Mariupol is a desert of rubble: more than 200,000 people at the end and barricaded underground. While the “official” UN figures speak of 925 civilians killed in Ukraine since the beginning of the conflict, according to estimates from the port city, there are thousands of victims in Mariupol alone: a week ago, according to local officials, there were 2,300 dead. Today there would be many more. Impossible to have certainties. The bodies are left outdoors, covered only with a cloth. “Hopefully no one will ever see what I saw,” said Manolis Androulakis, the Greek consul in Mariupol, who along with thousands of others managed to escape through fragile humanitarian corridors. “What is happening in Mariupol is a huge war crime,” said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell. Until a month ago, Mariupol had around 430,000 inhabitants. Some 100,000 would have fled before the Russian attacks began, making it virtually impossible to leave the city.
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The Russians have focused their war fury on the Ukrainian port on the Sea of Azov because control of the city would complete the nowcaptured land bridge along the coast connecting southern Russia with Crimea. Because of its strategic position in the north, which would allow it to encircle the Ukrainians by advancing from Donbass, Russian forces had already tried to overthrow Mariupol in 2014: Today’s anger, explains Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk, is a “personal revenge .” of Russian President Vladimir Putin for not doing so at the time.
Reports of thousands of Mariupol residents forcibly deported to Russia are “disturbing” and “unacceptable” if true. The American ambassador to the United Nations, Linda ThomasGreenfield, denounced this. Speaking to CNN, the diplomat reported that the United States has not yet confirmed the claims made by the Mariupol City Council on its Telegram channel. “I just heard that. I can’t confirm it,” he said. “But I can say it’s worrying. It is unacceptable that Russia is pushing Ukrainian citizens into Russia and deporting them to concentration and prison camps. Mariupol is by far the most heavily bombed and devastated city in the Russian war in Ukraine. It is the key to Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine. But why?
According to a BBC analysis, there are four main reasons why taking over the port city would be such a strategic victory for Russia and a blow to Ukraine.
1) The land corridor between Crimea and Donbass
Geographically, the city of Mariupol occupies only a small area on the map, but for now it is blocking the Kremlin’s plans in southern Ukraine, the only area where Moscow has recorded advances by ground forces with bombs. The fall of the main port on the Sea of Azov would allow Crimea to be connected to Donbass in eastern Ukraine.
General Sir Richard Barrons former commander of the British forces argues that the fall of Mariupol is vital to Russia’s war effort. “When the Russians feel they have successfully ended this battle, they will have completed a land bridge from Russia to Crimea and will consider this a great strategic success.” After capturing this city, Russia would have full control of more than 80 % of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, which would disrupt its maritime trade and further isolate it from the world. So far, the Ukrainians have managed to employ a large number of Russian troops. But Russia’s inability to take over the city prompted Russian commanders to resort to a 21stcentury version of medieval siege tactics: artillery, rockets and missiles, 90% of the city’s buildings damaged. No electricity, no heating, no water, no food and no more medicine. Ukraine promised to defend the city to the last soldier. It could very well come to that.
Russian troops are slowly pushing toward the center, and in the absence of a working peace deal, Russia is likely to step up its bombardment, making little or no distinction between its armed defenders and the besieged civilian population, which still numbers over 200,000 people. If Russia (unfortunately, it is no longer a question of “if” but of “when”) takes full control of Mariupol, it will free up thousands of soldiers for use on other war fronts in the northeast of the Donbass region, heading west Odessa, which would remain Ukraine’s last major outlet on the Black Sea, or to the northwest towards the city of Dnipro.
2) A heavy blow to the Ukrainian economy
Mariupol is a strategically important port on the Sea of Azov, a part of the Black Sea, which, with its deepwater berths, is the largest port in the Sea of Azov region and home to an important steel factory. In normal times, Mariupol is a major export hub for Ukraine’s steel, coal and corn, targeting customers in the Middle East and around the world. Since 2014, the year Moscow illegally annexed Crimea, the city has been sandwiched between Russian forces on that peninsula and proKremlin separatists in the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.
3) propaganda thing
Mariupol is the headquarters of a large Ukrainian militia called the Azov Brigade, named after the Sea of Azov that connects Mariupol to the rest of the Black Sea. The Azov Brigade includes rightwing extremists, including neoNazi elements. Although it is only a small fraction among all Ukrainian armed forces, it is a useful propaganda tool for Moscow, giving it an excuse to tell the Russian people through the deployed media that the young people it has sent to Ukraine to fight , free of charge there is land before neoNazis. Should Russia manage to capture a significant number of Azov Brigade fighters alive, they will likely be featured in the Russian statecontrolled media as part of the ongoing information warfare to discredit Ukraine and Zelenskyy’s government.
4) Psychic Victory
Russia’s capture of Mariupol, if it comes to pass, will be psychologically significant for both sides in this war. A Russian victory in Mariupol would allow the Kremlin to show its people—again through statecontrolled media that silenced critical voices—that Russia is achieving its goals and making progress. Putin sees Ukraine’s Black Sea coast as belonging to something called Novorossiya (New Russia) Russian lands dating back to the 18thcentury empire. Putin wants to revive this concept, “save the Russians from the tyranny of a proWestern government in Kyiv,” as he sees it. Mariupol is the main obstacle to achieving this goal. At the same time, the loss of Mariupol would be a severe blow to the Ukrainians, not only militarily and economically, but also to the morale of the men and women fighting on the ground: it would be the first major city to fall victim to the Ukrainian Russians after Kherson, a much less strategically important city that was not actually defended. Instead, Mariupol put up fierce resistance and now lies in ruins. Every house has become a target.
“It will go down in history along with Grozny and Aleppo notes the BBC places that Russia eventually reduced to rubble. The message to other Ukrainian cities is harsh and very clear: those who resist like Mariupol can expect the same fate. . “The Russians couldn’t enter Mariupol,” says General Sir Richard Barrons today, “they couldn’t enter with their tanks, so they reduced it to rubble.” The city of Mariupol has been “reduced to rubble” by Russian military aggression, but the city “will survive,” reads the message of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a video message released in the last few hours. The present speaks of death, destruction, ruins, no future.
The head of Ukraine’s Donestk separatist republic, Denis Pushilin, told Interfax that it would take more than a week to capture Mariupol. “I’m not so optimistic that it will be over in 23 days or in a week. Unfortunately no, the city is big.
The last two international journalists have fled
From today, Mariupol risks becoming a black hole for the West. Knowing what is really happening is getting more and more complex. The only international journalists remaining in Mariupol were Associated Press videomaker Mstyslav Chernov and photographer Evgeniy Maloletka. They are the ones who have documented in detail the devastating attacks on civilians, including the bombing of the children’s hospital, the local theater and an arts school. The two journalists published a report on their escape and the last few days in the Ukrainian city on the AP on Monday. “The Russians were chasing us. They had a list of names, including ours, and they were getting closer,” the two say.
While they were in a hospital documenting the scenes of dead and wounded, a group of soldiers began searching the corridors and doctors sent to rescue them gave them smocks to disguise them. Eventually it turned out to be a squad of Ukrainian soldiers who had come to rescue her. The two were ushered into the line of cars leaving the city and slipped into two cars carrying families trying to get out of the battered city through the humanitarian corridors. They passed fifteen Russian checkpoints. “When we stopped at the 16th checkpoint, we heard rumours. Ukrainian voices. I felt tremendous relief. The mother in front of the car burst into tears. We were outside,” reporters wrote on the AP website.
Moscow had offered a safe corridor out of Mariupol, leading east to Russia and another west to other parts of Ukraine, in exchange for the city’s surrender before dawn Monday. Ukraine categorically rejected the offer well before the deadline. The full extent of the horror in Mariouol is not yet known. From today it will be even more complex to know.
