By Serhiy Petrov
The amount of attacks was about the same as yesterday. The muscovites continue to shell Kharkiv, damaging houses, causing deaths and injuries. The northern suburbs of the city are under heavy fire.
The number of attacks in Kharkiv by muscovite troops has gone up over the last few days. After the morning resumption of shelling, which subsided around noon, there was a short pause. Muscovites began shelling the city again in the evening. Some areas of Saltivka suffer most of all. Thus, after a shelling of one of the areas three people were killed and seven more were wounded. In an interview with Suspilne, locals said there used to be a military unit in the area 30 years ago, which was later liquidated. This was back in the 80s and 90s. Obriy was also shelled, as well as the Kharkiv Tractor Plant neighborhood, Pyatykhatky, and the outskirts of Oleksiyivka.
Heavy shelling of the suburbs continues. The Derhachi Hromada was shelled, and according to the Kharkiv Oblast governor’s office, one person was wounded. Chuhuiv was shelled as well, with one person wounded as a result. The town of Zolochiv and the village of Odnorobivka, in the Zolochiv Hromada, near the border with moscovia, were shelled as well. According to local authorities, no one was injured in Zolochiv, but one house was destroyed and six more were damaged. In Odnorobivka, five people were injured, and houses were damaged. It is interesting that the governor’s office said three people were wounded in Zolochiv, while the prosecutor’s office said four were wounded in Odnorobivka. These constantly changing numbers show that it is not always possible to obtain up-to-date information. I’m not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing. It is what it is.
By the way, shops are already open in Slatyn and Bezruky, despite the constant daily shelling there. There will be a lot more destruction, so at the moment it is really dangerous.
Because the shelling has been low-intensity, it often results in a significant number of injuries and deaths, as people on the street do not have time to seek shelter. This is the dangerous tactic that the ruscists have been using for the last few days. However, it is an indisputable fact that less shelling means fewer house fires and less damage and destruction. Although destruction occurs every day, including further damage to houses that had already been hit, as well as new damage to buildings that were intact.
The main part of the city lives more or less peacefully (to the extent that this can be said about a city in the middle of a war). It’s gotten warmer, so there are more people on the streets, because not everyone can stand sitting between four walls. The muscovites use this fact.
The ruscists also occasionally use a tactic where they strike the same place they’ve already stricken, when rescuers and medics arrive.
The city is being cleaned up with help from the locals. City workers are planting flowers, whose seeds have been prepared since winter. Potholes are being repaired on the main city roads. Also today the city fountains were tested. Public utility workers continue to repair water and gas supply systems. The government has allocated 250 million to the Kharkiv region, to be used for infrastructure reconstruction. But, to be honest, restoring (actually building anew) a large power substation in the area that’s constantly being shelled seems a bit dumb. A new station should be built when there is no direct threat. With limited resources, money really needs to be used more strategically.
Today, I sent my grandmother to another city, in central Ukraine, to join relatives who had moved there earlier. Unfortunately, the war is dragging on for a long time, and there is no point in endangering her, so it’s better for her to be somewhere safer.
Fighting continues in the Slovyansk and Izium directions. Our military shot down another aircraft near Balakliya. This time, it was a Ka-52 Alligator helicopter. The muscovites actively use aviation in these areas and get kicked in the teeth in the Kharkiv Oblast every day.
The leaflets are being distributed in occupied Izium telling people that life will get better now and all that. The leaflet emphasizes that disclosure of muscovite troops locations will be punished according to the laws of war, and that the city and its residential areas will be fired upon by “armed Ukrainian nationalist groups.” (What a wording!! Well, we are all nationalists, because we want victory by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.)
Heavy fighting is taking place in the Lyman region. Battles for Rubizhne and Popasna continue near Sieverodonetsk. A part of Popasna has been captured by muscovites after all. They’re also attacking in the direction of Avdiyivka, Maryinka, and Velyka Novosilka in the Donetsk Oblast and Huliaipole in the Zaporizhzhya Oblast.
Meanwhilr, in Popasna direction, our troops hit a warehouse with ammunition and equipment in the town of Irmino, near Kadiyivka (Stakhanov).
Interesting events are taking place in the Kherson direction. First, three more settlements of the Mykolayiv region were liberated, and Ukrainian troops approached the town of Snihurivka from several directions. Secondly, our artillery struck the muscovite ammunition depot in Velyka Oleksandrivka, also hitting some equipment and personnel. Second, the occupiers had planned to evict the entire population of this village. Additionally, the prisoners of war (people who were forcibly mobilized from the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine) are providing information that will help our military.
The muscovites launched missile strikes on Zaporizhzhya, damaging the bridge across the Dniester estuary (the only railway line to the south of the Odessa Oblast).
To be honest, the situation in another muscovite-created proxy entity, the occupied part of Moldova, so-called “PMR,” is quite complicated. The ruscists are trying to drag this creation into the war by opening another front in the direction to Odessa and Mykolayiv through a series of terrorist attacks. However, some of the local elites dislike this idea, because they do not want to die for the Kremlin’s interests. But the situation is tense, and things will become clearer in the near future. Due to this, an emergency meeting of the Security Council was held in Moldova.
In occupied Kherson, the occupiers appointed their “head of the Kherson Regional State Administration,” Volodymyr Saldo. He was a former mayor of Kherson and a people’s representative who fled to Moscow in 2014, then returned, and in 2015 became a city council member. Since the beginning of the large-scale muscovite invasion in February he became a collaborator and cooperated with the ruscists. They also appointed a “head of the Kherson administration” Oleksandr Kobets. He is not a representative from the party “Golos.” He’s just some random guy in his 60s who lived in Kherson until 1991.
According to Ombudswoman Lyudmila Denysova, at least 400 girls and women were raped by muscovite soldiers in the liberated territories. And these are just the cases that were reported to law enforcement or other authorities. Some of them are pregnant.
I write very little about geopolitics, but the meeting of defense ministers from more than 40 countries at the Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany is very significant and important. The establishment of a center for coordination of arms supplies to Ukraine is definitely a real-world lend lease. I would compare this meeting to the meeting between Roosevelt and Churchill in Casablanca in January 1943, during World War II. The Ramstein meeting means one thing: the success of the civilized world depends on Ukraine’s victory over moscovia on the battlefield. This is exactly what the conference in Casablanca was about (opening of the fronts in Greece and Italy).
Now some funny stuff. The cause of the fire at the research institute VKS in Tver was an electric kettle, which one of the employees turned on and went to a meeting. The wiring was old and worn out, causing a short circuit that started the fire. We can look at this as a Darwin Award, a group one.
Let us believe in our army, let us believe in and help the Armed Forces! And let us get closer to our victory!
