11:13
Maybe I should have praised the marine soldiers a bit more than this dry summary turned out to be but after a month of fighting as a unit carrying their wounded and with heavy losses making it to Azovstal will go down in history books and they have basically fought to the last bullet according to their own statement which means they did not break down as a unit but ran out of ammunition. Then not surrendering but making it to another encirclement where they can continue the fight probably indicates a motivation beyond what one can expect from any Western unit 🙂
13:46
There have been many thoughts about Mariupol the past week and now it feels like one can let it go and let life in the fortress take its course, safe in the knowledge that they are sitting in their five-story bunkers sipping Coca-Cola and field rations and shooting away everything that comes within shooting range.
Having had seven years to prepare, they have made them ABC- and water-proof except maybe against the worst bunker busters or heavier nuclear weapons but the area is gigantic so they would need to drop dozens of bunker busters to take out the defenders and they certainly don’t have that.
13:52
Yes, I understand that you have to give what does not reduce your capability, but I believe Poland and Slovakia are donating what they have, lowering their capability and hoping for new, and I like that. There are probably a few hundred Mig29s on the table now which would be welcome and the number of T72s is probably between 150-200 in total.
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We could theoretically donate 50 Strf-90 with full TOLO delivered to the border as a loan. After the war ends we take back what remains 🙂 Experienced crews would learn that vehicle in less than a week I think.
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After this war, I feel that the EU collectively should ensure that all countries on our eastern flank have very good equipment and training, not just NATO sending a few battalions as reinforcement. They are the whole EU’s protection and the EU should pay for the party.
17:56
What an absolute cheer idiot who doesn’t understand the situation in Mariupol. We in the thread barely have a driver’s license as keyboard warriors and have figured out that the Azovstal fort will hold out for the duration of the war.
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Yes, quite a few prisoners have been taken by the marine brigade, they probably have not given up but more been overrun and when they tried to escape they did not get forward as planned. It was not a large homogeneous pocket but the remains of a brigade spread over an area with Russians in between who over time ran out of ammunition and food.
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Erik14 has today’s best point here 🙂 if they had captured 1000 marines they would have been lined up in a field and flown over with drones all morning and the videos would have been all over the media and Jan Guillou would have been seen buying a bottle of Finnish liquor.
18:12
Now that we can put Mariupol behind us, I’m starting to get a bit curious about this spring offensive that is brewing.
I understand that we don’t have the numbers clear to us but no matter how I try, it never becomes a reasonable figure for the Russians to start an offensive with. Maybe they can get local superiority on some front section but then Ukraine is not worse than that they strike somewhere else and then the circus is on. The critical mass is to Russia’s disadvantage.
Is there then any chance that there will not be an offensive? No, because the bunker dwarf wants his victory by May 9 so he is about to make his biggest mistake in this war of only mistakes and will manage to wipe out what remains of the proud (red) army in a few weeks here.
20:16
The latest from pro-Russian forums is that in the breakout attempt Ukraine lost 70 dead and 42 prisoners.
That is somewhat lower than the 1000 reported earlier.
As someone said, these would have been paraded ad absurdum so rather 42 prisoners is what we have seen.
What heroes the marines are who break down to Azovstal and lose about a hundred
09:55
Mariupol –
yes, it seems well established that it is 1 pocket out of 3 that has collapsed and that the parts of the marine brigade (however you spell it…) that were there made a breakout down to Azovstal. It also seems to be the northern pocket but the maps differ a bit regarding how it looked/looks. Since it is marines who broke down to another unit, one can guess that there are no other pockets with marines in the area but that it was the entire unit that regrouped, those who could. Pro-Russian sites probably have videos showing which area has been lost in the coming days. We are flooded with videos and messages, all about marine soldiers, so other units in Mariupol have not given up, have not felt forced to post videos, and there is no chatter about them on pro-Russian sites. On the Wikipedia page there are five different unit types and militaryland has three unit types. Regardless, there are at least two other units that have not been in the same situation to feel forced to make a breakout.
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Azovstal, which they have presumably retreated to, is therefore an ENORMOUS fortified factory with the sea at its back and a river on two of three land sides and large open areas, we are talking medieval fort. According to LW it has been fortified for seven years and one can guess that Ukraine has always counted on Mariupol being encircled, just not so quickly and from the south, and that they have large supplies. The fact that the marine soldiers made a breakout towards Azovstal, I think, indicates that it will not fall and that there is supply there, otherwise they would have surrendered or tried to break northwards. They were probably in the large industrial area north of Azovstal and not very good terrain for a breakout, so a serious effort to break out and bring their wounded, their comrades the Russians usually leave their wounded to die in piles.
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Certainly soldiers who have surrendered and who will now be paraded in Russian media but I think we know roughly the following – Azovstal is a medieval fort controlled by Ukrainian elite units. They are now reinforced with marines who had enough combat value to carry their wounded through Russian lines so capability increase. The southern pocket controls the port but a wedge has been driven in between them and Azovstal. If one is to speculate on numbers, which is damn hard, maybe it was 1/3 of the defenders who now made a breakout and have presumably taken quite a few losses.
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If you ask me, we can now calm down about Mariupol, Azovstal will hold until the war is over and Putin will be dangling from a gas station, remember Westerplatte 🙂