Ukraine's Drone Attacks on Russian Airfields -- One for the History Books

 

The head of the Ukrainian Security Service, Vasyl Malyuk, studies a map of one of the targets of Sunday's operation. Ukrainian Security Service / via AP 

"The enemy thought that it could bomb Ukraine and kill Ukrainians with impunity and endlessly."

"But this is not so. We will respond to Russian terror and destroy the enemy everywhere."

Lt.-Gen. Vasyl Maliuk, SBU

 

"This operation completely changes the perception of reality -- both within Russia and around the world. Our enemies are now forced to recognize that Ukrainian intelligence services are capable of penetrating even the most secure facilities."

"When the enemy loses dozens of strategic bombers, it's not just a technical loss; it's a blow to its ability to blackmail the world with missile strikes."

Ukrainian lawmaker Roman Kostenko

 

"The smartest thing Putin could do right now would be to not respond immediately."

"Putin's best response is to delay his response -- which he is good at."

"Putin does not have many spectacular 'good' moves in the current situation. Ukraine has no comparable facilities that can be destroyed without infernal civilian casualties and enormous damage to the environment ... which would traumatize the already troubled Trump." 

Vladimir Pastukhov, Russian political scientist, London 

A serviceman from the mobile air defence unit of the 115th Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces fires a Browning machine gun towards a Russian drone during an overnight shift, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv Region, Ukraine June 2, 2025.

Sofiia Gatilova, Reuters

 

 Ukraine's internal security service spent a year-and-a-half planning an assault on Russian airfields, an enterprise that was as audacious as it was spectacularly successful. The plan was to get drones into Russia and plant them close to key military runways. On the eve of a new round of peace talks Sunday, the signal to carry out the assault was lit and four unsuspecting Russian military bases were targeted -- remotely activated roofs lifted off mobile homes and sheds that had been parked on flatbed trucks.

 

The result saw armed Ukrainian drones soar, then land on military aircraft lined up on the runways, many of them engulfed in flames. At least 13 Russian aircraft were destroyed, dozens of others damaged, shocking Russia as the attack reduced its capability to threaten nuclear attacks or to launch missile strikes on Ukraine. The event was a crucial jolt to Moscow and a reminder to Ukraine's Western partners that although outmanned and outgunned, Kyiv is eminently capable of exploiting Russia's weaknesses, disrupting its war plans.  

 

A Ukrainian drone purportedly strikes Russian planes deep in Russian territory in an image from video released Sunday by a source in the Ukrainian Security Service. Source in the Ukrainian Security Service / via AP 

"[The attack was] a direct and highly sensitive blow to the nuclear triad [that destroyed] rare and expensive bombers."

"Most importantly, it reduced the Russian Air Force's ability to strike Ukrainian cities."

Yan Matveyev, military analyst, Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation  

The destroyed and damaged planes, some of which were nuclear capable, included A-50, Tu-95, Tu-22 M3, and Tu-160 planes that Russia had used, according to Kyiv, nearly nightly to bomb Ukraine. Video footage published on social media, eliciting reactions, demonstrated that in Russia the drone strikes had stirred panic, confusion and rage from Russian pro-war commentators, some of whom called the attack "Russia's Pearl Harbor".

 

A young Russian soldier stationed at another airbase, posted videos of several aircraft burning. Furious chief Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov demanded that the young soldier be shot for filming the video, calling him a 'scumbag'. 

 

The SBU, the Ukrainian security agency that had planned the strikes took public credit for them in Kyiv, revealing the operation's code name as Spiderweb. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted photos of himself hugging the agency head, Lt.-Gen. Vasyl Maliuk, in a celebration of congratulation for a spectacular work well done. 

 

Ukraine had transferred its Tupolev bombers to Moscow -- explained former Ukrainian defence minister Oleksii Reznikov -- part of its 1996 agreement to surrender its nuclear capabilities in exchange for security guarantees from several countries, Russia included. "On June 1, 2025, Ukraine began removing those very aircraft from one of the memorandum's main guarantors. That guarantor had shamelessly used them against peaceful Ukrainians." Sunday's attack was "a peculiar form of military-legal sanctions".

 

Russian outlet Agentsvo, Russian state broadcasters Channel One and Rossiya 1 each devoted a total of 40 seconds' airtime to the attack on distant Russian airbases. The news of the event was completely absent by next morning from news bulletins. Mikhail Zvinchuk, a pro-Kremlin military blogger observed that the attack would be the cause of "substantial moral and psychological damage"; Ukraine's operation not only aimed to exploit gaps in Russian defence but also "creating colossal tension" in society while discrediting the security services. 

 

Which seems like a fair enough exchange -- given that Moscow through its endless attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, civilian targets including hospitals, targeting of civilian areas with deliberate intent, creating instability and fear like any terrorist attacks would to demoralize the public in an effort to turn it against their own government -- making it a timely and well-deserved  turn-about of affairs, giving Russia and its population a graphic idea of what they have been imposing on Ukraine and Ukrainians.

 

Zvinchuk speculated that if Ukraine could attack airbases it could also attack highways and transport routes, stirring panic. But that kind of methodology leading to charges of war crimes is a specialty of Russia, not Ukraine. "Of course, from the point of view of undermining Russia's military potential, this is an extremely unpleasant story, especially in the context of the loss of the Tu-95Ms (Russia's fleet of nuclear bombers)."

 

Kyiv’s secret service stashed the attack drones inside the roofs of the sheds, which were loaded onto trucks that were driven to the perimeter of the air bases. AP

"[The attack provided] an immense inspirational push for Ukrainian society and soldiers [that may inspire more resistance to compromise that could lead to a real ceasefire]." 

"We're less likely to compromise in the nearest future. And some form of a compromise seems to be the only way to stop [or] pause the war."

"[Still, the attack dramatically improved the SBU's reputation and] deserves to be described in history books."

Former Ukrainian official, speaking anonymously 

"A Modern 'Dreyfus' Trial" Israel vs the ICC

"[The International Criminal Court] issued warrants of arrest for two individuals, Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu and Mr. Yoav Gallant, for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed from at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024, the day the Prosecution filed the applications for warrants of arrest."

"Each bear criminal responsibility for the following crimes as co-perpetrators for committing the acts jointly with others: the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts."

"[There were also] reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant bear responsibility for the war crime of intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population."

ICC Pre-Trial Chamber 1

"It's a geopolitical bombshell."

"It's the first time the court has issued arrest warrants against a western country and also the first time that they are issuing arrest warrants when there's no jurisdiction in the case, but they've invented it for themselves."

"Outrageous."

NGO Monitor legal adviser Anne Herzberg

Nir Elias/Pool/AFP/Getty Images

 

The ICC tribunal in The Hague announced its decision to issue warrants for the arrest of Israel's prime minister and its then-minister of defence, citing its finding of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In so doing, it echoes the accusations of Muslim governments as well as the belief of many of Israel's so-called allies, Western democracies. The ruling has brought great joy and celebration to the very terrorist groups that conspired to launch a savage attack on Israeli civilians that resulted in the mass murder of over 1,200 Israelis, the wounding of far greater numbers, the rape of girls and women, sadistic torture and mutilation, and the hostage-taking of 250 children, elderly, women and men.

From its very modern foundation, the Jewish State, like no other on Earth, has been attacked ceaselessly, first by its neighbouring nations, and more latterly by terrorist groups funded, formed and patronized by those neighbours. The relentless attacks culminated in the October 7, 2023 incursion of thousands of Palestinian terrorists, led by Hamas with a deliberate plan to commit unthinkable atrocities. There is no country in this world that would not respond with force and determination to end, once and for all, the unendurable attacks targeting its people.

Yet because the terrorist groups in their psychotic hatred have no compunction in sacrificing their own citizens in what they view as the greater goal of destroying Israel and its people, the construct of a nation in its own defence committing a counter-attack that results in mass collateral damage, despite care taken to avoid victimizing innocent civilians during a theatre of war, elicits condemnation by the international community which has never suffered constant, unstoppable violent threats to their security, holding Israel to an impossible standard no other nation could or would endure.

ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan whose forceful prosecution of the Jewish State as having overstepped the boundaries permitted it by international consensus in reacting to terrorism directed toward it, with the very same terrorist groups vowing never to stop, to continue assaulting the state and its people with the same intensity and savagery until their goal of  utter destruction has been completed, reached a decision that was predictable, given the animus directed toward Israel. Telling enough that Khan is himself Muslim, and a committed proselytizer for Islam.

 

97 hostages kidnapped in Hamas's 7 October 2023 attack are still being held in Gaza  Reuters

 

Israel, like other countries such as the United States (China and Russia as well; the 3 of 5 members of the UN Security Council that have never signed on to the ICC), nor did India -- sign on to the ICC. The ICC has no jurisdiction in those countries, unless a country that did sign on files against them, as well as the fact that if a country has the means and determination with an independent judiciary to conduct its own investigation and come to a conclusion, that would negate the ICC's move to investigate' a condition that Israel fulfills. In this instance, it was 'Palestine' which is not a state and therefore ineligible, that the ICC cited, giving them the 'authority' to investigate. A complete and utter sham.

The Hague chose to reject Jerusalem's challenges with respect to jurisdiction with the claim that the court exercises its authority based on the Palestinian Authority's membership. A membership in and of itself absurd, absent sovereign country status. Allowing the PA membership in the body represents an absurdity, but one with an illegal, immoral and defined purpose. Israel chose not to be a signatory to the Rome Statute which established the court. Yet "Palestine" was inducted as a signatory though no such state exists under international law.

 

It is not Benjamin Netayahu and Yoav Gallant that have been singled out for international censure; their names merely symbolic to the greater target of satanizing Israel itself, and by extension Jews, wherever they live; in Israel or throughout the diaspora. The situation is a deliberate diminishment of Jews having the right to self-defence, either as a nation, or as a people. This is a malign, institutionalized assault demanding respect for a corrupted UN body that purports to dispense justice. 

Today, on 21 November 2024, Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court (‘Court’), in its composition for the Situation in the State of Palestine, unanimously issued two decisions rejecting challenges by the State of Israel (‘Israel’) brought under articles 18 and 19 of the Rome Statute (the ‘Statute’). It also issued warrants of arrest for Mr Benjamin Netanyahu and Mr Yoav Gallant. ICC

"Israel utterly rejects the false and absurd charges of the International Criminal Court, a biased and discriminatory political body."

"The decision to issue an arrest warrant against the prime minister was made by a corrupt chief prosecutor who is trying to save himself from sexual harassment accusations and biased judges who are motivated by antisemitic hatred of Israel."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Office

Palestinian Terrorist Groups Excelling in Committing Atrocities

More than 360 civilians were killed at the Supernova music festival on 7 October  EPA

"[The terrorists committed a crime against humanity because they launched a] widespread attack directed against a civilian population."

"The killing of civilians and taking of hostages were all central aims of the planned attack, and not actions that occurred as an afterthought or as a plan gone awry or as isolated acts, for example, perpetrated by unaffiliated Palestinians from Gaza." 

"That [the claim that random Palestinian civilians took part in the attack] was a claim that was made very early on, it was made by Hamas in order to distance its own fighters from the abuses, and it was made by Israel to justify attacks on civilians in Gaza."

"The intentional killing and  hostage-taking of civilians was planned and highly co-ordinated."

Belkis Wille, associate director, Human Rights Watch

Palestinian militants move towards the border fence with Israel from Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 7.   Said Khatib/AFP/Getty Images

 

It has taken almost a year, but finally Human Rights Watch -- never a friend of Israel -- issued a report affirming the sadistic savagery visited upon Israeli civilians on October 7 of 2023 was a deliberately planned mass slaughter of devastating proportions. Palestinian terrorists killed some 1,200 people, kidnapping over 250 people of all ages, taking them to Gaza as human pawns, some 120 of whom remain in Hamas' hands.

Human Rights Watch has declared that the attack met the international legal definition for crimes against humanity and war crimes. Still in Gaza are 115 of the 251 abducted during the fateful early October day of dread infamy. Still being held for 'trade' agreements are 42 dead Israelis, among them soldiers captured by the terrorists on their crossing into southern Israel, who manned Israeli border observation posts. 

According to the HRW report, five different Palestinian armed terrorist groups engaged in war crimes, violating international law by killing, torturing, taking hostages, looting and committing crimes involving sexual and gender-based violence, primarily the mutilation of girls and women before they were raped and murdered. All the groups were led by the Hamas Qassam Brigades.

 

Photographs of some of those taken hostage by Hamas during the October 7 attack on Israel are seen in Tel Aviv, Israel on October 18.   Leon Neal/Getty Images

 

HRW researchers relied on a report by a special United Nations envoy who had found "reasonable grounds" to believe Hamas committed sexual violence during the attack, while claiming its own researchers had been unable to independently verify claims of sexual violence and rape. Somewhat akin to Medecines sans Frontieres claiming that since it had not actually witnessed these atrocities, it could not subscribe to their condemnation.

At 230 pages in length, the report focused on the October 7 attacks without examining actions taken by Hamas or Israel linked to the subsequent war brought to Gaza. As the terrorists launched a "widespread attack directed against a civilian population, theirs was a crime against humanity". HRW's Belkis Wille had arrived in Israel mere days following the October attack, spending  a month in research with local staff.

Palestinian terror attacks at 26 civilian sites were examined by the researchers, who spoke with close to a hundred survivors, along with 50 experts and first responders to the violent tragedy. The conclusion was reached by the researchers that following their review of hundreds of photos and videos the majority of the Palestinians taking part in the atrocities were terror-group affiliated, not random civilians who had taken advantage of the open fence.

 

A family photo hangs on the wall inside a burned-out house in Kibbutz Be'eri in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 assault by Palestinian armed groups on southern Israel, October 14, 2023. Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times

Footage of the events observing the terror operatives included those who wore civilian clothing, communicating via walkie-talkies, taking orders from commanders, which led the researchers to conclude the operatives who carried out the worst abuses, particularly in the early hours of the attack, belonged to 'armed factions'. 

Hamas issued a nine-page response to the report, elucidating that the Qassam Brigades had planned and led the attack, and the Hamas political movement was not involved; operatives, they claimed were instructed to avoid targeting civilians. A claim that even HRW found "false". The organization concluded their report by calling on Hamas to release the 120 hostages immediately, along with bodies of hostages remaining in Gaza.

Israeli soldiers inspect houses that were destroyed in a battle between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants on Saturday's Hamas attack on a kibbutz in Be'eri, Israel, on October 14.

Amir Levy/Getty Images

Crimes Against Humanity

"Look at this ceiling. This is not just a regular tunnel. It's more convenient for long living. You have toilets and you have rooms that were built in order to contain people."

"The hospital is providing electricity. They're using the hospital infrastructure in order to provide this terror mechanism to stay alive and survive."

"This blast door allows them to prevent blasts by our air force, meaning it can maintain the preservation of parts of the tunnel."

"Above us, patients, wounded, doctors, all being a human shield for this tunnel system here at Shifa hospital."

"One direction [of a staircase] goes to the Shifa hospital. The other direction goes to different places where the terrorists can move using the safe haven, the human shield of the hospital, the human shield of these regular houses providing them shelter, held by civilians."

"And they choose it in the most barbaric and cynical way. They use it in a room that should have provided teaching for children. This is their choice. This is what we're fighting."

Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, spokesman, Israel Defense Forces 

"The director of the Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip was apprehended and transferred for ISA questioning following evidence showing that Shifa Hospital, under his direct management, served as a Hamas command and control centre."

"The Hamas terror tunnel network situated under the hospital also exploited electricity and resources taken from the hospital. In addition, Hamas stored numerous weapons inside the hospital and on the hospital grounds."

"In the hospital, under his [Abu Salmiya's] management, there was extensive Hamas terrorist activity. Findings of his involvement in terrorist activity will determine whether he will be subject to further ISA questioning."

Israel Defense Forces statement

These images released by the IDF on November 21, 2023, show the inside of a Hamas tunnel found under Gaza's Shifa Hospital. (Israel Defense Forces)

 

A video has been released by the Israeli military; its purpose is to visually guide viewers through a Hamas tunnel located under the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The amount of work represented by designing and building a network estimated to be between 250 and 500 kilometres in length is truly astonishing. Even the amenities built into the tunnel system are fairly shocking perhaps simply because it is all so unexpected. On a special guided tour, Rear Admiral Hagari takes journalists through some of the facilities underground.

At one point he reaches up to touch the drop ceiling tiles in one of the rooms off the main passage. "Look at this ceiling!" There are communications conduits and electrical outlets and Hagari explains that power emanates from the building above, the hospital. The tunnel hallways are constructed of concrete with arched ceilings to enable a man to walk through without having to bend his neck or crouch. Such arched tunnels are typical of many of the tunnels built throughout the past 15 years, he explains.

The bare essentials are augmented with handrails on stairs, kitchen countertops, tiles in kitchens and bathrooms, an air conditioning unit in one room. It was, in fact, the air conditioning mechanism on the outside surface that led the IDF investigators to locate the presence of the tunnels below surface. Interior doors are lightweight, but there is also a heavy steel blast door which can withstand invading Israeli troops.

 

Hamas terrorists bring a hostage into Shifa Hospital as seen on surveillance footage from October 7, 2023. (IDF)

 

The video, in fact, had been released on X; the guided tour for journalists enhances and explains what is seen in the video. Yet another video released on X draws viewers outside the hospital to a street located a block away from the hospital. There, an ordinary-appearing apartment hides a tunnel entranceway. Within the bombed-out structure appears what would have been a classroom with a chalkboard covered in English-language lessons.

The floor was lifted in a corner, revealing a short staircase leading to a glass door, and beyond it, a spiral staircase.The director of Al Shifa Hospital was arrested by Israeli forces last Thursday, and with him other several staff members of the hospital, while they were in the process of evacuating south, along the humanitarian corridor.  

A Hamas pickup truck is seen at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, as seen on surveillance footage from October 7, 2023. (IDF)

 

Following their invasion of southern Israel on October 7 -- where terrorists scoured Israeli towns, villages and kibbutzim, killing everyone they saw, mutilating people, torturing them before killing them, tossing bombs into homes, setting homes on fire that burned people's bodies to unidentifiable cores of blackened bones, gang-raping girls and women at the Nova Music Festival nearby the Be'ri Kibbutz, taking 240 infants, elderly, infirm, women, men and soldiers hostage into Gaza -- some of the hostages were taken to the hospital.

Cpl. Noa Marciano

A pathology report verified that one of the hostages, Cpl. Noa Marciano, 19, had been murdered on the premises of the hospital.

"The pathology report states that Noa was injured by an IDF strike, but not in a life-threatening way, and this is contrary to the lies published by Hamas according to which Noa was killed by IDF strikes", explained Rear Admiral Hagari. "According to intelligence information, Noa was taken inside the walls of Shifa Hospital, where she was murdered by a Hamas terrorist."

 

"On November 2, Dr. Michael Ryan, director of WHO health emergencies program, said he knew what was going on ‘above ground’ at Shifa and was aware that the use of medical facilities for military purposes is forbidden according to international law. At the same time, he claimed he doubted that any terror activities were happening at Shifa."

"It is clear now that WHO has ignored the use of medical facilities as human shields and of Hamas’s refusal to allow civilians to evacuate from them… WHO’s failure to address these issues amounts to its contribution to the continuation of a conflict that is causing much suffering to so many."

Israeli Health Minister Uriel Busso and Health Ministry director-general Moshe Bar Siman Tov.

An IDF infographic showing where the bodies of Israeli hostages Yehudit Weiss and Noa Marciano were found near the Shifa Hospital complex. (IDF)

 

 

White-Washing the 14th Waffen SS Galicia

"I don't understand this upside-down universe where people here admire the Waffen SS and somehow that's OK."

"It doesn't embarrass the people at my university very much that they have a [group] that has been laundering Waffen SS reputations and funds for years now."

Karyn Ball, professor, Holocaust scholar, University of Alberta

Yaroslav Hunka, right, waits for the arrival of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the House of Commons in Ottawa on Sept. 22. The University of Alberta is returning endowment funds from the family of Hunka, a Ukrainian man whose military service was linked to the Nazis.Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press

After professors at University of Alberta lodged complaints that the University continues to engage in white-washing Nazi crimes, a panel scheduled to discuss the Waffen SS was quietly cancelled. A number of online discussions have been held at the university since an episode involving Ukrainian-Canadian veteran Yaroslav Hunka who served in the Waffen SS was invited to the House of Commons on September 22 on the occasion of Ukraine's Jewish President addressing Parliament. The-then Speaker of the House, ignorant of the Nazi connection, invited the man, characterizing him as a Ukrainian 'hero'.

Despite reality, speakers at the online discussions claim that the 14th Waffen SS Galicia was never involved in Nazi war crimes, attributing such claims to Russian disinformation. When, once again the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the university planned another online discussion for October 14, university professors launched yet another protest. Complaints were filed to the university's administration charging the CIUS in whitewashing Nazi collaborators and war crimes. 

The Hunka family had endowed the organized event with $30,000, before it was cancelled. The Waffen SS Galicia was involved in massacres of civilians during the Second World War, and used as well by the Nazis to crush an uprising in Slovakia. The university's vice-president of academics announced the Hunka family funding would be returned to them. "On behalf of the university, I want to express our commitment to address antisemitism in any of its manifestations, including the ways in which the Holocaust continues to resonate in the present", she stated.

Laurie Adkin, a political scientist at the university, called for an investigation of funding and activities of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. Recently an article in  media outlet Progress Report revealed that the university took money from Hunka, as well as from other Waffen SS members, accepting as well funds from the estate of Volodymyr Kubijovyc, a Nazi collaborator who founded Waffen SS Galicia, advocating for ethnic cleansing, for a Ukraine without Jews or Poles.

 

Monument to the people slaughtered by the 14th Waffen-SS at Huta Pienacka. Image via Stako

 

Another veteran of the Waffen SS Galicia division, Peter Savaryn, had served at the University of Alberta as chancellor from 1982 to 1986. He helped to fund the CIUS and had been awarded the Order of Canada in 1987. Among nationalist Ukrainian-Canadians, members of Waffen SS Galicia are viewed as heroes, reflecting their battles against Soviet forces, at that time in the war fighting the Nazis with the Allied coalition. Oakville, Ontario and Edmonton, Alberta both host monuments in honour of the Ukrainian SS troops.

There is a sharp distinction from that group to the 40,000 Ukrainian-Canadians who were members of Canada's military, fighting the Nazis, for whom no monuments have ever been erected in honour of their loyalty to democratic values and Canada. A 1980s study of war criminals in Canada found 600 former members of SS Galicia still resident in Canada. "The Division was an SS division and technically all of its officers and senior NCOs are liable for trial as war criminals", a 1948 British government report noted.

"The University of Alberta says it is reviewing other donations it has received after returning $30,000 from the family of Yaroslav Hunka, a Waffen SS veteran who got a standing ovation in Parliament during a visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last month."

"The university is facing calls to return hundreds of thousands of dollars in endowments in the names of Ukrainians linked to the Waffen SS Galicia division, who were admitted to Canada after the Second World War. They include an endowment of about $430,000 in the name of Volodymyr Kubijovych, who played a key role in the SS unit’s establishment in 1943."

The Globe and Mail

Left image: Peter Savaryn (left standing) and Volodymyr Kubijovyč (center sitting) pictured here at the 1976 contract signing between the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies and Shevchenko Scientific Society of Europe to collaborate on the Encyclopedia of Ukraine. Right image: Volodymyr Kubijovyč (circled in red) gives a Nazi salute at the 14th Waffen-SS recruitment ceremony in 1943.

 

Moscow's Scorched-Earth Agenda in Ukraine

Kherson in June, New York Times

"If the war ended tomorrow, and I don't think it will, it would take five years to rebuild that dam and then at least two more for the reservoir to fill up."

"Then it would take another ten years for the fish to grow -- for some species, 20 [years]."

"I'm 50. I don't know if I'll even be around that long."

"[This was a] katastrofa."

Serhii Bezhan, patriarch, Fishing business

 

"If we irrigate with only what nature gives us, it will not grow. Because now there's cool weather and rain here, but in the summer the climate is very dry, it's very hot, and so [the harvest] won't even be here at all."

"[The word in the local business community was that] once the Russians were kicked out [there was a plan to at least temporarily block the river and restore the reservoir]."

"For now, while they [the Russians] are here — 20 kilometres away from us — the government doesn't want to do this because obviously they might be shelling and there will be casualties." 

"We really love this water reservoir. It gives life. We all depend on this water."

Denys Myronenko, strawberry and grape farmer

 

"There's now a whole downstream catchment of the river that is not controlled. In the wetter periods flood waves will just come through."

"I expect those tens of thousands of people who were evacuated will have to stay away for a while as long as those solutions are not in place. It is difficult to see people coming back to those communities in this situation."

Jaap Flikweert, flood and coastal management advisor, engineering consultancy Royal HaskoningDHV

The dried-up Kakhovka reservoir in Ukraine is shown after the dam was destroyed on June 6, causing massive flooding along the lower Dnipro River. The receding water has revealed the remains of an ancient settlement known as the 'Cossack Meadow.' (Stephanie Jenzer/CBC)

When the Kakhovka Reservoir in central Ukraine was still intact, kids would play in the shallow water close to shore. Young couples would stroll beneath the pine trees, and men would go there to fish. This idyll was destroyed months ago when a major downriver dam was destroyed and the lake that shimmered in the sun and was a favourite recreational area for residents, was drained. It had once reined as one of Europe's largest lakes. In its place now, is a 150-mile-long meadow.

Serhii Bezhan's family business was established sixty years ago as a fishing enterprise on the shores of the lake. Generation after generation of the family made an enterprising living off fish. There are now no longer any fish to be caught. The family business of buying boats, nets, freezers and huge ice-making machinery is also now no more.

The seismic meters hundreds of miles distant from the reservoir and the dam on June 6 detected an explosion of enormous force taking place at the Kakhovka dam along the Dnieper River. The dam's reinforced concrete walls, over 60 feet in height and up to 100 feet thick, had crumbled, resulting in a massive 4.8 trillion gallons of water escaping in huge gushes flooding downstream communities.

The evidence indicating scientifically that the dam was blown up from inside has been attributed to Russia, a deliberate act of civilian sabotage, a war crime. A war crime among many other war crimes targeting civilian infrastructure; markets and schools and hospitals. The rehearsal of all these war crimes that took place in Syria is continuing to play out in Ukraine. Epic floods were created inflicting more misery on the Ukrainian population.

First the flood, then an ensuing drought, and wholesale environmental destruction, to the Ukrainian economy, to the lives of people never imagining their vast country would ever be under invasion and occupation again by a rapacious and cruel neighbour. To the present day, homes remain water-logged and mud-smeared. Everywhere lie the stinking skeletons of dead fish. There is a drinking-water crisis, a crisis of lack of irrigation for farmers. Communities bereft of work. Losses whose depths are not yet fully understood.

It seems there is no level of destruction and malevolent misery to be inflicted on the invaded country that is too extreme to be contemplated by a civilized world view. Power plants have been bombed with great deliberation, as have grain silos, with massive food losses. At one and the same time, Russia claims Ukrainian geography is really Russia's, while inflicting grave wounds on the land, destroying towns and cities, turning infrastructure into rubble, depriving people of their homes and their livelihoods and their lives.

 

Local residents take boats along a flooded street in Kherson, Ukraine, on June 8 as they evacuate from a flooded area after the Nova Kakhovka dam was destroyed two days earlier. (Vladyslav Musiienko/Reuters)

"At 2:35 a.m and 2:54 a.m. on June 6, seismic sensors in Ukraine and Romania detected the telltale signs of large explosions. Witnesses in the area heard large blasts between roughly 2:15 a.m. and 3 a.m. And just before the dam gave way, American intelligence satellites captured infrared heat signals that also indicated an explosion."

"The dam was designed to withstand any kind of attack from without."

"Evidence suggests Russia blew it up from within."

New York Times

Terrifying Evidence of Inhumanity

"Everyone must react, every leader. Do not expect that it will be forgotten, that time will pass."

"[Russian solders are] beasts."

"We are not going to forget anything. Neither are we going to forgive the murderers. There will be legal responsibility for everything. The defeat of terror is necessary." 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

 

"[Wagner was] reportedly continuing to commit war crimes by beheading Ukrainian servicemen in Bakhmut,"

"[Referencing a photo shared on pro-Russian social media sites showing what appeared to be a severed head, which they claimed belonged to a Ukrainian soldier, mounted on a spike]."

Institute for the Study of War

 

"[The videos are part of a psychological operation] aimed at intimidation.”

"It completely dehumanizes and demonstrates the essence of a terrorist country."

"But it is important to understand the purpose. This is an PSYOP [psychological operation] aimed at intimidation. The target audience is not only Ukraine, but also Western societies."

"It doesn’t work on us, though. The Russians are afraid of this, but not us."

 Dariia Zarivna, adviser to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine

Investigations have been launched both in Ukraine and in Russia into two gruesome videos showing the beheading of Ukrainian soldiers. The videos appear to have been taken at or close to Bakhmut the Ukrainian city that Russian troops along with the Wagner Group have besieged for months without being able to dislodge the defensive Ukrainian troops determined to hold the seemingly militarily insignificant city. In the process a horrendous death toll has taken place, where Wagner fighters in particular have been dying in droves.

The videos have spread online. Causing aghast condemnations from Kyiv along with condemnation from international human rights organizations. The Kremlin has responded to the footage as visually "horrible", and is awaiting the opportunity for verification before commenting further. Not only have the soldiers been executed by beheading, it appeared their hands had been amputated. In one of the videos, a sound track hints that one of the executed Ukrainians was still alive while his neck was being sawed by an ordinary knife.

Russian soldier decapitating Ukrainian prisoner

Starkly reminiscent of the Islamic State videos that horrified the world with their gruesome gloating over the reaction to their brutish atrocities. One video appears to show a man in green fatigues, a yellow armband prominent, typically worn by Ukrainian fighters. He can be heard screaming before another man dressed in camouflage decapitates him with a knife.

While this is happening a third man holds to view a flak jacket belonging to the Ukrainian soldier. All three men speak Russian. "In the world of fakes we live in, the authenticity of the footage must be checked", responded Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Attempts are being made to identify those in the videos committing the atrocities, along with the victims. On pro-Kremlin Russian Telegram channels posters did not dispute the videos' authenticity while at the same time not confirming them. There were some justifications; claims that combat hardened the Russian troops.

The videos' release was "fairly opportune" for Ukraine, speculated Andrei Medvedev, a Russian state TV journalist, member of Moscow city legislature. It had the potential to "fire up personnel ideologically" before the planned major spring Ukrainian counteroffensive. The videos' release, according to Mykhalilo Podolyak, adviser to the Ukrainian President, was meant to "demoralize the public mood or at least change the psychological perception of the war right now."

According to the UN and rights groups, since Russia's February 2022 invasion, the Russian military has committed widespread abuses and war crimes. Among them the targeting of apartment buildings and other civilian structures and equipment including hospitals in Russian air strikes. Images of hundreds of dead civilians in the streets and in mass graves in Bucha following the withdrawal of Russian forces provided horrifying testimony of Russian atrocities.

Russian War Crimes in Ukraine -- The Language of Force

"An attempt to split part of the state away means an encroachment at the very existence of the state. Quite obviously, it warrants the use of any weapons. I hope our 'friends' across the ocean realize that."

"If Patriot or other weapons are delivered to the territory of Ukraine along with foreign experts, they certainly make legitimate targets, which must be destroyed."

"They are combatants, they are the enemies of our state and they must be destroyed."

“Honestly speaking, Ukraine is part of Russia. But due to geopolitical reasons and the course of history we had tolerated that we were living in separate quarters and had been forced to acknowledge those invented borders for a long time."

Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president, now deputy head of Russia's Security Council

 

"Right now, residential areas where ordinary people and children live are being fired at."

"This must not become 'just another day' in Ukraine or anywhere else in the world. The world needs greater unity and determination to defeat Russian terror faster and protect lives."

"Every time someone tries to hear the world 'peace' in Moscow, another order is given there for such criminal strikes [against Ukraine's civilian population]."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Onlookers watch smoke rise from the fire caused by missile debris falling in the courtyard of a residential building in the Sviatoshynskyi district   CNN

 

Civilians are being killed and wounded across Ukraine by long-range Russian bombardment. At the same time Kremlin official Dmitry Medvedev heralded the news that Russian forces were prepared to repell the anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive scheduled for this spring. Last year Ukrainian authorities established hundreds of 'points of invincibility', in reality aid stations where residents of Donetsk province could have access to food, charge their cellphone and enjoy some warmth. 

A Russian missile struck an aid station in eastern Ukraine with predictable results. Russian attacks are replete with S300 anti-aircraft missiles, not aimed at military bases but directly at civilian enclaves. The civilians who were killed at the aid station were refugees. The winter artillery war continues with Russian forces  using air-launched missiles, exploding drones and sliding bombs in several regions. 

An overnight rocket and artillery barrage and airstrikes hit the town of Bilophillia in Sumy province in the northeastern region. While in southern Ukraine, Russian shelling in the city of Kherson killed and wounded civilians and as well in the town of Bilozerka just a day after President Zelenskyy had visited the region.

Rescuers carry a body from residential buildings destroyed by a Russian missile strike

 

With the arrival of warmer spring weather and new weapons in hand from the West, including tanks, Ukrainian forces are preparing for a counteroffensive meant to dislodge Russian troops from occupied areas of Ukraine. "Our General Staff is addressing all that", scoffed Medvedev; any Ukrainian attempt to recapture Crimea illegally annexed in 2014, could, he asserted, trigger a nuclear response from Moscow. 

This is reflective of Russia's security doctrine which envisions the use of its atomic arsenal responding to a nuclear attack or one with conventional weaponry threatening "the very existence of the Russian state". Western experts operating weapons like the U.S.-produced Patriot air defence missile system given to Ukraine could be targeted, suggested Medvedev.  Russia knows well that Ukrainian soldiers received training in the U.S. despite which Russian officials often allude to foreign instructors in Ukraine.

Medvedev revealed that Moscow may strategize to occupy a long strip of Ukrainian territory stretching all the way to the Polish border. Poland would not stand idly by, unperturbed at witnessing this kind of operation unfold, with no reaction. It is even so without this further kind of action, preparing for the type of scenario that would activate its own military into confronting Russian forces by committing to active combat alongside Ukraine.

Poland knows of a certainty that if Russia succeeds in its mission of eviscerating Ukraine and growing the territory of the Russian Federation accordingly, it would be next on Moscow's expansion agenda, and it has no intention of allowing itself to become another appendage of Russian territorial conquest in a renewal of the Soviet Union.

"Our relations with the West are already worse than they have ever been in history. [German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann asserting Putin would be arrested in the ICC warrant should he visit Germany, a case in point.]"

“Let’s imagine ... the leader of a nuclear power visits the territory of Germany and is arrested. [It would amount to a declaration of war against Russia.] In this case, our assets will fly to hit the Bundestag, the chancellor’s office and so on."

“I have no illusions that we could communicate with them [Western politicians] again any time soon. It makes no sense to negotiate with certain countries and blocs — they only understand the language of force."

Dmitry Medvedev

Three Russian rockets launched against Ukraine from Russia's Belgorod region are seen at dawn in Kharkiv, Ukraine   CNN

ICC Prosecution for War Crimes

 

What is a war crime?  Even war has rules.

• The definition of war crimes are set out in treaties called the Geneva Conventions along with other international laws and agreements.
• Military forces cannot deliberately attack civilians -- nor the infrastructure that is vital to their survival.
• Some weapons are banned because of the indiscriminate or appalling suffering they cause -- such as anti=personnel landmines and chemical or biological weapons.
• The sick and wounded must be cared for -- including injured soldiers,who have rights as prisoners of war.
• Serious offences such as murder, rape or mass persecution of a group are known as 'crimes against humanity' or in some circumstances, 'genocide
  

Reuters

Russia and its president have been referred to the International Criminal Court repeatedly, in reflection of the crimes against humanity committed by the Russian military as a whole and by Russian servicemen in episodes of vicious brutality, including torture, rape, looting, murder. It was inevitable, given Russia's violent invasion of Ukraine, and witnessed, photographed and first-person accounts of crimes committed by Russia that the International Criminal Court would be involved in prosecuting the perpetrator of barbarism in a conflict of territorial expansion.

"We see clearly a pattern, I think, in terms of the number, scale and breadth of attacks against the power grids of Ukraine. And we need to look at why that’s taking place; are they legitimate targets or not; and whether or not they are targeted for other reasons." 

"Children cannot be treated as the spoils of war."

"There seems to be a lot of damage in Ukraine, and it may well be it is part of a policy and part of a plan and we need to get to the bottom of it and see whether or not there is criminal responsibility and if there is we have an International Criminal Court that has jurisdiction to look into it."

"As a prosecutor we are officers of the court. We are not here to get a round of applause by a conjuring trick. Whenever we do move, [people] should have confidence that this is not a political process."

ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan

Mairupol theatre after the air strike    Reuters

The International Criminal Court has announced its preparation to initiate the arrest of Russian officials for their role in forcibly deporting children from Ukraine and for deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure. An unnamed source stated that arrest warrants could include the crime of genocide, expected to be served in the "short term" should the court prosecutor request be approved by a pretrial judge at the court based at The Hague.

Just as Russia, with its permanent seat on the United Nation Security Council vetoes any sanctions the other Security Council members, with China supporting Russia, bring forward, it is a foregone conclusion that it will use its weight at the UN to reject any such arrest warrants naming any Russian officials. An international war crimes prosecution would have the ultimate effect of pushing Moscow down a steeper diplomatic isolation incline. Russian officials named would theoretically find it difficult to travel abroad.

Dial back to the vicious assaults by the Sudanese military and its government on Sudanese Darfurians inspiring the International Criminal Court to prosecute the Sudanese president Omar Al Bashir and its head of military for 'genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in  Darfur, Sudan, since 1 July 2002' and the spectacle of Al Bashir travelling abroad to attend meetings of the Arab League where his presence was accepted and none there made a move to arrest him.

Moscow predictably denies deliberately targeting Ukraine's civilian infrastructure, insisting its attacks are merely intended to reduce Kyiv's fighting capacity. Russia feels it was completely legitimate to bring thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia as a humanitarian campaign meant to protect orphans and abandoned children from the conflict zone. Kyiv clarifies the situation, that thousands of Ukrainian children were deported to be adopted into Russian homes or placed in Russian camps and orphanages.

Exposed exclusively to a Russian education and ambience, given Russian passports, taught to be Russian and to reject their Ukrainian heritage, nationality and culture, the children are expected to consider themselves Russian. The genocvide convention of the United Nations defines 'forcibly transferring children of one group to another group' to be one of five acts prosecutable as genocide. 

The ICC can bring a prosecution against political leaders for "waging aggressive war". This covers an unjustified invasion or conflict not undertaken in self-defence.   Getty Images

Kyiv had taken its own prosecution action previously, conducting a few war crimes prosecutions of individual Russian soldiers accountable for incidents such as killings or rapes in occupied Ukraine territory. The prospective ICC prosecution would elevate the charges while targeting officials responsible for policies and not just the minions perpetrating such war crimes on the ground.

Russia is itself mindful of its diplomatic isolation, currying closer relations with those countries willing to overlook its barbaric war in Ukraine. The most senior and important to Moscow of which is Beijing. China's President Xi Jinping is on the cusp of visiting Russia, responding to a long-standing invitation. Just the kind of friendly support that President Vladimir Putin most appreciates at this vexing time from a powerful ally.

Rumour has it that President Xi may plan to speak by video link to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Beijing has made overtures in the past to bring Moscow and Kyiv to peace talks, but Beijing doesn't make the rules and Moscow insists that Kyiv accept all the territorial gains that Russia feels it is entitled to, and for Ukraine to disarm, and disavow joining NATO. Unlikely prospects.

Beijing has just pulled off a diplomatic coup in persuading Saudi Arabia and Iran to set aside their long-standing polarizing issues which has brought them into conflict by proxy, in Syria and in Yemen. Iran, resenting Saudi Arabia's role as custodian of Mecca and Medina, aspiring to hold that role itself, the two nations, the Sunni-Islam Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Shiite Islamic Republic of Iran have agreed to restore diplomatic relations. Whether they will put a halt to battlefield hostilities is another matter.

"We do not recognize this court; we do not recognize its jurisdiction."

Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov

Getty Images