Stefan Korshak is an American veteran who lives in Kyiv. He is a Russian-speaking military historian who has been writing about conflict since his service as a US Army intelligence officer in the mid-1980s.
He has covered five wars and now works full-time as a journalist for the Kyiv Post. His book, The Siege of Mariupol, co-authored with military analyst Christopher Edwards, was published in the United States a few weeks ago.
Stefan is also a Texan from Houston.
Among many other things, this means that the idea of the Alamo is written into his most fundamental understanding of how the world works. The recognition that small numbers of people, even when faced with overwhelming odds, can shape history. That the choice to stand and fight – regardless of the outcome – can change the world.
When I spoke with Stefan today – he in Kyiv, me in Mykolaiv – he used that analogy without hesitation.
The siege of Mariupol, he said, was Ukraine’s Alamo.
Not romantic tragedy. Not doomed futility. But a deliberate decision. Small groups of Ukrainians knowing exactly what they were up against – and choosing to fight anyway.
It’s an almost philosophical observation, and I asked him about the role his military and intelligence background plays in his work. I noted that he is observing and recording military history as it is being made. His response was modest to the point of self-effacing.
You do simple things, but you do them repeatedly. You start with the difference between a tank and an armored personnel carrier. Then you look at enough tanks to tell whether you’re seeing a T-64 or a T-72. From that you infer unit type, then unit designation. From there you infer priority of effort versus supporting movements. Eventually you can make reasonable assessments about what’s likely to happen next.
Not clairvoyance. Repetition.
“There’s nothing magic about it,” he insists.
He is quick to note that Ukraine has a solid corps of journalists who speak the language and live on the ground. They often begin with a clearer grasp of events than Western observers interpreting from a distance. Proximity matters. Language matters. Experience matters.
All of those tools shaped how Stefan understood Mariupol.
I need to provide some quick context.
In February 2022, Mariupol was a city roughly the size of Anchorage, Alaska. It’s located in southeastern Ukraine, close to Russia and the contested Donbas. It is the largest port on the Sea of Azov, and the key to securing Russia’s land bridge to occupied Crimea.
The coast road through Mariupol runs due west toward Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Odesa. Controlling Mariupol was essential to Russia’s short-term goal of conquering Ukraine in what the Kremlin called its three-day “Special Military Operation,” launched on February 24, 2022.
On that day, the Kremlin’s strategists were supremely confident. Tank columns would roll into the central square. The Ukrainian flag would be pulled down. The Russian tricolor would be raised. The advance would continue west.
Behind the tanks would come the security services. City block by city block, citizens would pass through filtration centers. (This was not hypothetical – filtration followed wherever Russian occupation took hold.) Those who insisted that Ukraine had a right to exist as a free nation would be imprisoned, deported, or killed. Those who submitted would live as subjects of empire.
Instead, for eighty-six days, a handful of Ukrainian troops in Mariupol unraveled every thread of Russia’s carefully woven narrative of invincibility.
This is the subject of Stefan’s book – and our conversation.
At the time of the invasion, Korshak had spent seven years as an OSCE observer in the Donbas. Three of those years were in Mariupol. He was intimately familiar with units like the 36th Brigade – “my guys,” as I think of them, the Marines from the Ukrainian south.
The Ukrainian troops working in and around Mariupol were not naive. For years before the invasion, they conducted aggressive patrols and regular skirmishes against Russian-backed forces. They understood their equipment. They understood urban warfare. They understood the vulnerabilities of Russian armor in cities.
They also understood math.
On the day of the full-scale invasion, roughly four thousand Ukrainian defenders – including the Azov Regiment, the 36th Marines, National Guard, Territorial Defense, and police units – faced roughly sixteen to twenty thousand Russian troops, equipped with tanks, armored vehicles, artillery, helicopters, and strike aircraft.
The “smart” choice would have been retreat.
Instead, they chose to stand.
Under the dominant Western narrative of early 2022 – Russian columns advancing on multiple axes, analysts predicting imminent collapse – that choice appeared irrational.
It wasn’t.
Tanks entering a city without infantry support are destroyed by anyone with anti-armor weapons. Tanks entering with infantry see the infantry targeted first, leaving the tanks isolated. World War II demonstrated this repeatedly. Urban warfare favors a committed defender.
And yet, when early images emerged of Russian vehicles burning in Mariupol, Western observers and capitals seemed just as surprised as the Russians.
Once resistance was encountered, the Russians escalated – by leveling the city. If they couldn’t take Mariupol overnight, they would swiftly break it, as an object lesson to the watching world.
Some words are thrown around too casually. I don’t use them lightly, and as we talked, I heard Stefan being equally disciplined in his language. This is not “Hitlerian” genocide, he said. There are no dedicated extermination camps. But the systematic targeting of cities, infrastructure, and civic life – the attempt to erase Ukraine as a nation and Ukrainians as a people – meets the definition of genocide. He used the word deliberately.
He and Edwards debated whether to include the bombing of the Mariupol Drama Theater – the building marked “DETI,” children, in letters visible from the sky. Civilians sheltered inside. The Russians bombed it in broad daylight.
Korshak believed the event could be presented with unimpeachable facts: aircraft type, munition type, weather, blast effects. His co-author questioned whether it belonged in a strictly military narrative.
They worked it out.
Because Mariupol is not only a tactical story.
It is a human one.
During the siege, Stefan and his family were hunkered down not far from Bucha. There was a moment, he said, when he realized what had happened there could have happened to his 14-year-old daughter.
The reason it did not is simple.
People who could have retreated chose to stand.
And then kept standing.
Until the last defenders in Mariupol laid down their arms, on orders from Kyiv, and under the eyes of a watching world.
They were promised humane treatment under international law, but that promise was not kept.
Thus Mariupol fell. Its defenders paid – and are still paying – an unimaginable price. So how can anyone still say that Ukraine cannot be defeated?
Because in our conversation, Korshak invoked not just the Alamo, but also Thermopylae.
Leonidas and his Spartans held against the entire Persian army for three days. They were annihilated.
And in doing so, they proved the Persian Empire was not invincible.
The Ukrainians in Mariupol held for 86.
And proved something similar.
At the end of our conversation, I asked Stefan a slightly absurd question: If you could say one thing to every American, what would it be?
He paused.
His voice shifted.
“I’m in my 60s,” he said. “I grew up believing the American Revolution was about liberty and freedom.”
“You can choose to hate Ukrainians. But I’ve seen this with my own eyes. Ukrainians are patriots fighting their own Revolutionary War.”
“I’m telling you from my heart.”
From a military historian who hears the echoes of Thermopylae.
From a Texan who remembers the Alamo.
From an American who recognizes our own revolutionary ideals being lived out – in tanks and trenches and drone feeds, and in the stubborn courage of deeply ordinary human beings.
“I’m telling you from my heart.”
Reprinted from Mark Hayward’s personal blog. Please find the original here.