Well, the Russians must be getting their a$$es kicked in Kursk, because they are just flinging missiles and whatnot at civilian communities all over Ukraine.
We had five air-raid alarms in Mykolaiv today. For whomever had to deal with the glide bombs launched at Sumy from aircraft based in White-House-protected Russian airfields, I suspect this was more than a minor inconvenience. Similarly, the multiple flights of Iranian “Shaheed”/“Martyr” UAVs launched from the occupied Kherson region at cities all over Ukraine, including the ones that apparently buzzed through the sky over Mykolaiv this afternoon, reflect Russia’s continuing strategy of using large numbers of barely-accurate weapons systems to attack civilian population centers. These are, of course, war crimes, and they have been going on since the first days of the war, when Russian troops used artillery to level entire apartment blocks during their initial ground advance. (Of course, fun fact: the Russian Federation also completely withdrew its consent to be governed by the Geneva Convention back in 2019. https://treaties.un.org/Pages/showDetails.aspx…
Please tell me again why Russia still has a permanent seat on the Security Council?)
Let’s take a moment to discuss Russian aerial target selection a little more at length, since I’m already awake at half-past-three in the morning after yet another air raid. If Russia were targeting concentrations of troops, airbases, or really anything with a military nature, Ukraine’s air defense problem would be much easier to solve. Although Ukraine certainly doesn’t have as many air defense systems as it would like, things are vastly improved from the situation earlier this year, when the US House of Representatives had blocked the resupply of air defense missiles and everything else to Ukraine for six months. During that time, Ukrainian cities in general and the electric power grid in particular were hit repeatedly by Russian air attacks, simply because they couldn’t shoot back. Now the Ukrainians have enough ammunition for their systems, and they probably have enough systems to protect all of their major military targets. However, the Russians aren’t attacking military targets. Instead, they regularly launch multiple cheap, inaccurate self-propelled Iranian “Martyr” UAVs at Ukrainian cities almost at random. On occasion waves of these UAVs are launched to distract and deplete air defense systems in order to allow a precision missile to get through to a specific target, as was the case with the destruction of the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital the day before I got to Kyiv last month. The fact that every one of these attacks is a criminal act under customary international humanitarian law is almost irrelevant at this point. Although there is an international warrant out for Putin’s arrest, the Western response to Russian war crimes during this war has been so disinterested that, at this point, the threat of international criminal prosecution for these crimes has probably become yet another factor in the Russian decision to keep pursuing their unwindable war. If you are only going to get punished for years of war crimes if you LOSE the war you started, how does that incentivize you to STOP fighting? Well, such is the wisdom of our current cadre of diplomats and national-security “experts” who are apparently making all of these decisions after 8pm. But I digress yet again.
In any event, Russia appears to be doubling down on its strategy of targeting multiple civilian areas in an attempt to force Ukraine’s leadership to make the impossible choice of trying to defend all of its population centers, or dedicating its air defense systems to protecting its military assets, and letting its civilian population get along however they can. This does, of course, place an asymmetric burden on countries like Ukraine, which actually follow international law. If you know your enemy will only attack your military forces, you can concentrate all of your defenses to protect those forces, without having to waste valuable equipment on protecting mere civilians. So Ukraine’s decision to fight according to the laws and customs of modern warfare further handicaps it when facing a genocidal and criminal state like Russia, which purports to reject such things as the protection of civilians as part of Western society’s attempted cultural colonialism towards the world’s truly free states, such as Iran, China, North Korea, and so forth. Or in other words, Tuesday yet again.
So, we continue to work on the equipment for the surgical team. Sasha effectively finished the Stealth Box for the generator today! It now sounds more like a hive of disgruntled bees even when it’s running, and although it looks rather odd in its sound-baffling container, it’s safe to say that nobody would look at that thing and say “oh, that’s a disguised generator.” Once more I won’t be posting photos, as it would kind of defeat the purpose of camouflaging something to then splash it all over the internet. I will admit that I myself wanted to make The Box look as much like a beehive as possible, under the theory that if you’ve got a large buzzing box outside your house and you don’t want anyone to randomly poke at it, convincing people that its a hive and the bees are Angry is likely to be very effective. However, cooler heads prevailed, and anyway, the size and shape just weren’t right. So the Non-Beehive project will have to wait until the next concealment project and a much smaller generator.
We also got a visit from another member of “That Day”’s leadership team. Tanya Gilka stopped by our work space in the Epitsentr parking lot to deliver about fifty pounds of cookies, jam, baby-wipes, and hygiene items, collected or donated by “That Day” volunteers for one of the military units we are working with. We have some dual-use equipment to deliver, so Tanya wanted to make sure the guys also got some tasty snacks and knew the folks at home were thinking of them. Tanya’s husband was also with her today, so I got to meet him, and their next stop was the delivery of several locally fabricated camouflage nets and other materials. The Gilkas were kind enough to model one particularly nice piece of camouflage for me. If one of the photos appears to show a large boulder sitting quietly in the Epitsentr parking lot, you know that it’s really Up To No Good. 😉
Finally, the day would not be complete without some updates from Kursk. I’ve got my own guesses now about what’s going on but for now I’ll just post some open-source maps…
Video caption:
A delicious lunch of meat, cheese, and Pringles is interrupted by yet another wave of Russian murder drones. There should be a “persistent annoyance” multiplier tacked onto war crimes.
