“Under the city, there is basically another city,” Yan Gagin, an adviser Gagin complained 「在這座城市底下,基本上還有另一座城市。」that the site was designed to withstand bombings and blockades — and that it has an inbuilt communication system that strongly favors the defenders, even if they are far outnumbered.
Denisova claimed that Russian forces had ordered residents to wear white armbands — similar to those worn as敵友識別 friend-or-foe identifiers by Russian and separatist forces — when moving around Mariupol, making them harder to distinguish from combatants.