Irish Examiner view: Echoes of Stalingrad as last defenders hold out in Mariupol

The endgame for the defenders of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol has begun, and the chances are that it will not end well

Soviet gunners fire on Nazis who had barricaded themselves into houses during street fighting in the ruins of Stalingrad in January 1943. That battle may well be on the minds of both the Russian troops sweeping into Mariupol and the Ukrainian troops holding out in the steel works there. Picture: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The endgame for the defenders of Mariupol has begun and the chances are it will not end well.

Despite claims from the Russians that they had finally taken the port city on the Sea of Azov, some 2,000 Ukrainian fighters remain in the vast Azovstal steel works in the south-east of Mariupol, along with as many as 1,000 civilians and an estimated 500 injured soldiers, but their plight — and the plight of 100,000 citizens still in the city — is parlous at best.