What Sarajevo in the Bosnian War, Aleppo in SyriaStalingrad in World War II or Guernica in the Spanish civilMariupol has already become the symbol of a war, that of Ukraine, whose development we all attend with bated breath because the common destiny depends on it. The port city on the Sea of Azov, a strategic enclave according to all the analysts of the war conflict, has been resisting since its inception a siege that resembles others that were milestones in history for its resistance to invaders; the Troy of the Homeric story, the Celtiberian Numancia, the Jewish Masada, the legendary El Álamo of the war of independence between Texas and Mexico, the last ones in the Philippines of the last colonial war in Spain… resistance symbols that magnify those who starred in it and that grow at the same time with the passage of time, that writer of legends against whom not even history can.
As I write this article, in the Mariupol Azovstal steelworks, a huge iron and steel complex, the last Ukrainian military resist along with a thousand civilians without capitulating to the Russian ultimatums, whose army already controls the entire city. Or what remains of it, since it is practically a ruin.
In the steel mill, without food or medicine, without light or waterOnly pride and fear keep the resisters standinglike his predecessors in this type of odyssey, while his enemies are impatient because every day that passes is a moral victory for those and a delay in his goal, which is to truly control the city at last.
The end of the story is already writtenbut, while it arrives, the name of Mariúpol gains more and more fame as before that of other cities converted into examples of resistance and sterile sacrifice. Or not. There are those who believe that this type of epic contributes to another type of victory, morale, as important as the military victory, as history has shown us since ancient times.
In almost all wars, the ideas of the vanquished end up triumphing, someone said, and whether it is true or not, it seems that this is going to happen in this one in Ukraine, since the whole world is witnessing its development. Communication technologies allow us to see almost directly the atrocities that are being committed a thousand kilometers away, and today that battle is being won by the Ukrainians, the true sufferers of a war in which neighboring Russia has forced them for more than says the propaganda of this country.
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It is true that among the Ukrainians, and more specifically among the soldiers of the Azov Battalion, the one who fights in the Mariupol steelworks, many of them Nazi pro-Nazis more than out of admiration for Hitler but in opposition to Putin’s Russian imperialism, not all are innocentbut what is clear is that between David and Goliath, history always tends to reward the former, especially when the aggression comes from the latter.
The image of Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, encouraging his citizens to resist and himself resisting in his post instead of fleeing the country as Afghanistan did recently has become iconic already, an emblem of the dignity of a country of which the city of Mariupol is another. The rest, the chronicles of the war, the mutual accusations, the conspiracy theories that always appear in these cases, they will say what they want, but this war has already been won by Ukraine for history No matter how much Russia imposes itself militarily, it will prevail.