Iran’s Gas Potential Is In the Spotlight Again as World Shuns Russia

Bloomberg News, Bloomberg News

    

, Photographer: Annie Sakkab/Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Lesser-known natural gas exporters are stepping into the spotlight as pressure mounts on companies to cut ties with energy giant Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

While liquefied natural gas from the U.S. and Qatar, as well as pipeline volumes from Algeria to Azerbaijan, are seen plugging a short-term gap, delegates at the European Gas Conference in Vienna questioned Monday whether Iran could step up as a supplier.

European buyers are scrambling to replace Russian gas flows following the invasion of Ukraine that’s exacerbated an already tight market and low inventories. Russia is the European Union’s top supplier of the fuel, providing about 40% of volumes consumed in the bloc last year.

“No one has been talking about Iran for a very long time,” said Anne-Sophie Corbeau, a Global Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. “There are three ways Iranian gas could possibly help Europe.”

Iran, which holds the second-largest gas reserves in the world, is reviving efforts to export LNG, just as Europe tries to cut reliance on Russian energy. Corbeau said this could help alleviate gas-supply tightness, however it may take some time. 

More Iranian gas could also be going toward Pakistan, with a pipeline already in place at the border, she added.

“If we get Pakistan getting more affordable gas from Iran, maybe therefore you remove a bit of LNG demand from Pakistan,” Corbeau said.

Extending the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, that delivers gas from Azerbaijan to Europe, could also help alleviate Europe’s supply tightness, Corbeau said, but would require the expansion of the network in Turkey.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

Exiled Turkish journalist Ahmet Dönmez attacked in Sweden

 

 Exiled Turkish journalist Ahmet Dönmez was recently beaten in Sweden. 

(Screenshot: Ahmet Dönmez/YouTube)

New York, March 21, 2022 – Swedish authorities should conduct a swift and thorough investigation into the recent attack on journalist Ahmet Dönmez and determine if he was targeted for his work, the Committee to Protect Journalists said on Monday.

On Saturday, March 19, in Stockholm, unidentified people hit Dönmez’s car from behind and, when he got out of his vehicle, proceeded to beat him up, according to news reports and tweets by the journalist.

Dönmez was driving his six-year-old daughter home from school at the time of the attack, according to those reports, which said he sustained head trauma and was hospitalized in stable condition.

Dönmez publishes reporting on Turkish politics and alleged corruption, as well as political commentary, on his personal website, Twitter, and YouTube pages; he has about 147,000 followers on Twitter and about 55,000 on YouTube.

“Swedish authorities must swiftly and thoroughly investigate the recent attack on exiled Turkish journalist Ahmet Dönmez, determine if it was related to his reporting, and bring all those involved to account,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Swedish authorities must provide security for Dönmez and ensure that he can live and work without fearing for his or his family’s safety.”

Dönmez worked as a reporter for the Turkish daily Zaman until 2015, when he fled to Sweden “because of political pressure” according to his website. Turkish authorities shuttered Zaman in 2016, and have accused its staff of having ties to the Fethullah Gülen religious movement, which authorities have labeled a terrorist organization, as CPJ has documented.

CPJ emailed the Swedish police for comment but did not immediately receive any reply.

Anti-corruption Guatemalan judge resigns and flees to the US

By Associated Press
Today 

GUATEMALA CITY — A Guatemalan judge considered key in fighting corruption announced her resignation on Monday and that she has decided to leave the Central American country.

Judge Erika Aifán has presided over corruption cases against businessmen, officials, judges and lawmakers, and she was recently overseeing an investigation about alleged irregularities during current President Alejandro Giammattei’s campaign. She has been pursued by her own colleagues and she faces at least 20 legal complaints for allegedly overstepping, something she denies.

“They left me no other option,” she said to The Associated Press on a phone conversation from Washington, where she fled.

Aifán is the latest case of other Guatemalan judges and prosecutors who have left the country in recent months after the government had started investigations or even looking to arrest those who oversee corruption cases.

Aifán said she had felt particular pressure from Guatemalan Attorney General Consuelo Porras, whose visa was canceled by the U.S. government because of corruption concerns.

“She has manipulated the Prosecutor’s office, prosecuting those of us who have worked to fight against impunity and corruption,” Aifán said.

One of Aifán’s most recent cases was an investigation about alleged illegal funding to Giammattei’s presidential campaign in 2019. The President has denied any wrongdoing.

The U.N. and the U.S. government had criticized and condemned in the past what they have considered “harassment” of the judge.

In July 2021, the U.S. government announced the suspension of its cooperation with Guatemala’s Attorney General’s Office in response to the firing of its then top anti-corruption prosecutor.

Leila Khaled—armed resistance for liberation
To mark International Women's Day, Socialist Worker remembers Palestinian freedom fighter Leila Khaled


Khaled toting a machine gun and wearing a keffiyeh is one of the most enduring images of Palestinian liberation.

Palestinian freedom fighter Leila Khaled was just four years old when she fled for her life. Born in the city of Haifa, Khaled was one of nearly a million victims of the 1948 Nakba—the systematic expulsion of Palestinians from their land.

It was the most ­conclusive wave of ethnic cleansing that helped found the state of Israel and left a lasting ­impression on a young Khaled. Growing up in Jordan as a refugee, Khaled became interested in pan-Arab activism and joined the Arab Nationalist Movement at 15 years old.

Her most famous acts would come eleven and twelve years later, in a desperate bid to draw attention to Palestinian liberation. By now, Khaled was a member of the left wing group, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Khaled, alongside Salim Issawi, hijacked TWA Flight 840 on 29 August 1969, diverting the plane from Tel Aviv to Damascus in Syria.

On landing in Syria, hijackers blew up the nose section of the Boeing 707 and were promptly arrested by Syrian authorities, to be released without charge by October. “The plane hijackings were tactical. Just for a short time, just to ring a bell for the world and make people ask the question—why?” She argued that the action showed, “We the Palestinians are not only refugees. We are a people that has a political and a human goal.”

Just over a year later, gripping two grenades in her pockets, Khaled tried again. On 6 September 1970, she and Patrick Arguello, a Nicaraguan activist, attempted to hijack the El Al Flight 219 from Amsterdam to New York City. But this time it ended in disaster. They tried to storm the cockpit, Khaled pulled the pins out of her grenades, but armed guards quickly shot Arguello dead.


It was part of the Dawson’s Fields series of hijackings, where four planes were simultaneously hijacked by the PFLP. The other three ­managed to successfully land at an abandoned RAF airstrip in Jordan, but Khaled’s plane was diverted to London.

As well as flying the flag for Palestinian liberation, hijackers were demanding the release of Palestinian prisoners detained in Europe and Israel. Khaled was again released on 1 October in exchange for British hostages taken in other planes. Her tactics ­amplified Palestinians’ voices, but individual acts of resistance didn’t offer a way towards the fundamental change that a mass movement could. It was a strategy of despair as well as wholly justified rage.

Despite years of monstering Khaled as a terrorist, the only person killed in either ­hijacking was Arguello, after Israeli officers shot him in the back.


Three radical women you should know about

Khaled remains ­unapologetic about the role of armed struggle for Palestinian liberation. “We cannot say that non‑violent resistance alone will achieve our rights,” she said. “We are facing an apartheid state, Zionism as a movement, the Americans, and in general, the West, which supports Israel. When the balance of forces changes, then we can start thinking about negotiating.”

In later years she settled in Jordan and remained a ­leading figure in the PFLP. She’s spoken out against negotiations, such as the Oslo Accords, signed in 1993, which legitimised and entrenched Israeli occupation. “It brought catastrophe on us”, she said in 2014. “The number of settlers has doubled, more land is being confiscated, and, of course, the wall has been built. “These negotiations, now, are meant to help Israel and not the Palestinians.”

The same programme of ethnic cleansing that forced Khaled to flee 74 years ago is still in operation. Among the many things Khaled has contributed to the struggle, the foremost must surely be that Palestinians are not just victims but determined to resist.

 

BEFORE THEY WERE COLD PLAY

REST IN POWER
Alain Krivine—a resolute revolutionary
A veteran of 1968

Alain Krivine, leader of the French left party Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire.
(George Laoutaris)


Alex Callinicos

SOCIALIST WORKER

Even at this tragic historical moment, I was saddened to learn of the death at the age of 80 of the French revolutionary leader Alain Krivine. For me he always represented the indomitable spirit of the great revolt by French workers and students in May 1968.

Krivine’s life touched most of the great dramas of the 20th century. His family were Ukrainian Jews who fled the antisemitic pogroms in the Tsarist Empire to France.

As a child he was hidden from the Nazi occupation in the French countryside. As a teenager, he joined the youth wing of the French Communist Party, which dominated the workers’ movement.

But Krivine soon was at odds with the party leadership, who refused to support Algeria’s war of independence against France. He joined a secret organisation, Jeune resistance (Young Resistance), which encouraged French conscripts to desert.

He drew close to French Trotskyists of the Fourth International who strongly supported the Algerian freedom struggle.

In 1966 Krivine and his comrades were expelled from the Communist student organisation. They set up the Jeunesse Communiste Révolutionnaire (Revolutionary Communist Youth), which played a central role in the great student revolt against the regime of President Charles de Gaulle in May 1968.

The government’s attempt to crush the student barricades on the Paris Left Bank sparked off the biggest general strike in West European history as workers occupied their factories.

Paris in spring 1968 – fifty years on from a working class revolt that shook the state

As the British revolutionary David Widgery recalled ten years later, “It was as if an international political pageant was being acted out—the ideas we had treasured in pamphlets and argued about in tiny pub back rooms were now roaming, alive, three dimensional. Marxism had come out of the cold.

“The simple lessons of 1968 were simple to read off and important to re-emphasise. The working class… remained, when the chips were down, decisive.”

I remember many years later watching a film of Krivine with two fellow leaders of the JCR, Daniel Bensaïd and Henri Weber, at the height of the revolt. I thought to myself how young and happy they looked.

Of course, at the crest of a struggle, it’s easy to be a revolutionary. The task is to remain a revolutionary when struggle dwindles. Weber—a brilliant intellectual—failed that test, and later became a social democrat. But Krivine and Bensaïd persisted till their deaths.

Alan Krivine on France’s new Anti-Capitalist Party

The Communist Party struck a deal with De Gaulle’s prime minister, Georges Pompidou, and managed eventually to end the general strike. The JCR was banned but revived as the Ligue Communiste (Communist League).

This was banned in turn in 1973 for organising a big antifascist protest. It became the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR), which in 2009 expanded into the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA).

Until close to his retirement in the mid-2000s Krivine was the Ligue’s main spokesperson. He ran for president a couple of times and served a term in the European Parliament.

He was a tireless speaker for the far left internationally. I think the last time I met him was in Athens in 2010 when he, David Harvey, and I were among the speakers at the Marxism Festival organised by the Greek Socialist Workers Party.

Krivine was in the thick of all the struggles of workers and other groups of oppressed people in France. But above all he strove to build the Ligue.

I remember one of his fellow members of the Fourth International saying that he could be relied on endlessly to travel around the country, speaking at often small meetings, and sleeping on comrades’ sofas.

When I think of Krivine, I remember the title of his old comrade Bensaïd’s autobiography. Translated, it means “The Slow Impatience”. In other words, revolutionaries like Krivine live for the overthrow of capitalism and an end to all the horrors and suffering it creates.

But even if the moment doesn’t come in time—and Krivine was lucky to get a glimpse in May 1968—they work tirelessly to sustain a movement that can finally help free us all.

Why the Ukraine crisis has dragged on

The face-off between the US and Russia over Ukraine is getting worse with no end in sight

Ukrainian tanks back in 2017 (pic: Seventh Army Command on Flickr)

Alex Callinicos

SOCIALIST WORKER

Robert Kennedy called his memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962—the greatest confrontation of the Cold War—Thirteen Days. But the present facedown over Ukraine has been going on for a couple of months, and seems to be getting worse.

Moreover, the conflict is, in a certain sense, more symbolic than real. The central demand made by Russian president Vladimir Putin is that the US should guarantee that Ukraine doesn’t join Nato.

But it’s extremely unlikely that Ukraine will join Nato. All 30 member states have to agree to any new member and—almost certainly—at least one would veto Ukraine joining. Why risk war with Russia? Even Ukraine’s pro-Western president Volodymyr Zelensky said the other day that Nato membership might be “like a dream”.

Putin is demanding that something doesn’t happen even when it probably won’t happen. And US president Joe Biden is refusing to concede this even if it probably won’t happen.

So what’s going on? The answer is that neither side can afford to be seen to lose. Putin has real security concerns about Nato’s encroachments in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea. But more fundamentally he wants Russian imperialism to be recognised by the US as a global player, not the “regional power” that Barack Obama once arrogantly called it.

Meanwhile, Biden’s domestic programme is blocked by the Republicans in Congress. His standing in the opinion polls has fallen sharply. Moreover, what tripped him up was a geopolitical setback—Afghanistan’s fall last August. As the Financial Times “Swamp Notes” column pointed out, “the collapse in Biden’s job-approval rating can be pegged almost to the date that the Taliban overran Kabul.

“The last time the president’s approval rating was above 50 percent was the week before the US-backed Afghan government disappeared. He has been below 50 percent ever since—and is struggling to stay above the 40 percent threshold.”

So Biden hopes that, if he humiliates Putin over Ukraine, his domestic political fortunes may turn up again. This makes the Ukraine crisis peculiarly hard to resolve, unlike the Cuban Missile Crisis with which it is sometimes compared. That was provoked by the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s decision to base nuclear missiles in Cuba. He wanted to protect Fidel Castro’s revolutionary regime from the efforts of US president John F Kennedy’s administration to overthrow it.

Installed

When Kennedy discovered the missiles being installed, he imposed a naval blockade on Cuba. The world seemed to be on the brink of thermonuclear war. Then Khrushchev ordered Soviet ships carrying more missiles to turn back. US secretary of state Dean Rusk is supposed to have commented, “We’re eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked.”

In fact, both sides had already blinked. A fascinating recent study by Theodore Voorhees Jr called The Silent Guns of Two Octobers shows that for both Kennedy and Khrushchev, nuclear war was unthinkable.

They had been communicating secretly for months through the intermediary of spooks and journalists. Kennedy got Khrushchev to agree very quickly to withdraw the missiles by making two big concessions. He promised not to invade Cuba and to withdraw US nuclear missiles based in Turkey and Italy that targeted the Soviet Union. They agreed to keep the second concession secret to avoid Kennedy being attacked by the Republicans in the mid-term Congressional elections that November.

Kennedy emerged as the victor in the Cuban Missile Crisis. But Khrushchev didn’t mind being portrayed as the guy who blinked because Kennedy offered him more than he would have settled for. This time, however, it’s important for both Biden and Putin not to be seen to have blinked. This is a struggle between two imperialist powers, both of which have suffered defeat—Russia in the Cold War, the US in the Greater Middle East. It’s a dangerous combination.

Comment
Azov, the far right and ‘national myths’ in Ukraine
How important are fascist groups such as the Azov regiment in Ukraine? Sam Ord looks at how they fit a wider pattern

Far right group Azov march in Kiev, Ukraine, in 2019 (Picture: Goo3)

SOCIALIST WORKER 

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky is generally right wing and supports US imperialism, however he is not a Nazi. But Ukrainian far right groups, quite small in themselves, prosper because of an explosion of “patriotic” ideas pushed out by the government.

Like many other countries, including Britain, Ukraine’s rulers seek to create a sense of national unity. They elevate ideas and figures from the past who can serve as a glue to bind people together and motivate them against Vladimir Putin. That has accelerated sharply since the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014.

As a Ukrainian novelist wrote in The Economist magazine this month, “The country used to lack national myths. Now they’re everywhere.” In 2014 the Ukrainian state deliberately launched a new campaign to emphasise its hostility to the Russian regime.

Building on a process that began earlier, this meant rehabilitating “anti-Soviet” figures who are beloved by the fascists such as Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. His Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists was responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews and Poles.

Already by 2009 there were 30 Bandera monuments in western Ukraine and four museums. In 2010 Bandera was named a “Hero of Ukraine” by the outgoing right wing president Viktor Yushchenko. This was part of emphasising ethnic divisions as austerity bit after the financial crisis.

He was stripped of the title in 2011 under Yushchenko’s replacement, president Viktor Yanukovych. But when Yanukovych was removed by the Maidan revolt in 2014, Kiev’s city council renamed the city’s Moscow Avenue as Stepan Bandera Avenue. This followed the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine.

Last year another local council renamed a major stadium in western Ukraine after Roman Shukhevych. He was a leading figure in SS Schutzmannschaft 201. This was a Ukrainian battalion formed by the Nazis that participated in the genocide of Jews in Belarus and hunted down anti-Nazis in Ukraine.

Banderist symbols such as the red and black flag have become “simple” national images and can be seen on some pro‑Ukraine demonstrations now. It’s therefore not surprising that groups such as the fascist Azov regiment can grow. It was set up in 2014 with fascist and white supremacist subgroups integrated within it. Its leading figure was the Nazi and antisemite Andriy Biletsky.

Former president Petro Poroshenko described Azov as “our best warriors” as they were recruited into the National Guard of Ukraine in November 2014. Azov members have launched attacks on Roma, LGBT+ people and migrants. But they have access to the weaponry that Nato has poured into the country and are nestling closer to the centre of government.


Ukraine—the shadow of 2014 on today’s war

Olena Semyanka, a leading figure in the Azov regiment’s political arm, told Die Zeit magazine that she was now an assistant to a deputy of Zelensky’s ruling party. She added that she was supporting him in building up the International Legion of volunteers to come from across the world to fight.

In 2015 Canada and the US announced that their own forces would not support or train the Azov regiment, citing its Nazi ties. But the following year the US lifted this ban under pressure from the Pentagon.

Another militarised far right movement is Right Sector, which also fights against Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. As the Russian aggression escalated, Right Sector grew with support from the top.

In December last year Right Sector member Dmytro Kotsyubaylo was awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine by Zelensky. There are such close links between Right Sector and the Ukrainian state that it is normal for schoolchildren to visit its training camps. Here they are given a version of Ukrainian history that venerates figures such as Bandera. Strengthening a right wing version of history has had very dangerous results.

CNN promotes neo-Nazi commander from Ukraine’s white-supremacist Azov regiment

Top US media outlet CNN promoted a commander from Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov regiment, failing to mention his militia’s white-supremacist ideology. Azov then proudly shared the video on its official Twitter account.

By Benjamin Norton

PRO RUSSIA LEFT



Leading US media network CNN has promoted a commander of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov regiment, without mention of his hate group’s extremist views.

In 2014, a gang of Ukrainian neo-Nazis formed a militia called the Azov Battalion. These far-right extremists played a leading role in a violent US-sponsored coup that overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected government, which they had deemed too “pro-Russian.”

The new pro-Western regime that was installed in Kiev after the 2014 “Maidan” coup waged a brutal war on Russian-speaking Ukrainian separatists in the east of the country. Kiev turned to fascist gangs like Azov to help strengthen its weak military forces.

Azov was officially incorporated into the Ukrainian state. It became a regiment in the National Guard, while still maintaining its white-supremacist ideology and use of numerous Nazi symbols.

This March 21, the neo-Nazi Azov militia posted a video on its official Twitter account of one of its commanders being promoted on CNN.

CNN had republished a video clip of Azov Major Denis Prokopenko, who was helping lead the fight against Russian troops in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

The major US media channel described the fascist extremist simply as a “Ukrainian military commander who has been defending the city from the siege.”

CNN subsequently quoted this neo-Nazi commander in two different print reports, which failed to disclose his far-right politics.

A March 19 CNN report titled “Mariupol residents are being forced to go to Russia, city council says” quoted him simply as “Major Denis Prokopenko, from the National Guard Azov Regiment,” with no further details.

A similar CNN article from earlier that same day cited the same quote, but did mention euphemistically in passing that the “Azov Battalion is an ultra-nationalist militia that has since been integrated into the Ukrainian armed forces.”

With state backing, Azov preaches a white-supremacist ideology and uses Nazi symbols like the German Wolfsangel and racist black sun. THE BLACK SUN IS A PAGAN SYMBOL APPROPRIATED BY RIGHT WING EURO NATIONALISTS

The Nazi symbols used by Ukraine’s Azov Battalion

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, neo-Nazi extremists from Azov and other far-right militias have played a leading role in the fight.

NATO member states have provided Azov with weapons and training. And Ukraine’s National Guard proudly tweeted a video of an Azov Nazi greasing his bullets with pig fat to kill Russian Muslims, whom the Ukrainian state institution demonized as “orcs.”

THIS IS A DEBUNKED STORY SPREAD BY THE RIGHT WING UNDER TRUMP ABOUT GENERAL PERSHING KILLING MUSLIMS IN THE PHILLIPINES 

1. Trump Got the Pershing Story Backwards - History News Network

   https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/162096

   During a campaign rally on Friday night in South Carolina, Trump told his audience a story about General John Pershing executing Muslim prisoners in …

CNN is far from the only Western media outlet that has actively promoted neo-Nazis in Ukraine.

Many major media outlets amplified a propaganda photo shoot that was staged by Azov before the Russian invasion.

US government-sponsored network PBS even heroized notorious neo-Nazi Artem Semenikhin, the mayor of the Ukrainian city Konotop, in a softball interview in which he demonized Russians as “cockroaches.”

PBS did not mention the “heil Hitler” symbol on Semenikhin’s car, or even the portrait of Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera that was on the wall behind the extremist in the video.

Russian attack on Kharkiv kills Holocaust survivor, 96

Boris Romanchenko survived four Nazi concentration camps.

He died after rocket hit building where he lived in Ukrainian city

 Photograph: Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation/Twitter

Philip Oltermann in Berlin
THE GUARDIAN

Mon 21 Mar 2022

A 96-year-old man who survived a string of Nazi concentration camps including Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen has been killed by an explosion during the Russian assault on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, a spokesperson for the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial foundation has confirmed.

“We are shocked to confirm the violent death of Boris Romanchenko, whose niece informed us on Monday morning that he died last Friday after a bomb or rocket hit the multistorey building where he lived in Kharkiv and his apartment was burned out,” a spokesperson told the Guardian.

According to regional emergency services, more than 500 people have been killed in Kharkiv since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on 24 February.

Born in 1926 to a farming family in the village of Bondari outside the city of Sumy in north-eastern Ukraine, Romanchenko was taken as a prisoner of war after the German Nazi regime launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union in 1941.

“The war had completely surprised us, I wasn’t able to flee,” he recalled in an interview in April 2004.

In 1942, he was deported to Dortmund, in Germany’s industrial Ruhr valley, to work as forced labourer in a mine. After attempting to escape, he was seized just as he was about to board an east-bound train and was then deported to Buchenwald concentration camp in January 1943.

Romanchenko was later moved to Peenemünde on the Baltic Sea island of Usedom, where he was made to work on the V2 rocket programme, as well as Mittelbau-Dora and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps.


Woman who survived siege of Leningrad as a girl now trapped in Kharkiv

Romanchenko said he was liberated from Bergen-Belsen by British and American allied forces on 14 April 1945 just before he and other survivors were due to be killed by being fed poisoned food.

He was enlisted to the Soviet army for five years after the end of the war. Afterwards, he began to play an active part in institutions that commemorate the Holocaust, acting for several years as vice-president for Ukraine on the international committee at the Buchenwald-Doramemorial foundation.

He attended several commemorative events at the camp’s former site and had been invited to attend an event marking the Buchenwald liberation this year.

In 2015, he read out the “Oath of Buchenwald”, a survivors’ pledge dating back to the camp’s liberation, in Russian.

“Our goal is to build a new world of peace and freedom,” he read.

Mariupol: Four reasons the city matters so much to Russia

By Frank Gardner
BBC security correspondent

IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES

Mariupol has become the most heavily bombed and damaged city in Ukraine's war with Russia - having suffered the brunt of sustained Russian attacks. It is key to Moscow's military campaign in Ukraine. But why?

There are four main reasons why taking the port city would be such a strategic win for Russia - and a major blow for Ukraine.

1. Securing a land corridor between Crimea and Donbas

Geographically, the city of Mariupol occupies only a tiny area on the map but it now stands obstinately in the way of Russian forces who have burst out of the Crimean peninsula.

They are pushing north-east to try to link up with their comrades and Ukrainian-separatist allies in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

General Sir Richard Barrons - former commander of UK Joint Forces Command - says capturing Mariupol is vital to Russia's war effort.

"When the Russians feel they have successfully concluded that battle, they will have completed a land bridge from Russia to Crimea and they will see this as a major strategic success."

If Mariupol was seized, Russia would also end up with full control of more than 80% of Ukraine's Black Sea coastline - cutting-off its maritime trade and further isolating it from the world.

By holding out against advancing forces for the past three weeks, the defending Ukrainians have managed to preoccupy a large number of Russian troops. But that failure by Russia to secure a rapid capture of the city, has prompted Russian commanders to resort to a 21st Century version of mediaeval siege tactics.

They have pummelled Mariupol with artillery, rockets and missiles - damaging or destroying over 90% of the city. They have also cut off access to electricity, heating, fresh water, food and medical supplies - creating a man-made humanitarian catastrophe which Moscow now blames on Ukraine for refusing to surrender by an 05:00 deadline on Monday. A Ukrainian MP has accused Russia of "trying to starve Mariupol into surrender".

Ukraine has vowed to defend the city down to the last soldier. It may well come to that. Russian troops are slowly pushing into the centre and, in the absence of any kind of workable peace deal, Russia is now likely to intensify its bombardment - drawing little if any distinction between its armed defenders and the beleaguered civilian population which still numbers over 200,000.

If, and when, Russia takes full control of Mariupol this will free up close to 6,000 of its troops - organised into 1,000-strong battalion tactical groups - to then go and reinforce other Russian fronts around Ukraine.

There are a number of possibilities as to where they could be redeployed:

• to the north-east to join the battle to encircle and destroy Ukraine's regular armed forces fighting pro-Kremlin separatists in the Donbas region
• to the west to push towards Odesa, which would be Ukraine's last remaining major outlet to the Black Sea
• to the north-west towards the city of Dnipro

• Ukraine war in maps: Tracking the Russian invasion

2. Strangling Ukraine's economy

Mariupol has long-been a strategically important port on the Sea of Azov, part of the Black Sea.

With its deep berths, it is the biggest port in the Azov Sea region and home to a major iron and steel works. In normal times, Mariupol is a key export hub for Ukraine's steel, coal and corn going to customers in the Middle East and beyond.

IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES

Image caption,

Ukrainian concrete defences on a beach by Mariupol port, 17 February

For eight years now, since Moscow's illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, the city has been sandwiched uncomfortably between Russian forces on that peninsula and the pro-Kremlin separatists in the breakaway self-declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Losing Mariupol would be a major blow to what is left of Ukraine's economy.

3. Propaganda opportunity

Mariupol is home to a Ukrainian militia unit called the Azov Brigade, named after the Sea of Azov which links Mariupol to the rest of the Black Sea. The Azov Brigade contains far-right extremists including neo-Nazis.

Although they form only the tiniest fraction of Ukraine's fighting forces, this has been a useful propaganda tool for Moscow, giving it a pretext for telling Russia's population that the young men it has sent to fight in Ukraine are there to rid their neighbour of neo-Nazis.

IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES

Image caption,

Azov Battalion training camp at a former holiday resort near Mariupol, February 2019

If Russia manages to capture alive significant numbers of Azov Brigade fighters it is likely they will be paraded on Russian state-controlled media as part of the ongoing information war to discredit Ukraine and its government.

4. Major morale boost

The capture of Mariupol by Russia, if it happens, will be psychologically significant for both sides in this war.

A Russian victory in Mariupol would enable the Kremlin to show its population - through state-controlled media - that Russia was achieving its aims and making progress.

For President Putin, for whom this war appears to be personal, there is a historical significance to all this. He sees Ukraine's Black Sea coastline as belonging to something called Novorossiya (New Russia) - Russian lands that date back to the 18th Century empire.

Putin wants to revive that concept, "rescuing Russians from the tyranny of a pro-western government in Kyiv" as he sees it. Mariupol currently stands in the way of him achieving that aim.

But to Ukrainians, the loss of Mariupol would be a major blow - not just militarily and economically - but also to the minds of the men and women fighting on the ground, defending their country. Mariupol would be the first major city to fall to the Russians after Kherson, a strategically much less important city that was barely defended.

There is another morale aspect here and that is of deterrence.

IMAGE SOURCE,REUTERS

Image caption,

Digging graves by the roadside in Mariupol, 20 March

Mariupol has put up fierce resistance - but look at the cost. The city is decimated, it lies largely in ruins. It will go down in history alongside Grozny and Aleppo, places that Russia eventually bombed and shelled into submission, reducing them to rubble. The message to other Ukrainian cities is stark - if you choose to resist like Mariupol did then you can expect the same fate.

"The Russians couldn't walk into Mariupol," says Gen Sir Richard Barrons, "they couldn't drive in with their tanks, so they've pounded it to rubble. And that's what we should expect to see anywhere else that really matters to them."