"Russian Terror Must Be Stopped"

"Russian terror must be stopped. Russia needs this and similar terrorist attacks for only one thing; to make its genocidal aggression the new norm for the whole world."

"Now we are talking with European leaders, in particular about strengthening our air defence, strengthening our soldiers, giving our country protection from terror. And we will respond to the terrorists."

"The key for us, especially before winter, is to strengthen air defence, and there is already a basis for new agreements with partners."

"[We need] additional air defence systems for Ukraine, additional artillery and shells, additional long-range missiles and drones for our soldiers, as well as additional formats of support and security guarantees for nations threatened by Russia [to help protect Europe from potential Moscow aggression]."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Rescuers stand atop a destroyed residential building as they clear debris following a Russian missile strike in Kharkiv on October 6, 2023, amid the Russian invasion in Ukraine.

Sergey Bobok | Afp | Getty Images

 

On Thursday Russia targeted drones at Ukraine's southern regions of which Ukraine's air defences were able to intercept 24 of the 29 Iranian-made drones launched at Odesa, Mykolaiv and Korovohrad regions. Later on Thursday a Russian rocket hit a village cafe and store in eastern Ukraine where a funeral wake was taking place. That strike alone succeeded in killing 51 villagers of the 60 people who were in attendance at the wake.

Ukraine's president received the news while attending a summit of 50 European leaders in Spain. He characterized the strike on the village of Hroza as a "demonstrably brutal Russian crime", "a completely deliberate act of terrorism". Which it most certainly was. the Russian military carefully selected a small town in a contested region to deliberately destroy the lives of civilians in their campaign of terror. An unmistakable war crime, among the many others attributable to Russia in this deadly conflict.

 

Rescuers conduct search and rescue operation in the central residential district hit by Russian Iskander missile on the morning on October 6, 2023 in Kharkiv, Ukraine. 

Oleksandr Stavytskyy | Getty Images News | Getty Images

 

It was an Iskander missile that hit the village. Leaving emergency crews to desperately search among the smouldering ruins of buildings reduced to rubble, for any possible survivors. Before the war Hroza had a population of about 500 souls in its location in northeastern Kharkiv region. A region seized early in the war by Russia, eventually recaptured by Ukraine a year ago. Kupiansk, a key focus of the Russian military is but 30 km from the village.

The European Political Community, formed in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 met in Granada for a summit where President Zelinskyy addressed them restating Ukraine's urgent need for more arms to withstand and surmount Russian plans to destroy his country. With winter approaching the vision of Russia once again targeting Ukraine's energy system is not far from anyone's mind. Moscow has used energy and food as weapons in its war against Ukraine. 

Its role as a key supplier of natural gas to Europe has been interrupted, but new customers were waiting in the wings and China and India have replaced Europe as recipients of Russia's energy production. The shortages elsewhere have led to other disruptions, in shipping and rising production costs, all the more egregious in the wake of the global pandemic which had a similar effect on an unready world. Both Russia and Ukraine have traditionally supplied emerging economies in Africa with grain and that too has been disrupted.

At the Granada summit, Zelenskyy spoke further of a focus on "joint work for global food security and protection of freedom of navigation" in the Black Sea where Russia has targeted Ukrainian ports and grain shipments, overturning the UN-brokered agreement to ensure safe grain exports from Ukraine's ports. According to the U.K. Foreign Office, intelligence suggests Russia may lay sea mines in the approach to Ukrainian ports blaming Ukraine even as Russia targets civilian shipping.

"Russia almost certainly wants to avoid openly sinking civilian ships, instead falsely laying blame on Ukraine for any attacks against civilian vessels in the lack Sea", stated the U.K. intelligence. Adding that the U.K. was working alongside Ukraine to aid in the improvement of shipping safety.

 

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (L) is greeted by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the start of a plenary session of the European Political Community summit at the Palacio de Congreso in Granada, southern Spain on October 5, 2023.

Ludovic Marin | Afp | Getty Images

"[There was a] strong message to Putin from Dublin to Chisinau that we do not tolerate aggression against a sovereign state."

"It was very important that President Biden informed us at the beginning of this week what the support for Ukraine is concerned from the side of the United States."

"Here, in the European Union, we are working on a package of 50 billion euros [$52 billion] for Ukraine for the years 2024 to 2027. This is very important because Ukraine needs predictability and reliability in the direct budget support."

"As far as I oversee the situation in the United States, I am very confident of support for Ukraine from the United States. What the United States is working on is the timing."

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen

Grain, As A Weapon of War

"Such attacks by Russian terrorists are not only affecting our country but also global stability."

"The corridor must be secure. In fact, knowing Russia, it won't be safe unless the UN starts working very clearly and firmly at the level of the secretary general."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

 

"[If Ukraine cannot export food], the population of the poorest countries will be on the brink of survival!"

"The price of grain will increase, and not all countries will be able to afford buying agricultural products, which means food prices will significantly rise: flour, cereals, meat."

Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Mykola Solskyi

A grain warehouse destroyed by a Russian drone strike is seen in a sea port, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Odesa Region, Ukraine, July 24, 2023. Press Service of the Operational Command South of the Ukrainian Armed Forces/Handout via Reuters

This has long ago been demonstrated not to be a just or a moral war, the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the pretense that Russia was proactively protecting itself from the nefarious plans of Ukrainian 'Nazis' set on destroying Russia. The principal Nazi, a Jewish-Ukrainian president, whose family members were Nazi Holocaust victims, has pledged to the population whose welfare he represents that every inch of Ukrainian land that Moscow has stolen will be returned to Ukraine. This is what makes him a Nazi as far as Vladimir Putin is concerned.

 

The president of the Russian Federation, intent on restoring Russia to its preeminent position of Eastern Europe Hegemon with himself at its helm, is outraged that Ukraine is fighting back -- is counterattacking, is reclaiming some of the vast territory that Vladimir Putin summarily absorbed as Russian territory and as such exempt from any claims by Ukraine -- actually sending bombs and drones and expeditionary groups over the border into Russian territory to wreak there a micro-violence of the macro-violence that Russia is conducting in Ukraine.

The Russian elites have no compunction over the fact that their troops on order from the Kremlin, are attacking civilian enclaves, civilian infrastructure, bombing apartment buildings, hospitals, schools, and committing war crimes. They echo their president's rage over Ukraine's 'terrorist' attacks on Russian targets. Theirs, Putin claims, is a just cause, to rid the world of fascists, even as Russian actions are fascist to their very core.

Russia daily proves to the world at large its moral core in bombing Ukraine port cities and their grain storage facilities where in one fell swoop 60,000 tons of grain were destroyed in an attack just south of the port city of Odesa, enough to feed 270,000 people for a year in a hungry world. Russia warned the world that any maritime vessels intending to help ship Ukraine grain shipments out of Black Sea ports would be regarded as enemy ships carrying weapons to aid Ukraine, and they would be destroyed.

 

Buildings in the Black Sea port city of Odesa lie in ruins after a third successive night of bombing by Russia   AP

 "If this grain is not only stopped but [also] destroyed . . . this is going to create a huge food crisis in the world. It is a very grave situation. This consideration that any ship [is considered as] a war ship and so a target for the military activities of Russia, is a step further in order to continue preventing Ukraine from exporting their grains."

"[The] massive air attacks [showed Russia’s] barbarian attitude which will be taken into consideration by the Council [of foreign ministers] today."

"The ministers will have to discuss how to proceed, but there is only one solution: to increase the military support to Ukraine. If they are being bombed, we have to provide anti-aerial capacities."

Josep Borrell, EU foreign and defence chief

 
"Hundreds of thousands of people, not to say millions, urgently need the grain from Ukraine, which is why we are working with all our international partners so that the grain in Ukraine does not rot in silos in the next few weeks, but reaches the people of the world who urgently need it."

"Putin hasn't just blown up the Black Sea Grain Initiative; now he has hit the port city of Odesa with a hail of bombs." 

"In doing that, he is robbing the world of any hope of Ukrainian grain. Every one of his bombs also hits the world's poorest."

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock

Russia has repeatedly attacked the Ukrainian port city of Odesa in the days since it withdrew from the grain deal   Getty Images

Russian War Crimes in its "Special Military Operation' in Ukraine

"[The] Special Military operation is now in its death throes, with a rampant, confident, well-trained and -equipped Ukraine army on the march. It is becoming clearer that the Russian military will hit a speed bump conventionally, and with a leader and army commanders with no morals or scruples we must brace ourselves for further unconventional violence."

"The attacking of schools and hospitals was a portent of the evil of Putin's regime, and the blowing of the dam is another move of truly terrible intent."

"Whatever it takes, we must ensure Ukraine prevails as quickly as possible, as there is still the spectre of escalation to chemical, biological and -- terrifyingly -- nuclear war."

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, former commander, U.K. and NATO CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear) forces

 

"The strikes began during evacuation of the residents, whose houses were flooded."

"Russia has abandoned people in calamity in the occupied part of the Kherson region. It continues to prevent Ukraine from saving the most valuable -- human lives."

Ukraine's Ministry of Internal Affairs 

Reuters

 

Yesterday, Russian forces shelled a Ukrainian city inundated in a catastrophic dam collapse, forcing a suspension of rescue work mere hours following President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's appearance in the area, in an effort to assess the damage. Many people in the region are now homeless, with tens of thousands of people lacking potable water after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam which Ukraine has accused Russia of blowing up. The facility has been under the control of Moscow's forces.

With the dam destroyed, the flooding that ensued has ruined food crops, it has displaced landmines, with widespread environmental damage, setting the stage for electricity shortages of long-term duration. Drone footage shows the ruined dam collapsing into the flooded river, leaving hundreds of homes, greenhouses and a church submerged. The largest municipality affected, Kherson city, suffered repeated Russian shelling close to where emergency crews and volunteers were dispensing aid.

People were wounded when evacuation points in Kherson were hit. Rescue workers temporarily suspended work in their efforts to retrieve stranded residents and pets while shells landed in the floodwaters. The Dnieper River is a pivotal waterway forming part of the front line between Russian and Ukrainian forces, and the dam was positioned along the waterway. 

Both sides in the conflict coped with the fallout from the burst dam, with Ukrainian rescue workers stepping up efforts to provide drinking water, medical care and other humanitarian support to nearby residents. President Zelenskyy had travelled to Kherson to view matters firsthand, visiting an aid distribution point and a medical facility, ordering Ukrainian officials to provide a "fair valuation" of the devastation to guide help in compensating residents. 

 

Still from video

 

The misery the region has suffered for over a  year from artillery and missile attacks has been intensified by the collapse of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, and subsequent emptying of its reservoir on the river. Access to fresh water and avoidance of contact with explosives-and-chemical-contaminated water from industrial sites appeared the most immediate concerns, noted by the local authorities and tracked by the United Nations.

Well over 6,000 people were evacuated from dozens of cities, towns and villages, inundated on both sides of the river in an area once home to over 60,000 residents. The destruction of the dam and the giant reservoir of water used for irrigation and drinking water will as time goes on stop fresh water being supplied to Russian controlled Crimea whose reservoirs are currently at 80 percent capacity.

The average level of flooding in the region is about 5.6 metres, with about 600 square kilometres of the region submerged, over two-thirds on the Russian-controlled eastern bank. "The blowing up of the dam at Ukraine's Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant was, quite simply, an act of terror by a terrorist state. With his army failing and his air force stuck in its hangars, it would appear Vladimir Putin is prepared to do almost anything to cling on to the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine and his throne in the Kremlin", wrote Hamish de Bretton-Gordon.

Ukraine's Moral Impertinence

"It's not a fun day today: loud sounds of explosions woke us up at 6:30 a.m."

"My wife suggested we move to the basement but what if something hit us: I wouldn't want to be buried in some basement. What will be will be."

"The only good thing is the kids are in Milan."

Viktor Bondarenko, Rublyovka, Moscow suburb

"What on earth are you doing, stinky morons?"

"Why the f--- did you let those drones get to Moscow?'

"They're flying to Tublyovka to your houses -- let your houses go up in flames!"

Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin

Russia has deployed drones against Ukrainian cities for months but has recently faced a growing wave of attacks within its own borders.  Aleksandr Kazakov / Sipa USA via AP

"The attack caused little damage, was irrelevant for most Russians, and is being finessed by the Russian media as another Ukrainian provocation in the face of Russian restraint."

"Single incidents such as this will not change Russian domestic politics appreciably. What matters more are larger trends, such as the situation on the ground in Ukraine and the level of Russian military casualties."

Christopher Tuck, expert in conflict and security, King’s College London

When drones strike inside Russia's borders they are called terrorist attacks. When drones strike within Ukraine in huge numbers targeting civilian infrastructure the Kremlin shrugs at a commonplace of war even while denying its troops deliberately hit civilian structures from hospitals to schools, medical clinics to shopping centres. A number of 'terrorist' attacks have struck inside Russia, even targeting a Kremlin building, and according to Moscow a 'terrorist' drone struck in Sevastopol, occupied Crimea, targeting the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

 

Completely intolerable. The Iran-produced Shahed drones are more powerful, can strike further and carry a larger explosive load than the UJ-22 Ukraine revealed in 2021, with a range of 800 km, carrying up to 20 kg of explosives. "A Muscovite has just found out that this country is at war ... Smoothies and scooter rides are cancelled", reporter Andrei Rudenko at state TV in occupied Donetsk wrote on his Telegram channel, posting a video of a young man in disbelief seeing a number of fire engines parked outside his home.

The drone fleet that hit the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Moscow may very well have been the work of the same Russian opposition groups that had staged a cross-border raid several weeks ago, likely with the connivance of Kyiv since they're also part of the foreign volunteer brigades fighting Moscow in Ukraine.Their choice targets and their aims of the UAVs are certainly admirable. As is the decision to stun ordinary Russians with the reality of a war their leadership imposed on Ukraine reaching out to touch them personally.

Or, as Russian lawmaker Maxim Ivanov was reported stating that no Russian could now avoid "the new reality". The Kremlin is now accusing Ukraine of 'war crimes' for sending Ukraine-produced UAVs into civilian areas of the Russian capital. Something that the Russian military has been doing without a twitch of conscience to Ukrainian cities and Ukrainian citizens for over a year, even while protesting that their military never targets civilians. 

An estimated thirteen drones crashed across Moscow, although the Kremlin admits to only eight, most of which they claim were shot down. Eight -- according to Russia's defence ministry -- attacked Moscow, but they had shot down five and electronically jammed three. Which is rather amazing given that a number of buildings were hit and sustained notable damage. Russia's air defence "successfully reacted to the attack", according to Vladimir Putin, adding there were "things to work on", presumably Russia's defences against penetration of such strikes hitting the city's most sheltered areas.

 

Law enforcement officers and investigators are seen outside a damaged multi-storey apartment building after a reported drone attack in Moscow on Tuesday. (Kirill Kudryavtseva/AFP/Getty Images)

 

Which of course, is where the elite and the wealthy reside in their mansions, never dreaming they might be the victims of attacks, awakening to the reality that is far from new for the tens of thousands of ordinary Ukrainians who have lived or died through countless midnight and early-morning artillery strikes and deadly drones disrupting the normalcy of life and robbing many of their very existence. This latest surprise event has awakened Russia's elite and its ordinary citizens to the extraordinary realization that they too are targets of war.

Moscow's 'Beverly Hills' neighbourhood, Rublyovka, saw residents rudely jarred from sleep by explosions as drones attacked their sheltered area. Some drones detonated while striking power lines. Nearby villages less than ten kilometres from Putin's official residence were impacted as drones were shot down over Romashkova and Razdory, one of which crashed across the river from the community that is home to Arkady Rotenberg, Putin's close friend, along with the homes of top defence ministry officials.

Gazprom's chief, living in the luxury neighbourhood of Grinfield saw it too hit by a drone, but the Russian gas giant's mansion was spared. Where finance Minister Anton Silunaov lives, video footage showed a drone flying over French-style estates in Ilyinskoye. Moscow's Pantsir air defences fired rockets to intercept the drones, but not all unmanned aerial vehicles were downed outside the beltway separating the city from the suburbs; at least three drones crashed into two highrise buildings south-west of the capital.

Bomb squads arrived to defuse three explosive devices when a drone flew into a block of apartments and the building was evacuated. 

 

Russian authorities are accusing Ukraine of launching drone strikes in Moscow that damaged some buildings and alarmed residents. Ukraine has endured a series of deadly airstrikes this month and denies any involvement.   Still from video CBC

In Ukraine, the war goes on, as Russia launched a predawn air raid on Kyiv, killing at least one person and sending the capital's residents again scrambling into shelters. According to information from the Kyiv Military Administration, at least 20 Shahed explosive drones were destroyed by air defence forces in Kyiv's airspace, in Russia's third attack on the capital in the past 24 hours. Overall, Ukraine shot down 29 of 31 drones fired into the country, most in the Kyiv area, the air force later said. These overwhelming numbers of UAVs, fully explosive, are aimed at civilian infrastructure as always, not to be confused with terrorist acts by Ukraine.

 

Russia's 'Special Military Operation'

"I attended the funerals of young men the age of my sons. I've met women who saw their husbands summarily executed by Russian troops. I met people missing limbs, or handicapped from war wounds, often in the prime of life."

"Not yet a year into this war and the casualties, military and civilians, Ukrainians and Russians are already over 200,000. To what end?"

"The Russian invasion of Ukraine, this great madness, has laid bare the weaknesses of a corrupt and ill-equipped army that struggles to hold territory but can still inflict death on a nightmarish scale."

"The easy victory Vladimir Putin thought was his in a week, has turned into a bloody quagmire."

Paule Robitaille, Quebec journalist journeying through the former Soviet Union

 

"They just throw in bodies [as new Russian conscripts at the front line] until something collapses." 

"Their equipment is crap, their weapons are crap, but these human waves are killing us."

Dan Bilak, foreign volunteer, Ukrainian territorial defence

"What we're doing today including with our special operation, is an attempt to stop this war and protect our people who live on these territories."

Russian President Vladimir Putin

Getty Images

 

This is the explanation Mr. Putin gave in 2014 when he annexed the Crimean Peninsula and armed ethnic Russian Ukrainian rebels living in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. This is what conquest of foreign regions is all about; claiming another nation's geography as one's own by sending in colonies of ethnics to give weight to the conquering state's power and entitlements. During the Soviet era of occupation of its satellite neighbours, ethnic Russians moved to the new territory as settlers consolidating Russian primacy.

Russians living in the 'near abroad' are used by the Kremlin in its stealth movements and threats of reoccupation, of restoring the territories controlled by the USSR. And Mr. Putin's explanation of Russia's obligation to uphold the right of ethnic Russians in protection of their language, their customs, their history and their political aims that coordinate with Moscow's gives the entitlement of forceful entry and violent conflict. As happened in Georgia, and then Ukraine's Luhansk and Donetsk provinces in the Donbas.

Russia, portraying Ukraine as the aggressor, and itself as the liberator. The approach that fascism rules supreme in Ukraine and it is Russia's mission to save Ukraine from itself. Ukrainians have not, by and large, honoured that scenario. The 'liberating' Russian military has flaunted all modern and universally accepted protocols of warfare focusing on sparing civilian populations direct conflict, left to the battlefield of opposing armies. 

 

The wholesale destruction of the Ukraine power grid in an effort to bring the country to its knees, the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, hospitals, schools, markets, apartment blocks, belies Moscow's protests at charges of war crimes. Mass graves, bodies lying in the street, direct witness accounts of human rights violations committed by Russian troops before withdrawing under Ukrainian counterattacks are more than ample evidence of the war crimes committed by Russia

With the help of the Wagner Group mercenaries, of Ramzan Kadyrov's Chechen military threat, the militias of the ethnic Russian separatist militias and others the Ukrainian counteroffensive has had its struggle cut out, but has acquitted itself admirably in retaining captured towns and villages and pushing Russian forces back to the front lines. An estimated 500 military deaths daily in heated combat appears not to have persuaded the Kremlin to pull back and pull out of its ill-designed 'special military operation'. 

The Ukrainian resistance, the level of determination and courage demonstrated by a military whose members only in the last several years were exposed to modern military strategies by NATO-member training sessions and supplied, hesitantly at first, then with growing impetus in larger, more effective military resources to counteract the Russian advance, surprised the world at large and gave heart to the Baltic nations who know that should Ukraine fall, they will be next; Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova among others.

 

Getty Images

"[Ukraine is anxious for supporting nations to send Leopard 2 tanks and to] immediately, officially request the German government to allow delivery of these tanks to Ukraine". 

"This is the move that will make the whole situation crystal clear and we will see where it takes Germany. This is something that needs to be done right away and everything will become obvious."  

"[I am] confident [Germany would supply the tanks eventually]: We already received British Challenger. They said it would be impossible... Every time in the end we obtained the desired result. We will have it this time as well."

Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba

Ukraine Annoyingly Frustrating Russian Goals

E. Eduardo Castillo, Associated Press

"Bakhmut Fortress. Our people. Unconquered by the enemy. Who with their bravery prove that we will endure and will not give up what's ours."

"Since May, the occupiers have been trying to break our Bakhmut, but time goes by and Bakhmut is already breaking not only the Russian army, but also the Russian mercenaries who came to replace the wasted army of the occupiers."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zenenskyy

"Our country has often faced challenges and defended its sovereignty."

"Now Russia is again facing such a challenge. Soldiers, officers and volunteers are showing outstanding examples of courage and self denial on the front line."

"People living there, Russian citizens, [in the four Ukrainian regions Putin summarily declared Russian territory] count on being protected by you [Russian servicemen]."

Russian President Vladimir Putin

"Not one single operational commander then in place on February 24 is in charge now."

"Russia has lost significant numbers of generals and commanding officers."

"[Some 100,000 Russian troops were] dead, injured or have deserted [since the invasion began]."

U.K. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace

Firefighters work to put out a fire at a residential building hit by a Russian missile strike in Bakhmut on December 7.

 

According to the Kremlin there is one way its conflict in Ukraine can be brought to a halt. And it is entirely up to Ukraine. The invaded nation must meet the conditions Moscow has set for the fighting to end. Kyiv must recognize Crimea is no longer a Ukrainian peninsula, but part of Russia. All other annexations must be accepted by Kyiv as Russian gains. Ukraine must disarm and not plan to join NATO..

 

The government of Ukraine, however rejects such conditions; the war will end when the occupied territories are retaken, or Russian forces are ordered to leave. And so, each leader, the aggressor and the defensive aggressed, praises their troops' heroic efforts to pursue the goals of their respective leaders. Russia which envisions complete control of Ukraine, a goal Putin is fiercely determined to reach, speaks of the Ukrainian unwillingness to accept Russia's conditions as the reason the conflict was launched.

 

Thwarted Russian troops by the Ukrainian counteroffensive placing Russia on retreat in a conflict it launched with the assurance it would have no opposition longer than a few weeks, represent an inconvenient reality that Vladimir Putin prefers to skirt around. It is not Russia that is responsible for the deadly nature of the conflict, but Ukraine, intransigent and vicious in its response to Russia's totally reasonable effort to relieve it of a third of its vast territory. 

 

An aerial view of Bakhmut on December 9. The city has been all but emptied of its 70,000 residents, and its buildings and houses are -- or are steadily being reduced to -- rubble.

 

The city of Bakhmut, "the hottest spot on the entire frontline", about 600 kilometres east of Kyiv, remains in Ukrainian hands despite Moscow's intention of capturing what remains of Donetsk still in Ukraine's possession, at a time when the entire Donbas has been declared a part of Russia, while Ukraine begs to differ. Denying Russia the momentum it feels it deserves, the annexed provinces of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia remain fiercely contested.

With the capture of Bakhmut, Ukraine's supply lines would be severed, opening a route for Russian forces to press forward on cities that remain key Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk province. Wagner Group mercenaries have been leading the charge in Bakhmut where prior to the invasion Donetsk separatists had controlled parts of Donetsk and Luhansk since 2014.

Mr. Putin gave out awards to the Moscow-appointed heads of the four regions of Ukraine Russia has illegally annexed, at a Kremlin ceremony in honour of Russia's military and security agencies. Russia remains in control of roughly 18 percent of internationally recognized areas of Ukraine inclusive of the 2014 parts seized of the Donbas and Crimea.

A Ukrainian artilleryman carries a 122-mm shell for a 2S1 Gvozdika self-propelled howitzer at a position along the front line near Bakhmut on December 10

An Urban Mausoleum

"It ]Mariupol] is horror. Wherever you look,whichever way you look. Everything is black, is destroyed."

"Our lives have been taken from us. Our child was taken from us."

"It's so ridiculous and stupid. How do you restore a dead city where people were killed at every turn?"

Lydya Erashova, Mariupol, Ukraine

"There is no discussion, people aren't prepared."

"People still live in the basements. Where they can go is unclear."

Mariupol activist

 

"They spend an inordinate amount of time focusing on things like erasing demonstrations of Ukrainian identity and very little time tending to the needs of the Mariupol people."

"It's really a very brutal, inhuman colonial experiment unfolding before our eyes."

Michael Carpenter, U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe

A man pulls a cart toward a destroyed suburb of Mariupol on October 29.

 

Back in November Russian President Vladimir Putin praised the heroism of those he spoke of as Mariupol's 'defenders' -- aka the Russian military that had laid siege to the city since February 24 -- as he awarded the ruined city the title of "City of Military Glory". The actual defenders of the Ukrainian city, now in Russian hands were needless to say, Ukrainians themselves determined not to allow Russia to take ownership of Mariupol.

But back in 2014 when Vladimir Putin annexed the Crimean Peninsula as part of Russia, he planned to advance to Donetsk's Mariupol on the Azov Sea as a land bridge between Russia and Ukraine. The Ukrainian military resisted Moscow's early siege of the city but months later the siege concluded with orders from Kyiv for the city defenders -- laid up, along with city dwellers at the Azovstal steel mill basement corridors -- to retreat and the ruined city fell to the invaders.

Moscow has ordered that Mariupol be scrubbed of all identification of its historic role as an industrial city of Ukraine's Donbas region. Plans for the destroyed iron works is to turn the site into an industrial park. The famed Mariupol theatre which had become the major bomb shelter of the city of close to a half-million residents which was destroyd when airstrikes hit it and hundreds died, is to be restored. OnlyRussian construction workers are permitted within its precincts.

 

Construction workers in a war-damaged apartment building.

 

According to Petro Andryushchenko, aide to Mariupole's exiled mayor, the reason that Ukrainian labour is excluded, not permitted the enter the ruins, is to ensure that only Russians are exposed to the sight of rotting corpses hauled away with the construction debris. For Moscow has undertaken a massive reconstruction of the city, to expunge its historic Ukrainian heritage status and completely Russify it.

 

Mariupol is now a garrison city with Russian soldiers, builders, administrators replacing the tens of thousands of Ukrainians who died there, or fled the Russian occupation. Ukrainian street names are converted to Soviet names. The Avenue of Peace to be renamed Lenin Avenue. The signage announcing the name of the city has been Russified, repainted with red, white and blue of the Russian flag. All vestiges of Ukrainian heritage obliterated.

 

The schools that remain open now teach a Russian curriculum, telephone and television networks are Russian, Ukrainian currency fading, and the city time zone now reflects Moscow's. Russia plans to demolish 50,000 homes in the city. The stench of death lingers over the city, fading out with winter's onset. One resident, Lydya Erashova saw her five-year-old son Artem and her seven-year-old niece Angelina die when a Russian shell hit their home.

 

A photo taken on October 19 shows Russian military trucks in front of a heavily damaged building in the center of Mariupol.

 

Her family buried the children in makeshift graves in a backyard and fled the city of death, returning in July to rebury the children. They discovered their bodies had been dug up and brought to a warehouse. Neither Lydya Erashova nor her sister-in-law were able to force themselves into the warehouse to retrieve the bodies of their children. The children's fathers chose tiny coffins to be placed side-by-side in a single grave.

 

During the months'-long siege the city was relentlessly targeted with airstrikes and artillery, food and water cut off along with communications. For 86 days of hardship and agony the city held itself together. In the eventual May surrender Mariupol made its way into history as a symbol of Ukrainian resistance. Over 500 buildings have now been identified as awaiting demolition, each holding 180 apartments. In many of them corpses still decompose.

 

A child's playground in the courtyard of a ruined apartment block on October 29. Mariupol was once home to around 431,000 people. Less than a quarter of that number are estimated to remain in the city today

The fate of one of those ruined buildings took place in mid-March when Russian tanks rolled in. One tank raised its gun at a building on Mytropolytska Streeet and fired shattering walls and windows, obliterating apartments, and killing residents, though most by then were huddled in the building basement. Russian soldiers set to work dismantling Mariupol's memorial to the Holodomor, the Soviet famine that killed millions of Ukrainians.

 

Two murals commemorating victims of the 2014 attack on Ukraine were painted over. Russia has formulated a plan for a new, Russian city, with a new population. The Russian military forces will be replaced by Russian citizens. Ukrainians who are content to live under Russian rule will be permitted to live there as well. The thousands of Mariupol's residents who were were sent to Russia may return, while those who fled to other areas of Ukraine may not. 

The heavily damaged Azovstal steel mill photographed on October 29.
The historic Azovstal metalworks was the final holdout for members of Azov, a controversial Ukrainian regiment that previously used neo-Nazi imagery on its uniforms.

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

Russian Sensitivities to Ukrainian Intransigence

"[Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy knows when it may end. It may end tomorrow if he wishes so."

"There are occupied territories in several new regions of the Russian Federation that need to be liberated."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov

 

"It's enough for us to make a move and there is a lot of noise, chatter and outcry all across the universe."

"It will not obstruct us from fulfilling combat tasks."

"[The fighting in Ukraine] could be a lengthy process. Moscow's gains in land is] a significant result for Russia; the Sea of Azov] has become Russia's internal sea."

Russian President Vladimir Putin

 

"Although questions are almost certainly usually vetted in advance, the cancellation is likely due to increasing concerns about the prevalence of anti-war feeling in Russia."

"Kremlin officials are almost certainly extremely sensitive about the possibility that any event attended by Putin could be hijacked by unsanctioned discussion about the 'special military operation'."

U.K. Defence Ministry

Parts of the drone are seen at the site of a building destroyed by a Russian drone attack, as their attack on Ukraine continues, in Kyiv, Ukraine Dec. 14, 2022.

Vladimir Putin cannot afford to back down from the corner he boxed himself into. His right-wing critics in Moscow, the hardlinersm have taken an increasingly vocal stance denouncing Mr. Putin as weak and indecisive, calling for strikes on Ukraine to be ramped up further. Putin acknowledged that his war is taking longer than anticipated, wrapping up the campaign could become a "lengthy process".

 

And that is because he cannot afford to now draw his troops back into Russia and say, sorry folks, big mistake, gotta go now. The Kremlin has put the next move in Volodymyr Zelenskyy's lap. All Kyiv has to do is admit defeat, agree to losing its territory, and pledge to disarm. Along with surrendering its ambition to have Ukraine become a NATO partner. Somehow, Mr. Zelenskyy's intransigence in judging Russia's invasion as an act of war and the Russian military as 'war criminals', refusing to surrender its territory, and insisting that Russia must be prepared to financially compensate Ukraine for Russia's wholesale destruction is responsible for dragging out the war, not Russia.

 

Russia faces the fact that the war it has imposed on Ukraine has besmirched its reputation and degraded relations between it and most of the rest of the world, sanctions harming its economy and its future. The Kremlin has been clear on the matter; Ukraine must accept the conditions Russia has imposed on it for an end to the fighting to take place. Kyiv must recognize that Crimea, the Donbas and other geographic areas wrested from Ukraine are now irretrievably part of greater Russia; not to do so, it suicidal, sniffs the Kremlin.

An explosion lights up the sky at around 6 a.m. on Monday morning in the city of Engels in Russia. Photo: from Twitter

However, the reality is that mere weeks after Russia incorporated areas of Ukraine into Russia, the Ukrainian counteroffensive drove Russian troops from the Kharkiv area, forcing Russian troops to leave Kherson and parts of the Kherson region, one of four annexed regions of Ukraine. The Russian troops fled ignominiously, leaving behind all the munitions and instruments of war that Russia had insisted were taken along with the evacuated troops. Furthermore, since then Ukrainian forces have sent drones on destructive missions into Russia itself.

The result of a brooding Russia whose plans have gone awry, having nothing to celebrate lately has seen its president put off his annual news conference, given the battlefield setbacks. President Putin has used his year-end ritual of availability to credit himself with his strongman position in honour of Russia's grand past and grander future. He is in no position at present to boast of his domestic and foreign policy successes.

With his troops in disarray in Ukraine it seemed to him preferable to avoid uncomfortable questions relating to the blunders of the Russian military. Nor would Mr. Putin hold a news conference as expected. Previously at such events he has gloated and preened over his professionalism, his adeptness at guiding Russia to the forefront of successful global nations. His annual televised call-in show has been cancelled as well. 

Questions from an adoring public can no longer be guaranteed to nurture his father-of-the-nation image he so pompously conveys. The annual televised state-of-the-nation address has also failed to materialize. He has much to answer for, but has no plans to leave himself wide open to criticism from an ungrateful public that the Kremlin effectively muzzled in the liberal anti-war camp. Independent media was shuttered, the spread of any opinion differing from the official has been criminalized.

Putin's campaign is not to be called a war, under duress of imprisonment. New polling data has revealed that Russian citizens narrowly support negotiations to end the Ukraine war. But those same citizens overwhelmingly reject the possibility of annexed regions of Crimea or Donbas be returned to Ukraine.

The Moscow-based Levada Centre in conjunction with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs conducted a joint survey to extract those results.

Firefighters stand on heaps of fruit while working inside burnt market stalls hit by shelling in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict in Donetsk, Russian-controlled Ukraine, Dec. 6, 2022.

Deadly Russian Malice

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appears on screens as he speaks via a video link at the opening session of the International Crimea Platform Parliamentary summit, organized by Ukraine and Croatia, in Zagreb, on Tuesday. (Damir Sencar/AFP/Getty Images)

"Our countries made clear that we all reject Russia's transparently false allegations that Ukraine is preparing to use a dirty bomb on its own territory."

"The world would see through any attempt to use this allegation as a pretext for escalation."

France, Britain, United States joint statement

 

"[The aim of a] dirty bomb [attack by Ukraine would be to blame the resulting radioactive contamination on Russia by accusing Moscow of detonating a low-grade nuclear weapon]."

"The aim of the provocation would be to accuse Russia of using a weapon of mass destruction in the Ukrainian military theatre and by that means to launch a powerful anti-Russian campaign in the world."

Russian Defence Ministry

"If Russia calls and says that Ukraine is allegedly preparing something, it means one thing: Russia has already prepared all this."

"So when today the Russian Minister of Defence organizes a phone carousel and calls foreign ministers with stories about the so-called 'dirty' nuclear bomb, everyone understands who is the source of everything dirty that can be imagined in this war."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Ukrainian National Guard soldiers fire at Russian positions with a mortar near Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Tuesday. (Andrii Marienko/The Associated Press)

Ukrainian forces are advancing toward the Dnipro River, a counteroffensive to retake Kherson the province and the city, from Russian occupation. All the more disconcerting to the Kremlin in the wake of its announcement of the annexation of the area along with three other south-eastern areas of Ukraine. Following hard on claims that those four provinces are Russian territory, Moscow advised the world and Ukraine in particular, that any action taken to recover the territory would be construed as an 'act of war' against Russia.\, with predictble consequences including nuclear.

 

A sanctimonious charge so arse-backwardly absurd it would make a good script for a theatrical comedy lampooning Russia, if it were not so obviously the work of a land-grabbing, nation-destroying, anti-human rights national government whose invasion exploits are the stuff of nightmares. A self-righteousness so deranged that the Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu had the unmitigated call to  to call his counterpart ministers of France, Britain and the United States to inform them of an odious plot Ukraine was engaging in.

In fact it became almost instantly transparent that the revelation was in reverse order; that Russia is scheming to make use of a radioactive bomb of limited power and range that would be used as 'evidence' of Ukraine's willingness to begin a nuclear war between Russia and NATO, spurring Russia to self-protection, to respond in kind. Not Russia's fault, goes the plotline, if the 'neo-Nazi' government of Ukraine provoked Russia to such an extent it had little option but to reciprocate.

In a follow-up call with Russia's military Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov, British Chief of Defence Staff Tony Radakin made it quite clear his government rejected the Russian allegations, even while taking pains to convey the sensible message that both sides continue to maintain open channels of communication as a vital commitment.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, when asked to comment on Western skepticism of Russia's Ukraine accusations, responded "their disbelief doesn't mean there's no threat. The threat is evident." In ostensible response to which Moscow has ordered civilian evacuation of the territory in advance of the Ukrainian forces' advance. Should Russia suffer a defeat in Kherson it would represent a massive setback of the Russian 'special military invasion' agenda.

The west bank of the Dnipro River represents Russia's sole foothold of the area. That area where the Dnipro i\bisects Ukraine is a gateway to the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014.  

Energoatom, Ukraine's state nuclear plant operator, said it assumes ... the Russians to be preparing a terrorist act using nuclear materials and radioactive waste stored at [the plant]. It said there were 174 containers at the plant's dry spent fuel storage facility, each of them containing 24 assemblies of spent nuclear fuel. 

"Destruction of these containers as a result of explosion will lead to a radiation accident and radiation contamination of several hundred square kilometres of the adjacent territory."

People shelter inside a subway station during a Russian missile attack in Kyiv on Tuesday. (Vladyslav Musiienko/Reuters)