Just a quick post to highlight a video I came across. The footage is somewhat old, but was only recently released because of the military sensitivity.

As you will recall, the army regiment defending Mariupol held out for an astoundingly long time. This, despite the fact that the city was well-surrounded by Russian forces on three sides, with the fourth side being the Azov Sea. (With Russian naval vessels in the Azov, you could make the argument that the city was fully surrounded.) But the Azov regiment defended Mariupol for nearly three months. Part of the reason they could hold out for so long was that they had gotten some supplies early in the war, thanks to a gap in the Russian coverage of the city. With that gap, helicopters missions were able to sneak in seven or eight times before Russia managed to close the gap.

The video below shows some footage of those missions and how they had to fly extremely low to the ground (or sea) in order to sneak in. Flying so low is difficult, so it’s quite a testament to the skill of the Ukrainian pilots. The flights at the time (back in late March or early April) had to cover about 60 miles to get to Mariupol, and while I don’t think they flew that low the entire distance, it was still a very impressive feat.