Ukraine, Nicastro (courier sent): “Mariupol emptied, whoever has not escaped is now trapped”

“The city is empty, all the shops are closed, the pharmacies open only a few hours a day. Yesterday I went to look for first aid material but I could not find anything, the ATMs work but you can withdraw minimal amounts. she has already been able to escape, and whoever is left is because either they don’t have petrol in the car or they don’t know where to go “. This is how Andrea Nicastro, correspondent of Corriere della Sera, photographed the situation in Mariupol at Adnkronos, a city south-east of Ukraine, on the shores of the Azov Sea, where the expert war chronicler has been for about a week. “People do not know where to move – explains Nicastro – because in the north there is a battle forecast, in the west towards Romania and Poland you have to cross the Russian columns, in the east they cannot go because there is Russia. They are in a trap,” unable to make long journeys avoiding the clash areas “. People “stockpile, prepare supplies, set up the cellars again to prepare for the bombing”, says the reporter, who photographs some eloquent scenes: “There are people who have been injured along the line of contact, and who are now forced to live in a single room. This is because the house was bombed. The bombings are strong, people struggle to sleep at night. ” “From a military point of view, explains Nicastro, who spent three years in Afghanistan, two in Iraq, and recounted the wars in Lebanon, Chechnya, Kosovo, Georgia – the pressure has clearly increased, but so far the Ukrainian forces have managed to resist “.” There was a small advance and they took some villages but there was no breakthrough that someone expected. They managed to resist, perhaps because on this line of contact there are the Ukrainian forces more tempered by them years of war, “he explains. “The Russians then” have adopted another tactic: instead of facing this barrier, they are trying to take it from behind. They landed from the island of Crimea on the mainland and began to advance east, north and west. “Nicastro, who is the author of several books including ‘Nassirya – lies between peace and war’ and the latest ‘The We are others: Why betraying democracy unleashes Jihad ‘, he observes: “We Western audiences have been accustomed to’ Western ‘style wars. The Russian way can be different, Putin can act differently because he is very interested in the display of force “. Specifically,” the Americans have the declared philosophy of winning the hearts and minds of the people, they always present themselves as the good ones. Maybe they don’t, but their narration, their military tactics follows this image they have of themselves. In this war, however, there is the possibility of understanding that Putin follows a different logic, which is that of the display of force: he does not want to be loved, he wants to be feared. And therefore he can do cruel things, in our eyes not rational, but for this logic of force he could do it. I hope not. “And on the possible scenario that opens up now, the Corriere reporter’s question is this:” The point is: here in Mariupol as in many other cities, what will the Russian General Staff decide? Will he want to enter the cities, and still face an urban guerrilla, or will he stop outside the cities, and try to weaken the resistance until the central government of Kiev decides to surrender? This is the crossroads where Ukrainian and Russian forces find themselves from a tactical point of view “.