Innocent Ukrainian Civilians are russia’s True Targets

It has been obvious since the first days of the latest iteration of russia’s war against Ukraine that moscow won’t succeed in taking Kyiv in two or three days and all of Ukraine in another few weeks, as putin crowed.

The incompetent former second mightiest army in the world has waged an uphill battle to decimate the Armed Forces of Ukraine and then seize and subjugate the country and nation. Village to village battles have not fared well for russia. The Armed Forces of Ukraine, led by Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, have kept the russian invaders at bay on land, air and sea.

Consequently, the cutthroat russians turned to killing innocent civilians and children and destroying their homes and apartments and demolishing the country’s infrastructure. This brutality has finally come to the attention of the United Nations.

Russia’s intense missile and drone attacks across Ukraine during the Christmas and New Year holidays sharply increased civilian casualties in December with over 100 killed and nearly 500 injured, the United Nations said in a new report Tuesday, January 17, according to the Associated Press.

The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said there was a 26.5% increase in civilian casualties last month – from 468 in November to 592 in December. With some reports still pending verification, it said, the increase was likely higher.

Danielle Bell who heads the UN’s monitoring mission, said: “Civilian casualties had been steadily decreasing in 2023 but the wave of attacks in late December and early January violently interrupted that trend.”

The UN mission said it is verifying reports the recent intense russian missile and drone attacks that began hitting populated areas across Ukraine on December 29 and continued into early January killed 86 civilians and injured 416 others.

“These attacks sow death and destruction on Ukraine’s civilians who have endured profound losses from russia’s full-scale invasion for almost two years now,” Bell said.

The UN monitoring mission said the highest number of casualties occurred during attacks on December 29, 2023, and January 2 amid plummeting winter temperatures. On January 4, it said, russian missiles struck the small town of Pokrovsk and nearby town of Rivne close to the front lines, burying two families – six adults and five children – in the rubble of their homes. Some bodies have still not been found as of the date of the report, it said.

In another attack on January 6, the blast wave from a russian missile strike in Novomoskovsk injured 31 civilians including eight passengers on a minibus that was destroyed during the morning commute, the UN said.

The confirmed number of civilians killed since russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, is more than 10,200, including 575 children, and the number of injured is over 19,300, the UN humanitarian office’s operations director, Edem Wosornu, told the UN Security Council last Wednesday.

As for child casualties, add to the previous figure tens of thousands of Ukrainian children who have been stolen – yes, stolen, not kidnapped, by russia and belarus, contributing to putin being designated a war criminal.