Since the beginning of the war between Russia and Ukraine, Mariupol, which is located on the opposing front line and less than 60 kilometers from the Russian-Ukrainian border, has quickly become the focus of world attention. Few people at first would have imagined that the 166-square-kilometer port city (including 244 square kilometers in the suburbs) and a pre-war population of 430,000 would have held out for at least 59 days. Even if the siege of the city began on 11 March, as Previously stated by Shoigu, that meant that more than 7,000 defenders (more than 8,100, claimed to be more than 8,100) held the remaining part of the city for at least 44 days from then on, almost as long as the entire Battle of France in World War II in 1940.
Even after Shoigu unilaterally declared victory and withdrew large numbers of troops on 21 April, the remaining less than 3,000 defenders held back several reinforced battalions/battalion-level battle groups of the Russian army and continued to create trouble for the Russian campaign plan. From this point of view alone, the overall impact of the Mariupol defenders on the overall situation was even greater than that of the Soviet defenders in the Brest Fortress in 1941, when the stubbornly resisting defenders paid the price of two thousand killed and seven thousand captured, and only held the German 45th Infantry Division in Brest for 12 days.
So, what kind of city is Mariupol? First, it is an accepted fact that Mariupol is a steel city, not because Ukraine awarded it the title of "Heroic City", but because nearly a quarter of Ukraine's pre-war steel was produced in Mariupol. In the twentieth century, the steel century, Mariupol once relied on its steel industry to become a pioneer city in the social economy of all Ukraine and even the whole Soviet Union, and to this day, the city's residents still pride themselves on being a steel city.
One of the landmarks of the city of Mariupol: statue of a steelmaker
The largest steel plant in Mariupol is named after Iric, the Mariupol Steel Plant, located in the north of the city, the name is derived from Lenin, generally referred to as the Iric Steel Plant, with about 30,000 employees, followed by "Azov Star" (Азовстталь) factory, "Starr" means "steel" in Russian, so it is also commonly called Azov Steel Plant, the plant employs about 10,000 people, the Azov Steel Plant is located in the left bank area of the eastern part of the city, and is currently the last fortress of the city's defenders.
▲Azov Steel Plant
Covering an area of 11 square kilometers, the Azov Steel Plant overlooks Wolong, with coke chemical production facilities, blast furnace workshops with 5 blast furnaces, converter workshops, rolling complexes (consisting of medium and thick plate rolling mills, railway and structural steel rolling mills, thick plate rolling mills and railway fastener workshops), with an annual production capacity of 5.7 million tons of pig iron, 6.2 million tons of crude steel and 5.2 million tons of finished steel, and is known for producing special steel.
▲ Azov Steel Works in the satellite map
The mention of the word "special steel" will surely understand its significance to the "steel torrent" of the Soviet army, so whether it was in the construction period of the factory in the 1930s or in the reconstruction period after 1943, the defense capability of the Aeszov steel plant was the focus of the construction requirements. Jan Gagin (Ян Гагин), adviser to the President of the "Donetsk People's Republic", declared in an interview with the Russian News Agency:
The Azov Steel Works is a huge factory, another Mariupol city, with its own vast road traffic system, and underground fortifications built in the Soviet era have thought of possibilities including bombing and blockade, and in some parts even take into account the needs of nuclear war. The underground transportation network connecting the various parties makes it difficult to storm the factory. The underground can be said to be a "city under the city"... Moreover, the defenders also had a large number of weapons, ammunition and armored vehicles.
Basulin, a spokesman for the Donetsk military, even preached that the structure of the factory was too special and that it was better to get the help of the "chemical forces" to solve the problem. At the same time, the European and American media also began to hype up the underground castle of the Azov Steel Works, and Grinberg, an analyst at the Jerusalem Society for Strategy and Security, declared: "Of course, the attackers can try to attack, but the defenders of the underground passage will definitely enjoy a tactical advantage and can slaughter the attackers." Britain's Daily Mail is even more imaginative, claiming that the Azov Steel Works has up to six floors of Soviet-era underground fortifications, built to nuclear war standards, enough to accommodate 40,000 steel mill workers.
▲ Exaggerated illustrations equipped by the Daily Mail
However, the description of "Donetsk" may be suspected of finding a reason for the slow progress, and the media reports in Europe and the United States are to a large extent exaggerated by European and American people when observing the former Soviet Union, and perhaps mixed with a trace of awe developed during the Cold War. In fact, as many recent videos released by the defenders show, the Azov Steel Plant certainly has underground fortifications and even underground passages, but it is far less exaggerated than in the Daily Mail report. Even in its heyday, there were only about 10,000 workers at the Azov Steel Works, and most of the workshops had only one basement floor below, which was a typical production facility, often used for water supply, electricity, gas, and the aboveground workshops were often separated by only one layer of metal plates. As far as soviet-era factories are concerned, only a factory with a shortage of land such as the Likhachev Automobile Factory in Moscow will have to build multi-storey underground facilities in desperation, and the Azov Steel Plant built on virgin ground is obviously not one of them.
▲Inside the red circle is the opening of a possible underground air raid shelter
Of course, it was impossible for the Soviet Union, which was always preparing for war, not to take into account the war factor, so there may indeed be several bomb shelters or bomb shelters underground at the Azov Steel Works, but they can only accommodate a few thousand people, and they are not connected to each other.
In fact, the owners of the two major steel mills, Ilyich and Azov, the Donetsk oligarch and ukraine's richest man, Akhmetov, have sent a spokesman a few days ago to clarify that the underground passage network of the Azov Steel Plant was originally only a production facility built to transport machinery and maintain the bottom of large machinery, and the underground bunker was only used to shelter workers during the 2014 war. However, it also admitted that "since the invasion in 2014, we have been carefully taking care of the underground bunkers and replenishing food and water in a timely manner", indicating that the underground material reserves are sufficient and can accommodate about 4,000 people.
Since the underground fortifications are not as terrible as the legend, why did the Azov Steel Plant make the Russian side choose to surround and not fight? In fact, the reason is not complicated, the Azov Steel Plant is located on the left bank of the Kalimius River, the west and north sides are rivers, the south is the Sea of Azov, no matter how the Russian aviation and artillery destroy the ground and underground facilities, and finally occupy the factory still have to rely on infantry to bite from the east step by step. For the Russian army, which was not well manned and especially valuable in infantry, it was not a good idea to fight hard with the fanatical nationalists of the "Azov Regiment" in the ruins, but it was better to rely on superior firepower to blockade the factory area, make it difficult for the defenders to attack, and free up troops to go to the main battlefield of Donbass further north, and perhaps play a greater role.
In his previous article, I have repeatedly quoted Strelkov, the former defense minister of the "Donetsk People's Republic", who was quite dissatisfied with the decision-making level of the Russian side, but he praised the siege and did not fight this time, and even believed that this was the first wise decision since the beginning of the war, and the reason for this is probably this.