Russians are willfully adding Insult to Injury

If it were only a few drones and missiles. If it were only one or two towns. If it were only one or two apartment buildings. If it were only one or two attacks per week. If it were only injured civilians but not a dozen killed and 100-plus injured in Russia’s latest attack.

Each sentence could be followed by words such as tens, dozens, many, hundreds. Russia has stepped up its aerial campaign against Ukrainian towns and civilians to cruel proportions. Every night residents of Kyiv with children of all ages in tow along and the elderly rush to the basement shelters as Russia rains drones and ballistic missiles on unarmed residents’ homes.

Russia attacked Ukraine’s capital with missiles and drones overnight, killing at least a dozen people, including a 6-year-old boy, and wounding 124 others, authorities said Thursday, July 31.

Ten children, the youngest being a 5-month-old girl, were among the wounded, Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said. A large part of a nine-story residential building collapsed after it was struck, he said.

The nighttime attack targeted the Kyiv, Dnipro, Poltava, Sumy, Mykolaiv regions, with Ukraine’s capital being the primary target, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram.

“Today, the world once again saw Russia’s answer to our desire for peace with America and Europe,” Zelenskyy said. “New demonstrative killings. That is why peace without strength is impossible.”

He called on Ukraine’s allies to follow through on defense commitments and pressure Moscow toward real negotiations.

While Russian cutthroats in uniforms aren’t able to make headway on the ground against the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Moscow is focusing on killing Ukrainians – the elderly, mothers and children – in their residences in hopes of demoralizing the nation. However, numerous comments by officials and the man and woman in the street indicate that Russia can’t meet even this goal.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian drones struck multiple targets across Russia at the same time, including an industrial facility in the western Russian city of Penza and energy infrastructure in Volgograd Oblast, according to Russian officials and media.

Penza lies roughly 625 kilometers (388 miles) southeast of Moscow and about 600 kilometers (373 miles) from the nearest Ukraine-controlled territory.

Without disclosing the nature of the facility, Penza Oblast Gov. Oleg Melnichenko confirmed the attack, saying that a fire had occurred at an industrial plant.

“There is a fire at the plant, which is being extinguished,” he said.

The strikes come amid Ukraine’s intensified campaign targeting Russian military, industrial, and logistical infrastructure deep inside Russia.

Among recent lighter articles about the Russo-Ukraine War, President Donald Trump has had his fill of Russian x-president Dmitri Medvedev’s lambasting of Ukraine and the White House. Medvedev has been regularly threatening the United States with nuclear annihilation because of the White House’s welcome change of heart about Russia and Putin.

According to several news reports, Trump warned: “Tell Medvedev, the failed ex-president of Russia who still thinks he’s president, to watch what he says,” Trump wrote. “Because he’s stepping into very dangerous territory.”

On July 28, frustrated by Moscow’s relentless, wanton bombardment of civilian centers across numerous cities, Trump said that the new deadline for Russia to agree to a peace deal with Ukraine will expire in “10–12 days from today.”

That same day, Medvedev posted on X (formerly Twitter) that Trump was “heading for war with Russia”: “Trump is playing a game of ultimatums with Russia: 50 days or 10... He must remember two things: Russia is not Israel or even Iran. Every new ultimatum is a threat and a step toward war. Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with his own country. Don’t go down Sleepy Joe’s path,” Medvedev wrote, referring to ex-president Joe Biden.

On July 31, Trump has made clear that he wants a deal to end Russia’s war in Ukraine by August 8, the United States told the United Nations Security Council on Thursday.

In the wake of this latest deadly attack, Zelenskyy called for a “regime change” in Russia. Noting that “peace without strength is impossible,” Zelenskyy urged Western partners to use all available tools, including the confiscation of Russian assets, to compel Moscow to negotiate.

A “regime change” or the elimination of Putin and his cabal will certainly lead to mass confusion and chaos in Russia, which may be long enough for Ukraine to rebuild its country and for Russians to ponder their future.

What are Ukrainians Fighting For?

Oleksandr Skrypnyk, an investigative, historical journalist in Ukraine, recently came across a quotation that was thought to be lost in time whose significance transcends the past, present and future.

In a recent Facebook post, Skrypnyk, who articles regarding disclosures of Russian dirty tricks against Ukraine and Ukrainians appear in THE UKRAINIAN QUARTERLY, wrote about the discovery of Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky’s 1844 prayer book. It was lost during World War Two, when the church in Kosteniv, in the Lviv region, was ransacked.

The prayer book contained his handwritten marginal citation, call it an observation, warning, declaration, explanation to his contemporary as well as future Ukrainians about what they are facing at the hands of their enemies.

The citation emphasizes the insurmountable importance of cultural values: “If we are not fighting for our cultural values during war, then what are we fighting for!”

Indeed, what have Ukrainians been fighting for, what have they been defending for centuries against all invaders – Russian and non-Russian. They’ve been fighting for their cultural values, which embody their bloodline, their heritage and legacy, that which makes them Ukrainians.

Metropolitan Sheptytsky understood that, Ukrainian patriots before the spiritual leader of Ukrainians and after him also understood that. Russian cutthroats understand that as well.

In a blog on July 24, 2023, titled “Life Imitating Art or Russian & Nazi Terrorists never Change,” I observed: “Since time immemorial and especially in the past 17 months (29 months now) muscovites/russians regardless of the flag atop the kremlin have endeavored not only to annihilate Ukrainians but also their creations that have attested to where they came from, where they are and where they hope to go.

“We witnessed entire families mercilessly killed by russian cutthroats in uniforms. We’ve also seen them destroy museums, churches, historical books and literature, and artworks. The other day we saw the ruins of a historic sobor in Odesa that was struck by a russian missile (the other day it was the historical Pryvoz marketplace in the Black Sea city). That Ukrainian house of worship was destroyed by stalin, later rebuilt and now destroyed by putin – leaders of the same murderous people.”

I noted then that even Hollywood also took note of this type of war crime, the eradication of a people during wartime: “Here’s how a comparable tragic situation was summarized by George Clooney’s character Lt. Frank Stokes in the 2014 movie The Monuments Men, a movie about a six-man Allied squad that was tasked to locate classical artworks stolen and hidden by the nazis: “You can wipe out an entire generation, you can burn their homes to the ground and somehow they'll still find their way back. But if you destroy their history, you destroy their achievements and it’s as if they never existed. That’s what hitler wants and that’s exactly what we are fighting for.”

To be sure, that’s what putin wants – the total eradication and annihilation of everything Ukrainian. And that’s exactly what we’re fighting for – the preservation of our bloodline.