If you watch or read any news source at all, you have no doubt seen at least one story about today (February 24) being the one-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine. If that’s what you’re hearing, it’s wrong and sloppy reporting. The war in Ukraine actually started nine years ago, in 2014. But this is still a tragic anniversary of the war — the one-year anniversary of the primary (or current?) invasion of Russian forces into Ukraine.
It hasn’t been a good year for anyone involved in the war, clearly, and things aren’t going to end anytime soon. We can only hope and pray that a positive resolution comes soon.
Something interesting from the past week — and perhaps a sign that Ukraine will soon be upping their efforts to retake occupied territory: some unknown explosions were reported in Mariupol. Not just random explosions, like a faulty gas whatever blowing up in the winter. No, these were deliberate hits on Russian military infrastructure. The Russians scrambled some jets and were whizzing around the city for a couple hours, but didn’t find anything.
There has been some speculation about what might have done this. Viktoria (and whatever sources she reads or listens to) says it was HIMAR missile strikes. That’s not impossible, but it seems unlikely. Another theory I saw was that these were drones, some of those “loitering” drones that can do kamikaze attacks. This seems more likely. One writer I follow suggested it could have been some non-HIMAR missiles; it would have been at the extreme end of its range (if placed right up at the line of contact between the forces), but Ukraine might be willing to put a lesser missile battery closer to the front lines.
What makes this extraordinary is that Mariupol is some 80km from the front lines. That far back means it’s not going to be liberated any time soon. But if Ukraine is already able to make targeted strikes in the area, that’s a really positive and hopeful sign of what is to come.
It comes with some concern our part, though. One of the strikes was already near the district where Artem’s family lives. There are still people, including family and friends, in Mariupol and the surrounding area, and neither Viktoria nor I are anxious to see the city become a siege-point again this year. The city suffered a lot when and since it was captured; it would be awful if went through similar anguish being recaptured.
(I don’t expect most people would have heard the Mariupol news; I’ll try to find some articles about it to link to.) Here’s a bit of what I was talking about. It’s not sustained enough to mark the effort to reclaim Mariupol, but it’s a start. Maybe.
- Russian ammo depot destroyed in Mariupol at night (ukrinform.net)
- Three explosions recorded in Mariupol. Russian military personnel hit (ukrinform.net)
- Explosions in large enemy personnel cluster near Mariupol reported (ukrinform.net)
A recap of what’s happened in Ukraine seems appropriate, and this one, I think, is pretty good: Slava Ukraini: A year in disaster, a year in heartbreak, a year in triumph, a year in Ukraine It not only gives a run-down of the more notable events from the past year, it starts its narrative a little before that, so you can see what life in Ukraine was like before the Russians came.