Mariupol: The Final Line of Defense - Russian Roulette (Dispatch 99)

[snooper2]

VICE

Published on Mar 10, 2015
The eastern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol is just 30 kilometers from the Russian border, and was previously controlled by the Donetsk People’s Republic. The Ukrainian military has done its best to fortify the city after winning it back, but many believe that the pro-Russia separatists plan to seize control of it once again.

In this dispatch from Ukraine, VICE News correspondent Simon Ostrovsky embeds with the Azov battalion as it prepares to defend Mariupol.

[pampango]

1. If I were an ethnic Ukrainian living in the path of the 'land bridge' from Russia to Crimea,

I think I would be looking to sell my property as soon as possible. Mariupol is the largest city in the way of the land bridge.

Ethnic Russians may not be a majority in any province other than Crimea, but the military pressure to clear a path for the land bridge will be more than the Ukrainian military can combat.

[Igel]

2. Yes.

And all the war-mongering polemic from the DNR seems to be routinely ignored. It boils down to, "Give us what we want peacefully, or we'll fight to reclaim the borders that we claimed but never actually had."

The fighting only briefly paused east of Mariupol. Then the "rebels" resumed their fighting. It really pissed them off that the "fascists" took the little berg of Shyrokyne and got the rebels away from the edge of the Mariupol suburbs, at least towards the southern 2/3 of the city.

Probably pissed off Russia, because every mile of seacoast that's still "owned" by Ukraine means more Black Sea that's legally part of Ukraine. And Black Sea = natural gas. It's not just the economic inconvenience of having what amounts to another Koenigsberg.

(Having the Crimea "return" to Russia was a big boon for natural gas supplies that Gazprom could exploit--and right on the edge of one of its biggest markets. Imagine, this happened just as oil and gas companies were beginning to explore the area, and would possibly have provided billions of cubic feet of natural gas that could be sold to Europe ... not by Russia. Instead, a couple of weeks after the "annexation" Gazprom had people in the area exploring the region's gas supplies. And it was decided to mothball some projects in Siberia. I wonder where the "no blood for oil" folk are, given Russia's obvious "economic interest" in putting the kibosh on Ukrainian natural gas production, if not usurping that natural gas resource itself.)