Russia Kills 6 in Overnight Bombing; ‘Let Them Fight it out,’ Says Trump

Overnight on November 8, 2025, the Russians launched another massive strike by missiles and drones against central and eastern Ukraine, killing 6, and injuring at least 26, according to a wide range of Ukrainian and Western news media.

The Ukrainian Air Force said in a Telegram post Saturday morning, November 8, that Moscow had launched 503 projectiles – 458 drones and 45 missiles – of which 415 were shot down while the remaining 78 struck 25 different locations across Ukraine. While this wasn’t a record number, it was deadly and destructive.

If you follow the war against Ukraine on social media, newspapers or television, you were almost as shocked as were local Ukrainians to see the gaping hole there once were the fifth and sixth floors of an apartment building in Dnipro, where regular people lived.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said in a Telegram post Saturday morning that the targets of the latest Russian strikes “remain the same: ordinary life, residential buildings, our energy system, and infrastructure.”

The irony of this deadly strike is that President Donald Trump cold heartedly quipped on November 3 in reply to a reporter’s question en route in Air Force 1 that in his opinion sometimes two sides just have to fight it out. “There’s no final straw. Sometimes you have to let them fight it out. It’s been a tough war for Putin... and it’s been a tough war for Ukraine,” he said. He later reiterated the point, saying the need for the two nations to take ownership of the war’s resolution. “Sometimes you have to let it just get fought out” – while he, Putin and other world leaders stand on the sidelines and watch the bloodshed.

While Trump never showed any interest in mediating an end to this war, which he really doesn’t understand or care about, his flippant observation about the life and death of innocent Ukrainians, who are regularly pitilessly and maliciously targeted for death by Moscow, is incomprehensible. He has stubbornly resisted learning why Russia has habitually invaded Ukraine for centuries while Ukraine has never invaded Russia. This alone should have given him an idea upon which to ponder. Why? Because Russia really has hated Ukraine, has believed it is its master, and seeks to permanently imprison it and its people in a renewed Russian prison of nations. An antiquated explanation, you say? Look at the centuries of wars and bloodshed between Russians and Ukrainians. Read the news.

The city of Dnipro, a city on the river that bears it name in central Ukraine, was hit hard, with three people killed and another 11 injured there, according to the regional military administration, which said children were among the casualties. A drone struck an apartment building in the city. Three more were injured in the nearby Samarskyi district of the wider Dnipropetrovsk region, authorities said.

In the Kharkiv region, at least one person was killed in the village of Rokytne; eight others were injured in the suburbs of Kharkiv city; one person was injured in nearby Chuhuyiv; and another was injured in the village of Hrushivka, according to the regional military administration. The mayor of Kharkiv said in a Telegram post Saturday morning that the city is facing a significant electricity shortage.

Additionally, one person was injured in the Poltava region in the east and another person was injured in the neighboring Kyiv region, according to the respective regional military administrations. The strikes on the Poltava region targeted energy infrastructure facilities, cutting off electricity, water and heating to some communities, authorities said. Actually, in addition to targeting civilians, the Kremlin is also striking the electrical infrastructure ahead of winter.

The Russian strikes mark the ninth large-scale attack on Ukraine’s gas infrastructure since the start of October, according to Ukrainian state-run energy firm Naftogaz, which in a Telegram post Saturday morning accused Russian of deliberately “targeting enterprises that provide Ukrainians with gas and heat” during the winter months. Ukrainian people are being forced to evade Russian missiles and drones as well as tolerate the region’s frigid winters.

The Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed in a Telegram post Saturday morning that it had targeted Ukrainian military and energy infrastructure in an overnight attack. The strike was carried out in response to “Ukraine’s terrorist attacks on civilian targets in Russia,” according to the Russian defense ministry. Moscow did not address its invasion of Ukraine which preceded the latest full-scale war, during which the Russians said they were looking for Nazis in Ukraine.

On that flight abroad Air Force One, Trump also indicated he’s not in a hurry to give Ukraine American Tomahawk rockets. While he understands their value to Ukraine’s war effort and that they can shorten Russia’s war, which has claimed so many civilian lives and military personnel, he doesn’t want to approve their use by Kyiv. He is willing to indifferently watch Russia and Ukraine fight it out.

Heathen Russians Target Churches in Occupied Ukraine

Since the beginning of the latest Russian war against Ukraine and Ukrainians – and for centuries before that – Russian cutthroats have targeted for destruction Ukrainian cultural artifacts, churches, libraries and other repositories of Ukrainian culture in order to obliterate evidence of the nation’s existence today and to wipe the historical slate clean of their presence in this planet.

Mission Network News on November 3, 2025, wrote about the Russians targeting Ukrainian churches in occupied regions of Ukraine for destruction or subversion. However, these violations of UNESCO restrictions that are tantamount to war crimes are felt equally in all regions of Ukraine.

Darina Rebro wrote: “Russian authorities are tightening their grip on occupied territories of Ukraine. Churches are under special scrutiny because sermons and prayers can either strengthen believers in faith and courage or pressure them to compromise with the occupying regime.

Pastor Mykhailo Brytsyn, a partner with Voice of the Martyrs Canada, says the crackdown has intensified especially against unregistered congregations.

“There are a lot of such churches,” Brytsyn explained, “because Ukrainian laws allowed churches to exist without registration.”

On the other hand, since the invasion, under Russian rule, churches must register so authorities can monitor sermons. Those who refuse risk punishment, and some gatherings are raided. Brytsyn experienced these limitations and oppression firsthand: “I saw it during the occupation, when it was forbidden to go to church, when our church buildings were already confiscated. People go to home groups for Bible study, as during the Soviet Union.”

Brytsyn said that his own church in Melitopol, a city in the Zaporizhzhia Oblast, southeastern Ukraine, was seized and transformed into an entertainment club. For believers who remained in town, even walking past the building brings deep pain.

“Russians cut off the cross,” he recalled being to mind criminal acts by the communists and tsarists. “They painted it brown and put up some picture instead.”

In occupied Berdiansk, a port city in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, south-eastern Ukraine, pastor Ilya and his wife Kateryna led a small church — until persecution forced them to flee.

“In 2024 he was twice arrested,” Brytsyn said. “He was tortured, and the third arrest — it could be the end. They escaped from the territory.”

Believers who remain in the occupied territories now worship quietly in small groups, echoing the secret prayer groups in the so-called catacombs of the Soviet era. Fear of informants keeps trust fragile, yet faith endures.

“I saw a lot of people who weren’t so dedicated to church attendance, but they made a decision and went to church firmly and bravely,” Brytsyn was quoted as saying. “For them, it was like their repentance — they were turning to Christ or renewing their commitment to Him.”

Rebro concluded her article: “Even as suffering deepens, believers see God moving in remarkable ways — through unity, mercy, and His protecting hand. Some ministers continue their training online as they pray for strength and hope in Ukraine’s darkest hours.”

The tsars, stalin, hitler and putin have sought the total eradication and annihilation of everything Ukrainian, including the people. And that’s exactly what we’re fighting for – the preservation of our bloodline.

I invite you to read two earlier posts on this topic based on the 2014 movie “The Monuments Men”: https://thetorncurtain1991.blogspot.com/search?q=Life+Imitating+Art+or+russian+%26+nazi+terrorists+never+change

Petrovsky-Shtern: Confronting Catastrophes Exhibit at Ukrainian Institute of America

The Ukrainian Institute of America, 2 East 79^th Street, New York City, continues presenting “Confronting Catastrophes,” an exhibition of paintings by Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern. Acting as a miniature survey, this exhibition features past and new works reflecting on personal and communal feedback to the resistance, stamina, and suffering of the Ukrainian people. The artist uses parallels between the fate of the Ukrainians at war and of Jews during the Holocaust and the catastrophe that befell Jews on October 7. Such topical parallelism has become part of a widely accepted and cultural war-time discourse in Ukraine and beyond. This marks Petrovsky-Shtern’s third solo exhibition with the UIA.

The exhibit continues until November 16.

“Confronting Catastrophes” displays a compelling evolution of Petrovsky-Shtern’s art, shaped by the tragedies of the 20th and 21st centuries. His narrative paintings combine memory, myth, and allegory, drawing on traditions from Renaissance masters, the avant-garde, and Ukrainian folk art. Balancing abstraction and figuration, his works confront war, devastation, and resilience while placing humanity at their center. Deeply rooted in Jewish cultural memory yet universal in scope, Petrovsky-Shtern’s art reflects both personal history and collective trauma. His layered identity as artist, scholar, and humanitarian underscores the transformative power of art amid catastrophe.

Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern is the Crown Family Professor of Jewish Studies and a professor of Jewish History in History Department at Northwestern University. He teaches a variety of courses that include early modern and modern Jewish history; Jewish material culture; history and culture of Ukraine; origins of Zionism; and Slavic-Jewish literary interaction.

He is also a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of The Ukrainian Quarterly, the UCCA’s 81-year-old journal of Ukrainian and international affairs.

He has published more than a hundred articles and eight books and edited volumes, three of them award-winning, including The Jews in the Russian Army: Drafted into Modernity (2008, 2nd ed. 2014); The Anti-Imperial Choice: the Making of the Ukrainian Jew (2009); Lenin’s Jewish Question (2010); Jews and Ukrainians: Polin, vol. 26 (2011, co-edited with Antony Polonsky); Cultural Interference of Jews and Ukrainians: a Field in the Making (2014); The Golden-Age Shtetl: a New History of Jewish Life in East Europe (2014, 2nd ed. 2015); Jews and Ukrainians :A Millennium of Coexistence (2016, co-authored with Paul Robert Magocsi; 2nd ed. 2018). His essays, books and book chapters have appeared in Greek, Spanish, Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, French, Hebrew, and German.

As an artist, Petrovsky-Shtern combines the traditions of European avant-garde, Polish political poster, and Ukrainian folk art. He enjoyed a dozen international and national shows, exhibiting his artwork in Kyiv, Lviv, Greenwich (CT), Chicago, and New York, including solo shows at Spertus Gallery, National Ukrainian Museum, and Ukrainian Institute of America. His work was featured at Crosscurrents, Antikvar, Ukrainian Weekly, The New York Jewish Week, and Arts Illustrated.

An illustrated catalog published by ibidem-Verlag (Hannover, Germany) in conjunction with the exhibition and will be available at the UIA. Confronting Catastrophes is edited by Anastasia Simferovska with contributions from Alex Averbuch, Rory Finnin, Amelia Glaser, Olena Grozovska, Anna Gruver, Borys Gudziak, Yuriy Gurzhy, Tamara Hundorova, Rodger Kamenetz, Mykola Kniazhytsky, Serhii Kvit, Oksana Lutsyshyna, Vasyl Makhno, Oleksandra Matviichuk, Joel Mokyr, Myroslava Mudrak, Mykhailo Nazarenko, Oxana Pachlovska, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, Katja Petrowskaya, Ilia Rodov, Edward Serotta, Anastasiia Simferovska, Benjamin Sloan, Edjan Westerman, and Marcin Wodzinski. Introduction by Andrew Horodysky.

The Ukrainian Institute of America and Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern are immensely grateful to the Temerty Foundation and Ronald Winston for their support of this cultural undertaking.

https://yps.gallery/