Are there any News? . . . Not a New

Keeping up with the War in Ukraine and the Dumpster Fire that is America  takes up a great deal of my time. Add to that something called the Klondike Papers in Canada and I have neglected blogging for two weeks. If anyone noticed.

The Klondike Papers, apuffofabsurdity.blogspot.com/2022/06/klondike-papers.html indicate that an organization called the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church is behind much of the ideology and activities of the Canadian Conservative Party. They are currently being investigated by the RCMP for their role in an alleged assassination attempt on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the FluTruxKlan convoy in Ottawa. The Government is holding hearings on the invocation of the Emergencies Act to bring an end to the Occupation of Ottawa. The Conservatives are opposed as it will bring to light their involvement in it.

No comments on the Jan 6th hearings as they well are covered by everyone. Scary things we learn. I will say one thing, when the extreme religious right gain full control of America, turning it into Gideon and the gas chambers and ovens are working overtime, Ukraine is going to look pretty good.

Speaking of, In the early days of the war intended to "denazify" Ukraine, Russian rockets aimed at a TV tower slammed into Babyn Yar in NW Kyiv. Babyn Yar is a sacred site to the Jews of Ukraine and from 1941 to 1943, the Nazis filled Babyn Yar with the bodies of about 100,000 Jews, Roma, Ukrainian political prisoners, Soviet prisoners of war and psychiatric patients. A museum to the Eastern Holocaust was in process of being built there.

After the war the ravine was leveled by the Soviets to erase all sign and memory of its victims. "Soviet" Jews were simply lumped in with all losses of the USSR during the war and given no recognition. In fact it was forbidden to even talk about it. This article, complete with maps tells the story of the  history of Babyn Yar and its meaning in the current war on Ukraine. www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/06/13/opinion/ukraine-russia-babyn-yar.html.

On Twitter, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine wrote that the strike illustrated the world’s failure to prevent genocidal atrocities from recurring. “To the world: What is the point of saying ‘never again’ for 80 years, if the world stays silent when a bomb drops on the same site of Babyn Yar?” he wrote. “History repeating …”

“Every town here has its own Babyn Yar,” Ukrainians have told me again and again in my years reporting from the country. Killing fields where Nazis shot Jewish civilians, sometimes with assistance from local collaborators, dot the land. The Russian missiles that have been falling all over Ukraine for the past 110 days, murdering civilians and destroying cities, have been exposing old, barely healed historical wounds. On Saturday, March 26, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense announced that a Russian missile strike had directly hit a Jewish memorial in a ravine called Drobytsky Yar, outside Kharkiv, where approximately 15,000 Jews were killed in 1941. “The Nazis have returned,” the ministry stated in a tweet.

If you follow WaPo and NYT accounts of the war, you will be highly depressed. If there is a negative way to spin the story or headline, they will use it. The situation is grim but certainly not desperate though the Ukrainian army does need all the promised equipment yesterday not in August. The war is currently an artillery duel. The Russians have long range guns in a ratio of 20 to 1 and are using WWI and WWII tactics or simply blasting everything in front of it before moving up. They are firing 50,000 to 60,000 shells per day while the Ukrainians are returning maybe 10% of that number. Very targeted but still not enough to counter the Russians. 

One of the reasons that Ukraine is short of artillery shells is that their Soviet era howitzers use 152 mm shells while the NATO standard is 155 mm which all their new guns use. Former East block countries are making 152 mm shells for Ukraine but cannot supply the volume needed. Also the barrels of the old howitzers are wearing out and there are no replacements.  Hence the urgency for artillery and shells.

In the southwest, Kherson oblast, The Ukrainian counter attacks are driving the Russians back. The Ukrainian army is within a few Kilometers of Kherson and gradually freeing up village after village. In the Northeast, the Russians are back to shelling and bombing Sumy and Kharkiv from Russia, though their troops have been driven back almost to the Russian border. The battles that have everyone's attention are the Russian attempts to close the salient centered on Severodonetsk and Lysychansk. 

So far they have not had much luck. They move forward very slowly if at all and Ukrainian counterattacks have regained some territory in the area around Izium. Severodonetsk is still holding out as the territory controlled by the Russians varies back and forth from 50% to 80%. Both sides operate in small groups. The Ukrainians clean the Russians out at night and they move back in in the day time. Losses on both sides are heavy. WaPo and NYT have been forecasting the immanent fall of the city for a couple weeks now. 

Ukraine needs long range artillery and long range rockets. Once they get what they need, they will push the Russian army back to the border of Russia and reclaim all territory of Ukraine including Crimea. They must not lose or it is the end of Ukraine and the world order as we know it. And Poland, Romania and the  Baltics will be next. Even if Putin dies of his illnesses, his ideology will live on.