A couple short videos of Mariupol. This first one is from the Christmas/New Year’s celebrations from last year:

And now a video of Mariupol taken earlier in December of this year:

If you are willing to go to Twitter, the second video comes from a thread that has some other interesting bits of content — https://twitter.com/kramarenkomari3/status/1602242316693118978

Just the preview images of the two videos show the transformation Mariupol has suffered in the past year.

Well, not quite yet, but that milestone is only a day or two away as I write this. And it will be a full year in short order. That’s an anniversary that shouldn’t have to exist.

I still stay up on news about the war everyday, and I tuck away notes that I always plan to get posted, but just can’t find the time for. Hopefully, with a couple days off from work in the coming weeks, I’ll be able to get re-caught up on all the stuff I’ve meant to post (assuming it’s still relevant — things change pretty quickly).

One of the blog authors I follow has recently taken to posting a summary of events, which is really pretty decent; I’ll post today’s version below. It’s largely taken from The Guardian’s website, with a few extra items that the author finds somewhere. It recaps things reasonably well. Most of the person’s posts are actually just maps and really long Twitter threads from the Institute for the Study of War. Those guys put out detailed analyses of all the military interactions and have things broken down by region and sub-region — Eastern Ukraine: (Eastern Kharkiv Oblast-Western Luhansk Oblast); Russian Subordinate Main Effort—Donetsk Oblast; Supporting Effort—Southern Axis; etc. I won’t subject you to that, and usually I skim that stuff anyway. There generally aren’t big changes day to day, and winter is putting an added damper on most of the fighting (except for the missiles).

In any case, here’s one of those summaries; I’ve added links where possible, but I’m not vouching for any of the sourcing. The bulk of the list can be seen at The Guardian (Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 298 of the invasion); below are the items I didn’t see there. (There are duplicates, and given the British spelling, I suspect that some of the items came from previous versions of The Guardian’s list.)

• Power has been restored to nearly 6 million Ukrainians in the last 24 hours following a slew of Russian missile strikes against the country’s various infrastructure including its electricity generating systems. “Repair work continues without a break after yesterday’s terrorist attack,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address on Saturday.
• Russia has claimed that the mass strikes it launched on Friday against Ukraine which led to national power and water outages were part of its prevention of foreign weapons’ delivery to Ukraine. On Friday, “military command systems, the military-industrial complex and their supporting energy facilities of Ukraine were hit with a mass strike with high-precision weapons,” Russia’s defence ministry said in its daily briefing.
• The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, has announced that 75% of households in Kyiv had had their heat restored. In a Telegram post on Saturday, Klitschko wrote, “75% of the capital’s residents already have heat supply. Heating engineers continue working for the second day in order to stabilize the situation with heat supply in Kyiv.”
• Russia has denounced a decision by Moldova to temporarily ban six television channels as “political censorship”. Moldova accused the channels of airing “incorrect information” about the country and Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. The channels are closely tied to the politician and businessman Ilan Shor, who fled the country in 2019 after the election of the pro-western president, Maia Sandu.
• Rescuers have recovered the body of a one-and-a-half-year-old boy from the rubble of Friday’s Russian strike on a three-storey residential building in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih in Dnipro region, the region’s governor, Valentyn Reznichenko, said. In total, four people were killed in the attack on Kryvyi Rih, Reznichenko said. 13 others were injured by the attack, including four children.
• Electricity has been restored in Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, and the region, its governor said, a day after fresh Russian attacks pitched multiple cities into darkness, cutting water and heat and forcing people to endure freezing cold. The mayor of Kyiv said the city’s metro system was back in service and that all residents had been reconnected to water supply a day after the latest wave of Russian airstrikes on critical infrastructure.
• Russia’s defence ministry said its “high-precision” weapons hit parts of Ukraine’s military-industrial complex and energy and military administrative facilities on Friday. Ukrainian facilities producing weapons, military equipment and ammunition had been disabled, it added. Ukraine’s western allies have said the suffering inflicted by Russian airstrikes on freezing civilians constitutes war crimes, with the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, calling the bombings “barbaric”.
• The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said Russia still had enough missiles for several more massive strikes and he again urged western allies to supply Kyiv with more and better air defence systems. “Whatever the rocket worshippers from Moscow are counting on, it still won’t change the balance of power in this war,” he said in Friday’s evening address.
• Air raid sirens were reported across Ukraine, including the capital Kyiv, on Saturday. “Please go to the shelters!” Kyiv city’s military administration said on Telegram. Explosions were heard in the southern city of Odesa on Saturday morning, Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesperson for the Odesa regional military administration, said.
• A 36-year-old man was killed inside his car after Russian forces shelled the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson on Saturday morning, the regional governor, Yaroslav Yanushevych, said. A 70-year-old woman was also injured after Russian troops struck a western district of the city with artillery and multiple rocket launchers, Yanushevych wrote on Telegram.
• A Ukrainian military commander has said Russia may try to invade from the north, potentially around the anniversary of when Vladimir Putin first ordered his troops to invade Ukraine. In an interview with Sky News, Maj Gen Andrii Kovalchuk warned the fiercest fighting may yet come and appeared particularly focused on the possibility of Russian troops invading via Belarus on Ukraine’s northern border, in order to target the capital.
• Russia’s campaign of strikes against Ukrainian critical infrastructure has largely consisted of air- and maritime-launched cruise missiles, but has almost certainly also included Iranian-provided drones, according to the UK’s Ministry of Defence. In its latest intelligence update, the ministry also said Russia was likely concerns about the “vulnerability” of Crimea.
• The Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak has said it is “unrealistic” to expect Kyiv to come to an agreement with Russia to end the war. “War must end only with its defeat,” Podolyak wrote on Twitter, and said Ukraine would act with “required proportions of artillery, armored vehicles, drones and long-range missiles”.
• Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, said the latest round of EU sanctions against Moscow will just lead to an “exacerbation” of problems within the bloc. EU leaders agreed on Thursday to provide €18bn to Ukraine as well as the ninth package of sanctions aimed at ramping up pressure on Russia for its war in Ukraine. The latest measures blacklist nearly 200 more people and bar investment in Russia’s mining industry, among other steps.

As I’ve noted here already, Viktoria’s sister Inna was killed during the shelling of Mariupol. That happened at the end of March, though it wasn’t know definitely until the end of July. With no family around to identify the body — and with the potential identification she did have stolen and sold by her “boyfriend” — it was largely assumed that she was buried in one of the many mass graves that had appeared in and around Mariupol and the surrounding towns.

It seemed like that was going to be about as much as we could know until such time as Ukraine regained control of the region and began unpacking the devastation and cover-up that Russia and their proxies had inflicted on the city and its population. But Baba Katya apparently didn’t feel like waiting for some ephemeral time in the future for that to happen, and she has been working to all the information she possibly could now. It seems to have paid off, in that we have more details.

I don’t know everything she did or how she managed to find things out, but Katya has learned that Inna’s body was buried in one of the mass graves in Manhush (Mangush, in Russian), a small town about 8 miles from Mariupol. The town was in the news during the earlier parts of the war, as a likely dumping ground for the casualties from Mariupol (New mass grave points to war crimes in Mariupol, Ukrainian officials say – The Washington Post). Katya was able to get the marker number to the grave, and a little over a week ago, went over and found the specific spot. (She took a picture, but I don’t have it, and probably wouldn’t post it here anyway.)

Obviously, none of this is great news. We’re dealing in degrees of badness, where ‘knowing’ is somewhat better than ‘not knowing.’ It set of a new wave of grieving in our household, but it has also given Viktoria a reason for returning to Mariupol — when it’s safe. It’s her goal to exhume Inna’s body from where it now lies and give it a proper burial in Mariupol with other members of her family. We don’t know when that will be, but at least we have the information so it can happen.

I’m sure this knowledge is small comfort, but in the midst of this great tragedy, any comfort is better than none at all.

Oh, something I neglected to mention. According to “official documentation,” Inna wasn’t killed by Russian aggression. No, nothing like that. Heart issue. Not random shelling of people’s houses and homes. A bad ticker.

Utter bullshit. It’s just an example of the petty meanness of the Russian and DNR regime. It’s not their fault that they attacked Ukraine. Nazis! Had to fight the Nazis! It’s not their fault that this woman died, surrounded in rubble caused by their artillery. She had a bad heart. Just her time.

This is why my posts sometimes seem angry. It’s this petty, BS vindictiveness that grinds my gears.

(I’m sorry for begin tardy with this post. Most of it was written a couple weeks ago, so you’ve likely heard the news already from other sources.)

I wrote about Kherson a couple weeks ago, and noted how well the Ukrainian army had been performing in the area. As you’ve probably heard — since it’s been on the national news and, here at least, some local broadcasts — the Ukrainian army has taken control of the city. Free Ukrainians again take to streets in Kherson – ukrinform.net. Russia pretty much surrendered the city after Ukraine had targeted a lot of their ammunition depots and supply lines, making a defense in the city practically impossible.

There’s still a lot more territory for Ukraine to reclaim, but this was a major victory and a significant hitch to the stories that Russia has been feeding to their home audience.

Unfortunately, this also means that now Kherson is subject to the missiles and shelling that other parts of the country have seen for months. Russian forces attack settlements in Kherson region with Grad MLRS, rockets, artillery – ukrinform.net Because Kherson was captured early in the war, and because collaborators in key positions basically just handed things over to the Russians, the city didn’t experience the sort of destructive siege that many other locations have seen, mostly notably Mariupol. But now that Russia has pulled back, they’ve positioned artillery closer to Crimea but still within range of Kherson.

The shelling and missiles are not just hitting Kherson. There have been more rockets fired at Ukraine in the past week or two than have been seen since the start of the war. President Zelensky: Russia is told about peace, it responds with missiles – ukrinform.net Many of the attacks have been targeting the utility infrastructure of Ukraine, taking out electricity, heat, water and communications — the same play that did on Mariupol, just much, much broader. The general consensus of reporters and pundits is that Russia is attempting to freeze the population of Ukraine as winter kicks off, so that they will rise up against the leadership and force them into negotiations with Russia.

So far, it seems not to be working. Kyiv under candlelight as defiance persists – thesouthafrican.com I won’t say that people have become used to being in the dark and cold, but it really seems that people understand what’s happening and why, and they seem willing to do their best to endure.

Two things strike me about this strategy from Russia. First, they might have overplayed their hand. While targeting of civilian infrastructure for military gains is allowed under the rules of warfare (yes, I know “rules of warefare” is an oxymoron), they’ve done it to such a degree and over such a wide area — pretty much the entire country — that it’s moved from “military objective” to “civilian terrorizing.” In other words, they’ve overdone it and now it could be considered a war crime. As stated by the UN high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, “Millions are being plunged into extreme hardship and appalling conditions of life by these strikes. Taken as a whole, this raises serious problems under international humanitarian law, which requires a concrete and direct military advantage for each object attacked.” Much of Ukraine still without power, heat and water after missile attacks – The Guardian

The other thing, is that these are targeted missile strikes. Targeted, meaning that the missiles are landing where Russia intends for them to land. What about the strikes on hospitals and schools? Are then supposed to believe that Russia can accurately target a power substation, but it’s just an unfortunate mechanical failure when the missile hits a maternity hospital? At least six die in Ukraine as dozens of missiles target civilian infrastructure – The Guardian I saw a statistic some time ago stating that over 75% (might have said closer to 80%) of Russia’s missiles hit non-military targets, and that was before their stepped up missile attacks following the recapture of Kherson. They can’t have it both ways — they are either targeting or they’re not. If the latter, then Russia is too inept to have some dangerous weapons at their disposal. But if it’s the former — which seems to be what their sustained attacks on the Ukrainian electrical grid would suggest — then they’ve been targeting civilians from the very start.

It was probably a coincidence, but two sources I follow had new postings in the past couple days about the mass graves in and around Mariupol. I know it’s not a fun topic to dwell on, but it’s something that comes up (in some form or another) fairly frequently in our house.

The first thing is this post from one of the Mariupol channels I follow. New satellite images has shown that the mass graves in and around Mariupol just continue to grow. I suppose that’s not a surprise, given than an estimated 20,000 people were killed there earlier in the year.

Here’s the text that accompanied the image: “*💔Біля Маріуполя з’явилось понад 1 500 нових могил.* Супутники Maxar сфотографував масові поховання в Старому Криму, Мангуші та Виноградному, що постійно збільшуються.” (Translation from Google: “*💔Bile of Mariupol appeared over 1,500 new graves.* The Maxar satellites photographed the masses in Stary Krym, Mangush and Vinogradny, which are constantly growing.”) Stary Krym is a suburb northeast of the city; Mangush and Vinogradny are communities a bit further away. I’m not sure which location the image shows.

Part of the issue with the mass graves (other than the mere fact that they exist) is laid out in a BBC article from probably the same day: The agony of not knowing, as Mariupol mass burial sites grow – BBC. This is exactly the situation we’re in with Viktoria’s sister Inna. Because of the nature and timing of her death, she’s probably one of the many unidentified bodies that has been laid in one of these mass graves. I know that Rodion gave a blood sample for possible DNA matching, but who knows what sort of records might exist that could be matched to. I’m sure the Russians and DNR occupiers aren’t that concerned with identification; they just want things cleaned up for prettier pictures to show on the Russian newscasts. It’s quite likely that the “not knowing” will be a permanent thing for a lot of people, including Viktoria.

That was going to be the end of this post, but we just got some bad and unfortunately related news. Baba Katya remains our eyes and ears over there, and she went out to the cemetery where Viktoria’s mother, grandmother and a few other family members are buried. (As a reminder, Viktoria’s mom passed away in January, just before the start of the war. Viktoria wasn’t there for her burial and, of course, hasn’t been there since.) Katya tells us that the cemetery is all but destroyed, by artillery and tank movements. We don’t have pictures — that would probably make things worse — but I’m sure you can imagine what a bunch of tanks running roughshod over a cemetery would leave in their wake.

I’ve said previously that it’s like the events of this year have been engineered to specifically hurt Viktoria, and this is just another to prove my point. Viktoria had been hoping that, in perhaps a couple years, she could go to Mariupol to see the damage and recovery, and to finally visit her mother’s grave. This after losing her mother, her mother’s apartment to fire, her son’s apartment to fire, all their family documents and photographs and her sister. Now, it would seem that visiting her mother’s gravesite will never be possible. It’s like she’s lost her mother all over again.

There is always a lot going on in Ukraine, and while I tend to read a lot of it, not a whole lot filters down to this blog. I’ve mentioned it before: I’m mostly focused on the people of Mariupol and places I’ve visited and know (to some degree). Unfortunately, it remains under Russian occupation, and since Mariupol is one of the closer locations to the real Russian border, it will likely be one of the last places to be liberated. Which means there likely will continue to be a dearth of news from that corner of the war.

In other areas, as you may have read or seen on the news, things are going rather well for the Ukrainians. War is never good, but the situation for the people around Kherson is definitely becoming more good. Or at least less bad, comparatively speaking. And I do kind of have a connection to the city. When I bought my house, I definitely didn’t know that I would eventually marry a woman from Ukraine. Had I known, I might have planned ahead and picked a house in one of the more “Slavic” areas. There is a fairly large Slavic population in the area, and Russian is typically in the top 5 of most spoken languages (after English) by county throughout the state. My point being, I didn’t buy a house in an area with a Russian- or Ukrainian-speaking population.

By sheer happenstance, the neighbor on the other side of my back fence also married a woman from Ukraine, from Kherson. And her mother had come to the US and was living with the couple. And that mother (Tanya) has become one of Viktoria’s closest friends. (Viktoria was in our backyard one Spring day and was surprised to hear Russian coming from other the fence. She poked her head over, said hello, and that was the start of a really good friendship.) So we do have that connection to Kherson, but even without that, I would be rooting for the people of Kherson.

Kherson is one of the larger cities along the Black Sea, but they aren’t right on the coast; they’re inland a bit, along the Dnipro River, just as it gets to the Black Sea (see map). It’s between Mariupol and Odessa, more to the Odessa side, and just northwest of the Crimean Peninsula, which is currently occupied by Russia. Being so close to a Russian-held area, it was the first large city captured in the current invasion, and it fell without the large-scale destruction seen elsewhere because, unfortunately, there were collaborators in sufficient numbers to turn the city over to the invaders. While the people of Kherson have fared better in this war than the people of Mariupol, a “comfortable prison” is still a prison.

The Ukrainian army has making steady progress on retaking the city over the past weeks, and they appear to be near to a major breakthrough. The Russians seem to know this too, since they’ve been evacuating Russian officials who had moved into the city. They’ve also “evacuating” groups of Ukrainians too because apparently the forced relocation of a native population is all the rage (In Kherson, invaders searching for locals who refuse to ‘evacuate’ – ukrinform.net). And since they’re leaving, the Russians are looting the city — something they wouldn’t be doing if they thought they’d be there for the long-term (Russian occupying forces loot Kherson art museum – Kyiv Independent). As was seen when Russia was pushed out of Northern Ukraine, Russian soldiers’ fingers get very sticky (Now Russia ‘liberates’… a WASHING MACHINE: Putin’s men are spotted stealing kitchen appliance from Ukrainian home – Daily Mail).

This all seems pretty good, but it still won’t be a cake-walk for the Ukrainian forces. Defensive lines are probably set up throughout the city, and a handful of soldiers with nothing to lose — which could be a description of the ill-trained conscripts that Russia has been stuffing into Kherson (Russia struggling to train newly mobilized troops – ukrinform.net) — could make things difficult for Ukraine (Russians seek to lure Ukraine forces into urban battles – ukrinform.net). Nevertheless, it does look like Ukraine is close to liberating Kherson, which would not only be a major military gain, but a huge symbolic victory against Russia.

And I know a few people who would be very, very happy to see that happen.

The weekend saw a pretty awesome event from Ukraine in the Russian war against them: they were able to significantly damage a major symbol of Russia’s aggression, the Kerch Bridge. This bridge was built after Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, the start of their land grab and illegal war with Ukraine. After taking Crimea, they put a bridge (and started restricting access and harassing naval traffic to the Azov Sea) so they could more easily move people and materiel from Russia into Ukraine.

As many commentators noted, there were two shining examples of Russian dominance in the Crimea area: their Black Sea flagship Moskva (part of the fleet stationed in Crimea) and the Kerch Bridge (Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense after fire on Crimea bridge: What’s next in line, Russians? – ukrinform.net; Crimean bridge: Excitement and fear in Ukraine after bridge blast – BBC). The Moskva was sunk back in April (wikipedia), and was a huge blow to Russia. Their pundits might be able to explain the rout their army experienced in Kyiv, but for puny Ukraine to sink their prized missile cruiser? Unthinkable! The state media was aghast at such a brazen “act of war” (See reaction on Russian state TV after major ship sunk – youtube.com).

The attack on the Kerch Bridge, however it was done, was definitely a masterful action by Ukraine. Regardless of how exactly it was accomplished, it caused a major disruption to Russia’s war efforts. Video shows that there was very little traffic on the bridge at the time, so I think it was timed to minimize potential civilian casualties. This attack was also loudly decried on Russian state television, with Putin himself calling it an act of terrorism (Putin calls Kerch Bridge attack “a terrorist act” by Kyiv – AP News; Ukraine war: Russian hawks celebrate deadly response to Crimea setback – BBC).

So how did Russia choose to respond to this action during a time of war? By showing that nothing Ukraine could possibly do would ever come close to the terrorism Russian can do (and has been doing for the past eight months). Russia launched nearly 90 guided missiles all across Ukraine, hitting dozens of civilian targets, doing so at rush hour when maximum casualty rates could be gained (Russian missile attacks reported all over Ukraine – ukrinform.net).

Russia’s claims that Ukraine targeted “civilian infrastructure” are only partially true. While bridges are indeed largely civilian infrastructure, the Geneva Conventions note the role that bridges have in military operations during times of war, which makes them legitimate targets (Ukraine Update: Tankies hyperventilate over Kerch bridge strike – DailyKos). Russia, on the other hand, seems to only target civilian infrastructure; schools, hospitals, apartment buildings, shopping centers do not have military value — only “terror” value.

Despite the obvious differences in targeting by Ukraine and Russia — where the former is fighting a war and the latter is sponsoring terrorism — Russia continues to call Ukrainian actions “acts of war,” completely oblivious to the irony.

October 11, 2022: A couple extra links to the point I was trying to make:

• Russia launches biggest air strikes since start of Ukraine war – Reuters
• Ukraine update: Terrorist Putin launches mass strikes against civilian targets in another tantrum – DailyKos

As I’ve noted in a couple other places in the past, there really haven’t been any significant changes to the status of family and friends. I doubt there will be much changing until the war is largely over, especially in the places we’ve been watching the most — Mariupol, Volnovakha, Kherson and other areas with people we know or have visited. But there’s been little changes here and there, so I might as well get everyone caught up.

Katya 2 & Vanya – Well, unfortunately, these two aren’t really in our orbit anymore, owing to the fact that Katya and Zhenya have broken up. They’d actually broken up a little while before the invasion in February, but seemed to have a reconciliation just before everything started. However, it seems the changes brought about by the war just wasn’t conducive to keeping them together; I’m sure the distances and stresses of war played a big role. Although we had been helping Katya & Vanya with their application (and approval) for the Canadian Ukrainian refugee program, it seems Katya really came to like living in Vienna (or at least, hasn’t felt like leaving Europe). So it appears that she won’t be going to Canada (I think her approval may have expired at this point). Since one of Viktoria’s oldest friends lives in Vienna (and had been helping Katya and others when they arrived in the city), we might still get news about how they’re doing, but I think this might be the last update for a while.

Baba Katya & Rodion – Still in the same place outside Mariupol, and while things are difficult, they seem to be getting by. Katya works weekends in the local bazaar/flea market and gets a bit of money that way. Rodion is in school, which had been virtual for the first month or so, but I guess enough repairs have been done to the local school for kids to attend in-person. And that’s about it, which is perhaps the best that can be hoped for. We did find out that we can transfer money to Katya, so we can help them out for a while longer. (Who knows what the winter months will bring?)

Artem & Katya 1 – We haven’t really heard anything more from this branch of the family. Artem had a birthday recently and we were able to send him some money (via Baba Katya). When she went over to their house to deliver it, he wasn’t in. But according to his mother, he and they are doing OK. School, of course. Hopefully he’s keeping his head down; he’s 14 now and tall-ish, which might make him look older. With the war going badly for Russia and mobilization being forced on the occupied area (and basically everywhere in Russia that isn’t Moscow or St. Petersburg), it’s not hard to imagine Artem getting press-ganged. Rather than end of that sour note, I will mention that now that Baba Katya and Katya 1 have connected (really, they aren’t that far from one another), hopefully we’ll get better and more regular information about how things are going.

That’s all for the moment. Events in Ukraine have been changing at a furious pace — generally in Ukraine’s favor — and I’ve probably collected enough snippets for another “catching up” post, which I’ll try to get to soon.

To utterly no one’s surprise, Russia is claiming overwhelming support for the referendums they held in those parts of Ukraine occupied by their armed forces (Ukraine war: Russia claims win in occupied Ukraine ‘sham’ referendums – BBC). 97 and 98 percent support! Because that’s how popular the idea of subjugation by Russia really is.

Of course, saying that there were “irregularities” in the voting is the nicest way of putting it. Voting at gunpoint is decidedly more accurate (Ukraine ‘referendums’: Soldiers go door-to-door for votes in polls – BBC). Although people were theoretically free to vote however they felt like, the truth is that if someone comes pounding on your door, accompanied by armed soldiers (and, reportedly, threaten you with conscription if you don’t vote the “right” way), there’s absolutely no way it will be a honest depiction of a person’s or groups attitudes.

The actual numbers will never be known and are utterly meaningless anyway. Russia is just making up whatever numbers they want, because who is there to offer a contrary, factual counter? They’ve got all the ballots — who cares if they’re blank? You can always fill them in later.

There’s a saying (typically in business, in my experience) that it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. It’s a way to justify action without the tedium of going through a committee, especially when action is needed quickly. That’s kind of what I see happening here. Though there was no “need” for Russia to invade Ukraine and loot everything, under the purported guise of “protecting” a Russian-speaking populace. Now they’re just trying to throw a veneer of legitimacy on their actions by “proving” that this is what the people wanted.

I find it beyond belief that the people of Mariupol would have provided any sort of “justification” for the Russian army destroying 90% of their city, driving off or killing 80% of the population, and failing for months to provide basic human needs. I’m sure that 98% of a subjugated population could be forced to “vote” against their best interests. But there’s nothing legitimate about it.

And now, because the outcomes were predetermined, it’s time to put all those willing/forced people to work supporting the very army that took everything from them. They voted to be part of Russia, right? This is what happens:

And just so they won’t have those images going international of thousands of people trying to flee Putin’s grand plan of “only” mobilizing 300,000 “reservists,” it’s best to just shut down the city.

If people from Mariupol do end up in the Russian Army, they can do what the “volunteer” prisoners from Russia are doing: surrender to the first Ukrainians they encounter, because the conditions in Ukraine — even as a POW — are better than in Russia. For the conscripted Mariupol citizens, it may be the way of escape from the hell of the past eight months.

Meanwhile, a reminder of what it means to “fight” in the Russian army:

A church school, an outbuilding and a shop were on fire. There were no military facilities there. Five people are hospitalized, – the deputy head of the President’s Office of Ukraine Kyrylo Tymoshenko reports.

A “mighty army,” so long as it doesn’t actually face any soldiers or real combat.