The Kremlin resorts to Syrian volunteers and reservists in the face of the casualties of its Army in Ukraine while toughening the punishment of the civilian population
Moscow continued on Thursday with its strategy of bleeding Ukraine dry by systematically bombing the civilian population. Like a blacksmith’s hammer, mortars and Grad missile launchers unremittingly rained down dozens of shells on the former Soviet republic. The worse the bleeding, the greater and faster the weakness comes. It was one of those days when the artillery claimed an infrequent number of citizen casualties. “Unfortunately, there are no places left in Ukraine where there is no obvious military threat; we can no longer name the areas where there are no bombings or where there are no representatives of sabotage groups,” Interior Minister Denis Monastyrsky lamented.
There were four cardinal points for horror: kyiv, already subjected to a sinister cadence of air attacks for a week; Chernigov, where the dozen civilians killed on Tuesday while queuing to buy bread were joined on Thursday by another 43 bodies in the local morgue; Merefa, in the Kharkov region where the Russians laminated the World War II monument and it rained so much fire at three in the morning that it killed 21 citizens, as well as leveling a school and a cultural center; and Mariúpol, where 350,000 people are trapped in a city reduced to rubble without water or food.
inside the theater
Mariupol is the name of all hells. Bombed for two weeks, its mayor assures that 90% of the city has been defenestrated. The International Red Cross demanded immediate help and declared it a humanitarian disaster before its staff was forced to leave. The roads are mined. The broken bridges. It is estimated that there are 2,000 dead. Like little. Many, thrown in the street. Others in basements where it is necessary to light with a lighter. The cell phone flashlight is too precious when there is no electricity for a recharge.
The neighbors have learned to live with the bodies or to quickly throw them into a grave so as not to be hit by a shell or a sniper. The smell is the worst, along with hunger and thirst. It is hardly possible to drink from the river. There are no supplies. Just the sentences of 350,000 condemned. And still, the war curls the curl: without leaving their astonishment at Tuesday’s attack against the Dramatic Theater building, the neighbors helped this Friday to rescue those who took refuge inside. At least a hundred left the building alive, but early Thursday night it was not ruled out that bodies would begin to emerge from the rubble.
Russian forces targeted civilian targets particularly viciously. A missile fell on a shelter for mothers with children in the town of Severodonetsk. “Fortunately, all of them are safe,” local authorities reported. The Barabashovo market, the largest in Eastern Europe with thousands of vendors, was also bombed, as was a building in Novi Petrivtsi, in which a two-year-old boy was killed. The Ukrainian government assures that more than a hundred minors have lost their lives in the war. The UN counts a total of 780 civilians killed, but considers that “the real figure will be much higher.”
Ukrainians can distinguish when a missile lands in the city or in the countryside. It sounds different depending on whether the impact occurs on the ground, against the asphalt or in a building. They have also learned to live with that fine ash that no one knows where it comes from but that always arrives when artillery fire strikes just a few kilometers away. Then there are the children. They know that street football is playing with death because children are now losing legs in Europe due to a mortar explosion.
A thousand shells
The United States estimates that the Russian military has fired more than 980 projectiles at the former Soviet republic since the start of the war 23 days ago. In this way, the Kremlin encourages civilians to flee. More than three million women, children and the elderly have already left Ukraine. The men of the nation, on the other hand, remain inside, recruited, which also makes it more difficult for President Volodímir Zelensky to capitulate in the face of the dramatic human effort caused by the separation of families throughout the country.
Bombing is also tactical. In Chernigov yesterday they finished “destroying the civil infrastructure”, according to a regional official, which means running out of supply lines, gas and electricity for thousands of people. “People have a critical shortage of medicine and sometimes food,” said Parliament’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Liudmila Denisova.
Artillery is also a way to undermine the resilient morale of the Ukrainians and to lengthen the time of conflict by ensuring that terror prevails. A British Intelligence report considers that Moscow has stopped its ground attack on the neighboring country and that it is now trying to group new forces. According to ‘The New York Times’, the United States calculates that 7,000 Russian soldiers have died and another 20,000 are back in their country having been wounded in the campaign. In theory, that represents a fifth of the entire contingent that Moscow has brought to the neighboring country. In addition, he would suffer a terrible loss of combat material. According to the Ukrainian newspapers, the local forces have disabled 1,435 armored vehicles, 108 helicopters, a hundred launchers and some 800 Russian logistics transports. This Thursday, the Ministry of Defense reported that an armored column was also destroyed in Pryluky, in north-central Ukraine.
Apparently, the intention of the Russian Army is to reinforce its troops with Syrian volunteers – 16,000 have already requested to join the war, as Vladimir Putin announced last week –, mercenaries, soldiers from Georgia and reservists from the troops stationed in Siberia. and the Pacific fleet. These units would act in the front line of combat while the Russian military would focus on controlling the already occupied areas, especially the strip between Crimea and Donbas. In addition, Moscow has the help of the Chechens, whose leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, announces that a “thousand” of them are on their way to Ukraine.
On the other side of the trench, the kyiv government called on Thursday for the formation of a new international coalition to come to its aid, since it considers the impossibility of counting on NATO to be proven. “We care about the allies who are ready to fight alongside us,” said presidential adviser Mikhailo Podoliak. Ukraine will shortly receive a reinforcement to its arsenal from the United States, which among the agreed equipment will supply it with attack drones, anti-aircraft missiles and anti-tank mines.
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