War
Every hour feels like 24. I try to summarise where things are this second morning of all out war in Ukraine.
Last night, after his country had been under full Russian attack from north, south, and east by air, land and sea, Ukraine’s president Zelensky addressed the nation. Wearing an army green t-shirt and looking like he hasn’t slept in weeks, he spoke with confidence, bravely addressing the heroes defending their country. During the first day of war, Ukraine lost 137 soldiers. Over 300 wounded. 13 brave border guards all died on Snake Island after a Russian ship warned them to put down their weapons. One of the border guards told the Russians to fuck off (audio here), and all 13 died defending their country on a tiny island in the Black Sea.
During the first day of fighting, Ukraine held back the Russians much better than most expected. There was fierce fighting around the Antonov military airport just northwest of Kyiv. This is the landing strip Russia needs if it wants to secure an airport near the capital so that it can continually send in reinforcements and supplies. Ukraine knows this and is fighting like hell. The fight continues there now:
As Russia was attacking Ukraine from all sides (north from Belarus, east and north from Russia, from Crimea and the Black Sea in the south, and even rockets fired from breakaway Transdnistria in Moldova), the Russians moved in and a tank battle ensued over the now defunct but very radioactive Chernobyl nuclear power plant. I compared the tank video to the photo I took at the Chernobyl power plant on Feb 8, and it appeared to be real.
There are worrying reports from Biden’s press speaker Psaki that the Russians have taken the operators and engineers at the site hostage. There are also unconfirmed reports of increased radiation in the area. There are buildings near the power plant we were not allowed to photograph where radioactive waste is handled. We were told by our tour guide that they were under SBU guard.
As I type this, FM4 is announcing continued air strikes on Kyiv. Residents of Ukraine’s two largest cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv, spent a sleepless night in bomb shelters and subway stations. Bombings continued this morning at dawn.
From Kyiv this morning:
For more on how those tanks plan on reaching Kyiv, a thread here.
Meanwhile, I am having a hard time thinking straight. It feels like an out of body experience. Like you know something no one else knows and therefore no one else is doing anything about it. Ukraine must be looking at Europe right now and asking what it even is? To light up buildings in pretty shades of yellow and blue in solidarity? To send thoughts and prayers, and some helmets, some 5000 fucking helmets against the entire Russian army?!
Germany’s chancellor Scholz said last night he wasn’t ready to consider kicking Russia out of SWIFT. I couldn’t believe it. Do the tanks need to be standing in Warsaw, or even Berlin before Europe realises the threat that Putin is to the entire civilised world order? Putin has gone mad. He has lost his mind. Anyone who protests in Russia is promptly arrested. If no one in Russia is willing or brave enough to stop him (it should be the job of the elite which is why sanctions are so important), the west must now, not later, because later it will be too late. Hit Russia with every possible economic sanction. Let Putin explain that to his people.
On Austrian radio this morning, they had a very informative program on Ukraine (I missed the Nehammer interview), but it was also super scary as a military expert outlined with precise detail step by step how Russia can take over the entire country within a month. So if we know that is a possibility, and Zelensky himself said last night he knows he is target no. 1 for the invaders, why are we waiting? Sanctioning a few sons of Putin’s friends like America just did is good but it is only a drop in the bucket. Britain is struggling with this; I imagine it’s also because they gave so many UK passports out to Russian oligarchs.
Intelligence reports are already starting to spill out about what Russia might plan. I don’t find it particularly useful to share these widely. I think we should focus on helping Ukraine fight back because this is everyone’s fight. But for the sake of a full picture, here is a link.
Europe has to act. It will be Europe next. It will be our newly admitted NATO members and non-NATO members who will be most vulnerable. Imagine the Balkans, Baltics, the entire central and eastern Europe map being rewritten by a Russian military emboldened because no one dared stop it.
So much is happening so fast it is impossible to track all of it, but I try to build threads throughout the day on Twitter and share videos uploaded to Telegram and TikTok by eyewitnesses and share local news from Ukraine. Here is the latest one I started a little after 5am this morning as warnings were being issued to Kyiv residents to take cover. An hour later, the same warning in Kherson.
Finally, as both Ukrainian young men, defending their homeland, and Russian young men, sent into slaughter for nothing, die in battle, let’s not forget those who will not even be allowed to mourn their deaths, because in Putin’s Russia, there are no heroes.
A humanitarian crisis is also building, as Ukrainian civilians try to move west. Nothing is moving. The only way out is by car if the roads haven’t been destroyed yet by the fighting. It certainly sounds like EU should start sending buses in:
I am haunted by these thoughts. I am waiting for the moment when we all realise what is happening here in the middle of Europe and we mobilise to do something about it. For now I feel like the only thing I can do is share, translate, and distribute information so people in the west understand what is happening on the ground in Ukraine, what people are seeing and experiencing, what kind of help they need, what our leaders must do. This cannot be ignored away. A siege of Kyiv would be horrors on a scale of multiple Sarajevos. We all remember Sarajevo. Those of us who are old enough — we know. Let that be a warning. We promised ourselves it would never happen again.