city from fascist aggressors (on 10 September) Day of the city (the Sunday after the day of liberation of Mariupol in September) Day of the metallurgist – a professional holiday for many citizens Day of the machine engineer Day of the seaman and other professional holidays Demographics As of 1 December 2014, the city's population was 477,992. Over the last century the population has grown nearly twelvefold. The city is populated by Ukrainians, Russians, Pontic Greeks (including Caucasus Greeks and Tatar- and Turkish-speaking but Greek Orthodox Christian Urums), Belarusians, Armenians, Jews, etc. The main language is Russian. The average annual population decline of the city from 2010 to 2014 is 0.6%. The death rate is 15.5%. Ethnic structure The city is largely and traditionally Russian-speaking, while ethnically the population is divided about evenly between Ukrainians and Russians. There is also a significant ethnic Greek minority in the city. In 2002, ethnic Ukrainians made up the largest percentage (48.7%) but less than half of the population; the second greatest ethnicity was Russian (44.4%). A June–July 2017 survey indicated that Ukrainians had grown to 59% of Mariupol's population and the Russian share had dropped to 33%. The city is home to the largest population of Pontic Greeks in Ukraine ("Greeks of Priazovye") at 21,900, with 31,400 more in the six nearby rural areas, totaling about 70% of the Pontic Greek population of the area and 60% for the country. Language structure The city is predominantly Russian speaking. From 60% to 80% of Ukrainian-language inhabitants communicate in Surzhyk, due to the large influence of Russian culture. Most Greek-speaking villages in the region speak a dialect called Rumeíka, a branch of Pontic Greek. About 17 villages speak this language today. Modern scholars distinguish five subdialects of Rumeíka according to their similarity to standard Modern Greek. This was derived from the dialect of the original Pontic settlers from the Crimea. Although Rumeíka is often described as a Pontic dialect, the situation is more nuanced. Arguments can be brought both for Rumeíka's similarity to Pontic Greek and to the Northern Greek dialects. In the view of Maxim Kisilier, while the Rumeíka dialect shares some features with both the Pontic Greek and the Northern Greek dialects, it is better considered on its own terms as a separate Greek dialect, or even a group of dialects. The village of Anadol speaks Pontic proper, being settled from the Pontos