Decryption | Why this fury in Mariupol, a martyr city?

The man who greets the journalists in front of a barricade, near the University of Mariupol, which houses the headquarters of the pro-Russian separatists, is called Andrei Borisov. He is armed with an AK-47 and a grenade launcher, and introduces himself as the “Military Commissar of the Donetsk People’s Republic”.

Agnes Gruda
The Press

We are on the eve of the Ukrainian presidential election in May 2014. The situation in Mariupol, the second largest city in Donetsk province, is unstable.

Two weeks earlier, a demonstration commemorating the end of the Second World War there ended in blood. Pro-Russian paramilitaries were forced out of the police station they had taken over to fall back on the university.

It was then that the oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, the richest man in Ukraine, who owns two steel mills in the region, decided to throw all his weight to prevent Mariupol from breaking with Ukraine.

Its employees have been released to patrol the streets of Mariupol alongside local police. Their goal: to prevent violence. But above all, to prevent Mariupol from following the example of the two other large cities of Donbass, Donetsk and Luhansk, which had just cut their ties with Kyiv.

Rinat Akhmetov will win his bet. Mariupol, a port city bordering the Sea of ​​Azov, will not switch to the separatist camp. And the “political commissar” Andreï Borisov will be killed in an attack, three weeks after our meeting…

field of ruins

Eight years later, five weeks of ruthless strikes have turned this vibrant seaside city into a field of ruins. At least 5,000 of its 430,000 inhabitants were killed in the bombardments. Two-thirds fled. Rinat Akhmetov’s Azovstal factory was shelled and destroyed. Like the majority of the city’s hospitals and all of its civilian infrastructure.

The 150,000 inhabitants in a state of siege are hiding in cellars and trying to find food between two bombardments, reports a deputy mayor of Mariupol, Petro Andrushenko, who himself had to take refuge in Zaporijjia, 200 kilometers further West.

The question arises: is Vladimir Putin taking his revenge on this Donbass city which resisted him in 2014? Is that the reason why he strikes Mariupol with such fury?

“The Russian failure of 2014 adds to the symbolic value of a possible takeover of Mariupol,” says Maria Popova, political scientist at McGill University and specialist in the post-Soviet transition.

“It’s about taking what Russia failed to take in 2014.”

For the Russians, “taking Mariupol is crucial because it is the big city of the Donbass that escaped them in 2014,” notes Dominique Arel, director of the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa.

Azov Regiment

But Mariupol is also the cradle of the famous Azov regiment – ​​an armed group from the nationalist extreme right which, in the eyes of the Kremlin, embodies the Nazi threat on which it feeds its anti-Ukrainian propaganda.

For Vladimir Putin, “Mariupol is a bit like the matrix of evil”, notes Adrien Nonjon, researcher at the National Institute of Oriental Languages ​​and Civilizations (INALCO) in Paris.

The reality is far from this caricatural portrait. With 2,500 to 5,000 men, the paramilitary group Azov was incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard in 2014, underlines this specialist in post-Soviet far-right movements.

Since then, it has diversified a lot. Considered an elite corps, the Azov regiment has three brigades. One of them defends Mariupol, another is present in Kharkiv and the third participates in the defense of Kyiv, explains Adrien Nonjon.

Despite this evolution towards less marginal ideological currents, for Maria Popova, the fall of Mariupol would allow Vladimir Putin to retroactively exhibit “proof” of an alleged fascist Ukraine. But Dominique Arel retorts that Russia does not need facts to feed its propaganda, which already presents all the Ukrainian opposition as “neo-Nazi”.

And then, as Adrien Nonjon underlines, for the Ukrainians, the Azov regiment, it is above all heroic brigades which succeed in putting up effective resistance against the invader. All the more reason for the Kremlin to want to wipe it off the map…

The missing link

The Russian relentlessness against Mariupol is also territorial. It is the largest city in the Donbass to escape Russian control, underlines Dominique Arel. He recalls that two days before launching his anti-Ukrainian offensive, Vladimir Putin declared that he recognized the “independence” of the two self-proclaimed republics of Donbass.

Everyone understood that his vision of Donbass went beyond Luhansk and Donetsk. “Putin justifies his war by claiming to want to protect Donbass, and for him, that necessarily includes Mariupol. »

Mariupol is also a land link between the Donbass and the Black Sea. This element is crucial in the relentlessness of the Russian army against this city, believes Ekaterina Piskunova, researcher at the Center for International Studies and Research at the University of Montreal (CERIUM). According to her, Vladimir Putin seeks to carve out a strip of territory from the Russian enclave of Kalinigrad, in the north, to Transnistria, the pro-Russian enclave in the territory of Moldova, in the south.

Control of this territory would allow Russia to connect the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. And according to Ekaterina Piskunova, this control necessarily passes through Mariupol.

Moreover, Ukraine expected an offensive against Mariupol and was prepared for it, says Ekaterina Piskunova. Hence the ferocity of the battle. But from there to destroying 90% of a city of nearly half a million inhabitants? The destruction of Mariupol strikes us because it is a big city, underlines Dominique Arel. “It’s as if we suddenly emptied the entire city of Laval. »

But this researcher is keen to point out that other smaller towns in the Donbass suffered similar firepower. Volnovakha, in the province of Donetsk, or Chchastia, in that of Luhansk. Ultimately, says Dominique Arel, whatever her reasons, Russia wants to take control of all of Donbass at all costs. And does not hesitate to deploy “massive means of destruction” to achieve this.