“The brave Ukrainian resistance cannot be maintained indefinitely in the absence of food, water and replenishment of ammunition, so the clock is ticking. Meanwhile, a substantial number of Russian forces are being freed up to move north, reinforcing Russian efforts to encircle and annihilate Ukrainian forces holding back the main Russian effort in Donbas.
The implications of the battle of Mariupol for both Russia and Ukraine are operationally significant, and for Ukraine the battle and 100,000 innocent lives hang in the balance.
Russia is sending a message to the West.
Russia is also sending a message to Ukraine and the West: whatever the problems in the north around Kyiv, Russia will use the means necessary, and suffer the losses required, to attain its objectives in Ukraine. A city of 400,000 has been deliberately erased through heavy and indiscriminate use of firepower and total disregard of international law and humanitarian conventions.
“ -usatoday.com
“The messages to the West should be clear. First, the outcome in Ukraine will be determined largely by “the facts on the ground.” Modulating Western military assistance to suit Putin flirts with strategic failure. Ukraine must be given the armaments necessary not only to resist but actually to defeat the Russian invasion, or there will be more Mariupols.
Second, despite escalating sanctions, time is not always on the side of Ukraine and the West – Putin has shown a STALINESQUE capacity to shrug off defeats and disloyalty, while Ukraine’s fierce spirit of resistance is under daily assault.
Make no mistake: the West is not yet winning against Putin’s attack on NATO and the rules-based international order.
The destruction of Mariupol was not inevitable. With adequate armor and artillery, Ukraine could have attacked and broken the siege; with more airpower, Ukraine could have blown apart and run off the besieging Russian forces; with more detailed and timely U.S.-provided intelligence, Ukraine could have used its relatively meager military resources more effectively.
Russian military vehicles move on a highway in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces near Mariupol, Ukraine, April 18, 2022. Mariupol, a strategic port on the Sea of Azov, has been besieged by Russian troops and separatist forces in eastern Ukraine for more than six weeks. (AP Photo/Alexei Alexandrov, File)
The overriding lesson is that Western policy, led, by the United States must be more proactive than reactionary, and more grounded in shorter-term military than in longer-term economic measures.
If we seek the surest and most rapid end to this tragic struggle at the negotiating table, now is the time to tell Putin, “You will not win,” and to provide Ukraine the means to relieve the siege of Mariupol and make Putin’s military defeat in Ukraine a reality.” - Retired Gen. Wesley Clark
The Russians are trying to send that message, but it's a lie.If it was the truth, they'd have mobilized far more fully than they have. Because right now, they are chewing through their pre-war army and don't have the replacements in the pipeline. If they get to the point where that pre-war army has taken enough combat losses to lose effectiveness, they're done.