Today is a black and shameful day in Russian history.
Today our country, the one that once established the UN after its victory over fascism together with Britain and the USA,
was shelling Ukrainian cities all day as a revenge against the successful Crimea Bridge operation.
This whole war, from its first day and until now was nothing but shame for Russia.
This is a war of aggression, Russia attacked Ukraine. It was not defending anyone and was not defending from anyone,
and yet, it attacked. A senseless war that not only has no purpose, but not even excuses, a war that was conceived as
a pre-election stunt, a lost war with tens of thousands of pointless victims.
But today’s massive attack on civilian infrastructure of Ukraine was an especially shameful moment.
A moment when the Russian leadership, incapable of achieving anything on the battlefield, incapable of disrupting
Ukraine’s operations inside Russia, decided to take vengeance on peaceful citizens.
How is the attack on the Crimea bridge different from the attack on power plants in the Lviv region?
In a way that Crimea bridge is a military target — it was used to supply the whole southern front of the
occupants with soldiers and ammunition.
The damaged Crimea bridge has direct influence on combat operations. But the Lviv power plant is a civilian object.
It has zero impact on war, zero impact on logistics, it has nothing to do with military operations at all.
It just provides electricity for houses in which people live, in some wars, civilian infrastructure can become military targets,
like it happened during WW2, when attacks on oil refineries had a direct effect on the front, because this way
there was no more fuel for tanks. But in this case, all necessary supplies come to Ukraine from European countries
and are not produced in its own territory, so attacks against civilian infrastructure are vengeance, pure and simple.
Let’s try to figure out what was happening today in Ukraine.
NEWS SUMMARY
The air raid warning was turned on at 7:40AM on all territory of the country. Kyiv, Kharkiv, Sumy, Dnipro, Khmelnitsky,
Vinnitsa, Zaporozhye, Lviv, Zhitomir, Ternopol, Poltava region, Ivano-Frankovsk region,
as well as other parts of Ukraine were attacked by missiles and kamikaze drones.
Zaluzhny, the commander of the AFU, reported that a total of 75 missiles were fired, 41 of which were taken down by air
defense, as of 17:00, at least 11 people died and 87 were injured, those numbers will most likely be updated.
The attacks were carried from Belarus, central Russia, Caspian Sea and Black Sea.
As a result of the shellings, several infrastructure objects were damaged or destroyed,
some major cities were left without electricity and water supply, fully or partially.
Putin spoke before the Russian Security Council meeting and claimed that the shelling was “proposed by the Ministry
of Defense and planned by the General staff” as a response for terror attacks on the Crimea bridge and attempts of terror
attacks against TurkStream and Kursk nuclear power plant.
The Ministry of Defense’s speaker Konashenkov reported on a briefing that “a massive attack utilizing long-range high-
precision weaponry was carried out against military control systems as well communication and energy infrastructure of
Ukraine — all objectives were accomplished and all intended targets hit”.
KYIV
Missile attacks on Kyiv started early in the morning, at around 8 AM. Almost every district in the city was hit.
As a result of the shelling, at least 8 people died and 24 were wounded. When the explosions started, people were on their
way to work or study, taking children to schools and kindergartens.
According to Klichko, the attacks targeted critical infrastructure. The metro had stopped.
TPP-3 and TPP-6 were damaged. The shelling of Kyiv was caught in many videos, including the BBC broadcast.
The missiles fell in childrens’ playgrounds, road intersections, pedestrian-bicycle bridge, a mall,
and 101 Tower business center. People fled to the metro. After dinner, its operation was restored.
At 15:30, the air raid alert in Kyiv and its region was turned on again.
ATTACKS ON OTHER CITIES AND INFRASTRUCTURE
Kharkov is left completely without electricity as a result of the shelling. TPPs and power lines were damaged.
Water supply is disrupted. Lviv was left completely without water supply, TPPs and traffic lights don’t work there.
The city now uses a reserve power supply. “Ukrainian Railroads” reports of the damage of the contact network in
the West of Ukraine and the possible delays of trains. Khmelnitsky was too left without electricity:
hospitals were moved to power supply from diesel generators. Sumy and Poltava regions are partially without power.
Sumy is left without water supply. For the third day in a row, Russian troops have been shelling
living quarters in Zaporozhye, as a result of the nightly shelling on 10th of december, at least 1 civilian died and 5
were wounded, a residential tower block was destroyed. There were powerful explosions in Dnipro.
Ukraine begins to save energy: in the Kyiv region, street lights will be turned off, and elevators in the Ternopil region.
REACTION
Vladimir Zelensky published a video message from the center of Kyiv even before the shelling ended.
“We are dealing with terrorists. They have two targets. Energy infrastructure — everywhere in the country…
The second target is people. They intentionally chose the time and targets that would cause the most harm.”
Zelensky negotiated the urgent meeting of G7 leaders, on which he himself intends to speak and demand more active
support against the Russian aggression. Zelensky’s office advisor Alexey Arestovich said this in comments regarding
the attack: “Apparently Putin thinks that the suffering of peaceful citizens would force our leadership
to make concessions, as well as the entire international community.
But something tells me that the opposite of it will happen”, in parallel to this, Alexander Lukashenko decided that the time
had come to declare “the deployment of Belorussian-Russian military grouping”. It is not yet clear what it means in reality.
Ramzan Kadyrov, like Putin and Konashenkov, commented on the shelling too. He said that he is now “100% satisfied
with how the Special Military Operation is proceeding”.
The head of the EU diplomacy Josep Borrel condemned the attack and stated that “additional military aid from the EU
is already underway”, Military experts agree that the attack was a response to Ukraine’s military superiority on the
battlefield and that the Russian army intentionally targets not only the critical infrastructure, but also symbolic civilian
objects, having decided to waste their limited supply of missiles on non-military targets.
Apparently to “satisfy” the internal audience, Russian propaganda and z-channels’ publishers keep calling to
continue the shellings of infrastructure. For instance, the head of Russia Today Margarita Simonyan wrote:
“here goes revenge” and added that “the Crimea bridge was the red line from the very beginning”.
VGTRK war reporter Evgeny Poddubny called the shellings “a boomerang”.
Some link the cruel response to the explosion at the Crimea bridge to the
new commander of the Special Military Operation Surovikin.
I don’t like historical parallels, but today I want to remind you of a certain historical fact.
The first time Hitler’s war machine truly halted after encountering not the Soviet,
but the British resistance in 1940, the aggressor failed to quickly take over the country,
and they weren’t given a second chance to occupy Great Britain all the way until the end of the war.
They knew it all too well, and Hitler couldn’t do much but take his petty vengeance on the British for having successfully
defended their island, on the eve of its complete downfall, the Nazi germany has adopted V-1 cruise missiles and V-2
ballistic missiles. Britain was attacked by over 10 000 V-1 and over 3 000 V-2.
For the German army, the effect was not just zero, it was negative! Hitler diverted vast resources from his army to
produce and use those missiles. Firing them at London had no effect on the front.
Each launch of the extremely expensive missile caused several deaths of civilians. It was a drain to Germany’s
resources, caused no harm to the British army, but made the British much more defiant.
There is no doubt that Putin’s missile attacks will have the same effect. In the end, I want to show you this video.
Not all missiles launched by Putin’s troops have reached their intended targets in Ukraine, not all of them managed to kill
Ukrainians, not all of them destroyed their peaceful infrastructure.
About half of them were taken down by the Ukrainian air defense, we all know how slow Germany is at sending
weapons to Ukraine, and how reticent Europe is about helping it, in the absence of modern weaponry, the Ukrainian
military are taking down Calibers that cost millions with ancient shoulder-fired missiles. Here’s one of such videos:
There it is! Do it Vanya! There, you bitch, fall! Yeah!
Many heroes of Ukraine were saving the lives of strangers today, like this Vanya, like many rescuers and doctors.
Engineers and technicians are now restoring and in some places have already restored power supply.
On this black day let’s not forget — there is doubt in the world that Putin is the devil that must be stopped.
He will be stopped. The question is, how many people will he have the time to take along with him.
See you tomorrow.