Punishing Ukraine for Defying Russia

"At exactly 7 a.m. the [Ukrainians] subjected the center of Donetsk [city] to the most massive strike since 2014."

"Forty rockets from BM-21 ‘Grad’ MLRS were fired at civilians in our city. [A key intersection in Donetsk city center had come under fire]."

Moscow-appointed mayor, Aleksey Kulemzin

 

"[The city was hit 86 times with] artillery, MLRS, tanks, mortars and UAVs, [in the past 24 hours]."  

"One of [the victims] was a volunteer, a member of the rapid response team of the international organization."

"During the shelling, they were on the street, they were fatally wounded by fragments of enemy shells."

Yaroslav Yanushevych, regional head, Kherson military administration

A firefighter works inside a destroyed apartment of a residential building hit by shelling in Donetsk on December 15. Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters

"[Russian strikes are exposing millions of people to] extreme hardship."

"Additional strikes could lead to a further serious deterioration in the humanitarian situation and spark more displacement. [The war is an] unmitigated tragedy and disaster."

"[Russian forces killed at least 441 civilians in the early days of the invasion. Moscow has denied targeting civilians]."

"[Accountability for such incidents is] sorely lacking," [Not a single member of Russia's armed forces was known to have been held accountable by Moscow for carrying out, or failing to prevent, these killings]."

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk 

 

"[The United States had] effectively become a party [to the war in Ukraine. U.S. military assistance to Ukraine, including the transfer of such sophisticated weapons as the Patriot missile system] would mean even broader involvement of military personnel in the hostilities and could entail possible consequences."

Russian Defence Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova

"[The death rate in the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol has skyrocketed amid a lack of heating, food, and medical supplies]."

"The incidence rate is insane. A flu epidemic is spreading in Mariupol. Hospitals are overcrowded. The ambulance does not even leave for those with a high temperature because there is no place to hospitalize people for treatment."

"At the beginning of November, the weekly death rate was about 150 people. Last week it exceeded 250 deaths per week.... That is 7-7.5 times higher than it was before the beginning of this phase of the war,."

Petro Andryushchenko, adviser to the mayor of Mariupol

 How surprising is that? Russia is pouring all the munitions it has, hoping to secure more in good time, at Ukraine's city centers all over the country, wreaking damage to the country's energy systems, leaving millions of people without electricity, heating, water, the very basics of winter existence. the Ukrainian military is doing its best to return the compliment, and this enrages Russia, reporting that 'war crimes' are being committed by Ukraine in its targeting of Russian-held territories, as part of its campaign for their return to Ukraine's sovereign possession.

 

A soldier known as 'Kipish' holds the remains of a rocket that he allegedly shot down with rudimentary equipment Credit: Felipe Dana/AP Photo

 

 

The commanding officer of a soldier known as Kipish with the  territorial defence troop praised his "lightni8ng fast reaction" when the soldier using a machine gun hit a cruise missile destroying it. "When he fired, green sparks went off (the missile), it started to spin, tilted on its tail and tumbled down", said the commander. The gun had been mounted atop ammunition crates in a suburb of Kyiv. And he was duly praised for pulling off the "impossible". 

"It's almost impossible to hit a missile with a machine gun, but it was done", further explained another commander. This feat on Friday as Russia launched one of its most powerful barrages of missile fire against Ukraine, once again hitting and crippling the power grid. Pieces of the missile landed in a field of snow. Images from the scene show a grinning young man holding what appears to be the wing of a missile.

The Russian barrage was launched from the Black and Caspian seas and included Kh-191Kalibr and S-300 missiles. All cities in Kharkiv and Poltava provinces were bereft of electricity within minutes of the attack. Kyiv was left temporarily without water. In Kremenchuk both water and power supply were disrupted. In President Zelenskyy's hometown of Kryvyi Rih, a missle hit a block of flats. Three people were found dead and 13 injured when rescue teams scoured the debris, among them four injured children. Close to 600 miners were trapped underground as missile strikes cut off electricity at the town's coal mine. By late afternoon, about 250 of the miners had been rescued. 

 

In Kyiv all metro trains were stopped while local residents rushed to underground stations to wait out the air attacks. Ukraine's second-largest city -- Kharkiv, suffered one of its worst attacks yet in this conflict. According to Mayor Ihor Terehov "colossal infrastructure damage" was done. A fraction of the homes affected by power cuts saw their power restored Friday. The impact from previous missile strikes was compounded by the added damage from Friday's mass attack. 

Nine power stations were hit. Ukrenergo the country's electricity operator announced that less than 50 percent of all customers would have their power restored in a bid to prioritize critical infrastructure like hospitals. According to Yuri Ihnat, Ukrainian Air Force spokesman, markings on some of the missiles launched on Friday identified their manufacture as a mere months earlier. "They are using up thei8r reserves quicker than they can shore them up", he stated.

 

Launch of the Igla MANPADS missile. Frame from the video

 

Russian Bluster, Ukraine Action

"If you look at the explosions in the attacks, they are quite small. I suspect that these [rudimentary drones made in Ukraine] are homemade drones, which have had explosives strapped to them."

"If you wanted to seek out enemy positions in the past, you would have had to send out special forces units... and you might lose some troops. Now, all you're risking is a drone."

"They were shown attacking targets such as ammunition dumps, and played a part in the sinking of the Moskva [warship],"

"Ukraine doesn't have as much ammunition as Russia. Having 'eyes in the sky' to spot targets and direct artillery fire means they can make better use of what they have."

"Russian forces have the Stupor rifle, which shoots electromagnetic pulses, [This stops commercial drones from being able to navigate using GPS]."

Dr Marina Miron, researcher in defence studies, King's College London

A damaged building after a Russian drone attack on Wednesday in Kyiv, Ukraine.Credit...Laura Boushnak for The New York Times

Faced with a violent adversary that has demonstrated its willingness to exercise a scorched earth policy on its neighbour, marching in to invade and to intimidate by force of arms with the intention of unseating the legally installed government, in the process never hesitating to bomb civilian structures; apartment buildings, schools, markets, hospitals; Ukraine has had to jump-start itself on brilliant strategic moves, improvising munitions, quickly training its servicemen in the use of internationally-supplied advanced weaponry and has, by sheer grit and determination defended itself.

To the astonishment of the global community, most of which has rallied to aid Ukraine in its plight, pledging military and non-military support, enacting sanctions on Russia, fulfilling commitments to upgrade Ukraine's weapons arsenals and to continue training for its military, the government of Ukraine and its military has exacted a steep price on Russia for its arrogant assumption that the country would easily fall to its neighbour's predations.

Ill-trained Russian troops, unprepared conscripts, faulty weaponry have all illustrated just how ill-prepared Moscow was to pounce on its neighbour with the expectation that it could withdraw after looting Ukrainian territory in an expansion of Russia's. Ukraine's counteroffensive has aptly demonstrated the expertise and versatility of Ukraine's strategic capacity, from sinking Russian warships to bombing weapons depots and returning to Russia within its borders compliments in the form of missiles and improvised drones in response to Russia's raging drones as pay-back for Ukraine's attack on a supply bridge in Crimea.

Russia saw fit to annex Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts as an entitlement project, but spits fire in rage over Ukraine defending itself and effectively demonstrating that those provinces will be returned to Ukraine by the same kind of force that the Kremlin ordered to divide them from their proper sovereign ownership. Yet again, Ukraine is able to state having thwarted Russian drone attacks, this time on Kyiv and its regional surrounds. The Ukraine air defence system on Wednesday destroyed a baker's dozen of explosive-laden drones.

Their falling wreckage did cause damage to buildings but no human casualties. As opposed to those thirteen drones hitting their targets unchallenged. Russia has had to rely on distance aerial attacks in the face of its troops' inability to counter Ukrainian troops on the battlefield without ignominiously retreating, leaving behind all their munitions as a gift for the victorious Ukrainian troops. No doubt leaving Mr. Putin both fuming in rage and cringing in despair.

Once again Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that "terrorists" had fired Iranian-produced drones, all of which were successfully intercepted. Drones alongside rockets, missiles, mortars and artillery have all been used by Moscow to target power stations, water facilities and various other public utility apparatus. In the wake of the latest attacks on Wednesday, clean-up crews were dispatched to shovel off rubble and roll out sheeting to cover windows. 

According to some Kyiv residents, fragments from a drone bore the words "For Ryazan", a military base in the Ryazan region of western Russia hit by a cross-border attack the week before. In areas close to the front lines Odesa has seen drone strikes shut off power completely. Air defence systems on December 5 responding to a round of Russian volleys, intercepted over 60 of 70 strikes, nine of 10 targeting the capital. Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries are next on the agenda from the U.S. to Ukraine.

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In Washington, the Russian Embassy warned that a Patriot missile delivery would be viewed by Moscow as "another provocative step by the administration, which could lead to unpredictable consequences" which in turn would be likely to cause "colossal damage not only to Russian-American relations but would create additional global security risks".

 

Firefighters work after a drone fired on buildings in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Oct. 17. Waves of explosive-laden suicide drones struck Ukraine’s capital as families were preparing to start their week early Monday, the blasts echoing across Kyiv, setting buildings ablaze and sending people scurrying to shelters. Roman Hrytsyna/AP

Battering Ukraine, Hitting Russia

"Every downed Russian missile is concrete proof that terror can be defeated."
"Air defence shot down most of the missiles. In total more than 60 invaders' missiles were shot down."

Power engineers have already started to restore electricity. Our people never give up."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

 

"If something is launched into other countries' airspace, sooner or later unknown flying objects will return to departure point,"

Zelenskyy adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak

 

"[Ukraine used drones to attack two Russian military airfields on Monday morning. Russian air defenses intercepted the attacks] in the Saratov and Ryazan regions." 

"On the morning of December 5, the [Kyiv] regime, in order to disable Russian long-range aircraft, attempted to strike with Soviet-made jet unmanned aerial vehicles [drones] at the Diaghilevo military airfields in the Ryazan region and Engels in the Saratov region."

Russian news agency RIA Novosti

 

"[Ukrainian air defenses were able to shoot down over 60 of the more than 70 missiles launched.]"

"We also have information on the use of Tu-22 M3 bombers with rocket launchers, which are the most powerful in terms of combat weight."

"Guided air missiles were also launched from Su-25 fighters." 

Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat

Russian President Vladimir Putin, second left, visits the Crimean Bridge connecting Russian mainland and Crimean peninsula over the Kerch Strait, on Dec. 5, 2022. (Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

 Russia just doesn't seem to be able to get a break. Ukrainian resolve not to melt under the Russian military's relentless missile barrages keep throwing Moscow's plans for a quick wrap-up into the 'special military operation' onto its back foot. Rumours proliferate that Russia is running out of missiles, that it has exhausted its inventory, most of which Ukraine has been able to shoot down. Those that do hit their target unleash catastrophic damage on the nation's ability to provide its population with the basic services required to endure a winter. Power and water suddenly cut off.

The Kremlin hasn't bargained with the Ukrainian military employing guerrilla methods in modern military conflict, mysteriously blowing up Russian ships, the pride of the fleet, bombing a bridge in the Crimea, Russia's vital direct link from Russia to Ukraine, to resupply its forces with food and medicine and munitions and raw recruits. The ship sank, the bridge was fixed, and Russian President Vladimir Putin himself drove a vehicle across the bridge, to restore Russian pride and honour, Russia-style.

Great perturbation over the fact that Ukrainian forces have been able to shrink the distance between the Ukraine border and well within Russia to further crimp their enemy's capacity to deliver reinforcements and supplies. The Dyagilevo air base, hit by drone explosives houses tanker aircraft used to refuel other planes in flight, the base located about 500 kilometres (over 300 miles) northeast of the Ukrainian border.

Firefighters work outside an office building destroyed by shelling in Donetsk, Ukraine, on December 5.2022

As for the attacks on the Engels base in the Saratov region on the Volga River and the Dyagilevo base in the Ryazan region in western Russia, this strategy represents part of Ukraine's determination to curtail Russia's long-range bomber force, explained the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence.The Engels air base located over 600 kilometres (over 370 miles) east of the border with Ukraine, houses nuclear-capable bombers.

Moscow is furious. This should not be happening. Ukraine's newfound capacity to deliver strikes deep inside Russia assaults Russian sovereignty and cannot be allowed. Exemplifying the Russian mentality that it is perfectly reasonable to massively assault Ukraine, under the Russian game plan of extreme punishment earned by a neighbour with the unforgivable effrontery of rejecting Russian hegemony over Ukraine. It becomes a war crime to turn the tables by attacking Russian air bases located on Russian soil.

The Russian strikes constituting a 'massive missile attack" ranges right across Ukraine, striking homes and buildings, killing civilians, disrupting electrical power and water supplies around the Black Sea port city of Odesa and stretching further into the country; permissible by Russian accounts of the games of war. Since the truck bomb in October so embarrassing to Moscow putting the bridge link to the Crimean Peninsula out of commission temporarily, Russian rage has been unappeasable. NO amount of civilian destruction is too much.

Citizens sheltered in the metro in Kyiv on Monday, as Russia released another missile attack towards Ukraine.  Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

 

"The enemy is again attacking the territory of Ukraine with missiles!", Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian president's office wrote on Telegram as air raid sirens sounded cross- country and Ukrainian media reported explosions south of Kyiv, including Cherkasy, Kryvyi Rih and Odessa. In the southern Zaporizhzhya region people were killed and injured, including an infant. About three miles from the Ukrainian border away from the front lines, a missile hit a town in Moldova. 

According to the Moldovan Interior Ministry: "The area where the rocket was discovered has been isolated by police patrol and border police. The specialized services of the interior ministry" are on the scene. Following Monday’s attacks on Ukraine, Defense Intelligence stated their opinion that Moscow still has missiles enough to inflict heavy damage on Ukrainian infrastructure – despite stocks potentially falling to "critical levels".

A War of Propaganda and War Crimes

"Militarily, the city and its bridges serve as a Russian toehold on the southwest bank of the Dnieper River, which cuts Ukraine in two. Russian control of Kherson allows the Kremlin to continue to use the city as a base to try to capture the neighboring ports of Odesa and Mykolaiv, thereby crippling Ukraine’s export-based economy. Conversely, liberating Kherson is probably a prerequisite for Ukraine to recapture several other cities."

"U.S. and European weapons have already helped bring a halt to Russia’s slow advance in the east and created the potential for Ukraine’s southern counteroffensive. If that aid can be sustained — and undeniably, there are challenges and costs involved — it will make Russia’s invasion less and less sustainable. That’s ultimately what will gravely weaken the Kremlin’s illegal occupation of Ukrainian cities and its impetus to take what it wants through force, something that’s a threat not only to Ukraine but also to the U.S. and its allies."

Sébastien Roblin, military writer, Think: Opinion, Analysis, Essays

A Ukrainian soldier patrols along an undisclosed frontline position in Mykolaiv Oblast, Ukraine, on Aug. 23.  Alex Chan / SOPA Images/Sipa USA via AP

 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has invited Russian soldiers to abandon their ill-fated mission that the Kremlin dispatched them to fulfill in invading and occupying Ukraine and slowly destroying towns and villages, emptying cities, flattening neighbouhoodrs and civil infrastructure, shelling schools and hospitals indiscriminately and generally indulging in massive human rights abuses, in their commission of war crimes. "If they want to survive, it is time for Russian soldiers to flee. Go home."

 

It has long been known that Ukrainian forces have been massing in the Donbas for an eventual planned offensive with the determination to retrieve from Moscow's clutches vast tracts of Ukraine's territory in the east that belongs to sovereign Ukraine and which Russia now claims as its own. This war began in 2014 when the Kremlin surreptitiously committed to supporting, training and arming ethnic Russian Ukrainian terrorists who succeeded in capturing with the help of the Russian military, most of Donetsk and Luhansk, declaring them to be autonomous republics.

 

To cap off their adventure in international criminality Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula, establishing its deep-water port on the Black Sea for its fleet. Both Lohansk and Donetsk have been declared by Vladimir Putin as Russian territories. But not if the government and people of Ukraine have anything to say about it and they have quite a lot invested in its history, geography, heritage and culture, not to speak of national pride.

 

Increased supplies of Western military aid has little by little allowed the Ukraine military to advance its restoration agenda, of shoving back on the Russian military. The cost to both sides in terms of lives lost; military for Russia in the tens of thousands, and both military and civilian in Ukraine's case, in equally large total numbers, remains substantial and tragic. But loss of human life, and wholesale destruction of a nation's infrastructure rings no soothing sounds of compassion from the Kremlin.

 

Moscow's propaganda machine has been churning out lies at an incredible rate and nothing, absolutely nothing that issues from Russian official sources can be trusted. Ironically, Russian media speaks with utter contempt of Ukraine's propaganda machine. In league with their president who claims Ukraine's neo-Nazi character is a potential security risk to Russia's tolerant and patient government, a threat that must be expunged and Ukraine freed from the shackles of fascism.

 

Spurring pacifist Russia to invade and to destroy its neighbour with absolute abandonment of humanity. Ukraine has now announced the start of its long-hinted-at counteroffensive meant to restore its territorial integrity from rapacious Russian intentions. For its part, Moscow has already dismissed talk of a Ukraine offensive, speaking of it as an ill-designed strategy that has already cost Ukraine dearly in lost troop lives. 

 

Russian shelling continues to target port cities such as Mykolaiv, even as the Kremlin solemnly claims time and again that the Russian military never targets non-military sites. Russian occupation in the south and east of Ukraine continues in artillery bombardments and airstrikes with swaths of Ukrainian territory near the Black Sea coast including the city of Kherson which were captured by Russia early in its invasion. Ukraine's southern command spokeswoman points out its troops began offensive actions n the south, in the Kherson region, north of Russian-annexed Crimea.

 

Ukrainian soldiers prepare artillery at the southern front line near Kherson last month  Getty Images

For its part, the Ukrainian strategy of making use of sophisticated Western-supplied weapons, hitting Russian ammunition depots and wreaking havoc with supply lines, have had their effect in demoralizing Russian troops. Ukraine struck over ten sites in the past week alone that had "unquestionably weakened the enemy". Statements that the Russia-appointed governors in the occupied territory dismiss as "Ukrainian propaganda".

Moscow claims that Ukrainian troops' attempts at an offensive in southern Mykolaiv and Kherson regions had ended with the area sustaining significant casualties: "Enemy's offensive attempt failed miserably", reported the RIA news agency quoting a local Russia-appointed official reporting the evacuation of people from Nova Kahokva in the east of Kherson following over ten missile strikes by Ukrainian forces. 

Mykolaiv is a shipbuilding centre and port on the Southern Bug river off the Black Sea and has suffered heavy Russian bombardment during the course of the war, yet still remains in Ukrainian hands. The Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in south Ukraine is anticipating a mission from the International Atomic Energy Agency to investigate the plant's vulnerability and condition resulting from nearby shelling in the facility's vicinity. 

The mission is to assess physical damage, evaluate working conditions and check safety and security systems, and "perform urgent safeguards activities", referencing tracking nuclear material. The Kremlin refuses to vacate the nuclear site even as the United Nations, United States and Ukraine call for withdrawal of military equipment and personnel from the complex, to completely remove the possibility that it will become a target in this war of attrition.