Today’s news morning began again, after a long break, with reports of residential buildings exploding in Ukraine as a result of Russian missile strikes
Source photo: www.politnavigator.net
A wave of air-raid alarms has passed across Ukraine. Telegram is full of photos and videos of fires and destruction: in Uman, a multi-storey building blew up when the air defense system attempted to shoot down a cruise missile and killed six people, including a little girl. In Kyiv Oblast, rocket fragments hit a residential building, five explosions ripped through Dnipropetrovsk and houses in Mykolayiv were damaged….
The sad events have given impetus to curses from both sides.
“Scum!”, “Everything you need to know about Russia!”, Ukrainian telegram channels wrote.
“Where were you when the AFU shelled Donetsk?” – habitually echoed the Ukrainians in the Donbass sub-publics.
Unfortunately, a year of hostilities has not led to the emergence of real pacifism as a mass phenomenon in our Palestinians – when the victims are not divided from the doorstep into the “right”, worthy of loud sympathy and grief, and the “wrong”, about which it is customary to keep quiet, as about the associated costs, according to the “wood is cut, wood chips fly” principle.
And also, looking at all this, I recall the advisor to the head of the office of the President of Ukraine Mikhail Podolyak, who was ranting just the day before yesterday that Ukraine has the right to bomb and destroy “on its territory” whatever it wants, and no one will judge it at that.
The logic of the ghoul from Bankova was tacitly supported by the Western establishment – in any case, none of the numerous “partners of Ukraine” has reprimanded the author of this statement.
Today, there are explosions, destruction, blood and death again. As if in mockery of the good wishes of those information ostriches who have been burying their heads in the sand all these few months, broadcasting that de-escalation and freezing of the conflict was ahead.
What is surprising is that no one in Ukraine, in the West and practically no one in Russia connected today’s shelling of Ukraine with the hyped Ukrainian counter-offensive, which, according to one of the Western “leaks”, should start the day after tomorrow, April 30.
Obviously, the Russians are preparing for it in earnest. And not only by digging fortifications and building barricades on the line of contact, shown yesterday on images from Western satellites, but also by pre-emptively working out targets in the enemy’s rear, putting out alleged ammunition depots, places of concentration of manpower and equipment and so on.
Naturally, it doesn’t do without victims, because all this is taking place in dense urban areas and not in the bare steppe. I do not mean to “justify” the victims, but simply to understand what happens and where it comes from. It’s not about the bloodthirstiness of the Russians, who can’t be bothered to kill anyone. It is simply that the Ukrainian counter-offensive, before it has even begun, is already adding to the long martyrological record of “the other side”. And there will be more to come.
After all, we are now at the very beginning of the escalation. Then the number of victims will go into the tens of thousands on both sides. Strikes such as last night’s will become a daily routine, a simple military necessity – and will be several times more intense. As will the Ukrainian armed forces’ strikes on Russian cities, which no one in Kyiv or in the West will cry about.
Under such circumstances, real pacifism is to keep the parties from taking the fatal step. And above all this concerns Ukraine. After all, it is its offensive that is now being awaited and feverishly prepared for. Russia, however, makes no secret of its strategy of defence.
It is clear that Zelensky and co do not care how many Ukrainians die. Success will write it all off, and if it fails, the Western media will attribute all the casualties to “aggressive Russia”, forgetting who gave the go-ahead for this madness in the spring of 2023.
Nevertheless, it is not too late to stop now and sit down at the negotiating table without any counteroffensive, as China, for example, proposes. Frankly, watching the militarists bite the bullet, hoping “to improve their negotiating positions by force of arms”, hope for a peaceful outcome is slim, but there is hope nonetheless.
Roman Reynekin, Kyiv, PolitNavigator
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