Mariupol fighters battle on weeks after experts said city would fall

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Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the southern port city, Mr Zelensky said on Monday.

And he made clear that it could be the most important battle of the war.

“Mariupol is the heart of this war today. It is beating. We’re fighting. We’re strong. And if it stops beating we will be in a weaker position.

“They are people who are distracting a big part of the enemy forces. The stronger our position in Mariupol, the stronger our position in the east of the country will be. And if they are stronger, the negotiation table will be closer and we will have advantages in the dialogue with the Russian Federation.”

If Mariupol falls, and the looming battle for the east goes badly, he warned, Russia would seek to press its advantage and continue the war.

Both sides are aware of the importance of the battle.

“If and when it does fall, then those forces that are engaged there are free to attack north to attempt to join up with those forces that are attacking south from Izyum,” said a Western official. “The Ukrainians are now going to face effectively a pincer move.”

The official said Russia would be looking to “double or triple” the forces available to it in Donbas before attempting that operation, and that it “is going to take some considerable time to bring them up to that sort of number”.

The length of the siege, the scale of the destruction and the bravery of the defenders of Mariupol has drawn inevitable comparisons with Stalingrad.

But Stalingrad famously ended in a seemingly miraculous victory for the defenders. There is a more recent, and bitter, precedent many Ukrainians will have in mind.

In 2014 and 2015, small numbers of Ukrainian troops battled for months to hold onto the wreckage of Donetsk airport against impossible odds. They became a symbol of heroism and defiance, but the fight ended in inevitable and painful defeat.

Will Mariupol end the same way?

The siege began on March 3, when Russian spearheads from Crimea and Donbas met and completed an encirclement of the port city.

Although there are rumours of secret supply routes, reinforcement has been effectively impossible ever since.

The Russians quickly targeted essential utilities including water and electricity to make life impossible for both the defenders and the 400,000 or more civilians trapped in the city.

They also destroyed communications infrastructure, making it nearly impossible to speak to those trapped inside or document the realities of the battle.

For the first three weeks, Mstyslav Chernov and Evgeniy Maloletka, two women with the Associated Press, continued to work under shell fire, sending pictures and words when they could still get a tiny bit of signal.

They documented the Russian airstrike that destroyed a maternity hospital, killing at least one heavily pregnant woman and her unborn child, but had to leave when they were warned that the Russians were hunting for them.

Since then, we have had to rely on infrequent updates from the city council and the harrowing testimony of the civilians who very occasionally make it to safety along a “green corridor”.

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