Day 771
I am reminded of the seige of Aleppo, which I covered ad nauseum, reel after bloody reel, from 2012 to 2014.
Kharkiv this morning: the son of 52-year firefighter killed in Russia’s latest double-tap strike falls to his knees in grief and is comforted by rescue workers.
Russia, with the help of Iran and North Korea, is attempting in Ukraine to create the same kinds of “sanitary zones” as in Aleppo, using double-tap warfare to terrorize and de-populate the country’s big cities in the north. The State Emergency Service has said Russia’s double-tap attacks have killed 91 first responders, injured 348 during total war.
On the USA jacket, Speaker Mike appears in no hurry to move legislation that would help Ukraine defend itself better, so Russia’s onslaught will continue well into the summer.
On the Ukraine jacket, the latest re-arrangement of deck chairs at the President’s Office (Oleksandr Danilov, Serhiy Shefir, Andriy Smirnov) is not accidental and fits into the general context of our unending political crisis, which has many causes and and even more consequences.
The lack of a clear strategy for victory amid chronic failures to support Ukraine’s Armed Forces (with necessary defensive fortifications, drones, electromagnetic gadgets) is painfully obvious. The “heroic stage” of the war ended at the end of 2022 with a counteroffensive near Kharkiv and Kherson. Ukraine’s own offensive during the summer of 2023 failed. Since then, we have withdrawn from at least three “iconic” lines of defense (Bakhmut, Avdiyivka, Marinka1).
Uncertainty about the prospects for war, which is aggravated by the Z’s inability to break through the “blockade of benevolent indifference” and acquire sufficient guns and ammo has exacerbated splits within Ukraine’s elites. On the surface, it has already manifested itself in at least two open conflicts, between Z and former Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny and Z and Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko.
Serious changes are brewing and will probably exceed the technical “reset” of Ukraine’s security and defense apparatus Z alluded to during the months-long soap opera involving Zaluzhny’s ouster.
Some readers have criticed me for posting unsavory footage of the war, clips showing Russian invaders being blown to smithereens by drones. The above video was posted yesterday by Madyar (Robert Brovdi), whose birds were incorporated this year into the Ukrainian Marine Corps as the 414th Strike UAV Battalion.
But I like the song, titled “Beyond the Tericons,” esp this version, which has English-language subtitles. (Tericons are cretaceous mountains which disfigure much of Donbas).
Yuriy yesterday spent more than one hour explaining problems with Ukraine’s production and use of drones on the battlefield. Hopefully, they will be addressed.