KYIV — Four years after Ukraine’s Azov Regiment was forced to surrender the last remnants of the battered city of Mariupol to Russian forces, the reconstituted unit has turned its attention back to making Russia answer for that occupation.
That crushing defeat in May 2022 — during which hundreds of Azov fighters were either killed or taken prisoner — transformed the regiment into a symbol of resilience across Ukraine and set the stage for its return as a larger, more formidable force. The unit is now once again directing its efforts toward its home city on the Azov Sea.
Drones operated by First Corps Azov flew over the city’s strategically important seaport last week in a mission that struck electrical substations, repair facilities, and a sanctioned vessel, knocking out power to the port entirely, according to Ukraine’s military. Reuters was able to verify the location of portions of attack footage the corps posted publicly.
The strike was part of Ukraine’s growing campaign to hit Russian military supply lines far behind the front lines, with the goal of wearing down Moscow’s ability to wage war and shifting momentum in Kyiv’s favor.
Col. Arsen Dmytryk, First Corps Azov’s chief of staff, told Reuters that many more such operations are planned to demonstrate the unit’s capabilities, technology, and strategic thinking.
He acknowledged that pushing Russia out of Mariupol — which sits roughly 120 kilometers, or about 75 miles, behind front lines that have barely shifted — is a slow process he described as a “long game.”
“If it takes 20 years, we will spend 20 years planning, waiting, preparing,” said Dmytryk, 32, who was among those captured by Russia and later released. “But when the time comes, we must be ready. I believe we will return it (Mariupol). It’s just a matter of time.”
Russia’s defense ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
The port strike, conducted alongside Ukraine’s drone forces and the SBU security service, hit just a few miles from the steel mill where Azov fighters and other Ukrainian troops surrendered following a three-month Russian siege of the city.
It came after months of strikes on major roadways throughout Russian-occupied areas of the eastern Donetsk region, including in Mariupol itself, as part of a coordinated effort to disrupt Russian supply lines heading to the front.
Video footage released by the corps documents these operations: an April 16 clip shows drones flying over wide open fields and long stretches of highway around Donetsk before slamming into heavy military vehicles. A May 8 post features aerial footage sweeping over central Mariupol and the heavily damaged Azovstal Iron and Steel Works — the site of the Ukrainian garrison’s final stand in 2022. “Azov is already patrolling its home city of Mariupol. From the skies — for now,” the post stated.
Mariupol’s population has dropped significantly from its prewar total of more than 400,000. Today the city is the site of new infrastructure projects that are part of Russia’s effort to solidify its hold on occupied southern Ukraine, according to a Reuters investigation conducted earlier this year. In January, Kyiv’s foreign intelligence service reported that Russia is expanding Mariupol’s seaport as a major economic hub while pursuing high-profile construction projects at the expense of ordinary residents.
Within Ukraine’s broader “middle strike” campaign, Azov’s main objective is to cut off enemy cargo — particularly fuel — moving from Russia through key transit points like Mariupol and Donetsk city, according to a corps drone officer. He noted that the constant movement of supply trucks along wide, exposed roads makes them hard to protect. “There’s no way to hide a tanker carrying fuel … It’s just impossible,” he said.
The targeted routes include the M14 highway connecting Mariupol with the Russian city of Rostov to the east, the H20 running north from Mariupol to Donetsk, and a ring road around Donetsk city.
Ukraine’s military is also intensifying strikes on logistics across the Russian-occupied “land bridge” through southern Ukraine that links Russia with Crimea — attacks that have already caused fuel shortages on the peninsula. Ukraine’s top drone commander Robert Brovdi pledged last week to “isolate Crimea in the near future” through continued strikes on the key P-280 highway.
Azov’s strikes are “cumulative rather than decisive,” according to Franz-Stefan Gady, a Vienna-based expert with the Center for a New American Security. He explained that the strikes force Russian forces to spread their vehicles across longer alternate routes and rely more heavily on nighttime driving — which over time “degrades the offensive tempo Russia can generate” on the battlefield.
Russian forces are currently on the verge of capturing the city of Kostiantynivka, the southern anchor of what is known as the “fortress belt” in the Donetsk region that Moscow has demanded Kyiv hand over. Russian drone teams are also targeting Ukrainian battlefield supply lines. However, Russia’s overall rate of advance has slowed considerably in recent months, and Ukrainian forces have reclaimed ground in some areas along the front.
Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, said Kyiv’s mid-range strikes could “test the conditions” for Ukraine — and possibly Azov — to eventually launch offensive operations. “This is one of the big stories of this year: how does Russia deal with Ukraine’s middle strike campaign?” he said.
Among Azov’s primary weapons is an AI-assisted drone called the Hornet, produced by a U.S. defense-technology firm run by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt called Perennial Autonomy. Corps operators enhanced the drone by fitting it with Starlink internet terminals to extend its original 100-kilometer range — an innovation that highlighted the unit’s technical expertise. “Azov was responsible for a lot of the improvements to the Hornet,” Lee said.
By targeting roads into and out of Mariupol with drone strikes, the corps is working toward another critical goal, said chief of staff Dmytryk: speeding up an end to the war that he hopes would result in the release of more than 700 Azov fighters currently held in Russian prisons. Kyiv has made a full prisoner exchange a central demand in any peace negotiations. Frequent “Free Azov” rallies are held in Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities, reflecting the unit’s revered status in Ukrainian society.
Corps commander Denys Prokopenko wrote on X last month that freeing his fellow fighters was “my personal priority and a matter of honour.”
Despised in Russia due to its origins as a nationalist militia, today’s Azov is a far different organization from the small volunteer battalion that liberated Mariupol from pro-Russian separatists in 2014, or the fragmented regiment that fought in 2022. Now formally part of the National Guard, it is considered one of Ukraine’s top fighting units and among its “most advanced formations” in drone warfare, according to defense analyst Olena Kryzhanivska of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.
Last year, the unit expanded into a full corps made up of six brigades, a drone regiment, and a special-purposes unit, and now numbers in the tens of thousands of troops, the unit says.
“When we were in captivity, the Muscovites told us that they wanted to destroy, destroy, destroy us,” said Dmytryk, whose call sign is “Lemko.” “But somehow their ‘destruction’ keeps scaling up Azov instead.”
