The symbol of Ukraine's strenuous resistance against the Russian invasion has fallen. It is about theAzovstal Steel Plant – which has become the fortress of the Azov battalion and of the Ukrainian soldiers – after 86 days of fierce battles, bombings and assaults it is “totally under the control of the Russian armed forces”, as announced by the Defense of Moscow. "The city is ours - Defense Minister Sergej Shoigu reported to President Vladimir Putin - we can sanction the end of the operation and the complete liberation of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol". In reality, it was Kiev that ordered the defenders of the steel plant (2.439 fighters) to lay down their arms and surrender since it was "impossible to break" the stalemate "by military means", explained the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. There final defeat of Mariupol it does not change the fate of the conflict in the short term but certainly the scenarios of the war on the ground.
What does the fall of Mariupol mean?
Although the Kremlin has repeatedly claimed the city, this time it is true. The last bastion of resistance in the strategic port city of Mariupol, reduced to rubble after weeks of siege, has fallen into Russian hands. The General Staff can therefore exhibit the double trophy: the first step for the "denazification of Ukraine" - given that the men of the Azov battalion were hidden in the plant, the "Nazis" to be extirpated according to Moscow - but above all to offer Russian President Vladimir Putin a territorial corridor in the southern part of the Ukraine, capable of connecting Crimea to the part of Donbass in the territories controlled by the separatist and pro-Russian republics, currently reachable only through a bridge built after the military annexation of 2014.
Moscow thus closes an account that remained open for eight years, when the Azov Battalion, during the war in Donbass, reconquered the port city of Mariupol from the pro-Russian separatists, creating enormous difficulties for the rebels of the self-proclaimed Republics of Lugansk and Donetsk who wanted to enlarge the territories under their control. While for the Ukrainians, the fall of Mariupol as well as being the symbol of resistance in the collective imagination represents the main pole of the Ukrainian metallurgical industry, as well as one of the main poles of the sector in all of Eastern Europe. And now in Russian hands.
Stop to Russian gas for Finland
As expected. Moscow has closed the natural gas taps to Finland. This was confirmed by the Finnish state energy company Gasum after the Nordic country refused to pay Gazprom in rubles. “Natural gas supplies to Finland under Gasum's supply contract have been stopped,” the Finnish company said in a statement, adding that gas will now be supplied from other sources through the Balticconnector gas pipeline, which connects Finland to the Estonia.
