Russians quickly reached Mariupol because they did not meet proper resistance - Deputy Commander of Azov Palamar
The Russian occupation forces did not meet with adequate resistance, so they were able to quickly reach Mariupol at the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion.
Sviatoslav Palamar (Kalyna), deputy commander of the Azov regiment, told this in an interview with Dmytro Gordon, Censor.NET reports.
The journalist asked him why the Russians reached Mariupol so quickly.
"Because they did not meet proper resistance. Let the top military and political leadership deal with this. I don't know (whether there was treason - Ed.). I don't want to make any assumptions, to say that there are some investigative commissions, competent authorities, special services. Let them sort it out. I am not ready to give an objective answer to this. The subjective answer is yes, it surprised us all because we did not expect them to act so quickly," the Hero of Ukraine said.
"If they had not reached us from this direction and we had fought on these borders, where we realized that there would be such an attack... It is important to say that by this time our guys were already fighting... at the same time, our brothers from the Marines were fighting in the Pavlopil-Shyrokyne area. Our guys, scouts, were already in their ranks, and they met us there. This is one of the reasons why, if someone says: "What if it was possible to withdraw the troops from Mariupol somewhere to the north...", realizing that this is how the situation will develop. But no, there was no order. There were brothers from the Marines who, conditionally, if we decided to withdraw towards Volnovakha or somewhere else, towards Zaporizhzhia. Yes, and what would have happened to them? We couldn't let that happen either. It's war, we were preparing for it, and protecting our homeland is our only goal," the defender added.
