REPORTAGE – The fighters who defended the city of Mariupol, reduced during the clashes to a besieged group in the steelworks, are today heroes for the population.
Special Envoy to Dnipro
“Heroiam slava! (“Glory to the heroes!”)” These two words, which the Ukrainians at war pronounce without always paying attention to them, have taken on a new gravity. At 86e the day of the dantesque siege imposed on the city of Mariupol, the chief of the Azov regiment announced on Friday that he had received the order from the military high command to lay down his arms. This announcement marks the end of a fierce resistance that surprised the world and won the admiration of an entire people. Surrounded, subjected to an incessant deluge of artillery and air strikes, a few thousand men entrenched in an industrial complex transformed into a fortress resisted step by step despite the overwhelming superiority of the enemy. Having reached the end of their strength and with no prospect of being freed by arms, they had been asking for two weeks to be extracted from this cauldron. Mariupol, the great port city, is now in the hands of the Russian army. This asserts that «2439 nazis du…