My apologies for not posting lately; it’s been busy in real life and, as I’ve noted before, I focus primarily on the stuff happening in and around Mariupol (Viktoria’s home town), and there’s just not much to say from there. However, there’s been some broader news of late that really warrants some attention.
The post title isn’t really a new development. Ukraine has been fighting back since the very beginning and has been doing pretty well despite the overwhelming numbers of everything that’s been thrown at them by Russia. Recently, though, Ukraine has started taking the fight to Russia instead of just being on the defensive. Over the past year, Ukraine has been getting weapons and training from a variety of countries, and has largely been saving that up and building their forces. For the past couple weeks, a part of that force has been pushing southward and making slow but steady progress.
One of the more interesting things is that Ukraine chose one of the more heavily fortified and entrenched areas of Russian troops to make their first push. They definitely could have picked “easier” points and gone at the Russians with greater force than they’ve shown. I’m sure there are military tactics and greater strategies at play here; I have no experience in those areas and wouldn’t even try to be an “armchair quarterback” for what’s going on. But I think it’s fair to say that only using 10% of your available forces against the densest part of your enemies defenses and still making progress is, overall, a very promising sign of what is likely yet to come.
“Fighting back” could also be pithy description for the past 24 hours in Russia. This is something that probably rose to the level of “local newscast reporting” for most places in the US, so I won’t go into details. (Plus there’s just way too much background that would need to be covered.) But there was a little semi-coup staged against Putin and/or the Ministry of Defense (it depends on who is doing the reporting) wherein the leader of a private military group fighting in Ukraine says he was attacked by Russian regular forces, so he marched a bunch of his forces back into Russia, taking over parts of a couple cities and saying he was heading to Moscow to free the Russian people from something. It was all very dramatic but didn’t amount to much of anything. The dictator from Belarus (one of Putin’s puppets) is said to have brokered a deal to allow the military group leader to hang out in Belarus, his troops to return to Ukraine and be merged into the regular army and everyone just kind of pretend that nothing happened and Putin is still a strong leader. Who knows if that’s the real story and what’s going to happen from here. But it did make for an exciting few hours.
Back to the Ukrainian offense and how it might pertain to Mariupol. As I noted, Ukraine is pushing southward, heading toward Melitopol (see map) and the Azov Sea. If Ukraine can make it to the Azov, they will have effectively cut the Russian forces in half, cut off Crimea from direct land access from Russia (something they had wanted for years), and brought Ukrainian forces to within a couple hours of Berdyansk and Mariupol. That would be a huge gain if it can be done. And it would be a big step toward freeing Mariupol from Russian occupation.
If all that does happen, I would really hope that Russia behaves like they did last year when Ukraine broke through the lines around Kharkiv, to the north, and reclaimed hundreds of square miles that Russian forces had control over. At that time, the Russians just ran away and didn’t really put up any significant resistance. That was good, in that it spared Kharkiv from becoming a battleground (again) and suffering more damage and death like what seen during it’s initial capture. Mariupol suffered months of siege before the Russians occupied it, and it bombed and shelled repeated throughout that time. If the Russian choose to make a stand in Mariupol, the city and those Ukrainians still living there would be subject to some of the same conditions as before. I really hope that doesn’t happen.
I would be remiss not to mention the events around Kherson, even though they don’t directly pertain to Mariupol. The big hydroelectric dam north of the city was destroy, and most credible reports indicate it was done by munitions planted in the dam infrastructure by the Russia force occupying the dam. This is another story that probably made most people’s news. It has been a catastrophic event on many front. The loss of the electricity generated by the dam has impacted not only the people in the surrounding areas, but the nuclear plant upriver from the dam. The reservoir created by the dam supplied water throughout the region, including providing drinking and agricultural water to parts of Russian-controlled Crimea. The ecological damage to lands and wildlife will be felt for, but not even full known, for years. Just one more (big) thing on the list of Russian war crimes and atrocities.