Vladimir Putin Finally, it has something comparable to a triumph: the surrender of the last focus of resistance in the Avozstal steel plant, which allows Russia to secure complete control of Mariupol and complete the connection of Donbas with the Crimean peninsula. The agreement takes the fighters who lay down their arms to territory controlled by the invader, but allows Volodymyr to manage Zelensky One variable: it is holding an unspecified number of Russian soldiers, which will surely enable it to arrange a prisoner swap and, just maybe, avoid Russian retaliation on Ukrainian fighters that Moscow will be tempted to refuse to treat as prisoners of war. At the same time, it allows the President of Ukraine to tune in with a growing number of voices that demanded, once the goal of holding numerous Russian forces for more than two months had been achieved, a surrender that would stop the slaughter. More than 80 days of resistance allow the flag to be lowered in the besieged city while continuing to feed the politics of emotions with the exaltation of the heroic efforts of the last resisters.
The fact that Russia has managed to control the coast of the Sea of Azov after a long and bloody battle of attrition should not prevent both sides from immersing themselves in a bath of realism that activates some form of negotiation to stop fighting. Because it seems certain that neither Russia is in a position to achieve the success predicted on February 24, nor can Ukraine trust in the final victory, no matter how much the propaganda mentions it as something within their reach. The longer the war drags on, and more analysts fear this every day, the greater the desolation, the greater the risks of escalation, and the greater the economic ruin.
For the Western bloc, the outcome of the siege of Mariupol must not go unheeded: the enormous aid provided to date to the Ukrainian Army is effective, has served for Russia to limit its objectives to the east of Ukraine and may facilitate some significant progress, such as those seen these days north of Kharkov, but it does not allow Russia’s defeat to be glimpsed on the horizon of the conflict. When the president of France, Emmanuel Macrondeclares that the Ukrainian regime should perhaps consider what territorial concessions is willing to accept does nothing more than draw logical consequences from the objective data of the crisis, which have hardly changed with the price paid by Russia to take over Mariupol. And such data can be summed up in two: Vladimir Putin will not order a ceasefire until he can claim victory, even if it is limited and in the midst of a landscape in ruins, and NATO will never take a step that the Russian president could interpret as a participation straight into the war. As so often in politics, the game is played with marked cards.