Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared victory over Mariupol, Ukraine’s strategically important city. In this biggest war in Ukraine, Putin claimed that the Russian army had ‘liberated’ Mariupol. According to reports from Mariupol, Russian flags can be seen all over the city. Meanwhile, the United States claims that the Russian army has yet to capture the entire city of Mariupol. The Russian-Ukraine war is now in its second month, and Putin is determined to turn it into a victory as soon as possible. Analysts, on the other hand, say that Russia’s capture of Mariupol is akin to a victory in Ukraine’s war. Let’s look at why defeating Mariupol is so important….
According to experts, Russia will gain a land route between its controlled Crimea and the self-proclaimed Donetsk Republic after occupying Ukraine’s port city of Mariupol on the coast of the Azov Sea. Just before the attack on Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin recognised the Donetsk and Luhansk republics as independent states. On February 24, Russia launched an offensive on three fronts: the Belarus border in northern Ukraine, Kyiv and Kharkiv, the rebel-controlled Donbass in the east, and Crimea in the south. Today is the 58th day of the war between Russia and Ukraine, and Putin’s army is concentrating all of its efforts on capturing Ukraine’s eastern region.
Hitler had Mariupol, the steel-making capital of the world, under his control.
The Russian army’s ongoing campaign to the south and north has come to an end. Russia’s sole goal was to take Mariupol, which it has nearly accomplished. The city of Mariupol was under the control of the Azov governor during the period of imperial rule in Russia, and was named after the 18th-century Russian king Maria Feodorovna. Russia relocated Orthodox Christians from Crimea to Mariupol, on the coast of the Azov Sea, in the 18th century. It grew into one of the largest trading centres on the Black Sea and the Azov coast in the years that followed. Mariupol became a steel-making centre in the nineteenth century. Thousands of workers arrived as a result of this.
The Russian attack on Mariupol destroyed 90% of the city.
Mariupol was occupied by German forces led by Adolf Hitler for about two years during World War II. During this time, the Nazi army began a campaign to exterminate Jews with the assistance of locals. Following this, the Russian Red Army liberated Mariupol, which was renamed Zhdanov after Soviet leftist leader Andrei Zhdanov. Mariupol was renamed again in 1989, two years before the Soviet Union fell apart. According to the BBC, the capture of Mariupol was critical to Russia’s war effort, according to General Sir Richard Barron, a former British army commander. The Russians would consider a land route to Mariupol a major strategic success by the end of the war.
80 percent of the land along the Black Sea coast is under Russian control.
With the capture of Mariupol, Russia now controls 80 percent of the territory along Ukraine’s Black Sea coast. Not only would Ukraine be cut off from maritime trade, but it would also be cut off from the rest of the world. With guns, rockets, and missiles, Russia has decimated Mariupol to the point where nearly 90% of the city has been destroyed. The coast of Mariupol is a deep sea port. Ukraine used to export steel, coal, and maize to Gulf countries from here. Not only that, but now that Mariupol has been captured, Putin will be able to portray it as a victory to his people who are opposed to the war. For Putin, who considers Ukraine’s Black Sea region to be part of the ‘new Russia,’ it was a personal matter. Putin named it ‘liberation’ for this reason. On the other hand, this is Ukraine’s biggest defeat in the war so far. Mariupol was the first major Ukrainian city to fall under Russian control.
