Litwin
Diamond Member
Mariupol reminds this writer a lot of Aleppo Syria during the war of rebellion against Bashar Assad, the President of Syria. Assad was a horrific dictator his forces doing things like dropping barrel bombs from helicopters on hospitals and committing shocking numbers of atrocities and the rebels in Aleppo fighting so bravely; Aleppo being the last major holdout of the Syrian rebels who would have won the war if it was not for the intervention of Russia. Many people had hoped the U..S. and its allies would have put a no-fly zone over Aleppo which would have likely saved the city because the rebels were so tenacious but that aid from the Free World never came and the city fell to Assads forces. The Ukrainians in Mariupol pull at one's heart strings everyone knew that the city was the target of the Russian military invasion for it would provide a land bridge from Crimea to the separatist areas in Donbas and the Ukrainians defending the city could have fled one saw the Russian noose slowly tighten on the City but to the Ukrainians of Mariupol staying meant defying Russia's naked aggression and standing up for Ukrainians fundamental rights it is just plain wrong that Ukrainians have to be subject to Russian oppression! But as it turns out the Russian invaders have been too strong and now the world sees a few hundred Ukrainian fighters holed up in Azovstal, the large and old steel plant of Mariupol with crushing Russian forces bearing down on them; the really disconcerting factor here is that hundreds if not as many as a thousand Ukrainian civilians have taken shelter in the underground tunnels of this steel plant the world sees the cell phone pictures of the women and children in the plant's shelters! One ask themselves is the world so dysfunctional and impudent that it cannot save the lives of these innocent civilians? It has been requested of the Russian government to evacuate these civilians with no agreement forthcoming? It is time to get tough with the Russian government here, the World could hurt Putin for his noncompliance on evacuation of these civilians. Let the world make the cost be that if Putin does not comply the Free World will salvage for Ukraine all the weapons and munitions on the Moskva, the ship likely still has usable SAM missiles for the S300 system it likely has some cruise missiles left. The free World could access it from submarines and underwater submersibles, the sunken ship is in Ukrainian waters like fifty miles off the Ukrainian coast. The Free World should not idly stand by as hundreds of more Ukrainian civilians are senselessly killed in this tragic military conquest of an authoritarian government out to just gain more power!
People throughout the world if they had a magic wand would like to use it to save the Ukrainians in Mariupol, the Ukrainians have this David pull of the David vs. Goliath biblical story. But Mariupol is now deep in Russian territory so it would be irresponsible for the Ukrainian government to expend any significant resources trying to rescue it. This is a hair brain idea but since there is no "shred of hope" ideas proposed I throw this out there. The Ukrainians and their allies should make an initial 2.5 km wide and over time widen it to 7.5 km path through the Russian lines to Mariupol, call it a zone of wrecked vehicles. The path would be littered with destroyed cars, trucks, tanks, armored personnel carriers, etc.; you take out the engines out of the wrecks so they don't weigh so much and you attach them with a chain mechanism to an operating car or truck that will be driven. You get a collection of like one hundred vehicles and all at once you move forward it could be two hundred yards to one thousand yard each run would be different and once you hit the destination point you release the vehicles and turn around and drive back. You repeat the process over and over again and you build a path of littered vehicles to Mariupol. What the littered vehicles provide is hiding places for Ukrainian fighters and their weapons and confusion for enemy artillery because they cannot distinguish between wrecks and actual live people in working vehicles. The path to Mariupol would not in any way be a perfect or a great path (it would be a life-line), it wouldn't support truck caravans because they would be spotted as targets but a modest number of passenger vehicles could traverse the gauntlet on a daily basis; it is not a meaningless thing a passenger vehicle could hold four people to four Ukrainian civilians trapped in Mariupol it would be a journey to heaven; what the path of wrecks would provide is a lifeline to Mariupol to get some food, supplies and fighters to the besieged city.
This writer isn't completely naive, it is understood that this would be incredibly dangerous for the people building and securing the wrecks zone and it is understood that it could not be embarked on without some heavy weapons to at least combat short range artillery. With respect to long range artillery the thinking would be that a cat and mouse strategy would bring about tolerable level of casualties (working at night, going at different times, different locations, different numbers, using fires to hide plans, etc.). Again it would require some heavy weapons and again it shouldn't take from Ukraine's ongoing battles. So what to do here, well after this war and it is pretty clear that Ukraine will at least have the western part of their country at the end because Putin doesn't have enough troops to take the west and after this war the citizens of Ukraine since they are a people of really good character are going to want to make the sacrifice of the tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians who lost their lives mean something, not be wasted so the Ukrainian people are going to be an industrious people and thus prosperous. This idea suggests the Ukrainians use some of this future prosperity to buy weapons to try to rescue Mariupol, it wouldn't be able to buy many this way because many would not be for sale but the thinking is go to small countries in Africa and South America and Asia that could really use the money and offer to buy five or ten tanks or artillery guns and offer to pay richly for them like ten times the market value try to work out a deal where you would pay for them in four years or if that isn't possible go to one of the large investment banks and try to borrow the money and work out terms where you would not have to begin paying the bank for four years.
Some heavy weapons would be essential for the plan to work because that is the only way to combat the Russian tank and short-range artillery units that would try to destroy this pathway zone. Also, what would be critical is to come up with an idea to mute all the land mines that the Russians would lay in front of the path. One idea may be to use the idea behind the U.S. MRAP vehicles where occupants survive driving over mines because of the shape of the cabins which is a "v" shape which deflects the blasts outward, use the tractor part of the tractor trailer which is high off the ground and weld a metal frame that looks like a box out of one inch square metal beams and put on over top of the tractor chassis which will support the frame and weld a "'v" shaped frame with steel plates welded to the frame to make the "v" underneath the tractor attaching it to the box frame so at least the driver of the trailer has a chance to survive the mine explosion ( You could do this idea with trucks and SUVs you would just have to make the struts or like assembly long so the passenger compartment is high enough off the ground to accommodate the "v" shaped steel plate shield) [since there is a steel frame you could weld steel plates all over the vehicle to act like a bullet proof vests. Lastly the idea would require a force of individual fighters to defend the pathway they would have to lay mines outside the 7.5km wide path to obstruct enemy units trying to cross over and destroy the path, they would have to embed amongst the wrecks to provide sniper protection to protect the path from being infiltrated by enemy fighters and man and move the heavy weapons embedded in the pathway zone needed to provide artillery protection for the path.
