Ukrainian Defiance, Spartans at Azovstal and Thermopylae – The Siege of Mariupol
In spring 2022, a few thousand Ukrainian soldiers held Mariupol for nearly three months against overwhelming Russian force. They were defeated, but never broken. The siege proved – to Ukrainians most of all – that Putin could be defied. It is a lesson both sides are still reckoning with.
Kyiv Post
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On May 20, 2022, the very last Ukrainian defenders of the Black Sea port city Mariupol laid down arms and walked out of the remains of the Azovstal steel plant, defeated but unbowed, and into Russian custody and history.
For two months, three weeks and five days, Ukrainian national guardsmen, marines, border troops, police, civilian volunteers, special forces and splinters of at least four army brigades held out, in Mariupol, against at least five and likely eight to ten times their number of Russians. The attackers were picked troops. The Kremlin-favored 150th Motor Rifle Division traced its heritage straight back to WWII and the capture of the Reichstag in Berlin. The elite 810th Naval Infantry, fresh from successful amphibious landings around Berdyansk, was recruited, in part, from Ukrainians who had gone over to Russia in 2014. Both featured regularly on state-run TV as exemplars of Russian military might. Thousands of Moscow-loyal troops raised in the occupied Donetsk region backed them.
Supporting Russia’s ground assault was an air force operating with total air supremacy, and artillery not just out-shooting Ukrainian gunners 10 or 20 shells to one but just firing with impunity. In about the third week of the siege, the Ukrainians ran out of artillery shells completely.
Worse for Ukrainian hopes to make a fight at Mariupol, in the early days of the (second) invasion, Ukrainian defenses north of Crimea had collapsed. Instead of the expected attack from the east, Mariupol’s defenders found themselves surrounded almost from the first day of the war. Every day they held out, the chances of surviving to fight again decreased. One of the great achievements of Ukrainian arms at Mariupol is that most of the siege was fought by men and women knowing the only way out was death or a Russian prisoner of war camp.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said efforts to broker peace talks between Ukraine and Russia have stalled, with no current negotiations underway. He stressed that Washington became involved because it was seen as the only mediator both sides would engage with, but said the process has so far failed to deliver progress. Rubio added the US remains ready to re-engage if future talks become productive.
Unexpectedly, the headquarters of a National Guard unit called 12th National Guard Regiment “Azov” took over the circular defense of a city of almost a million civilian residents, against the most concentrated firepower the Russian military had, even by 2026, ever focused on a single objective since the 1940s. Azov’s commander, a former English student named Denys Prokopenko, like many of his mates, had first gone to war in 2014 as an armed civilian defending against Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine, so he knew how to fight but had no experience commanding a combined force. He and Azov improvised, in retrospect, brilliantly.
During the 2015-2021 “ceasefire” years, when the world pretended Russian aggression against Ukraine was over, inside Azov, every single recruit was taught the same lesson the 300 Spartans that defended Thermopylae demonstrated almost exactly two-and-a-half millennia (2,501 years) in the past: The enemy is real, he is powerful, and only professional soldier skill, will to fight and above all readiness to sacrifice will stop him.
The second defensive backbone in Mariupol – 36th Naval Infantry Brigade – made its stand much the same way, but in the tradition of hard-nosed, leatherneck Marines. Even as international observers in early 2022 were predicting the collapse of Ukraine’s military against overwhelming Russian force, 36th Brigade’s tough infantrymen, tankers and mortarmen knew they were seasoned, combat veterans under attack by green Russian troops, most of whom had never experienced a shot in anger. Marine bunkers at Mariupol were deeply dug, machine gun engagement areas were set, and their machine guns were ranged in.
Ukrainian heroism was common. A Marine nurse, unable to treat wounded people because medical supplies ran out, ignored artillery and mortar strikes around her to cook food for her patients. Surgeons and infantrymen volunteered to fly into Mariupol, by helicopter, through Russian air defenses, one-way. The medics probably saved the lives of hundreds of wounded.
A pair of Georgian officers, both 60+, volunteered to lead soldiers one-third their age on anti-tank raids behind Russian lines. One died, the other was severely wounded. A border troops officer retired and spending most of his time fishing around Mariupol, ran small boats up and down Mariupol’s shore moving troops, supplies and wounded. None of his young sailors had set foot on a motorboat, never mind under fire. They learned.
An Azov lieutenant, sent to organize defenses at Mariupol airport, and finding most of the garrison in hiding, took charge and ordered people back to work. Some outranked him. That didn’t matter. A Marine veteran, volunteering to lead a squad of untrained, armed civilians, fought an almost private war against the Russian army in the middle of the city. He only got out months later.
Four years after the siege’s end, the 36th Marine Brigade has expanded fivefold to an entire Corps, and one of the most decorated Ukrainian Marines of all – Andriy Hnatov – is a lieutenant general at the head of Ukraine’s top military brain, the General Staff. Prokopenko and Azov, now a formation about eight times larger than the forces they commanded at Mariupol, are on the line mostly in the Donetsk-Pokrovsk sector. Both sides account 1st Corps one of the most combat-capable outfits on the entire front. But that is only part of the Mariupol Siege’s legacy.
Every day Mariupol held out, via the Azov Starlink, Mariupol showed the world, but most of all, Ukrainians, that Vladimir Putin and Russia might be defied. Here, Mariupol’s defenders showed that Ukrainians will fight – to the death if necessary, they may be defeated, but they will not be bowed, they will not submit. Russian (and Western) messaging that Ukraine must roll over and surrender, and neither can nor will defend their freedom and independence, is a lie.
The greatest legacy of Mariupol, purchased with Ukrainian blood, is this: Anyone believing in that lie, and treading on Ukrainian soil, will do so at their very great peril.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
