Category Archives: Ukraine 2024

Site update

Ukraine 2024

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.

2 years ago

Ukraine 2024

This is not a post about the start of the (current) invasion of Ukraine. That milestone was hit over a month ago, on February 24th. This past week, two years ago, saw a couple more personal events — both of which were documented here, but it’s good not to forget.

The first is kind of a happy memory, although “happy” is somewhat relative. On March 22, 2022, Katya 2 and Vanya were able to get out of Mariupol and begin the journey (and process) that would eventually bring them to Vienna. It was nearly a full month after the attack and siege of Mariupol had begun, with the two of them living in the basement of their apartment building, sheltering with maybe a hundred other residents, usually in the cold and dark. Limited resources of any kind, especially after the Russians cut off power, water, internet service and blocked humanitarian shipments.

After a month of surviving such destitute conditions, they and a lot other people had had enough and figured that whatever might be waiting for them outside of Mariupol couldn’t be any worse. So Katya gathered up what she could — including, fortunately, some key documents and their family cat — and began walking west out of Mariupol. If I recall, they traveled about 12 miles on foot before getting to a local village where they were able to get some food and water, and connect with volunteers who could take them past the checkpoints and into Ukrainian-controlled territory. From there they were able to make their way to the border and eventually to Vienna, where a friend of Viktoria’s was able to offer some assistance (as well as the generosity of the Austrian government and people).

Since Katya and Zhenya broke up (distance and war would be trying on any relationship), I haven’t had contact with them, and not much news filters my way. But from the snippets I’ve heard, Katya and Vanya are still in Vienna and it sounds like they are managing quite well. I wish them continued success and, hopefully, happiness going forward.

Unfortunately the other event from two years ago is more somber. Although the date isn’t completely established, it is generally thought that March 24, 2022 is the date that Viktoria’s sister Inna was killed by Russian shelling. This happened near the basement entrance where Katya 2 and Vanya had been staying. Inna came and went frequently during the siege, alternating time between the family apartment block and the apartment block of her boyfriend. The date of her death is somewhat imprecise since, during that time, the removal of the dead didn’t always happen expediently.

Adding to the confusion was the fact that there was little way to contact or track her. Viktoria did try to get in touch with her, and at one point it looked like her cell was working. (Often, if one could get out of the city proper, it was possible to get a wifi connection from an outlying house or village.) However, no communication attempts got a response and after about a week or so, the cell phone no longer appeared to be active.

Viktoria also monitored online Russian/DNR sites where people were able to get some food assistance in return for providing name and/or passport information. There was a point around the time that Inna’s cell phone was working when Viktoria also found her name on one of the sites of people receiving aid. All this happened after March 24th; Viktoria was heartened by Katya and Vanya’s escape and was hoping the same could/would happen with Inna.

As it turned out, though, Inna’s “boyfriend” had sold her phone and passport (for drugs or alcohol, I’m guessing, based on what I’d previously heard about that person), so it was someone else activating the phone and using Inna’s identification to get food. The phrase “adding insult to injury” definitely applies here.

After the siege was over and the occupation of Mariupol began, Baba Katya was able to track down information about Inna, including where her body had been buried. That information included the approximate estimated date of death, which is how we have the date of March 24th. (The Russians, like the Nazis in WWII, seem to like keeping records.) Even if the 24th is not exactly the right date, we can be fairly sure that Inna was killed around this time, two years ago.

Inna’s gravesite in Manhush (Mangush in Russian), a town to the west of Mariupol where a number of mass graves were created.
Baba Katya arranged for the site dressing and cross.

Mariupol Video

Ukraine 2024

I’d posted about “20 Days in Mariupol” last year, which is an award-winning documentary about the assault on Mariupol. Human Rights Watch has their own video out, which to me looks like a summary of the investigation that they’d done about Mariupol, in conjunction with a couple other organizations I hadn’t heard of. Some overlap of content, of course, but presented in a fairly concise and more “news program” type approach.

It’s only about 22 minutes long, so not as much of a time commitment as “20 Days” is. Some graphic content, as you would expect from eye witness accounts and video.

I did a little additional looking and this appears to be the main page for their reporting, from which the above video became a part/summary:
https://www.hrw.org/feature/russia-ukraine-war-mariupol
The page has some nice images of Mariupol before the war. Makes what happened all the worse.

Headlines

Ukraine 2024

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.