Tag: russia

Another hellish night in Kiev.

While the MSM keeps insisting that Ukraine is suddenly winning the war against Russia, the developments on the ground across the 800-mile frontline show a very different story.

After the key victory in Konstantinovka, opening the way for an assault on the Slaviansk-Kramatorsk fortress belt, news arises that the Russian army liberated 4 settlements in the Kharkov region at once.

Units of the Запад (West) group of forces established control over the settlements Shiykovka, Novy Mir, Cherneshchina, and Druzhelyovka, as well as in Vasilevka in the Donetsk region.

And even when it comes to the gruesome exchange of drone-missile combined strikes, while Ukraine does have successes in their efforts, it can’t really be compared to the absolute blitz that Russian forces are submitting the capital Kiev.

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So, it begins.

Whatever else may be happening in the Ukraine war, the Russians won a major victory yesterday (3) and are about to deliver the final blow to the Donbas.

The Donbas, comprised of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, is the cradle of the war in Ukraine, a region torn by war since 2014.

As the Kiev-controlled part of Donetsk shrinks under constant Russian onslaught, the conquest of the gateway city of Konstantinovka paves the way for the endgame.

Moscow now focuses its attention on the Kramatorsk-Slaviansk Agglomeration, a heavily fortified area where Ukrainians have been preparing for this very day for the last 12 years.

According to the Russian MoD, the offensive is already moving beyond Konstantinovka’s borders, advancing towards Alekseevo-Druzhkovka and beyond, heading straight towards Kramatorsk.

Reuters reported:

“Russia’s military told Russian President Vladimir Putin on ​Friday that its forces had taken control of Konstantinovka in eastern Ukraine, a key locality whose capture Moscow has ‌long sought in its advance through the Donetsk region.

Putin, shown in videos visiting a command post and receiving a report from top commanders, praised the city’s capture as an important strategic achievement.”

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Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine’s capital overnight into Thursday that killed at least 25 people and injured scores as loud explosions shook Kyiv for hours.

The attack with ballistic and cruise missiles and drones damaged buildings and civilian infrastructure across the city. Many residents took shelter at metro stations after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other authorities issued the first warnings of the attack.

The attack killed 25 people in Kyiv and at least 85 others were injured, city military officials said.

Damage was recorded in 30 locations across the city, mainly residential buildings and civilian infrastructure, said Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv City Military Administration. Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said 20 residential buildings were damaged across the city. The Emergency Service says it deployed nearly 500 personnel and 100 units of specialized vehicles, including a helicopter, to deal with the aftermath of the attack.

Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called on Ukraine’s allies to strengthen the country’s air defenses following what he described as a “night of horror” in Kyiv, urging partners not to delay decisions on supplying air defense systems and missiles. Writing on X, Sybiha said the death toll after the attack may rise as the rescue teams continued their work.

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Though relegated to the sidelines thanks to President Donald Trump’s decision to launch an illegal and unjustified war on Iran at the behest of the Israeli warfare state, the war in Ukraine grows more dangerous with each passing day. In fact, recent reports indicate a perilous increase in attacks on energy and civilian infrastructure from both Moscow and Kiev.

On June 17, Kiev launched the largest aerial attack of the war on Moscow with an estimated 550 drones and missiles. One attack resulted in the spectacular explosion at the Kapotnya refinery southeast of Moscow. It was the third time in a month that the refinery had been targeted by Kiev. Whether the explosion was caused by a Russian MANPAD defending Moscow or by a direct hit from a Ukrainian drone remains unclear. Shortly after the attack, a Ukrainian commander sent a message to the Russian people: “This war has now reached your homes as well. We hope that message helps Russia bring this war to an end.”

Only days later, on June 20, another attack struck the Antipinsky oil refinery in Tyumen in Western Siberia, some 1,200 miles from Ukraine. That same evening, Ukraine struck the oil terminal at Kerch in Crimea. A week later, Ukraine hit Russian refineries in the Krasnodar and Yaroslavl regions.

In response, Russian forces have struck both Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia, killing numerous civilians. For his part, Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, noted that “strikes on our infrastructure, wherever they are directed, have absolutely no effect on the situation at the front, on the line of contact.”

For Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, there would seem to be a number of motives at play — none of which portend an end to the conflict, now in its fifth year. For one thing, Zelensky has seen a dip in the robust support he once had from Washington under Trump II. He seems convinced that such shows of force will shore up what remains of his support among Democratic war hawks, as well as among his European collaborators such as the German Chancellor Frederich Merz and the now-departing British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Yet Zelensky’s stepped-up drone war, far from being, as some US analysts suggest, a show of strength, may be the beginning of the end for the budding despot, the desperate last gasp of a wartime leader with an economy in ruins, a shrinking population, and a generation of young men irretrievably lost. Putting Zelensky’s drone war into proper perspective may require recalling how ultimately ineffective the flurry of Nazi Germany’s V2 missile attacks on London and the Japanese Kamikaze attacks on the US Navy were during the final year of the Second World War.

The mood among ‘official’ Moscow has, as might be expected in light of these developments, grown darker than usual. In addition to the unprecedented drone attacks on Moscow, Russia has suffered an estimated 1.2 million war casualties, including approximately 325,000 dead. And while there are growing signs of war weariness and disgust with Putin’s regime among pro-Western elements in Moscow and St. Petersburg, there are voices close to the Kremlin that are, in a manner not terribly dissimilar to our own neoconservatives whenever Israel attacked, baying for blood.

Sergei Karaganov, an academic who heads the Kremlin’s Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, has repeatedly called for Russia to strike Europe with nuclear weapons in order to “restore deterrence.” For his part, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov promised that Russia would retaliate for the refinery attack on a “mass scale.” Lavrov also warned that the current “state of affairs poses serious threats to global security. A direct confrontation between NATO and Russia could rapidly escalate into an exchange of nuclear strikes, with catastrophic consequences.” Lavrov’s comments were originally meant for publication in POLITICO Europe, but the outlet, owned by the shamelessly pro-war Axel Springer group, pulled the piece at the last minute. Heaven forbid we hear from the “enemy” directly.

That said, with Donald Trump distracted by more pressing matters of state such as the deteriorating condition of the Reflecting Pool and his duties as host of the Great American State Fair (his promise to end this war now, as with so many other promises, forgotten) few, if any, remaining world leaders outside of Pope Leo XIV have called for a cessation of hostilities in between Russia and Ukraine and her sponsors in Washington and Brussels.

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