Russia & Ukraine War

[tampa24]

I just wanted to share a few musings on the conflict so far. As I've mentioned elsewhere I have been very disappointed that so few YouTube clips are able to be posted on this thread. Nevertheless I will share some of the conclusions I've come to understand from YT as well as other media sources and my own background knowledge and research on the subject.

These points won't necessarily be in order of importance. But merely my stream of consciousness order of access to what I want to share. lol

I've heard musings that Putin and his inner circle are already plotting and planning ways to flee Russia if the war turns so badly for them that there is risk of an internal coup to topple them by force. While that would not fit Putin's strongman image that he wants to project at all costs, it would also be foolish of him not to have a Plan B in place for his own safety. There are rumors that he and his cronies have eyes on South America. Namely Venezuela, Argentina and Uruguay as possible friendly ports in a storm if things really hit the fan in Mother Russia. While it's not impossible that Russia could still pull out something it could call a victory in Ukraine... It's certainly not looking very good for them right now.

In addition to this the longer the sanctions are in place, the more (and almost inevitably sooner) their economy starts to collapse. The Russian Bank and state treasury officials made some very smart decsions that avoided an immediate meltdown. But the spare inventory already inside Russia of fresh Western goods and Western technological parts will eventually run out and not be replaceable. The clock is ticking for Russia to end the war quickly with a win. As well, they would need to get some kind of negotiated settlement wherein the sanctions are lifted. And fast. If not, the country will be headed into both a near and possibly long term economic decline. With much help from the West, Ukraine can hold out and run down the clock. Russia cannot. As long as Western resolve holds, nobody blinks, the sanctions aren't circumvented, the boycott of Russian oil and gas supplies to Europe stays in place, and financial and military support to Ukraine continues... Time is not on Russia's side.

There is much talk that Russia is purposely leaving their dead on the field (or burying them in mass graves) so as not to have to identify them or pay reimbursments to the families.

I'm pretty sure that Ukraine already has battle plans on the books for retaking all of Crimea. I've been wondering if they have the capability and the will to try to tackle such a vast undertaking in winter. If not, I'm fairly certain that that process will start in the spring. The loss of Crimea could be the crippling blow that would send Putin fleeing for exile. It could be the final straw that leads to Martial Law and tanks in the streets of Moscow. While the full history of the Russo-Ukrainian War is yet to be written, Putin's desired image and hoped for legacy of an utterly brilliant statesman and tactician (albeit ruthless, cruel, tyrannical and murderous) is already in tatters. He may very well preside over the second collapse of the Soviet Union. Except now it could be the Russian Federation.

If Ukraine takes back Crimea there is no way in hell that they will let the Russian navy keep its open access to the ports there such as Sevastopol. The Ukrainians will nationalize every bit of the Russian shipyards there as reparations for the war. The last offical agreement Russia had to lease the naval port of Sevastopol from Ukraine was by a treaty called the Kharkiv Pact in 2010. In the accords Ukraine agreed to lease Sevastopol to the Russian Black Sea Fleet through 2024. In return Russia agreed to compensate Ukraine with below market discounted Russian gas.

If Ukraine succeeds in kicking Russia out of Crimea and forever bans the Russian navy, it will be a devastating blow to them as a world power. Imperial Russia's, the USSR's and thereby the Russian Federation's biggest geo-political weakness has always been its lack of access to year-round warm water ports. If the Russain navy is kicked out of Crimea altogether, it has only a relatively tiny footprint of territory on the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. It could probably resort to using some ports along the eastern Black Sea coast if it had to. But the fact that modern Soviet and Russian navies did not use those areas in the past could be due to such factors as not enough depth at the shoreline to accomodate huge ships, or some other geological impediments.

Regardless though, if Russia's navy can't operate from Crimea, Russia's reach and influence in the Black Sea, the Mediterranian, the Middle East, Africa, Southern Europe, etc, will be greatly reduced. It would be left with its naval base in the Baltic Sea in Kalliningrad, and its ports in the Arctic (north of Saint Petersburg) that are not suitable for winter use. It would still have its Pacific coast ports, but not much in Europe. Trying to convert any ports along the Sochi coastline (with possible dredging) and building sprawling modern naval shipyards, transportation links inland, ancillary support services, etc, would cost many billions and take years to build.

Before I reach the TLDR limit, I'll stop here for now. haha

 

[tampa24]

 

[tampa24]

Russia Can Finally See That Putin’s ‘Days Are Numbered’​

Anna Nemtsova
Sat, December 17, 2022 at 8:03 PM EST

Photo Illustration by Erin O'Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty Images

More than two decades after he came to power, President Putin’s grip on the Russian people is finally starting to falter.
The war in Ukraine has opened up a credibility gap, and for the first time many Russians no longer feel they can trust what their leader is saying to them. Combined with tough economic sanctions, funds being re-allocated to the war, and conscription drives across the country, the costs of this vainglorious conquest are becoming more and more difficult to take.
Even loyal Russians have plenty of questions for Putin right now. And the Kremlin is running out of ways to cope with the pressure. In the past, a scripted appearance, or a half-naked staged photoshoot would be enough to get the domestic media back on side. Sometimes, they even gave independent reporters a chance to ask Putin one or two sensitive questions—which he would quickly and vigorously dismiss.

But every recent attempt to make Putin look like a strong and decisive leader has failed so badly—even inside Russia—that after nine months of devastating war in Ukraine, the Kremlin is running out of ideas. They even canceled Putin’s big annual press conference for the first time in years.

“Russia, just like any other nation, wants to live a stable life without feeling ashamed of our Moscow leadership. Before the war Putin guaranteed us a stable life but now he tells us that life in Russia will be good only in 10 years,” Vera Aleksandrovna, 57, a lawyer from Saint Petersburg, told The Daily Beast. “I liked Putin before the war, my son was an IT tech, we liked the IT opportunities in Russia; but now all the brain and talent is escaping the country, my son is gone too and I cannot afford to wait for 10 more years for a good life.”

Putin’s rock-solid system is crumbling.

Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, an outspoken critic of the Kremlin, told The Daily Beast that we are already entering the endgame for Putin. “Russia has obviously lost the war, which will lead to the collapse of the regime but the question is how many more people will die before that happens,” he told The Daily Beast.

“Putin has never played chess, the game of rules, he played a poker game,” Kasparov said. “Putin is absolute evil, he has gone insane after 22 years in power; but in his bones he must understand that he cannot go on ruling Russia, when the war ends and dozens of thousands of angry soldiers return home with arms, feeling robbed.”

Tatiana Yashina, 62, the mother of jailed opposition leader Ilya Yashin, said the last week has been a turning point in Putin’s regime.

“Putin is falling apart,” she told The Daily Beast. “He is clearly lying right in front of the cameras—with no confidence in his voice.”

Yashina had particular reason to pay attention to Putin’s state of mind because her son was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison last Friday, but the way the president has handled the fallout of his unpopular incarceration—for telling the truth about the war in Ukraine—has broken through to the wider population.

Veteran Kremlin pool reporter Andrei Kolesnikov confronted Putin over Yashin’s “beastly” sentence in a video that went viral. Yashina said: “Shaky Putin… lied that he did not know my son, then he lied that he did not know anything about the sentence.”

Putin’s contortions are no longer convincing his domestic audience.

Hundreds of independent Russian and foreign journalists have left Russia during the past nine months but some of those remaining, including BBC journalists, continue to spread the word about a commander-in-chief who is losing thousands of his soldiers, as well as some of the key territories in Ukraine. Last week BBC’s Russian service and the local publication Mediazona confirmed the names of 10,002 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine. The real Russian death toll “may exceed 20,000 and the total number of irretrievable losses could be as high as 90,000,” the BBC said.

Both independent and Kremlin-controlled polls show that Putin has lost support for his war, with less than 30 percent of the country wanting it to continue. “Putin could have ruled longer, if he did not start this war but now his days are really numbered, he is falling apart and he is clearly aware of it,” Yulia Galiamina, a Moscow-based opposition politician, told The Daily Beast. Galiamina has been a victim of police violence, and has been arrested multiple times but she refuses to leave Russia. Instead, she is encouraging more people to stand up to Putin.

Galiamina leads a movement of more than 150 Russian women called Soft Power. “Most of our women are mothers, who see the problems from the point of view of our children’s future without Putin, in Russia, that is eventually going to be free.” Galiamina and Soft Power activists have been collecting signatures of people speaking against Putin’s mobilization of Russians. “We have collected more than 500,000 signatures that we are going to send to the Kremlin, we understand our collective responsibility,” she added.

Putin is still backed by around 79 percent of Russians, according to recent polls, but that faith is weakening. Studies by Levada, an independent Russian think tank, show the number of Russians who believe their country is moving in the right direction has already fallen from 64 percent in October to 61 percent in November.

Every Kremlin attempt to rebuild the image of Putin as a superman seems to provoke another avalanche of jokes online.
Putin recorded one of his on-location Action Man clips earlier this month showing him driving over the bomb-damaged bridge to Crimea. It was supposed to show how fit and healthy he still is at the age of 70 but online commenters were more obsessed with the car he was driving. It was not one of the Russian-made Ladas he has previously promoted—which motorists curse for “breaking down more often than even the cheapest foreign brands”—but a German-engineered Mercedes.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was forced to go on the record explaining that the Mercedes just happened to be on hand, and it was no indication of Putin’s vehicular preferences.

More damagingly, his jaunt into internationally recognized Ukrainian territory, now annexed by Russia, came in the same week that three explosions struck strategic airfields inside the motherland, one of them just 150 miles from Moscow. The drone attacks made Russian air defenses and the commander-in-chief look pathetic, even in the domestic media.
Last week, the Kremlin published an image of Putin with a glass of champagne in his hand, and that immediately gave rise to many anecdotes about “drunk Putin.”

The prevailing mood is becoming very hard for the Kremlin to navigate.

“The Kremlin canceling Putin’s big press conference is a sign: they realize how hopeless their situation is—this is a dead end, his plan has failed in Ukraine,” well-known Kremlin observer Olga Bychkova told The Daily Beast. “They are still standing by him, since without Putin they are finished; but now they are even unable to write a script, think of questions and answers for him.”

The latest debate among Putin’s critics is whether the catastrophe in Ukraine is the fault of one man or all of Russian society. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch turned prisoner now exiled in London, suggested to Radio Liberty last week that—while Putin took the whole country with him during the annexation of Crimea in 2014—he is now on his own. “The war of 2020 is purely Putin’s invention; Russian society had a shock on Feb. 23,” he said.

The question now is how much worse is the situation going to get?



Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-finally-see-putin-days-010335807.html

Kasparov, an ally of Khodorkovsky, thinks there is now also an opportunity for the U.S. to drive a wedge between the president and his senior lieutenants, like Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Kremlin’s security council. He says the U.S. must spell out what would happen if they did ever allow Putin to press the nuclear button. Kasparov said he hoped CIA director William Burns “whispered something into Patrushev’s ear,” at the meeting between the security chiefs in Moscow last month.
After years of adulation across the country, Putin is becoming more isolated by the day.

 

[br6205]

While I hope all that is true, remember this desperate men do desperate things, which greatly worries me. How many more will die in this senseless war & even when Putin leaves the scene what will his successors do?

 

[tampa24]

While I hope all that is true, remember this desperate men do desperate things, which greatly worries me. How many more will die in this senseless war & even when Putin leaves the scene what will his successors do?

Good points.

There's also that old saying of , "Be careful what you wish for." While many of us on the planet would love to see Putin overthrown or kicked out of the country... The next ruler of Russia is not guaranteed to be any better than him. At least not for the West. If indeed Russia is utterly humiliated and more or less defeated in Ukarine, the generals left in power are still (or maybe even more so) going to antagonistic towards Europe and the U.S.

If there's anything the more cynical side of myself has learned... In just about any situation of someone in authority, with a certain job title, or someone elected to office, who is known for mismanagement, unbridled egotism, corruption, incompetence or greed... There can always be somebody worse. haha Just when you think they can't possibly find or hire anybody worse than the person you're having to put up with now, they seem to find one. haha

That leads to that other saying, "Better the devil you know, than the devil you don't." haha

 

[br6205]

Good points.

There's also that old saying of , "Be careful what you wish for." Whie many of us on the planet would love to see Putin overthrown or kicked out of the country... The next ruler of Russia is not guaranteed to be any better than him. At least not for the West. If indeed Russia is utterly humiliated and more or less defeated in Ukarine, the generals left in power are still (or maybe even more so) going to antagonistic towards Europe and the U.S.

If there's anything the more cynical side of myself has learned... In just about any situation of someone in authority, with a certain job title, or someone elected to office, who is known for mismanagement, unbridled egotism, corruption, incompetence or greed... There can always be somebody worse. haha

That leads to that other saying, "Better the devil you know, than the devil you don't." haha

Agree, fully.

 

[mikeyank]

I am thrilled to learn that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is in Washington D.C. today and will meet with President Biden and address congress this afternoon.

From NPR

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy will meet Biden at the White House today

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to meet in Washington with President Biden and Congress on Wednesday. The trip comes as lawmakers are debating billions more in aid for Ukraine.

www.npr.org

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will visit President Biden at the White House on Wednesday and will address Congress in a trip aimed at underscoring U.S. support for the country as Russia's war against its neighbor drags on.

During the visit, Biden will announce nearly $2 billion in new security aid, including a Patriot surface-to-air missile battery, a senior administration official told reporters on a conference call. The United States will train Ukraine's military how to use the Patriot in a third country, the official said, noting it will take time before it is operational in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian president's visit is the first to the U.S. since Russia launched its attack in February. It also comes as lawmakers are preparing to vote on an omnibus spending bill that includes $44.9 billion in emergency assistance to Ukraine and NATO allies.

 

[tampa24]

I am following that story closely as well. I look forward to his address to Congress. I hope we'll get to see most of it. Does anyone know what time he's supposed to do it?

 

[tampa24]

It's my understanding that we should expect Ukraine to launch winter offensives in the south within the coming weeks as the ground freezes over well enough for tanks and heavy equipment to move about freely. Obviously armies are traditionally very averse to fighting in winter conditions. But, I've heard that a British general in particular has urged Ukraine not to hibernate over the winter as the Russians would like to. There are dangers in the fronts of the war going mostly silent until after the spring thaw. The Russians would like nothing better than to freeze the field of battle in place while they call up several hundred thousand troops (maybe a million or more in a new January mobilization?) and try to get them trained and equipped for summer fighting.

The British general has told them that given that the West has provided a very large portion of the Ukrainian army with some of the very best winter military clothing and gear for cold weather fighting that currrently exists... They should use that to their full advantage. The Russians do not have that advantage. In fact they suffer from the opposite of that. Many mobiks (newly mobilized and poorly trained Russian troops) in the field, have very inadequate clothing and equipment for winter conditions. And for that matter not even enough food. It's expected that hundreds and even possibly thousands of Russian troops in the field will freeze to death this winter in Ukraine. Just as they did in the Winter War of 1939 in Finland.

The best thing the Ukrainians can do for themselves is to keep offensive operations going through winter and not give the Russians respite or breathing room. Take (liberate) as much new territory as possible now. Again, the Russian army itself is not in a good position to launch or maintain offensives in the bitter cold. The less territory the Russians still control by spring, the better. The Ukrainian army may be one of the best equipped for conventional winter combat than any previous armies before it. Or possibly a close second to the Finns.

In my mind they shouldn't wait and give the Russians time to field a whole new crop of cannon fodder. The Soviets and the Russians could usually count on sheer numbers to overwhelm other armies. German troop losses in WWII were somewhere between 5-7 million. Total Soviet losses (in troops and civilians) were around 27 million! Historical estimates vary. But the point is that the USSR could afford to just keep throwing thousands and millions of bodies into the Nazi meat grinder, until Hitler's troops were finally exhausted, depleted and then inevitably defeated. It didn't matter after a certain point that the German army had much better equipment, better training, better generals, etc. In the war of attrition following the German defeat at Stalingrad in 1942, the Soviets and Russians successfully made it a game of numbers. It's what they did in Finland. That's what they do.

There are already rumors that Putin is planning another wave of mobilization in January. Possiby even a "full" mobilization. (Might that be beween 1-3 million?) While that in itself would be a tacit admission that he has lost control and that Russia is losing the war currently... Ukraine needs to keep the momentum going in their favor while they can, and for as long as they can, while there are much fewer Russian troops on the ground. At some point a negotiated settlement is the only way out. So Ukraine needs to take back as much territory as realistically possible before that point.

 

[br6205]

The Ukraineans rightly will only negotiate a peace treaty that assures the full return of all its land & Putin will never willingly accept that.

 

[chac54]

I thought Zelenskyy did an amazing job addressing congress. And he is right, this funding is not charity, it's security for not only Ukraine but the world. We can't let a madman run rampant.

 

[kgmets2]

I thought Zelenskyy did an amazing job addressing congress. And he is right, this funding is not charity, it's security for not only Ukraine but the world. We can't let a madman run rampant.

I totally agree with your post and Tampa's recent one. Aid to Ukraine is in the US national security interest as we stay out of war with Russia, while helping Ukraine to defend itself against an illegal unwarranted Russian invasion and challenge to the post WWII world order. In 1994, the newly independent Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in a treaty signed by Russia in which Russia promised to respect Ukraiine's sovereignty and to never invade. Funny how Putin never mentions that still in force binding treaty upon Russia. Second, Putin's declared goal is to restore the territorial borders of the old Russian Empire. Well guess what, that includes Finland, all three Baltic states and Poland, all NATO members, which if Russia invades, the US is bound by the NATO treaty to go to war with Russia, so Ukraine defeating Russia spare us from actually going to war with Russia if it invaded any of those NATO countries which would happen as per Putin's own words if it defeated Ukraine. So isn't it obvious how it is in the US national security interest to aid Ukraine as opposed to letting it fall and then have to go to war with Russia after it then invaded its former territories, which now are NATO members! Also, you are quite right that Zelenskyy was brilliant today!

 

[br6205]

As do I.

 

[br6205]

Vladimir Putin warns war in Ukraine becoming ‘extremely complicated’​

Financial Times
21 Dec, 2022 12:30 PM3 mins to read

Vladimir Putin warns war in Ukraine becoming ‘extremely complicated’

Premium: Russian leader’s comments mark another admission military operations could be prolonged.

 

[tampa24]

I thought Zelenskyy did an amazing job addressing congress. And he is right, this funding is not charity, it's security for not only Ukraine but the world.

Oh, I agree. I thought it was a wonderful, powerful and historically significant moment in time. He delivered it beautifully. I was also impressed at how well he delivered the speech in English. As we've discussed before, he is a Ukrainian who (like many in Ukraine) was born into a Russian speaking family and community. For him he was also born into a Jewish family. So his native language from childhood was Russian. He chose to learn Ukrainian as a second language. So English is at least his third language. I don't know if he learned any others before English.

I bring up those smaller details again only to rebut the Kremlin assertion that the "Special Military Operation" was supposedly necessary from the Russian Federation as a matter of national and cultural survival. Because Ukraine (and its government) was supposedly being run by out-of-control fanatical Nazis, whose goal was to commit genocide against the Russian speaking population within Ukraine's borders. And even more omenously, they were supposedly getting ready to wage war against Russia itself. Those are still some of the talking points of the official Russian narrative and part of the unscrupulous justifications for the war today.

 

[tampa24]

 

[mikeyank]

Oh, I agree. I thought it was a wonderful, powerful and historically significant moment in time. He delivered it beautifully. I wasa also impressed at how well he delivered the speech in English. As we've discussed before, he is a Ukrainian who (like many in Ukraine) was born into a Russian speaking family and community. For him he was also born into a Jewish family. So his native language from childhood was Russian. He chose to learn Ukrainian as a second language. So English is at least his thrid language. I don't know if he learned any others before English.

I bring up those smaller details again only to rebut the Kremlin assertion that the "Special Military Operation" was supposedly necessary from the Russian Federation as a matter of national and cultural survival. Because Ukraine (and its government) was supposedly being run by out-of-control fanatical Nazis, whose goal was to commit genocide against the Russian speaking population within Ukraine's borders. And even more omenously, they were supposedly getting ready to wage war against Russia itself. Those are still some of the talking points of the official Russian narrative and part of the unscrupulous justifications for the war today.

I didn’t see his entire speech but watched Morning Joe and saw all the highlights. Zelenskyy was brilliant as he presented a Ukrainian flag signed by soldiers to Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris. He quoted Franklin Delano Roosevelt and made me think of Winston Churchill. I agree with Tampa that it was more effective that he delivered the speech in English, rather than in his native tongue.

I knew he was formerly a comedian and actor, but I learned that he was famous for his TV series in Ukraine called, Servant of the People, where he played the role of the president of Ukraine. How ironic. And of course we first learned his name in this country when his conversation with Donald Trump lead to Trump’s first impeachment trial.

From a 'perfect' call to a party switch: How we got to the impeachment of Donald Trump

The path to an impeachment vote started with a call on July 25, the day after special counsel Robert Mueller testified about his Russia investigation.

www.usatoday.com

“In the call with Zelensky, Trump asks the Ukrainian president "to do us a favor" by investigating both Crowdstrike and the role of Biden and his son, Hunter, whose appointment to the board of a Ukraine energy company, Burisma, had been the subject of a corruption allegation in the Eastern European country. Details of the call, which Trump often describes as "perfect," would not become public for nearly two months.”

No one could ever have guessed that the young little known in international political Ukrainian president who was taken advantage of by the bully, Donald Trump, would become perhaps the most influential international world leader in 2022. Today Zelensky is the hero, while Trump is going to go down in infamy as perhaps the most corrupt American president in history. What a turn of events.

 

[mikeyank]

Thank you Tampa for the link to his entire speech. You were posting that while I was writing my previous post.

 

[tampa24]

Here's a good article that is rather lengthy. I'll include just a portion of it. I'll post a link below if you'd like to read it in full. The following includes much evidence of a form of cultural genocide that the Russians were trying to ascribe to Ukrainians before the launch of their "Special Military Operation". After all the false and grossly hyperbolic claims of Ukraine being controlled by fascist Nazi-like demons intent upon the genocide of a proud people and any semblence of another country's language and cultural identity... Do you think Russia's government projects much??

P.S.

I did edit this (above) a little bit for greater clarity.


*****************************************************************************

Russia scrubs Mariupol's Ukraine identity, builds on death​

LORI HINNANT, VASILISA STEPANENKO, SARAH EL DEEB and ELIZAVETA TILNA
Thu, December 22, 2022 at 2:17 AM EST


Throughout Mariupol, Russian workers are tearing down bombed-out buildings at a rate of at least one a day, hauling away shattered bodies with the debris.

Russian military convoys are rumbling down the broad avenues of what is swiftly becoming a garrison city, and Russian soldiers, builders, administrators and doctors are replacing the thousands of Ukrainians who have died or left.

Many of the city’s Ukrainian street names are reverting to Soviet ones, with the Avenue of Peace that cuts through Mariupol to be labeled Lenin Avenue. Even the large sign that announces the name of the city at its entrance has been Russified, repainted with the red, white and blue of the Russian flag and the Russian spelling.

Eight months after Mariupol fell into Russian hands, Russia is eradicating all vestiges of Ukraine from it – along with the evidence of war crimes buried in its buildings. The few open schools teach a Russian curriculum, phone and television networks are Russian, the Ukrainian currency is dying out, and Mariupol is now in the Moscow time zone. On the ruins of the old Mariupol, a new Russian city is rising, with materials from at least one European company, The Associated Press found.

But the AP investigation into life in occupied Mariupol also underlines what its residents already know all too well: No matter what the Russians do, they are building upon a city of death. More than 10,000 new graves now scar Mariupol, the AP found, and the death toll might run three times higher than an early estimate of at least 25,000. The former Ukrainian city has also hollowed out, with Russian plans to demolish well over 50,000 homes, the AP calculated.
___
Associated Press journalists were the last international media in Mariupol to escape heavy shelling in March, before Russian forces took the city over. This is the story of what has happened since. AP reconnected with many people whose tragedies were captured in photos and video during the deadliest days of the Russian siege.
___

Death surrounds Mariupol in the rapidly growing cemeteries on its outskirts, and its stench lingered over the city into the autumn. It haunts the memories of survivors, both in Mariupol and in exile.

Every one of the dozens of residents the AP spoke with knew someone killed during the siege of Mariupol, which began with the Feb. 24 invasion. As many as 30 people arrive at the morgue each day in hopes of tracking down a loved one.

Lydya Erashova watched her 5-year-old son Artem and her 7-year-old niece Angelina die after a Russian shelling in March. The family hastily buried the young cousins in a makeshift grave in a yard and fled Mariupol.

They returned in July to rebury the children, only to learn while on the road that the bodies had already been dug up and taken to a warehouse. As they approached the city center, each block was bleaker than the last.

“It is horror. Wherever you look, whichever way you look,” said Erashova. “Everything is black, is destroyed.”

Neither she nor her sister-in-law could bear to go inside the warehouse to identify the bodies of their children. Their husbands, who are brothers, chose the tiny coffins – one pink and one blue – to be placed together in a single grave.

Erashova, who is now in Canada, said no Russian rebuilding plan could possibly bring back what Mariupol lost.
“Our lives have been taken from us. Our child was taken from us,” she said. “It’s so ridiculous and stupid. How do you restore a dead city where people were killed at every turn?”

RECKONING WITH DEATH

The AP investigation drew on interviews with 30 residents from Mariupol, including 13 living under Russian occupation; satellite imagery; hundreds of videos gathered from inside the city, and Russian documents showing a master plan. Taken together, they chronicle a comprehensive effort to suppress Mariupol’s collective history and memory as a Ukrainian city.
Mariupol was in the crosshairs of the Kremlin from the first day of the invasion. Just 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the Russian border, the city is a port on the Sea of Azov and crucial for Russian supply lines.

The city was hit relentlessly with airstrikes and artillery, its communications severed, its food and water cut off. Yet Mariupol refused to give in for 86 days. By the time the last Ukrainian fighters holed up in the Azovstal steel mill surrendered in May, Mariupol had become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance.

That resistance came at a high price. The thoroughness of Russia’s destruction of Mariupol can still be seen today. Videos taken across the city and satellite images show that munitions have left their mark on nearly every building across its 166 square kilometers (64 square miles).

Large swaths of the city are devoid of color and life, with fire-blackened walls, grey demolition dust and dead trees with shredded foliage. But the worst destruction Mariupol suffered may be measured in its death toll, which will never be fully known.


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Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-scrubs-mariupols-ukraine-identity-071726747.html

 

[tampa24]

Thank you Tampa for the link to his entire speech. You were posting that while I was writing my previous post.

You're welcome.