With a total population of 430,000 before the war, Mariupol is the top ten largest cities in Ukraine and the second largest in Donetsk Oblast. Since the area occupies the entire sea of Azov, it has been the focus of Russian forces since the outbreak of conflict between Russia and Ukraine on February 24. Russian troops, along with militias in eastern Ukraine, surrounded the city on February 24, while the main Ukrainian forces guarding the area were the 36th Marine Brigade and the infamous Azov Battalion.
In particular, the Azov battalion, an armed force composed of a large number of ultra-nationalist personnel, although its thinking is typical of the far right, but the combat effectiveness of the personnel armed with this thinking is indeed first-class. Thus the Russian army in the course of the offensive, the Azov battalion caused them considerable trouble.
The Siege of Mariupol has been going on for 50 days so far, and I am afraid that no one could have imagined that the Ukrainian army would be able to resist the Russians here for so long at the beginning of the war. Moreover, the Ukrainian army had long since lost control of the port, which meant that they had not been able to obtain external supplies for a long time.
The reason for this is that on the one hand, Mariupol was a key fortified city for the Ukrainian army before the war, and the city stored a large number of weapons, ammunition reserves, food and medicine, etc., on the other hand, because the Azov steel plant in the Soviet era had been built into a fighting fortress. The Russians' large-caliber artillery shells, even cruise missiles, have limited strike capabilities against the local area.
About half a month earlier, the Russian army had compressed the remaining Ukrainian defenders to a few blocks centered on the Azov steel mills. As the Russian army put a large number of 203 mm self-propelled howitzers and 240 mm self-propelled mortars into the battlefield, the casualties of the Ukrainian defenders were also getting worse, and now they finally could not hold on. According to the latest reports in the Russian media, just a few days ago, as many as 1,026 soldiers of the 36th Brigade of the Ukrainian Marine Corps stepped out of the defensive positions and surrendered to the Russian army, including 126 officers.
The 36th Brigade of the Ukrainian Marine Corps, when fully loaded, had its own strength of only about 2,500 men. Considering the heavy casualties in the course of the previous battle, coupled with this group of surrendered troops, this force can basically be said to have been completely annihilated. That is to say, the only one who is still stubbornly resisting in the Azov steel plant is the Azov battalion, a far-right armed force, which has long been on the wanted list of the Russians, and it is only a matter of time before it is completely annihilated, and presumably the Russian army will not accept their surrender.
The day when Mariupol was completely conquered by russia, that is, the day when the Azov battalion ushered in its own doom. The conquest of the city is undoubtedly a milestone for Russia. From a geostrategic point of view, Russia has complete control of the territory along the entire Azov coast of Ukraine, and the Russian army groups deployed in crimea and the Russian army groups in the Donbass region can be linked on land.
In addition, the Ukrainian authorities have regarded Mariupol as one of their own symbols of resistance, and the Russian army's move can also destroy Ukraine from morale.
But then again, the results of the Russian army may be limited to that. In addition to that, they won at most more sets in the Donetsk region. At present, a large number of Ukrainian troops drawn from Kiev are rushing to the eastern region, and NATO countries' assistance to Ukraine is becoming more and more arrogant, from the past infantry light weapons to the level of offensive heavy weapons. The fabled Armageddon in Donbass is likely to break out in the near future, a battle that will undoubtedly determine the future fate of russia and Ukraine.