ROME, APRIL 20 (ANSA) Russian forces will organize a military parade in Mariupol on May 9, the anniversary of the Nazi surrender to Soviet troops in World War II.
This measure was already expected by Western and Ukrainian leaders and was confirmed this Wednesday (20) by the Russianappointed deputy mayor Viktoria Kalachova. “It will happen without a doubt, the people of Mariupol are expecting this event,” he said, according to the TASS news agency.
Mariupol, a strategic city for Moscow’s plans in Ukraine, is already effectively under the invaders’ control, and the last focus of military resistance is confined to the Azovstal Steelworks, despite repeated ultimatums for Ukrainian militants to surrender.
The city’s capture is crucial to Russia’s goal of establishing a land link between annexed Crimea and rebelheld areas of Donbass.
Moreover, it would be the Vladimir Putin regime’s first major military victory in Ukraine since the beginning of the war, although the community was leveled during the nearly twomonth siege.
Mariupol is also symbolic, as it is the birthplace of the Azov Battalion, a farright paramilitary militia attached to the Ukrainian army and accused of neoNazism by Russia. (ANSA).
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