In a war marked by Russia’s underperformance, by its inability to take Kyiv and its failed attempt to decapitate the Ukrainian leadership, control of the devastated metropolis amounts to a significant and horrific Kremlin victory.
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The near-total leveling of a city has evoked the sieges of Aleppo, Syria, in the 2010s and Grozny, Chechnya, in the 1990s — but also the destruction of European cities from an age thought buried in the ashes of World War II and, further back, the 13th-century pillaging by the Golden Horde that overran the lands where modern Mariupol now lies in ruins.
Yet, at the same time, renewed investment from Kyiv injected new energy into the city. Streets were fixed. Stylish bars and cozy restaurants sprang up in quirky neighborhoods lined with Soviet-era apartment blocks. Urban life bloomed anew. Wrestlers once again competed for the prize of a sheep at the annual “Great Feast,” a celebration of Mariupol’s place at the center of Ukraine’s Greek Orthodox life.
“I opened my eyes and saw my brother and mother standing and shouting at me to run into the corridor,” the 19-year-old wrote in an account that he later published on Instagram. “We realized that we had to leave, but it was already too late.” Like many parts of Ukraine, particularly in the south and east, Mariupol is a largely Russian-speaking city with deep traditional and cultural ties to Russia and complicated, overlapping loyalties to Moscow and Kyiv. But the sheer brutality of the assault has turned the city decisively against the Kremlin.
The battle for control over eastern and southern Ukrainian cities is the latest stage in this war, as Russia attempts to solidify its grip on the Black Sea.
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