Azov Regiment vows long campaign to hit Mariupol from the air

Mariupol, the port city that became one of the war’s defining ruins, is once again in Ukraine’s sights. The rebuilt Azov Regiment has moved from defense to pressure, using drones and other long-range strikes to hit Russian military logistics around a city that still sits about 120 kilometers behind the front line.

Colonel Arsen Dmytryk, Azov’s chief of staff in First Corps Azov, said there would be dozens more operations as the unit tries to show what it can do in the air and far behind the line of contact. He cast the effort as a long campaign rather than a quick strike, saying driving Russia out of Mariupol could take years. The message was as much political as military: Mariupol is not only occupied territory, but a symbol of Ukraine’s deepest wartime loss.

That symbolism is rooted in the city’s collapse in 2022. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion, Mariupol had an estimated population of 425,681 and stood as one of Ukraine’s major industrial ports on the Sea of Azov, a gateway to Crimea and the southern front. The siege began on February 24, 2022 and ended on May 20, 2022. Ukraine said the defense lasted 86 days, including 82 days under complete siege, after some of the war’s fiercest early fighting around the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works.

The human cost remains staggering. Human Rights Watch said the Russian assault between February and May 2022 left thousands of civilians dead and injured, and in 2024 it said more than 8,000 civilians were likely killed. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights had already confirmed at least 1,348 civilian deaths by June 2022 and said the true toll was much higher. Rights groups have warned it may take many years, and perhaps never be possible, to identify everyone who died.

Azov’s return matters because the unit itself was remade after the siege and the loss of Mariupol. Dmytryk, who was captured by Russia and later freed, now speaks for a force that appears determined to prove it can do more than hold ground. The new attacks, including strikes on logistics hubs, electrical substations and repair facilities around Mariupol, are meant to stretch Russian defenses and raise the cost of occupation.

The battlefield has changed. Around Mariupol, the fight is now as much about endurance, reach and industrial warfare as it is about trenches. For Ukraine, hitting the city from the air does not mean liberation is near, but it does mean Russia cannot treat occupation as secure.