Day 922

With Russia on Its Doorstep, a Ukrainian Town Packs Its Bags. Ukraine gambled that its move into Russia would draw Moscow’s forces away from the town of Pokrovsk. It didn’t happen. And now resigned residents are evacuating daily (The New York Times, September 1, 2024)

Wonderful photographs by Nicole documenting the misery of evacuating Pokrovsk.

Almost a month after Ukraine moved the fighting to the territory of “canonical Russia,” to Kursk region, the goal of the operation appears to have been to boost morale and drag the country’s benefactors even further into the conflict. More participation of the West in the war seems to be the only understandable strategy to end the invasion, something we touched upon on Day 22, but the achieving this objective seems more remote now than ever¹.

Z tells us the time is now for Biden, Starmer, Scholz and Macron to cough up long-range weapons and to authorize Ukraine to use them.