The catacombs of mariupol-azovstal: An inside look.

I don't want to be too optimistic obviously, but I did a quick rundown of things.

With respect to the Ukrainian garrison at Azovstal, I would reckon it consists of roughly 400 Azov Battalion fighters left out of the original 800, plus the 300 or so marines from the 36th who chose to head to the plant instead of joining the doomed escape, and the 500 national guardsmen surrounded at the port Azov rescued last week. 1000-1,200 defending that area is a pretty decent sized force. As for the Russians? 14,000 besieging the city since the start of the war, lets be conservative and say they've lost 25% of that. Combined with the men being deployed elsewhere in Donbass, that leaves roughly 9,000-10,000 men still besieging Azovstal.

You know what they say, under the right conditions one man can equal ten. If we are to believe that the Ukrainians have kept months to maybe even a year's worth of provisions there, in conjunction with an active smuggling network to keep them supplied and the layout of Azovstal in general, which is a defender's dream, they still got some fight left in them I reckon.

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