Waarom Mariupol zo belangrijk is voor de Russen volgens oprichter Andriy Biletskyy van het Azov-regiment.
Volgens hem was de Russische verbetenheid om de stad voor hen ook een verrassing, omdat het verder vrij onlogisch is.
Verder zouden Russische elite-eenheden op Mariupol gezet zijn:
The Azov Commander mentioned that elite units are currently stationed in Mariupol: the Russian Marines, the Pacific Fleet, and the Slavic Regiment of the so-called DNR.
Earlier there were paratroopers, partly Kadyrovites, Rosguard, 9th Marine Regiment of the so-called DNR.
According to the military, the occupiers were half-destroyed and left incapacitated. He added that they were taken out for replenishment and reformatting.
In his opinion, no one, not even the Ukrainian defenders themselves, expected such a fierce battle for the city. Biletskyy noted that what is happening in Mariupol contravenes the laws of military logic and the laws of physics.
De redenen van de Russische obsessie:
“There are three directions: geostrategic, military-practical and moral-ideological.
1. moreel/ideologisch:
Moral and ideological is that Mariupol was the heart of Ukrainian Donbas. We talked a lot about the need to create a “storefront” in Donbas, so that residents understood that Ukraine is better. In many ways, Mariupol was truly a “storefront”. This is a developing city that lived better than Donetsk. The city, which in 2014 did not want to become DNR, which largely supported Ukraine, and the Ukrainian military. And for them it is, on one hand, a city-traitor of the “Russian world”, on the other hand – a symbol of the normal Ukrainian Donbas. So they decided to bury this symbol, because if everything is filth and there is nothing to compare it with, then, perhaps, filth looks normal. If there is something to compare with, it is difficult to pretend that filth is actuallygood. Accordingly, now there is nothing in Donbas to compare Donetsk and Lugansk with, whichwere turned by the Russians into a kind of soviet hell”.
2. geo-strategisch:
According to Biletskyy, the Russians wanted to capture Mariupol from the very beginning, and this was their geostrategic dimension.
But without the seaport of Mariupol and its factories the so-called “L/DNR” could not function properly economically. It was an interrupted industrial chain, because both Donetsk and Luhansk worked for Mariupol in many aspects. They also needed logistics, and logistics means the southern route that passed through Mariupol, which is called Vienna-Rostov, I think, and which goes from Odessa. That is, from the Crimea, they could easily connect in this way with the “L/DNR” and, so to speak, mainland Russia.
3. militaire logistiek:
And the second is the port, which significantly improved logistics. Until Mariupol is controlled, it is impossible to fully use this logistic corridor, and the Russians have been dreaming of a land corridor to the Crimea since 2014. Now there is a corridor, but they can’t put it to good use. This requires control over Mariupol.