It is truly heroic what is happening in Mariupol. The troops there aren’t willing to surrender. We mustn’t allow them to die.
The battered port city of Mariupol appeared on the brink of falling to Russian forces Sunday after seven weeks under siege, a development that what would give Moscow a crucial success in Ukraine following a botched attempt to storm the capital and the loss of the Russian navy’s Black Sea flagship.
The Russian military estimated that about 2,500 Ukrainian fighters holding out at a hulking steel plant with a warren of underground passageways provided the last pocket of resistance in Mariupol. Russia gave another deadline for their surrender, saying those who put down their weapons were “guaranteed to keep their lives,” but Ukraine remained defiant.
We must deny Putin this victory. MIracles do happen:
“Mariupol is very important to Putin because after a victory there (and the surrender of Azov troops) he can claim that the ‘denazification’ process is successful,” the source added.
An assistant to Mariupol’s mayor said on Wednesday that Russia planned to celebrate victory in the city on 9 May, the date Moscow marks victory over Nazi Germany in the second world war with an annual parade on Red Square.
Zhdanov, the military analyst, said he saw little chance of Ukrainian forces from the outside breaking through Russia’s siege.
“How many supplies the defenders have and how long they can hold on is anyone’s guess. But they have no other way out. They’re surrounded on all sides, they have to stand till the end. If they give in, they will not be spared,” he said.
The 99 Percenters 