Politic?: Imperial Russia's "Special Operation" In Ukraine

"They [Ukrainian troops] have the ability to send the wounded to hospitals, so there is still access."
"It's hard to deliver weapons or reserves. Difficult, but not impossible."
"The battles are so fierce that fighting for not just a street but for a single high-rise building can last for days."
"About 500 civilians remain on the grounds of the Azot plant in Sievierodonetsk, 40 of them are children. Sometimes the military manages to evacuate someone."
Gov. Serhiy Gaidal, Luhansk region, Dombas

Seven bodies were reportedly excavated from a mass grave.

Bodies excavated from a mass grave. Photograph: Dominika Zarzycka/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock

What is happening in Sievierodonetsk is a repeat of the siege and vicious artillery attacks by Russian troops leading to civilian deaths where no school, hospital, medical clinic, market or apartment building can be spared the constant shelling leading to civilian deaths and desperate efforts to escape the carnage that happened agonizingly in Mariupol, until it finally fell where there too an immense sprawling factory housed civilians seeking cover and Ukrainian military units.

The Donbas region in eastern Ukraine that Moscow is determined to wrench away just as it did Crimea has sustained heavy losses. Taking possession of the industrial heartland of Ukraine to claim the Donbas as Russian territory. Just as Crimea was the start of Vladimir Putin's long-range plan of gradually accessing increased territory for Russia whose land mass even without securing additional geography is already the largest in the world, the Donbas is next in line to fall to his imperial plan to become Vladimir The Great.

The eastern front line city of Sievierodonetsk has seen all bridges leading to it completely destroyed, the process putting an end to evacuation of remaining civilian populations. Governor Gaidal writes that Russia has not yet full control of the city; "a part" of it remains in Ukrainian control, but it seems clear enough that this a situation destined to crumble under the unsustainable and constant artillery assaults from Russian troops.

President Volodymyr Zelensky's desperate calls to the conscience of the West to supply his suffering country with more powerful, longer-range weapons in the defence of Sievierodonetsk has fallen on deaf ears, even though Kyiv has made it clear the fall of the city would spell the end of eastern Donbas region as Ukrainian. The Azot chemical plant is being pummelled ceaselessly, endangering the hundreds of civilians sheltering there, much less the Ukrainian military units fighting from the plant.

Russia has given those military units the generous option of surrendering, or dying. Just as occurred in the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol. Over five million Ukrainian civilians fled Russia's "special operation" in Ukraine, a relentless operation to render the nation non-operational, sans history, sans culture, sans territory. Historical buildings, museums holding national treasures and religious artifacts of great cultural value are all sacrificed in Mr. Putin's dirty little "special operation" to destroy a neighbour.

The United States which spurred Ukraine on to defend itself while manipulating its allies to ensure that NATO would not become physically involved, has turned a deaf ear to Ukraine's pleas for heavy weaponry to defend itself. Billions in weapons and aid have been sent, but not the defensive weapons that could turn the tide in the conflict. President Biden fears Ukraine hitting Russian territory and President Putin has promised should that happen with the help of U.S. weapons, he is prepared to attack the U.S.

So President Biden agreed to medium-range rockets. Yet even so, stipulating that Ukrainian defense must not include using that 48-mile-range rockets to hit Russian rocket sites sitting on Russian territory that are aimed at, and hitting Ukraine. "That is no way to win a war or even to force a settlement on terms favourable to Ukraine", read a Wall Street Journal editorial, critical of the Biden administration.