Fighting to the last man: GUY ADAMS reveals how, deep in a network of tunnels beneath the smoking ruins of Mariupol, a diminishing band of bruised and bloodied Ukrainian soldiers is still holding out against Russian savagery
In Mariupol tunnels, a band of bloodied Ukrainian soldiers are fighting on
The bruised and bloodied soldiers are still holding out against Russian savagery
The heroics reflect the critical nature of the unbelievable struggle for Mariupol
By Guy Adams for the Daily Mail
Published: 23:12 BST, 15 April 2022 | Updated: 00:44 BST, 16 April 2022
Occupying a sprawling network of Cold War-era bunkers, connected by mile after mile of dimly lit passageways, the remnants of Ukraine’s 36th Marine Brigade prepare to mount a desperate last stand.
Pale, unshaven, exhausted after seven weeks of non-stop combat that has reduced the surrounding city of Mariupol to smoking ruins, they find themselves in a perilous position: outgunned, outnumbered and completely surrounded.
Maybe a third of their brothers-in-arms have already been killed or wounded, with roughly the same number taken captive by the Russians whose advance they so far have managed, against extraordinary odds, to frustrate. Food, water and ammunition are running scarce. The chances seem insurmountable. The situation hopeless. Yet they refuse to surrender.
‘We are the protectors of Ukraine in Mariupol, the 36th Marine Brigade, who will protect this city to the end,’ was how one of the 1,500 or so surviving fighters put it, in a video message this week.
Occupying a sprawling network of Cold War-era bunkers, connected by mile after mile of dimly lit passageways, the remnants of Ukraine’s 36th Marine Brigade prepare to mount a desperate last stand
‘We did not give up our positions. We held every piece of this city for as long as we could, but the reality is that the city ended up blockaded, and so we could not receive any arms back-ups, or any food supplies. We thank every Ukrainian who believed in, and continues to believe in, the marines.
‘We’ve survived on this hope for a very long time and continue to survive. Glory to Ukraine, glory to the heroes!’
A second fighter, who produced a separate film showing roughly a dozen defiant-looking comrades holed up in a small windowless room deep below the Azovstal iron and steel works, declared: ‘Ukrainians must remember the cost of this struggle and believe that we will do the task until the end. Ukraine, Europe, world — we’re loyal to the end!’
The footage, shared via the messaging app Telegram on Wednesday, lays bare the remarkable fortitude that has allowed Ukrainian forces to cling on to parts of central Mariupol since the early stages of this war, despite the ferocious efforts of around 15,000 Russian troops whose political masters have for weeks assumed that the city’s fall is imminent.
The soldiers, one of them female, appear in one of the short films to be in various stages of physical exhaustion. One, with his feet swathed in bandages, reclines on an armchair next to a set of crutches. Another toys with a walkie-talkie. A third fiddles with his telephone. Those not asleep drum their feet, restlessly. A young man waves blearily at the camera.
As their haunted stares attest, it has been a terrible struggle that will almost certainly end with yet more pain. In a post on its official Facebook page, the brigade this week offered an insight into the scale of the suffering they have endured as the Russian stranglehold on Mariupol choked the ability of Ukraine’s air force to fly in food, ammunition and replacement weapons for their troops.
‘The enemy gradually pushed us back. They surrounded us with fire and are now trying to destroy us. For more than a month, the marines have fought without refilling ammunition, without food, without water, aside from the dregs of puddles, and have died in packs,’ it read.
‘The mountain of wounded now makes up almost half of the crew. Those whose limbs are not torn off can return to battle. Our infantry have all died and gunfighters are now led by cooks, contacts of our drivers and police officers. Even members of our orchestra. We are dying but fighting. But gradually we are coming to an end.’
The heroics reflect the critical nature of the unbelievable struggle for Mariupol, an industrial city on the Gulf of Azov which, prior to Putin’s invasion, was home to 450,000 people.
An essential strategic city, which would allow Russia to establish a ‘land bridge’ to the Crimea, the region Putin annexed in 2014, it came under heavy bombardment from the opening days of the war, which began on February 24, and has remained at the centre of hostilities ever since.
Drone footage shows that barely a building has survived undamaged and swathes of the blackened metropolis, which stands eight miles across and boasts a deep-sea port through which around a quarter of Ukraine’s exports normally flow, have been reduced to rubble and smoking ruins. Corpses and twisted wrecks of vehicles and tanks litter the streets.
According to the city’s mayor, Vadym Boichenko, 21,000 civilians have already been killed during the bombardment. Earlier this month, he said Russian forces had brought mobile cremation equipment to the city to dispose of the corpses and were taking bodies to a shopping centre where there are storage facilities and refrigerators.