It’s beginning to dawn on some journalists that the invaders are trying to kill them and civil defense teams with missile strikes. Blowing up assistance centers (pizzerias, invincibility points, shopping malls) is a recurring pattern of behavior in fascistic Russia’s genocidal campaign. The intention is to inflict the most severe suffering by killing the people who document it and offer relief and treatment services.
Three recent examples are Russian missile strikes against a pizzeria in Kramatorsk, rescue workers in Pokrovsk and, most recently, the Reikartz Hotel used by UN workers in Zaporizhia1.
The deadly attacks are remarkable because of the ‘double tap strike’ tactic, which is based on bombing sites that were bombed a short time before as the ambulances and emergency workers rush to rescue the survivors.This is done in order to not only inflict the greatest possible loss of civilian lives, but also to scare the shit out of everyone and the greatest possible number of rescue workers, medics and bystanders.
The big news in Kyiv are the straight blue lines municipal workers have drawn on the asphalt along Lesi Ukrainky Blvd in order to keep residents of the capital in their correct lane. These also keep us from veering too far to the right and rearending parked cars.
Additional signs of progress include the completion of cobblestone work from the Opera house down Bohdana Khmelnytskoho St. to Kreshchatyk. The chain gang moves next to re-arrange stones on the 45-degree Shovkovychna Street descent. That project might last through the New Year.
I had intended to say something sly about the curtain of continental anarchy — the pursuit of life for its own sake — as people stock up for fall and winter, but I got sidetracked by thinking about battles.
Also, I noticed Garry Kasparov (again) criticizing western leaders for fueling Putin’s sense of impunity2. The op-ed follows a public service announcement, titled A History of Betrayal: Biden’s Team Keeps Negotiating About Ukraine Without Ukraine (August 13, 2023) published on his website.
The most glaring deficiency has been the consistent inability of Ukraine’s benefactors to appreciate the lead times between decisions about providing military gear to eliminate invaders and actually delivering it. As a result, dislodging occupying forces is taking longer than necessary.
In this sense, the Battle of Bakhmut, like Battles for Volnovakha and Mariupol, for Lysychansk, Severodonetsk, etc, should remind us of the Battle for Ilovaisk and Battle of Debaltseve, which were preceded the Battle for Aleppo, a four-year carnage (2012-2016) and marked by the failure of the world community to stop it. We all remember the Battle of Vukovar and the Rwanda Genocide during the early 1990s and the survivors of the four-year Seige of Sarajevo (1992-1996) in Minsk. They told us what a miserable picnic that was. I remember Operation Desert Storm, but have very fuzzy recollections of Team USA’s misadventures in Afghanistan and the Iraq War post 9/11.
How the West fueled Putin’s sense of impunity (The Wall Street Journal. August 15, 2023
syria is still a disaster in progress. dunno what to expect from team usa. it appears ukraine will be an issue in the upcoming u.s. presidential campaign. dislodging the invaders without committing suicide is the mission until our partners, including ireland, cough up better gear.
The lessons of Syria applied sadly. Do you think that Ukraine will ever get what is needed for victory when it is needed? Feels like a slow walk from DC and that you’re getting jerked around deliberately.