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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Day 774: It Appears that Russia Has Decided To Reduce Kharkiv

War for Ukraine Day 774: It Appears that Russia Has Decided To Reduce Kharkiv

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Graphic by NEIVANMADE of a Russian bomb with a "Z" symbol on it crashing through the roof of the Ukrainian Postal Service delivery hub. "Everyone Is a Target" and "Stop Russia" are written in the space between the destroyed roof and the fins of the bomb.

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

As I draft tonight’s update – 6:15 PM EDT –  almost all of the central Ukrainian oblasts, from Chernihiv in the north through Kyiv to Kherson and Odesa in the south, are under air raid alert. As I typed the previous sentence air raid alerts were just posted for Zhytomer Oblast immediately to Kyiv Oblasts west!

I’ve written here far too many times since FEB 2022, that a significant portion of Putin’s strategy for Ukraine is to reduce it completely. As in if he, and by extension Russia, cannot have and control Ukraine, then no one including the Ukrainians can have Ukraine. And if that means he has to destroy every building, every bit of natural or man made infrastructure, every person, then Putin is willing to pay that price.

In practice, this clip from the movie, which I’ve posted here before, sums up the strategy well:

 

Kharkiv is a the most current example of this. Ever since Russia resumed its large scale bombardment of Ukrainian civilian targets and infrastructure, Kharkiv has been under nearly constant bombardment for the better part of the past several weeks.

As we’ve also discussed, there are overlapping Russian strategic objectives at work. Specifically, stretching Ukraine’s air defense to the breaking point by forcing the Ukrainians to use up their precious stocks of air defense munitions. By forcing the Ukrainians to deplete their air defense, Russia hopes to set the conditions to be able to actually strike the weapons systems and take them out. And they’re doing this knowing that the US is not going to backfill and resupply Ukraine’s munitions or weapons systems needs any time soon.

President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today addresses this problem. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

We are looking for opportunities to provide Kharkiv with greater air defense – address by the President of Ukraine

7 April 2024 – 20:42

Dear Ukrainians!

Today’s key points.

The frontline and the defense of our cities. I was in touch all day with the military – with the Commander-in-Chief, the Head of the Security Service of Ukraine and the Minister of Internal Affairs. We discussed the situation on the frontline and Russian attacks on our country. Special attention, of course, was paid to Kharkiv. The situation in the city is very tough, there is constant Russian terror, now with aerial bombardment virtually on a daily basis. We are looking for opportunities to give Kharkiv greater air defense, and this is a task for both the military and all diplomats of Ukraine – for everyone who is responsible for international communication, who has to be in dialogue with partners on a daily basis. It is quite obvious that the air defense capabilities available to us in Ukraine are not enough, and this is obvious to all our partners as well. And the world must finally hear the pain that Russian terrorists are inflicting on Kharkiv, on Kupyansk, on cities in Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Sumy regions, and many other Ukrainian communities… There are air defense systems in the world that can help. The only thing needed is the political will to transfer these systems to Ukraine. I am grateful to those countries that have already helped. And being active in fulfilling this task is the personal responsibility of our diplomats who work in the areas and countries where the necessary systems are available. Patriots should now be deployed in Ukraine, so that later on they will not have to be used at least along the entire eastern flank of NATO.

Second. We are already actively preparing our international activities for the coming weeks and months. In particular, we are planning the annual summit of the Ukrainian charity platform United24. I spoke with United24 ambassadors. I thanked them for their activity, both now and last year. Now everyone sees that much more personal energy and much more effort is needed to keep the Ukrainian issue in the focus of global attention alongside many other problems and conflicts. This is not an easy year. A year of elections in different countries and in the European Union. Conflicts and instability keep spreading around the world – in particular due to Russian investments in violence. And I am grateful to everyone who stands with Ukraine after these years of war. I am grateful to everyone who believes in us and helps us. Ukraine has every opportunity to achieve its goals. The key is to stay united with everyone in the world who values life – life safe from terror.

And third. Our warriors, our brigades. Our gratitude to everyone who is now in combat, who is on the frontline, who is defending Ukraine from Russian evil with their courage. The 35th separate marine brigade operating in the Prydniprovya direction. Thank you guys! Pokrovsk direction – the 71st separate jaeger brigade and the 47th separate mechanized brigade. Thank you! Lyman direction – the 95th separate air assault brigade. Well done! Kupyansk direction – the 57th separate motorized infantry brigade. Thank you! Thank you to everyone who gives Ukraine the opportunity to stand up to terror, the opportunity to protect Ukrainian lives.

Glory to Ukraine!

Zelensky pleads with western partners to provide Ukraine with more air defense systems ASAP. “Russians began using guided aerial bombs against the city almost daily,” he says. These bombs are devastating and a weapon for which Kyiv’s forces have “practically no countermeasures,” Ukrainian analysts say. More about these Russian bombs here: https://on.ft.com/4aBzPYo

From The Financial Times:

The Russian air force is stepping up its use of Soviet-era weapons that have been retrofitted for 21st-century warfare and are pounding Ukrainian forces, pulverising towns and giving Moscow an advantage on the battlefield.

“The experience of the past months and weeks shows that the enemy has significantly increased aircraft activity, using guided air bombs that destroy our positions,” Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky said in March.

The guided weapons are commonly referred to as “glide bombs” and consist of decades-old projectiles that would typically be dropped from Su-34 and Su-35 warplanes directly over targets. By adding cheap pop-out wings and a satellite navigation system, these former “dumb bombs” can now be launched by Russian bombers deep behind the front line and out of reach of Ukraine’s air-defence systems.

“For them, it is much cheaper than using hundreds of thousands of artillery shells, when one of these bombs will demolish several buildings,” said Vlad, a 27-year-old soldier serving in the eastern Donetsk region.

The glide bombs can carry between 500kg and 1.5 tonnes of explosives for over 60km, leaving craters up to 20m wide and 6m deep.

“They are very scary, very lethal,” said Bohdan, another soldier in Donetsk. “Even a kilometre away, the blast rips the doors of buildings off their hinges.”

They are so destructive that Ukrainian analysts with Deep State, a group close to the defence ministry, have called them a weapon for which Kyiv’s forces have “practically no countermeasures”.

Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba told the Financial Times that his country’s soldiers “are being massively and I would say even routinely attacked by guided aerial bombs that wipe out our positions”.

The Russians have attacked Ukraine with around 3,500 such guided aerial bombs just this year, according to Ukrainian defence officials, a 16-fold increase over 2023. In the third week of March alone, Russia “launched over 700 guided aerial bombs,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

“They are very simple in essence, so you cannot jam them, you cannot hide from them — the only way to protect yourself from them is to shoot down the bomber that carries this bomb,” explained Kuleba.

Yet to achieve that, Ukraine needs significantly more modern air defence systems.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think-tank, said in a report published this month that “the growing number of glide-bomb attacks are indicative of the scarcity of air defence weapons”.

This shortage is in part due to delays in European military aid and the US Congress holding up a $60bn package for Kyiv, it added.

US-made F-16 fighter jets which have been promised by allies could also help Ukraine fend off Russian bombers. But they are unlikely to be delivered before midsummer, according to Kuleba.

These delays are hurting Ukraine. Zelenskyy said last month that Russia could launch a new major offensive in late spring or early summer. And Ukrainian officials told the FT that Moscow’s glide bombs would probably be used to blast paths through the new fortifications Kyiv is rushing to build to stave off the advance of Russian forces.

In the last week of March, Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, was hit by two “unified multipurpose” gliding bombs which have a range of up to 90km. It was the first time Kharkiv had been hit by aerial bombs as opposed to missiles and drones since the full-scale invasion.

Much more at the link.

Russia is also using chemical weapons against the Ukrainians. The Telegraph has the details:

Russian troops are carrying out a systematic campaign of illegal chemical attacks against Ukrainian soldiers, according to a Telegraph investigation.

The Telegraph spoke to a number of Ukrainian soldiers deployed in positions across the front line who detailed how their positions have been coming under near daily attacks from small drones, mainly dropping tear gas but also other chemicals.

The use of such gas, which is known as CS and commonly used by riot police, is banned during wartime under the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Ihor, the commander of a Ukrainian reconnaissance team who is deployed near the front line city of Chasiv Yar, in Donetsk Oblast, told The Telegraph: “Nearly every position in our area of the front was getting one or two gas grenades dropped on them a day.”

He said that because of how embedded many Ukrainian troops are now it was difficult for the Russians to attack with conventional artillery or drones firing missiles, adding: “The only way for them to successfully attack us was with gas.”

Even when not lethal or immediately incapacitating, these gas attacks usually cause panic. “Their first instinct is to get out,” Ihor said. They can then be attacked with more conventional weapons.

Two other Ukrainian soldiers, deployed on opposite ends of the front line, spoke of similar experiences.

Mikhail, the commander of an infantry unit deployed in Robotnye, in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, where a Russian offensive is currently under way, said: “Gas masks saved more than one of our lives.”

He said his soldiers were now required to carry their masks with them at all times.

Slava, a senior lieutenant whose unit is deployed near Lyman, in Donetsk Oblast, said some Ukrainian units in his area were coming under “almost daily” gas attacks.

One of these CS gas grenades was provided to The Telegraph for verification by Rebekah Maciorowski, an American combat medic and a qualified nurse serving in the Ukrainian army.

She has been routinely called to provide medical aid to Ukrainian soldiers in the three brigades she works with in Donetsk Oblast after chemical weapon attacks, which she described as “systematic”.

The grenade was originally retrieved by soldiers in the 53rd Mechanised Brigade, one of the brigades with which she works. “My guys retrieved it whilst under fire because nobody believed they were being attacked with chemical weapons,” she said.

Marc-Michael Blum, a chemical weapons expert and former head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons laboratory, confirmed the recovered munition was a K-51 gas grenade, which are typically filled with tear gas.

Other types of chemical gas have also been reported, although the reports could not be independently verified by The Telegraph.

Ms Maciorowski said that she attended one incident last year caused by what she suspected was hydrogen cyanide, a deadly, colourless gas used as a chemical weapon by the West in the First World War.

A Russian drone dropped two munitions containing an unknown gas that had a “crushed almond aroma” on soldiers in Donetsk Oblast, she said.

Two people were killed and 12 required hospital treatment. In an interview with Le Monde in JanuaryYuriy Belousov, the head of investigations for Ukraine’s prosecutor general, referred to one of the deaths as being caused by an “unknown gas”.

There have also been reports of the use of chlorine and chloropicrin – a substance typically used as a pesticide that was deployed by the Germans as a chemical weapon in the First World War.

Officially the Ukrainian military has claimed that 626 gas attacks have been carried out by Russian forces since the start of the full-scale invasion.

But Ms Maciorowski believes this is almost certainly a gross underestimate, saying: “Sadly, as it stands right now, the causes of deaths of many Ukrainian soldiers are not properly investigated. There are just so many of them.”

The attacks have become such a feature of Moscow’s tactics that Ukrainian soldiers now have specific training to deal with them.

One training document supplied to The Telegraph detailed a Russian attack on Ukrainian positions close to the city of Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine, late last year.

Russian drones dropped three chemical grenades, believed to have been filled with CS gas, directly into their dug-in positions. As the soldiers attempted to flee, they were attacked with shells and drones dropping conventional grenades.

The training manual tells soldiers to stay where they are and suffer through the first few minutes of tear gas exposure instead of fleeing their fighting positions. After the first few minutes of exposure, the document says, the effect of the gas weakens.

Compounding the problem is the fact that protective equipment provided is not always provided to Ukrainian soldiers and, when it is, it is often of poor quality.

“We have gas masks, but in almost all cases they’re very old, ex-Soviet models, and they’re not very effective,” said Ihor. Some even have filters that contain asbestos.

Ms Maciorowski said some of the soldiers in her brigades are given no protective equipment at all and have to rely on donations from volunteers or source their own.

The Russians have made little effort to conceal their use of chemical attacks. The Black Sea Fleet’s 810th Naval Infantry Brigade boasted about the deployment of chemical weapons in a post on Telegram in December, posting a video of what it claimed were K-51 gas grenades being dropped on Ukrainian positions.

“Thanks to the head of the radiation, chemical and biological defence troops… for the weapons provided and their timely delivery,” the caption read.

Similarly, a news report aired on the Russian state television station Channel One in May 2023 contained explicit discussion of the issue. One Russian soldier said: “The enemy decided that using gas masks would help. The gas masks don’t help.”

Pics and links at the link to the reporting.

As we’ve repeatedly discussed, one of the reasons that the House GOP majority refuses to move any additional aid for Ukraine is because Russia’s information warfare, as part of their overall political war against the US, the EU, NATO, and other allies and partners, has been successful for far too many members of the GOP and the conservative movement in the US. As I’ve highlighted over and over since 2015, the Russians have done an amazing job infiltrating and then influencing major Republican sources of support. From the white Evangelical Christian churches and organizations, to the traditional Catholic ones including Opus Dei, to the international Chabad movement, to the National Rifle Association, to major conservative thought leaders and influencers like Tucker Carlson. So it is no surprise, even if it is unfortunate, that the GOP of 2024 is far more aligned with Putin and his interests. This is, as I’ve written here before, part of Russia’s doctrine for setting a theater of war. Specifically, to control, dominate, and set the information environment prior to doing anything in the actual land, sea, or air domains. And, of course, Trump is the other major reason the GOP is now this way. Though as I’ve extensively documented here since 2015, that’s because he was an early target first for Soviet and then Russian influence, as well as serving as a money laundry for the Russian mob. This is why Paul Manafort is going to be returning to Trump’s campaign.

Which is why we’ve got this:

Good for Republican Congressmen Turner and McCaul for speaking the truth against their own actual political interests.

At this point, because the US is AWOL, Ukrainian resilience is having to make up for a lack of American support:

The EU initiatives, either as a whole or by specific member states, all sound great, but they all come with the same caveat: if we can raise the funds.

Estonian defense minister Hanno Pevkur @HPevkur
said his own government had found another million 155mm and 152mm shells and rockets for Ukraine.
“If we combine these one million shells, the Czechs’ potential purchases, our buying capabilities and also the British”—who reportedly are organizing their own ammo-for-Ukraine initiative—“I dare say that it would be possible to send Ukraine two-to-2.5 million shells this year, if the funding were available,” Pevkur told @Postimees.

“…if the funding were available…”

It goes beyond this though. Ukraine is going to need replacement barrels. Those aren’t coming any times soon either.

As Dr. Franklin included in his Poor Richard’s Almanac, though the proverb is much older:

For want of a nail the shoe was lost,
for want of a shoe the horse was lost,
for want of a horse the knight was lost,
for want of a knight the battle was lost.
So it was a kingdom was lost – all for want of a nail.

If Ukraine is lost, it will not be lost on the fields of Donetsk or Luhansk, in the forests of the Donbas, or along the rivers of Kherson. Nor will it be lost because of a lack of will and resilience among the Ukrainians. Rather, it will be lost in Washington, DC, in the capitols of Europe, and in Fox News’s studios in New York.

Russian occupied Kherson Oblast:

Russia occupied Donetsk Oblast:

Belgorod Oblast, Russia:

Orsk, Orenberg Oblast, Russia:

 

Putin found the money to finance the war, but he has no money for his citizens. Thus, for 3 days now the city of Orsk and the Orenburg Region as a whole have been flooded due to the collapse of a shitty dam on the powerful Ural River. Thousands of houses are under water, the situation continues to worsen.

It is very strange that the authorities have not yet found a “Ukrainian trace” in this story. It would be absolutely their style.

The ongoing floodings in the Russian city of Orsk, Region Orenburg, which were caused by collapsing dams, rendered the local oil refinery (Orsknefteorgsintez) inoperable.

It is kind of ironic that Russia’s crumbling infrastructure is joining ranks with the Ukrainian fight for freedom.

Source of news: Telegram / Uniannet

That’s enough for tonight.

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Reader Interactions

20Comments

  1. 1.

    ColoradoGuy

    While the CIA, NSA, and the whole vast apparatus of US intelligence collection sits idly by, as the Russians seize control of the former GOP. Are they afraid of mean tweets?

  2. 2.

    Sister Inspired Revolver of Freedom

    ARGH! The West is utterly failing Ukraine & in the process, failing itself. 😡 How about sending all the arms that Israel was supposed to get to Ukraine instead? Or does that make too much sense? The UK is an arms dealer. Instead of selling those arms, why not send them to Ukraine? Call it a loan, call it what you want. The Great war leaders are all rolling in their graves at the rampant refusal to face the clear and present danger.

    Thank you Adam, as always. These updates have been increasingly difficult to read, but I value them all the same. BB

  3. 3.

    Raoul Paste

    @ColoradoGuy:  This.   An inordinate number of CIA agents killed in Russia after Trump took office, and they are apparently OK with that

  8. 8.

    Nukular Biskits

    I’m old enough to remember when the (alleged or otherwise) possession of chemical weapons by Iraq, for example, was sufficient justification for the use of US military force.

    Not advocating for us to intervene militarily on behalf of Ukraine but our selective natsec policy decisions are rampantly hypocritical.

    It’s time for Congress to get off its collective ass and fund aid to Ukraine, sufficient enough to push Russians back to the pre-2014 borders.

  11. 11.

    Sister Inspired Revolver of Freedom

    @Adam L Silverman: Blessed Be. 😌 It’s a witch blessing. Public witches often use the BB abbreviation on social media, for safety. (Yes, I’m aware you are Jewish. Since I’m not, I wouldn’t dream of appropriating anything from your faith traditions.) I’m not in your face about my beliefs, but they are very real & BJ seems like a safe space for them. Cheers!😁

  15. 15.

    Devore

    Thanks Adam.   News seems to be getting worse lately.   Hopefully that changes soon

  19. 19.

    Debbie(Aussie)

    Read these every day. Thank you Adam..with regard to CIA…… not working within the US. wouldn’t that make it the FBIs job to tackle the GOP?

    Slava Ukraini!

  20. 20.

    ColoradoGuy

    @Debbie(Aussie):  Which I guess raises serious questions about KGB/FSB penetration and subversion of the FBI, especially the New York office that’s given a free pass to Trump for decades.

Comments are closed.