Several square miles of train tracks, warehouses, coke ovens, various factories and chimneys, all with reduced visibility, holes, obstacles, traps at every step, steel and concrete at a loss of sight. Below, tunnels representing nearly 20 kilometers of underground corridors, up to 30 meters deep, according to some. This is the setting for the latest urban battle being played out in Mariupol.
The Azovstal metallurgical complex, which belongs to the Metinvest group, controlled by Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, has been at the heart of the fighting in this Ukrainian city for weeks. So does the Azovmash plant, which manufactures railway equipment, cranes and other heavy metallurgical products. “How to imagine the industrial zone? It’s a city within the city, and there are several underground levels dating from the Soviet period, it’s not possible to bomb from above, you have to clean underground. It will take time, ”admitted last week Eduard Basurin, representing pro-Russian separatist forces in Donetsk.
Impenetrable tunnels for the Russians
The Vietnamese in the Cu Chi tunnels, near Saigon (south), during the Indochina war, the Islamist group Hamas against Israel or the jihadist group of Daesh in Mosul, from the time of the caliphate, had already taken great advantage of it. . Even today – and probably for a long time – the tunnels remain very effective in creating uncertainty for the adversary. They reduce the effectiveness of enemy artillery, airstrikes, infantry, snipers. They impose silence on satellite surveillance and complicate technical intelligence by offering combatants in the lowlands a real ability to move.
For Russian forces, entering the tunnels is “impossible”, confirms Alexander Grinberg, analyst at the Jerusalem Institute for Security and Strategy (JISS). They “can try to do it, but they will be slaughtered because the defenders of the tunnels have the absolute tactical advantage”.
But is this underground citadel impregnable?
This would require that the Ukrainian forces have a sufficient quantity of all the necessary equipment, such as night vision goggles. And that’s probably not the case. And they will have to compensate for the possible use by the Russians of water, to drown the tunnels and the fighters who are there, or of gas and other chemical products, to make unbearable, even impossible, all life inside.
Can the battle for the industrial zone last? Without explicitly mentioning it, Russian President Vladimir Putin assured Tuesday that the Russian offensive was taking place according to his plans, refusing to set a timetable. “Our task is to accomplish the set objectives while minimizing losses,” he said.