It’s been a long time since I posted, and that’s not because there hasn’t been anything going on. As I’d noted long ago, most of my posts are meant to be about Mariupol and the family and friends impacted by what happened there. That’s partly why, even when I was in Ukraine earlier this year, I didn’t do many posts about my time there. But sometimes there are events that warrant a few words, even if they aren’t directly about Mariupol, family or friends.

While I generally stopped marking day counts some time ago, there’s definitely something “impressive” about noting that this war has now lasted 1000 days. One thousand, or as one pundit noted, the 1000th day of Putin’s 3-day war. And here’s another number to note: it’s less than 100 days until the 3 year mark of the war. Of course, if you go back to when Russian forces first invaded a sovereign country, this conflict has been going on for over 10 years.

I don’t recall if I’ve ever actually posted on of these daily infographic totals images, but this seems like a good time to show one:

Personnel is an estimated count of the wounded and killed, probably a little higher than reality (if that can ever be determined), but most experts agree that it’s not wildly inflated. And that daily increase number — 1610 in this case — is not a fluke; it rarely dips below 1200 these days. (Ukraine’s losses are generally considered to be one-third to one-half of the Russian numbers. By any metric, Ukraine has been amazing.)

But even before that 1000 day mark, the world slipped into the worse possible reality for Ukraine’s future. For some reason, a plurality of voting US citizens —not a majority — decided to elect venal and hate-filled village idiot instead of thoughtful and compassionate politician. I’m not even going to bother with the idiot’s name; I will call it “VI” if a direct reference is needed.

Were Kamala Harris to be have been elected, I think Ukraine would have largely been guaranteed an on-going and consistent, if not improved, measure of support from the US. Harris didn’t want to fully embrace the Biden legacy, but I think this is one area where she would have followed his lead. While there are things Joe Biden could have done differently, better or more quickly for Ukraine, he truly did a lot, and it’s possible that Ukraine would not have survived to 1000 days without his leadership.

Now it’s all a big question mark, with most signs pointing to a bad outcome. The idiot has long claimed to be a master at many things and have the ability to end the war in a single day. Obviously not a reality in any but the most feeble of minds. But the idiot can definitely set the stage for Ukraine’s failure.

Often the idiot and many of his political ilk have said the quickest way to end the war is to just give the captured areas of Ukraine — some even say a little more — to Putin and voila, the hostilities will all cease. This is the way to end a war, like killing yourself is the way to bring down those high grocery bills. Of course, Ukraine won’t go along with this, nor is it up to the US or any other western nation to tell them they have to surrender. But that’s not to say the idiot won’t do things to try and force this outcome:

• Cutting off support. This is almost a given. No more money, no more weapons, no more support of any kind. The US accounts for about 50% of the overall weapons and ammunition that Ukraine has been using. The 100% they receive has allowed them to last these past 1000 days and even make some small gains here and there. With only 50% of the support coming in, it will also certainly be a losing situation.
• Ending sanctions. This is kind of the other side of the coin. While supplying aid has bolstered Ukraine, imposing sanctions on Russia and Russian interests has been dampening their ability to wage war. Blocking oil transactions saps Russia of needed funds, as does keeping them disconnected from key monetary tools. Restricting electronics and other materials hinders the ability to construct new weapons and maintain the ones they have. Russia has lost almost 1000 tanks, and the sanctions mean that only a handful of tanks can be produced each month to replace the losses. The entirety of Russian society is feeling the pinch. Remove those sanctions and you give Russia the means and spirit to fight on.
• Personnel changes. This one gets overlooked a lot, but the first time VI was squatting in the Oval Office, it replaced a very competent ambassador with someone less so. (Not “bad,” but not as good.) Biden put someone who has been a strong supporter of Ukraine in the ambassador role, and I suspect that’s going to be counteracted fairly early on after the idiot is sworn in. Having the right people in the right places makes all the difference, and having the wrong person there can spell disaster. (You know, that sentence could apply to the US for the coming days, too.)

I’m glad that Biden has lifted one of the longest-held and least beneficial limits to Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles, and I really hope the fast-tracking and delivery of approved aid is largely completed before the idiot manages to screw things up. We can always hope for the best — and I do — but I’m pretty sure there will be dark days ahead in this worst of possible realities.

I’m sorry I haven’t updated things of late (like a month or so). It’s been a busy time with one of the outcomes of that busyness being that… we’re in Ukraine. Despite the State Department currently classifying Ukraine as “Level 4 – Do Not Travel,” we came anyway. Viktoria needed some paperwork updated, and since she’s not a great planner, it was going to be quicker to come here to do it rather than trying to get it done through the Ukrainian consulate in San Francisco. Weird, huh?

We’ve been here just shy of two weeks and things have been going well. We’re staying with family friends a few kilometers outside of Lviv (on the western side of the county, not that far from the Polish border). In addition to paperwork, Viktoria has been visiting assorted doctors and such — things she hates to do in the American medical system, because the process is very different. I’m doing my job as normal, except with some odd hours, so I partially overlap with my colleagues’ hours back home. Our host has been most gracious and has been helping Viktoria get around (there’s a larger town just a kilometer or so away, so many things she’s been able to do there); plus, he’s lived in the area most of his life and has connections that have helped speed things along. With a bit of luck, we’ll be heading home in a couple weeks.

Despite being away from the main areas of fighting, the war is not forgotten here and is very much on the forefront of people’s minds. Last weekend (appropriately, Memorial Day weekend) we visited a cemetery in Lviv which now has a section for local residents killed in the war. Most every city, town and village has their own war cemetery; we passed several during an outing. It was starting to rain, so I didn’t even make it half-way through the rows in Lviv. Based on the graves per row, there are probably at least 1500 soldiers buried here alone. We saw some people standing or sitting near a loved one’s grave, but there were also a lot of visitors who would just walk the central lane, looking at the soldiers buried there. It’s the high cost of freedom, and I think they just need to see it up close.

We’ve listened to some sirens too, warning of missiles. There was actually a siren test happening at the little border train station when our host picked us up. Welcome to Ukraine indeed. There have been a couple other, including one last night. I don’t think there have been any actual missiles in the area, but my access to the news has a language barrier. It is possible that we heard a missile over-flight last week. It sounded very much like a jet to me, but there’s not really any air traffic these days and Viktoria says it was way too fast to have been a jet. (She was in Mariupol during Russia’s initial incursions back in 2014-2015, so it’s likely she learned the difference.) Despite this, we’re still in a reasonably safe part of the country.

So, we’ve been here for about two weeks, and it actually took us about three weeks to get here. (Kind of a vacation, but a much longer travel story for another time.) And hopefully we’ll be leaving in another two weeks. That’s a full seven weeks of travel, making it the longest trip I’ve ever been on and the longest amount of time I’ve been away from our house. I’m definitely looking forward to getting back. But that’s largely why I haven’t been able to update things of late. I’ll have to do some catch-up posts when I get home.

Technically, there’s also something with the site that I haven’t been able to address. The certificate that secures the site — necessary for the HTTPS in the address bar, as well as the little lock that shows you that your communication with the site is secure — will be expiring soon, and unfortunately I don’t have the right information to get it renewed from here. The stuff I need is either on my home computer or, because I’m trying to make security-type requests from a foreign country, I’m just not able to provide the appropriate verification needed. As a result, future visits to the site might get a warning from your browser that my site is not secure. It should still be accessible, but there might be some hoops you’d have to jump through. Don’t worry about doing that if you don’t want to; once I get home, I’ll get everything back to normal. And I promise I won’t post any urgent, breaking-news articles until then, so you won’t be missing out. Just pop your head in now and then; you’ll know when things are a-OK again.

Update: With a bit of persistence and patience (things take longer to arrive here it seems), I was able to update my site certificate. So, there shouldn’t be any warning messages or issues with HTTPS.

I haven’t posted for a while because, well, life. I recall that I’d been planning to post something in early December, but that’s when Hamas attacked Israel and that just really grabbed focus. Whatever I was going to post would have seemed petty in comparison to those events. And then the holidays came along, followed by other stuff, and really it only seems like now I’m able to find a spare moment for an update.

Despite not posting, I have been staying up on things, of course, and one of the best “quick take” things I read on a daily basis is the daily “Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment” produced by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). On their daily report (click here for the report for Feb. 9, 2024) they include some “Key Takeaways,” which provide a great recap of events; the full report then delves into each of those post a bit more. I know I’ve posted these one other time, but I thought it was time for a re-up.

Here are the takeaways for February 9th:

• The Russian online community noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin did not offer any new information in his interview with American media personality Tucker Carlson and simply repeated longstanding Kremlin talking points about Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine for American audiences.
• Russian Security Council Deputy Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev noted that Putin told the Western world in the most thorough and detailed way why Ukraine did not exist, does not exist, and will not exist.
• Delays in Western aid appear to be exacerbating Ukraine’s current artillery shortages and could impact Ukraine’s long-term war effort.
• Newly appointed Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi identified several of his goals as commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
• Ukrainian actors reportedly conducted a successful drone strike against two oil refineries in Krasnodar Krai on February 9.
• Ukrainian military officials reported that Russian forces are increasing their use of illegal chemical weapons in Ukraine, in an apparent violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), to which Russia is a signatory.
• Bloomberg reported on February 9 that Ukraine is considering economic reforms in order to secure funding from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the event that the US Congress continues to block crucial aid.
• Russian forces advanced near Kreminna, Bakhmut, and Avdiivka amid continued positional engagements along the frontline.
• Russian paramilitary organization Novorossiya Aid Coordination Center (KCPN) is training drone operators in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast near Krynky.
• Russian occupation authorities continue to prepare for the upcoming Russian presidential elections by creating the appearance of popular support for Russian Vladimir Putin in occupied areas of Ukraine.

Here’s an infographic that a few sites produce (this one from Euromaidan Press) of a daily tally of estimated Russian losses. These are numbers reported by the Ukrainian Army/Defence Department and as assumed to be on the high side. Other entities use different metrics to calculate losses, which are generally more “pessimistic” because they rely more on uniquely identifiable characteristics, which sometimes don’t exist. Reality is probably somewhere in-between, which I guess would be about 75% of the numbers shown here. (That is, if a loss of 100 is shown here, the reality is probably closer to 75.) Also, please note that personnel losses are both wounded and killed.

I was thinking that even if there’s not much to be reported (as I’ve noted before, I mostly focus on Mariupol), I could post the takeaways and the infographic every now and then. I know that not everyone follows the events in Ukraine as closely as I do, so maybe it would be a handy way to help keep up, especially when there’s not that much in local or national news these days.

I waited until after Thanksgiving to post this because it’s a hard thing to watch. Recently — last week — Frontline on PBS showed a film about, as the title explains, 20 days in Mariupol. It was taken right at the beginning of the invasion. It shows a lot of what was going in those initial days — the panic and fear, the uncertainty about was happening or going to happen, and a lot of destruction and pain.

It’s definitely something people should see, but it also the sort of thing that I can’t show to Viktoria. She’s slowly getting to a better emotional state — although she still frequent curses Putin and/or the Russians and wishes them dead — and this film would be a huge trigger for her. But everyone else should see it.

Here’s a link to the trailer, to give you a sense of what’s there: https://www.pbs.org/video/20-days-in-mariupol-trailer/. And here’s the link to the full presentation:
20 Days in Mariupol (https://www.pbs.org/video/20-days-in-mariupol-x62itb/)

Quite the jump from my previous post, “600 days,” right? But I’m noting a slightly different anniversary. We’ve just passed the 10th anniversary of the protests/demonstrations that took place in Maidan Nezalezhnosti (“Independence Square”) in Kyiv that could be considered the start of all this. The demonstrations never ended and became the catalyst of the “Euromaidan” revolution. That revolution lead to the ousting of then-President and Kremlin puppet Viktor Yanukovych, the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea, the Russian support of separatist proxies in Luhansk and Donetsk (during which time Mariupol was first attacked with rockets), and ultimately, the full-force invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

I was in Kyiv around the time all this started. I wasn’t there for the first few days of the protests — they started on the 21st, and I think I arrived the 24th or 25th — but I remember walking through and around the Maidan area in those following days. (I was staying in an apartment just down Khreshchatyk Street, a nice place that provided bath slippers with their logo embroidered on.) Even fairly late at night there would be people in some sort of assembly area making speeches to virtually no one. I walked passed busses with police in riot gear parked just down the side streets near the square. I recall that it was too bad those people had to just sit in the busses for so long in that cold weather.

There hasn’t really been anything to write about for a while. The war goes on, now passing 600 days. I remember thinking/hoping back in the early days that fighting would only last a handful of months, a peace treaty would be hammered out, and life in Ukraine could begin resuming some version of normalcy again. Instead, we’re starting to see the two year mark, with some pundits saying peace won’t be seen until late 2024 or sometime in 2025.

There continues to be slow progress by Ukraine in breaking through Russian fortifications in the south, and Ukraine continues to push back Russian attacks in the east. I won’t bore you with a lot of details; if you want to see some of those details, sites like the Institute for the Study of War produces daily reports and maps showing all the movements (like this).

I will note something from the last day that gives me hope. The other day, Ukraine used their newly-received ATACMS missiles to strike the airfield the Russians set up in Berdyansk, destroying nine helicopters, along with ground equipment and ammunition. I’ve been to Berdyansk twice; it was a place that Viktoria took us on one of our first dates. I’m looking forward to seeing it liberated almost as much as I’m looking forward to Mariupol’s liberation. This strike at a city well back from the front lines means that Ukraine is getting the tools it needs to really disrupt Russia’s war-making capabilities. (In general, Ukraine has made very productive use of all the arms and equipment they’ve been given; they just need more.)

(A picture of Berdyansk from my and Viktoria’s first trip there together. We had lunch at one of the cafes here.)

Just a quick follow-up to my last post: Rodion‘s summer camp is over and he has safely returned home. I’m not sure where the information about the camp being in Crimea had come from (it may have been a misunderstanding or miscommunication somewhere along the line), but he had actually gone to a place over/down by Krasnodar. Better, since it was away from the fighting, but also potentially worse, because it was in Russia proper as opposed to an occupied area. Also, since the trip and camp appear to have been sponsored by a Greek historical group (Mariupol has/had a strong Greek heritage), maybe Krasnodar was a more cost-effective choice.

Whatever the specifics, he’s gone and back now. It sounds like he enjoyed parts of it, but definitely not everything. Breakfasts were creamed wheat (remember Malt-O-Meal?), which he does not like at all. The “fun” was very regimented — he told Viktoria it was like being in North Korea. Like many things in Russia that aren’t Moscow or St. Petersburg, things were generally run-down and not always in working order; for example, the bus bringing him back home broke down four times on the way. He said nights were cold in the camp quarters. Still, he went with a friend and sent a couple videos where he seemed to be having some fun, so I don’t think it was all bad. But he’s back home now and getting ready for school. Given Russia’s penchant for abducting Ukrainian children (Russians stealing children to destroy next generation of Ukrainian defenders – UK ambassador (ukrinform.net)), I think things turned out as well as they could.

One more quick note: this active part of the Russia’s war against Ukraine has now be going on for 555 days. Russia’s overall actions against Ukraine have been going on for over 9 years — perhaps longer, if you count Russia’s efforts to undermine Ukrainian independence since their breakaway in 1991. I continue to hope that Ukraine’s incremental gains will start to snowball and finally push Russian forces out of their country completely.

Apparently, in the past week or so there’s been an uptick in the number of mentions in Russian of a negotiated settlement to the conflict. I don’t have an article handy that I can point to, but observers see this as perhaps tacit acknowledgement that Russia knows it has a losing hand and it trying to freeze things where they are now (i.e., keep what they’ve got and stop trying for more). For well over a year Ukraine’s position has been “leave the country and then we’ll talk,” so I doubt there’s any peace treaty coming soon. I generally agree with that position. It’s as if bank robbers broke into a bank, took hostages and started cleaning out the vault, only to be confronted by a substantial number of security guards. At that point, sure it’s in the best interests of the robbers to take what they’ve already gotten and leave, but they’re the only ones who get anything. Between the Russian robbers and Ukrainian security guards, I’m going to continue to side with the latter.

There’s really not much in the way of news from the family and friends still there, I’m sorry to say, but maybe that’s as best as can be hoped for. Viktoria does talk to Baba Katya on a fairly regular basis and we are able to send them money to help out, so that’s all good. Things are still largely awful there, and that’s not likely to change any time soon. There have been a couple little tidbits that have been bothering me, though.

In a recent call with Katya, Viktoria learned that Rodion was going to be going to summer camp in Crimea. Under normal circumstances, this would be a great adventure and something that everyone would be happy about. Unfortunately, Russia has been using children as props, weapons and shields since the start of the war, and since Crimea is under occupation, it’s probably not the best place for a Ukrainian child to be. Russia has been stealing children (Invaders take 135 more children from Donetsk region to Moscow (ukrinform.net)) as a way to undermine and destroy Ukraine; it’s a barbaric tactic as old as time and a recognized war crime (Russians stealing children to destroy next generation of Ukrainian defenders – UK ambassador (ukrinform.net)). I’ve recently seen headlines of children being taken to Russia under the guise of going to camp (or other things apparently — Russia plots to use Ukrainian children as human shield in Crimea – ombudsperson (ukrinform.net)), so hearing that Rodion would be going to camp has brought the worst possible outcome to mind. Not just for me, for Viktoria too. She urged Katya to cancel those summer camp plans and hopefully that’s what will happen.

But it’s not like kids have to travel far to be impacted negatively by Russia. Viktoria hasn’t talked to her grandson Artem all that much — mostly because it’s difficult in general, and the fact that Artem’s mother is something of a Russia booster doesn’t help — but their last conversation was rather alarming. (I think I might have mentioned this in an earlier post.) There aren’t (or weren’t, during the school season) many schools operating in Mariupol, but the one that are (or were) had a very Russian propaganda-heavy curriculum. Artem was questioning why Viktoria would live in the US, as it forces kindergarten children to have sex or undergo gender-reassignment surgery, and other such outlandish claims. This is the sort of stuff he’s been hearing, and for children at an age where critical thinking skills aren’t yet well-developed, such propaganda becomes their reality.

As worrisome and disturbing as that is, there’s something else that concerns me with Artem. His birthday is coming next month and he’ll be 15 (I think). That, in addition to being rather tall for his age, makes him look older than he is. With Russia losing badly on the battlefield, they are doing everything possible to increase their ranks. I’m concerned — and would not be surprised — if some recruitment/conscription drive through Mariupol saw Artem, assumed he was 18 or so, and threw him in the back of truck for military service. Given the indoctrination he’s been receiving, he might even go willingly (though I’m somewhat sure that wouldn’t be the case, but who can know). Viktoria is always very concerned about “her boys” in Mariupol, and I’m sure she would be quite devastated to learn that Artem was in the Russian army. Again, this is all just a concern that I have; I have no reason to think this is going to happen.

Even though Mariupol is not in the news every day like it was last year for a time, that doesn’t mean that things are happening there. Little of it is good, but if you can bear it, here’s a list of some of the recent news about Mariupol: Search (ukrinform.net). Ukrinform has been one of the better sources of information about the events in Ukraine since the start of the war. I’ve generally found that they have more news about Mariupol than other Ukrainian news sources.

Over the past year I’ve occasionally seen stories about people from Russia coming to Mariupol. Many of them were about workers being brought in to do something, and then getting stiffed by the local occupation authorities. A little schadenfreude from those stories, I have to say. But what really gets my goat are the stories about people trying to profit off of Mariupol’s misery. Things like people from Russia buying property in Mariupol because “it’s so cheap” (The Russians hunting for cheap flats in occupied Mariupol – BBC News). This bothers me no end, for multiple reasons. For one, it’s Russia (or the phony DPR) selling property that doesn’t belong to them; they are, at best, temporary occupiers with no claim to the land they’re on. For another, people doing this are actively supporting the destruction of Ukraine. Even if they were to say that, for them, it’s just a great real estate deal, that’s still supporting the war. This “great deal” only exists because thousands of people were killed. That’s probably not on a sales brochure. And really, what person of good conscience could even do that? I mean, if you were looking to buy a house and found out that someone had been murdered there, you’d probably think twice about making the purchase. How could someone want an apartment in a block that was firebombed by your own country, causing deaths of the hundreds of people that lived there? It’s a mentality that I don’t think I will ever understand (not that I really want to).

There are — fortunately? — two silver linings to this story. First, most of the property being purchased doesn’t physically exist; it’s proposed or planned construction that may not come about for a long time. I’m OK with people like that (who are willing to buy the murder flats) having their money taken from them. (I sure some of the money goes to support Russia’s war machine, but I’m sure a lot of it just disappears thanks to Russian corruption.) The second is that when Ukraine resumes control of Mariupol, any such property claims probably won’t be honored. Ukraine has records of who owned what (and I’m sure that many of the people who fled the city still have their deeds and other paperwork), and that ownership will definitely take precedence over any claims from Russian carpetbaggers. So lose-lose for them. (Sorry, more schadenfreude.)