The Last Stand At Mariupol
Its the stuff nations are made of
Block by block, the Russian military lumbers through Mariupol. A highly mobile, agile Ukrainian defense has kept Russia from taking over the city and held out far longer than anyone could have reasonably expected.
But math has a funny way of defying the reality we wish to create. Knowing the tenacity of the city’s defenders, the Russians have only one option: leveling the city and taking out defenders one by one until there are none left. They have more firepower and more soldiers to commit to the fighting.
Outnumbered and outgunned, the defenders of Mariupol have boldly taken a last stand. Their actions show a willingness to defend the city to the last man.
With the horrors of the Russian occupation being revealed daily in Bucha, Irpin, and other cities, the defenders of Mariupol have nothing to lose. Their death sentence has already been written, but they’re determined to take as many Russian soldiers with them as possible.
Their bravery mirrors the origin story of many nations.
The United States has its brave colonials standing off against the world’s greatest empire. British identity was forged in hundred-year struggles against Norsemen, the French, and, more recently, against Germany. Russia ironically shares that struggle against the Germans in WWII. And now Ukraine is forging its own identity in an existential struggle with its former colonial master.
Stories are the glue that binds nations together, and this war has so many. The defenders of Snake Island, with their defiant response to a Russian warship that now rests beneath the Black Sea. The mythical “Ghost of Kyiv”, an ace pilot who shot down 6 Russian aircraft. A president who needs ammo, not a ride.
And now add to this the brave legion of defenders in Mariupol, pushed back into the Azovstal steel plant. Their resistance may be futile, but without bravery like theirs, the entire Ukrainian war effort would be futile.
There is a saying that nations that hold out survive, even if they lose, but nations that surrender die. That goes back to the question of what a “nation” even is. More than anything, a nation is an idea, a common belief, or an identity, that a group of people hold that unites them as one people.
If the idea lives, the nation lives. If the idea dies, even symbolically, the nation dies with it.
If people are willing to die for the idea, that only makes the idea stronger. If people are willing to die for the idea of an independent Ukraine, that only makes Ukrainians more resolute in defending it and missionaries in the cause of seeing that the sacrifice is not in vain.
The idea of Ukraine is also tied up in the ideas of liberal democracy, freedom, and self-determination. Not because of the nature of Ukraine itself, but because of the nature of their enemies. These ideals are on trial in a sense, and if Ukraine cannot survive, then the legitimacy of those ideals is called into question.
Right now, the world has organized itself around the Ukraine question. You are either with them and for the liberal world order, against them and for a more imperial order, or lukewarm.
The lukewarm will decide based on which ideals hold the most power on the battlefield. But as long as the idea survives, and men willingly sacrifice themselves in its defense, it always has a chance.
So celebrate the last stand at Mariupol. They are breathing life into the idea of a peaceful world order of peaceful nations.
They stand between us and a cruel past seeking to be reborn.