Another Ukrainian unit joined the invasion of Kursk Oblast in Russia. On Sunday, the 501st Marine Battalion of the Ukrainian Marine Corps announced its presence in the city, in a video showing Marines tearing down a Russian flag “in one of the Kursk settlements. “
The battalion’s roughly 400 Marines “are at the forefront of combat missions,” the unit said. But that has not been the case. The 501st Battalion had the unfortunate history of avoiding fighting. In this sense, the Kursk crusade is an opportunity for redemption.
The component of the 501st Marine Battalion of the Ukrainian garrison in Crimea when Russian troops invaded the strategic peninsula in 2014. When ill-equipped Ukrainian forces fled the peninsula, only 64 members of the 501st Marine Battalion joined them. he remained in Crimea, siding with the Russian occupiers of the peninsula.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense has rebuilt the 501st Marine Battalion. Eight years later, in the first months of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the battalion joined the garrison at Mariupol, on the Black Sea coast.
Russian troops laid siege to Mariupol, starved and mercilessly shelled the city’s garrison as well as its civilian population. The main garrison, more than 2,000 strong, held out for three months and eventually withdrew to the Azovstal metallurgical plant before surrendering at the end of May. 2022, when food, ammunition and medicine ran out.
The 501st Marine Battalion was not among the last Resistance fighters. Instead, he dropped out six weeks earlier, in the first week of April.
Without coordinating with adjacent forces, some 270 Marines abandoned their positions and weapons and entered Russian captivity. “We need casualties and bloodshed,” 501st Marine Battalion Senior Lieutenant Kostiantyn Bezsmertnyi told Russian state media after the mass surrender. Tired of seeing other people die. “
Authorities in kyiv have opened an investigation into the unauthorized surrender of the Marines, focusing their attention on Bezsmertnyi and some other senior officers. Over the next two years, about 20 Marines returned to Ukraine as part of prisoner exchanges. But there are about 250 left in Russia.
Decimated in Mariupol, the 501st Marine Battalion will have to be rebuilt again. Resupplied with new officers and conscripts, the unit joined the war in 2023, fighting first in Kherson Oblast in southern Ukraine. This summer, the unit was in northern Kharkiv Oblast, protecting the city of Vovchansk against a primary (and ongoing) Russian incursion.
The 501st Marine Battalion reportedly marched the 160 kilometers from Vovchansk to Kursk last week, as the invading Ukrainian force extended its advance beyond the city of Sudzha, 10 kilometers from the Russian-Ukrainian border.
With the arrival of the battalion, the invasion force now includes troops from the Army, Air Assault Force, Territories and Marine Corps. The Marines would likely have the most to prove.
Sources:
1. Marine Brigade: https://t. me/ua_marines_36brigade/2055
2. Ukraine Control Chart: https://www. google. com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1xPxgT8LtUjuspSOGHJc2VzA5O5jWMTE
3. Military: https://militaryland. net/ukraine/marine-corps/501st-marine-battalion/
4. La Media Initiative for Human Rights: https://mipl. org. ua/en/disfully-of-the-501st-marine-battalion-unknown-circumstances-of-captivity/
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