Under a billboard “Kharkiv invincible” the Ukrainian flag is already at half-mast. Today, city mourning was proclaimed to remember the 7 deaths from the bombing that occurred yesterday at the printing press in Osnovyansk, in the southern area of the north-eastern capital.
President Zelensky declared that “Russian terrorists take advantage of the world’s weaknesses”, or, according to his vision, the lack of anti-aircraft supplies and the ban on hitting Russian territory with Western weapons. But the problem is at the base, the problem is war. And those who started it, from Moscow, are currently basking in the inflammatory declarations of the West.
A sign of the fact that in the capitals of NATO countries they do not know how to manage this phase of the conflict in which the Ukrainian soldiers are in extreme difficulty and civilians continue to die as “collateral damage”.
Those seven workers from yesterday are the perfect example of this, they were not directly involved with the war but they died because their workshop was located near a train depot where, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense, there were some workers at that time. wagons carrying supplies for the army. As usual “the attack was a success and all targets were hit”, no mention of the men and women who died due to a lopsided missile or a distracted gunner.
BUT EVEN IF the White House were to finally give in and authorize Kiev to strike across the border with powerful weapons systems made in the USA, what would change? According to Zelensky, “a reliable ability to destroy terrorist launchers exactly where they are, near our borders” would allow his generals to avoid attacks like yesterday’s. At the moment, however, little would change.
Russia is converting its production to what is called a “war economy” and 6.7% of its GDP is allocated to military spending which is now the most important chapter of public spending for the Eurasian giant. If two months ago we talked about the soldiers destroyed on the front who complained of being able to fire “one shot for every 7-10 of the Russian ones”, now we are not at much better levels.
With a massive and constant flow we can aim to reduce this gap, but by how much and, above all, for how long? This is why the Ukrainian leaders are all focused on Kharkiv. Yesterday the feared head of the Ukrainian military intelligence service (GRU), Kyrylo Budanov, visited the eastern region to “hold a briefing with officers who participated in the defense operations”.
He probably went to understand what is needed at the front and how to take action if the situation worsened. We know that the GRU expects a Russian attack from the Sumy region, further north of Kharkiv. Sumy has been constantly targeted by Russian fire in recent days and on Wednesday one of the most important energy plants in the region was knocked out of action. It is therefore possible that Budanov’s trip is actually a way to verify and provide provisions in the event of a new attack.
ALMOST SIMULTANEOUSLY his most exposed alter ego, the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces Oleksandr Sirsky, declared that on the border between Russia and Ukraine, in the town of Vovchansk, “the enemy is completely bogged down in street battles”. According to Syrsky, the defenders still control more than half of the territory of Vovchansk while the Russians are trying to “support new active assault operations, but without success”.
Like many other little-known towns, Vovchansk is becoming the symbol of this phase of the war, but the front line exceeds 1300 km. The Ukrainians are very afraid of a breakthrough near Kupiansk, halfway between the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, which could cut the defensive lines in two.
But the greatest fear is for Kharkiv. We are already at almost 12 thousand evacuated, in a city that has already lost half a million residents. The fear of a new exodus is real and on Russian Telegram channels various analyzes insist on the fact that Moscow’s maneuver aims to create even more internal havoc for the Ukrainian administration. More displaced people mean more problems for the central government and the Kremlin knows it.
Walking through the Shevchenkivsky and Kholodnohirskyi neighborhoods, yesterday you could see workers intent on covering the windows of the buildings bombed in recent days with plywood boards. Nobody lives there anymore.
MORE SOUTHERN, as soon as you pass the overpass overlooking Osnovyansk station the smell changes in the air. It smells of moldy wood, at times there is also the pungent smell of burnt plastic and some chemical substances. It is the result of the sudden downpour that dampened the flames on the printing plant where 50 employees were located at the time of the attack according to local authorities. For some charred bodies, DNA testing will be necessary to discover their identity.
Returning to the hotel, in front of the imposing facade of the Soviet Kharkiv Administration building in Freedom Square you can see an empty throne built with the remains of welded bombs and ammunition. The tails of the missiles all point towards the backrest where there is the writing “Putin son of a puxxxna” with “x” instead of letters also in Ukrainian.
Those small complaints strike the eye because everything around here, the palace reduced to a skeleton, the flags at half-mast, the charred corpses of yesterday and the hundreds of soldiers who died every day are much more obscene than a swear word and yet no one seems to be scandalized.
