THE WORLD has grown used to Ukrainian forces beating the odds, but the 51-day defence of Mariupol almost defies the imagination. Russia has already declared victory several times in the near-destroyed port city on the Azov sea. Yet Ukraine’s massively outnumbered soldiers refuse to concede. On April 13th commanders of the Azov Battalion and the 36th Marine Brigade, the two main units charged with defending the city, issued a defiant message. They would fight to the last drop of blood, they said: “Our moral spirit is strong, we know what we are doing and why we are here.”
The Russian army has left a heavy footprint wherever it has trod in Ukraine, but it has reserved its cruellest for Mariupol, a city it claims to be liberating. From the first days, it targeted critical infrastructure: electricity substations, hospitals, public bomb-shelters. The campaign left tens of thousands dead, bodies abandoned on streets and an estimated 80,000 residents in cellars on the edge of life and death. Reports of mobile crematoria being deployed suggest the full scale of the slaughter may never be known. The ruthlessness appears to be aimed not just at concrete strategic gains, such as a land corridor to Crimea or a stranglehold on Ukraine’s economy. For Vladimir Putin, victory in Mariupol is symbolic: beating the ultra-nationalist Azov regiment would be a prize he could hold up as proof of his bogus “denazification” of Ukraine. But so far it has proven elusive.
From controlling most of the city in mid-March, Ukrainian forces have retreated to two strongholds. One group is based in the port area—an important logistical target for the Russians, who control the sea and would like direct access to it for supplies. Another group is located at the Azovstal steel plant that towers over the Kalmius river on the east side of the city. Both were built during the cold war and hence have networks of deep bunkers. Locals report that shelling and aerial bombardment have intensified around both places. On April 11th Azov fighters said Russian troops had used chemical weapons on their positions in the steel plant. The Ukrainian government has refrained from repeating these claims, pending an investigation.
A third group of Ukrainian marines was until recently based in the Ilyich metal plant to the north of the city. Those positions were abandoned in the second week of April when supplies ran out. Part of the group joined up with Azov troops in the steel plant on April 12th following a daring night-time mission. But a sizeable party went north, were surrounded, and surrendered. Russia said it had captured 1,026, a figure Ukraine denies. In the broadcast on April 13th, Azov’s commander, Denis Prokopenko, accused the soldiers of desertion.
Clearly, surrendering is not an option for Mr Prokopenko or his soldiers, given the Kremlin’s public promise to “destroy” Ukrainian national battalions. “We understand the predicament,” says Andriy Biletsky, a founder of the Azov Battalion, who says he is in daily contact with Mr Prokopenko and other soldiers in Mariupol. “We always told our guys they had no place fighting for us if they planned on going into captivity.”
Accusations of Azov’s far-right sympathies are not without historical basis. The battalion was formed in May 2014 with the aim of reclaiming Mariupol from Russian-backed separatists. Its patrons, Arsen Avakov, the then interior minister, and Serhiy Taruta, then governor of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, called in muscle from the more dubious elements of local society. Few questions were asked. Some of Azov’s first members carried neo-Nazi tattoos and had criminal records.
Whether the group is still extremist is another question. Azov was incorporated into the National Guard and army structure in 2015. Since then, it has been through a process of professionalisation, with far-right extremists, symbols and ideologies largely filtered out. Michael Colborne, an investigative journalist, author of a forthcoming book on Azov and a longtime critic of the movement, says the process was never completed. But Mr Putin’s war has done everything to rehabilitate Azov’s reputation. “In bloody war, even unsavoury people can be on the right side,” he said. “Everything changed on February 24th, when Russian tanks crossed the border. That’s hard for many people to accept, even me.”
Mariupol locals are dealing with similar issues of cognitive dissonance. Before the war, the population of 350,000 was an ethnic mix of Russians, Ukrainians, Greeks, Armenians and Jews. What they had in common was pragmatism. The majority spoke Russian. Many were sympathetic to Moscow, even after a rocket attack by Russian-backed forces hit the city in 2015. Few expected such a ferocious campaign to be launched against them. “Over many years, locals were sold a myth about Ukraine being Nazi, about Azov being Nazi,” says Anna Murlykina, editor of 0629.ua, Mariupol’s most popular website, who escaped under shelling in mid-March. “But what none of us realised was how corrosive that narrative was, how it would end up killing Ukrainians, and who the fascists really were.” Her friends and acquaintances are still in shock, she says, trying to understand how they wound up relying on handouts of food from Azov to stay alive.
The miracle of Ukraine’s last stand in Mariupol is small consolation to the hundreds of thousands who have lost homes and loved ones. They did not set out to be heroes, only to stay alive; and not all of them succeeded. It is also unclear, with supplies running out, how long the resistance can hold on. It would take Ukraine’s army a series of successful operations to break the siege, and the threat of still greater Russian atrocities hangs overhead. But against all probability, the port city’s defenders continue to defy Mr Putin’s plans for them. “If Kremlin hates something more than Ukraine, it has to be the word Mariupol,” said Mikhail Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s president, Volodymr Zelensky, in a recent tweet. Surrounded, Azov and the Ukrainian marines continue to dish out bloody noses. Their chances of getting out alive may be diminishing, but by keeping Russian troops committed, they may be giving their comrades to the north the time they need to win.
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