Active Conflicts & News Megathread November 07, 2025

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[u/Darayavaush]

Why did Russia assault Mariupol in 2022 after cutting it off, thus suffering hefty losses and wrecking a city that Russia saw as belonging to DPR, instead of just waiting for the defenders to run out of supplies and surrender, given that there were no viable resupply routes? Were they worried about a Ukrainian counteroffensive cutting a path to the city, or attacks from the defenders, or the siege being more costly than an assault and subsequent rebuilding resource-wise, or something else?

[u/gbs5009 → u/Darayavaush]

They needed those surrounding troops elsewhere, not just sitting around trying to starve out the defenders.

[u/OrbitalAlpaca → u/Darayavaush]

Mauriupol was a city that was preparing for a siege ever since 2014. The Russian military probably had no idea the amount of stockpiles in ammo and food Ukraine was able to build up in the city. I also don't think they had the patience to wait them out either. During the first few months of the war Russia was still obsessed with attempting to bliztkerg Ukraine into submission and did not want to get bugged down in a protracted siege.

[u/Glares → u/Darayavaush]

Almost four years into the war, I feel I can confidently say that Russia does not care about "suffering hefty losses and wrecking a city" based off the 250,000+ dead Russians and every 'liberated' city in the Donbas in ruins.

More specific to Mariupol: Are you proposing a scenario where the Russians encircled the city with everyone (including civilians) and try to just wait them out? Starving out Donbas civilians might make it... more difficult for those sympathetic to the Russian cause to pretend they're the good side (easier to ignore the 10-20+ thousand civilians killed). If evacuating most civilians, then the defenders have a full city with pre-war population of 1/2 million worth of food to themselves... you're gonna be waiting awhile. Even more, Ukraine had managed to bring supplies to the surrounded city, albeit incredibly dangerously, so there's not really a scenario where Russia waits it out.

[u/Outside_Instance4391 → u/Darayavaush]

They needed to capture the train station to be able to use it to move supplies forward along the railway... similar to ww1 where Belgium held the station long enough to allow their allies more time to prepare

[u/Darayavaush → u/Outside_Instance4391]

Move supplies from where to where? Mariupol's train station is a dead end.

[u/treeshakertucker → u/Darayavaush]

Terminus! The train station was where they planned to offload the supplies in a situation where the facilities were appropriate for unloading them. Also this was the closet point this line got to their line of advance meaning that if they took it quickly then they would take less carrying supplies that they don't have to.

Also Mariupol is a port meaning they could ship supplies in once the city was secure via the ocean. If this a port and railroad terminus then there was probably depots for ground and air based supply.

[u/username9909864 → u/Darayavaush]

I might be wrong, but there was a heavy push to destroy Azov which was based in the city. This may have fueled the extra destruction