Ukrainian helicopter pilots flew daring shuttles to drop off key supplies of food and ammunition. Infiltration parties ambushed and destroyed Russian supply columns. Ukrainian troops in infantry fighting vehicles outmanoeuvred and defeated Russian tanks. That Ukrainian forces held out for as long as they did testifies to the ferocity of the defence. The Ukrainian general staff had feared it would fall sooner. Mariupol, with a slightly larger defence force, has been subjected to the same fate in seven. In 1999 the Russians took six weeks to seize Grozny. The Russians employed massive artillery fire to wear down the defenders, destroying most of the city in the process.
The Russian military surrounded the city on 2 March and proceeded to pin Ukrainian defenders into isolated pockets which could then be assaulted in turn. In a war that has defied many expectations, the fighting in Mariupol conformed to conventional analysis. Photograph: Maxar Technologies Handout/EPA Satellite imagery of fresh graves in Vynohradne, east of Mariupol. The siege was prosecuted by troops from the 150 th Rifle Division and 810 th Naval Infantry Brigade reinforced with Chechen Rosgvardia and conscripted fighters from occupied Donetsk. The Russians assigned a significant force to take the city, though their composition shows that it was not Russia’s primary objective. A major industrial centre and port on the Sea of Azov, Mariupol would be economically vital to any annexed territory and in any case was on the main supply route from Rostov into southern Ukraine. That Mariupol would be a target for the Russian military had been obvious since 2014, when Russian proxies initially seized the city and tried repeatedly to retake it after being driven out. President Vladimir Putin set out to reanimate a Russian empire but has instead found himself master of a wasteland above ground and a mass grave beneath. They leave behind an apocalyptic landscape that in many respects stands as a symbol of Russia’s strategic failure in Ukraine. Although some Ukrainian troops continue to hold out at the Azovstal steelworks, the Russians have felt able to redeploy the forces used to assault the city.
The city of Mariupol is now effectively in Russian hands.
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