Mariupol signals chilling future of Putin’s war on Ukraine

The devastating images from the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol are a grim bellwether of what’s to come the longer Russia’s attack on the country drags on, experts and officials say. 

Heavy shelling in the city has caused most remaining residents to hide in basements and foreign journalists to flee from what’s been called an “absolute hellscape” of bombing and rubble.   

But with fierce fighting that has reached a stalemate across most of the eastern part of the country, officials and experts fear Mariupol could be an indicator of what’s to come for other major Ukrainian cities.  

“It’s pretty clear that [the Russians] have not achieved the objectives that they were after when they began this invasion,” former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told The Hill. “It’s obviously stalemated a lot and so the real question is, what does the next phase look like? And it would appear to be a siege … a lot of missiles and artillery trying to level a lot of cities and try to wear down the Ukrainians through this kind of constant bombardment approach.” 

Russia’s military has become bogged down in Ukraine after more than 150,000 troops were sent into the country beginning Feb. 24. Moscow sought a swift toppling of Kyiv’s government but was met with heavy resistance from Ukrainian forces using hit-and-run tactics and Western-supplied weapons. 

As the war enters its fifth week, Russian troops have taken Kherson, Melitopol and Berdyansk but have failed to make much progress toward Kyiv. They are also struggling with dwindling supplies of food and fuel, little to no reinforcements and even frostbite due to lack of appropriate cold-weather gear, according to the Pentagon. 

Now, with NATO estimates that up to 15,000 Russian troops have been killed — including six generals — Putin’s forces are resorting to destroying cities from afar using bombs and heavy shelling.   

The Pentagon assesses that the Russians are “near desperate” to try to turn the course of the war in their favor, a senior defense official told reporters on Monday. That likely means an increase in long-range missile and artillery bombardments.

The Russians have launched more than 1,200 missiles into Ukraine in the past 28 days of war, an average of about 43 a day.

“That’s what’s getting so much more dangerous for civilians,” they added. “The more you use long-range fires — and this is not a military known for precision — the more you’re going to hit civilian targets, the more you’re going to hit residential areas, the more you’re going to kill innocent people.” 

That death and disruption is on full display in Mariupol amid fierce fighting as Ukrainians refuse to surrender the port city. 

The world looked on in horror after Russia on March 16 bombed a theater there where hundreds of civilians were seeking shelter. A week prior, its forces bombed a maternity and children’s hospital.  

Hundreds of thousands are believed to be trapped in the city without access to heat, food or water. Satellite images of Mariupol, which had a population of 400,000 before the war, show widespread destruction in its residential areas.

The last confirmation of civilian deaths in the city was on March 14, when the Mariupol City Council said about 2,400 people had been killed.  

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday that the city is “being reduced to ashes,” and on Tuesday Mariupol’s local council said Russia is turning the city into a “dead land.” 

“Once again it is clear that the occupiers are not interested in the city of Mariupol. They want to level it to the ground and make it the ashes of a dead land,” the council said in a statement. 

Across Ukraine, major infrastructure has been damaged and destroyed, including 10 hospitals, with limited medicines and supplies at other facilities struggling to restock because of nearby fighting, Ukrainian Health Minister Viktor Lyashko said on Tuesday. 

The World Health Organization on Wednesday confirmed 64 attacks on health facilities in Ukraine since the start of the war. 

In Pavlohrad — an important cargo hub and crossroads for Ukraine’s railway system with links to frontline fighting — a Russian missile hit and destroyed the train station on Tuesday. 

Schools and shopping centers have also become a major target, as have residential buildings, with nearly 1,000 destroyed in Kharkiv, its mayor said Wednesday. 

The atrocities have led the U.S. government to formally declare that members of the Russian armed forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement Wednesday.  

The bombardments have also led to more than 3.5 million Ukrainians fleeing abroad, with about twice as many displaced within the country.  

United Nations Secretary General António Guterres on Tuesday said Russia’s invasion “is going nowhere fast” and urged Moscow to end to its “unwinnable” war as Ukrainian people are “enduring a living hell.” 

“The only outcome to all of this is more suffering, more destruction and more horror as far as the eye can see,” Guterres said in a televised address. 

And the longer the conflict stretches, the higher the risk of the war spilling over into NATO countries, Panetta added. 

Several smaller incidents of spillover have already taken place, including earlier this month when four Russian fighter jets violated Swedish airspace. Days prior to that, a drone carrying a bomb crashed in Croatia after it flew more than 350 miles beyond Ukraine’s western border. It’s unclear whether it came from Ukrainian or Russian forces. Other drones from the conflict have also entered Romania’s and Poland’s airspace. 

“It’s a very dangerous situation,” Panetta said. “It doesn’t take much to suddenly — either through a missile that goes astray or a mistake in judgment or a stupid decision — suddenly escalate that conflict into a greater war.”