Mariupol, a strategic city in southeastern Ukraine where Moscow announced a truce on Thursday to allow the evacuation of civilians, has been besieged for a month by the Russian army. Last week the scenario of a massive evacuation by the port of the city was advanced, but the conditions do not seem to be met. Pascal Ausseur is director of the Mediterranean Foundation for Strategic Studies, during his active service in the Navy at the rank of Admiral he himself had followed a similar operation with Lebanon:
“This kind of operation is very important operations which can only be done if all the belligerents agree or in any case if no belligerent is in a position to oppose this evacuation. This consists to put passenger transport boats, civilian boats or military boats and they go into the port, dock and there we get as many people as possible on board. And then afterwards, they leave and so we escort them, we protect them, but they are extremely vulnerable. And so, if one of the belligerents wants to oppose this movement, it cannot be done.”
The evacuation of Beirut in 2006
“We did it in 2006 in Beirut, during the war between Hezbollah and Israel, and I commanded a boat which was responsible for protecting this operation. We were able to do this only because neither of the two belligerents opposed this evacuation of nationals and Lebanese that we had done at the time. Several tens of thousands of people left by sea at that time. My analysis is that these evacuations by land, they are symbolic. It’s almost communication management. The flow is so low that it has no bearing on the reality of the situation in Mariupol.”
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