KYIV, Ukraine:Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to claim victory in the strategic port of Mariupol on Thursday, even as he ordered his troops not to storm the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance in the war’s iconic battleground. Russian troops have besieged the southeastern city since the early days of the conflict and largely pulverized it — and top officials have repeatedly indicated it was about to fall, but Ukrainian forces stubbornly held on. In recent weeks, they holed up in a sprawling steel plant, and Russian forces pounded the industrial site and repeatedly issued ultimatums ordering the defenders to surrender.
Putin said that, for now, he would not risk sending troops into the warren of tunnels under the giant Azovstal plant, instead preferring to isolate the holdouts who have captivated the world’s attention “so that not even a fly comes through.” His defense minister said the plant was blocked off, while giving yet another prediction that the site could be taken in days. Putin's order may mean that Russian officials are hoping they can wait for the defenders to surrender after running out of food or ammunition. Bombings of the plant could well continue.
Even though Putin painted the mission to take Mariupol already a success and said the city had been “liberated," until the plant falls, he cannot declare a complete victory. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said about 2,000 Ukrainian troops remained in the plant, which has a labyrinth of tunnels and bunkers that spread out across about 11 square kilometers (4 square miles). Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that about 1,000 civilians were also trapped there.
Russian-backed separatists in the area previously seemed bent on taking every last inch of the city, which has seen some of the most dramatic fighting of the war and whose capture has both strategic and symbolic importance. The scale of suffering in the city on the Azov Sea has made it a worldwide focal point, and its definitive fall would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, complete a land bridge between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized in 2014, and free up Russian troops to move elsewhere in the Donbas.
Russian officials now say capturing the Donbas, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, is the war’s main goal. This week, Moscow's forces opened a new phase of the war, in a deadly drive along a front from the northeastern city of Kharkiv to the Azov Sea. Detaching the region from the rest of Ukraine would give Putin a badly needed victory two months into the war, after the botched attempt to storm the capital, Kyiv, and amid mounting Russian losses.
Britain’s Defense Ministry said that Russia likely wants to demonstrate significant successes ahead of Victory Day on May 9, the proudest moment on the annual calendar marking its critical role in winning World War II. “This could affect how quickly and forcefully they attempt to conduct operations in the run-up to this date,” the ministry said. Retired British Rear Admiral Chris Parry described Putin's remarks as reflecting a change in "operational approach" as Russia tries to learn from its failures in the eight-week conflict, which turned from initial hopes of a lightning-fast invasion of a neighbor into a war of attrition with ever mounting casualties and costs.