Ukraine's Azov fighters were forced from Mariupol. Now they're hitting back

KYIV, June 18 - Four years after Ukraine's Azov Regiment surrendered the last corner of the devastated city of Mariupol to Russian forces, the rebuilt unit is setting its sights on making Moscow pay for its occupation.

That bitter defeat in May 2022 — when hundreds of its fighters were killed or captured — turned Azov into a symbol of endurance in Ukraine and paved the way for its return as a bigger and more powerful force. Now, it is once again focusing on its home city on the Azov Sea.

Drones belonging to First Corps Azov streaked across the sky above the city's strategic seaport last week in an operation that targeted electrical substations, repair facilities and a sanctioned ship and plunged the port into a blackout, according to Kyiv's military.

Reuters was able to confirm the location of parts of a video of the attack posted by the corps.

The attack was part of Ukraine's expanding strike campaign targeting Russian military logistics deep behind the front line, in a bid to grind down Moscow's war machine and swing the war in Kyiv's favour.

Col. Arsen Dmytryk, First Corps Azov's chief of staff, told Reuters there would be dozens more such operations to showcase the unit's capabilities, technology and planning.

Driving Russia out of Mariupol, which lies 120 km (75 miles) behind front lines that are barely budging, is a "long game", he conceded.

"If it takes 20 years, we will spend 20 years planning, waiting, preparing," said Dmytryk, 32, who was among those captured by Russia then later freed. "But when the time comes, we must be ready. I believe we will return it (Mariupol).

"It's just a matter of time."

Russia's defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

'MORE IS COMING'

The port strike, carried out with Ukraine's drone forces and the SBU security service, hit just a few miles from the ravaged steel mill where Azov fighters and other troops surrendered after Moscow's three-month siege of the city.

It followed months of strikes on critical roadways across Russian-occupied parts of the eastern Donetsk region, including in Mariupol, in a systemic effort to disrupt Russian supply lines to the front.

Footage posted by the corps captures its operations: in an April 16 video, drones soar over broad fields and long highways around Donetsk, before careering into bulky army vehicles.

Another post on May 8 features drone-view footage sweeping over central Mariupol and the heavily damaged Azovstal Iron and Steel Works, the site of the Ukrainian garrison's last stand in 2022.

"Azov is already patrolling its home city of Mariupol. From the skies — for now," it said.

Today the city — whose population has fallen from more than 400,000 before the war — is home to new infrastructure projects, part of an effort by Russia to cement its grip on occupied southern Ukraine, a Reuters investigation earlier this year found.

In January, Kyiv's foreign intelligence service said Russia was expanding Mariupol's seaport as a key hub for its economy, while pursuing showcase construction projects in the city at the expense of ordinary residents.

The regional authorities in Russian-occupied Donetsk did not immediately respond to questions for this story.

CUTTING CRITICAL SUPPLIES

Within Ukraine's "middle strike" campaign, Azov's primary aim is to choke enemy cargo - especially fuel - heading from Russia through key nodes like Mariupol and Donetsk city, said a corps drone officer.

The constant movement of supply trucks along vast, open roads makes them difficult to defend, he said: "There's no way to hide a tanker carrying fuel ... It's just impossible."

The routes under attack include the M14 linking Mariupol with the Russian city of Rostov to the east, the H20 heading north from Mariupol to Donetsk, and a ring road around Donetsk, he added.

Ukraine's military is also stepping up strikes on logistics across the Russian-occupied "land bridge" across southern Ukraine connecting Russia with Crimea, attacks which have sparked fuel shortages on the peninsula.

Speaking to Reuters last week, Ukraine's top drone commander Robert Brovdi pledged to "isolate Crimea in the near future" through mounting strikes on the key P-280 highway.

Azov's strikes are "cumulative rather than decisive", said Franz-Stefan Gady, a Vienna-based expert with the Center for a New American Security, as they force Russia's army to disperse its vehicles through longer detours and resort to more night driving.

Over time, he added, that "degrades the offensive tempo Russia can generate" on the battlefield.

Russian forces are on the verge of capturing the city of Kostiantynivka, the southern anchor of the so-called "fortress belt" in the Donetsk region which Moscow has demanded Kyiv relinquish. Russian drone teams are also hammering Ukrainian battlefield logistics.

However, Russia's overall pace of advance has slowed to a crawl in recent months. Ukrainian forces have regained ground on parts of the front.

Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, said Kyiv's mid-range strikes could "test the conditions" for Ukraine, and possibly Azov, to eventually go on the offensive.

"This is one of the big stories of this year: how does Russia deal with Ukraine's middle strike campaign?" he said.

FUTURE OPERATIONS

One of Azov's primary weapons is the AI-assisted Hornet drone produced by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt's U.S. defence-tech firm Perennial Autonomy.

Corps operators modified it by installing Starlink internet terminals to expand its original range of 100 km, Lee added - an innovation that showcased the unit's technical knowhow.

"Azov was responsible for a lot of the improvements to the Hornet," he said.

By raining its drones on the roads leading to and from Mariupol, the corps is working toward a key objective, said chief of staff Dmytryk: accelerating an end to fighting that he hopes would see more than 700 of its fighters freed from Russian prisons.

Kyiv has made an all-for-all prisoner swap a central part of any peace deal. Frequent "Free Azov" rallies take place in Kyiv and other major cities, reflecting the unit's heroic status in Ukrainian society.

Corps commander Denys Prokopenko said on X last month that freeing his comrades-in-arms was "my personal priority and a matter of honour".

Vilified in Russia over its roots as a nationalist militia, today's Azov is a far cry from the scrappy volunteer battalion that freed Mariupol from pro-Russian separatists in 2014, or the fragmented regiment of 2022.

Formally under the National Guard, it is now seen as a premier fighting force and one of Ukraine's "most advanced formations" in drone warfare in particular, said defence analyst Olena Kryzhanivska of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.

Last year, it expanded to a corps containing six brigades, a drone regiment and a special-purposes unit, and now totals tens of thousands of troops, the unit says.

"When we were in captivity, the Muscovites told us that they wanted to destroy, destroy, destroy us," said Dmytryk, whose call sign is "Lemko". "But somehow their 'destruction' keeps scaling up Azov instead." REUTERS