Pavlo Kyrylenko, Ukraine’s governor of the Donetsk oblast made a statement the other day about the latest shelling of Bakhmut, and had a perfect summary of the war in Ukraine:

“The Russians call the war a ‘military operation’, but in reality it is an operation against civilians. Every now and then they fight where the military has never been. This is terrorist behavior and the attitude towards the enemy must be appropriate,” Kyrylenko said.

(For some general background about the fighting in and around Bakhmut, this is a pretty decent and recent article – ‘All hell broke loose’: weary soldiers tell of frontline holdout in Ukraine city.)

Amnesty International’s report this weekend about Russian’s using cluster munitions in Kharkiv would generally support Kyrylenko’s contention that this is a war against civilians, not the military – Amnesty International: Russia shelled Kharkiv with banned munitions.