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READ: Russian regions targeted by shelling at least 480 times since war in Ukraine began - Kyiv is already training drones to strike targets deep within Russia, experts believe
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in February that the country’s top priority was preventing shelling of Russian territories. Nevertheless, Russian regions are being targeted by attacks more frequently. Local authorities reported a record high of 74 strikes in February 2023 alone. Novaya-Europe tallied all the reports and concluded that Russian territories (including annexed Crimea) were targeted at least 480 times since the start of the war. Russia’s central regions — Ryazan, Tula, and Moscow regions — come under attack more and more often. In total, 195 people fell victim to these attacks, 43 of them were killed.
Novaya-Europe earlier reported that Russian governors had been reporting shelling attacks sometimes several times a day since the early autumn. In March 2023, Ukraine struck Russian regions and Crimea twice a day on average, and the record-breaking number of shelling operations was observed in February. The past three months of the war account for 40% of all Ukrainian air attacks. Russian territories are targeted 10-15 times more frequently than they were in the beginning of the invasion.
By framersqool:
It hasn't been any secret since last February that Ukrainian ordnance has been used on multiple targets inside the Russian Federation since almost the beginning of the 2022 invasion.
The usual position of the Kyiv state on these continual incidents amounts to 'no comment' or some kind of sarcastic retort as if to say, 'What did you expect?' Neither NATO nor the US government has bothered to even acknowledge this facet of Ukraine's war effort one way or another. The most bizarre thing is that even the Kremlin's press releases rarely have much more to say than 'we know Ukraine is behind this, and they better knock it off, or there'll be consequences and other meaningless yada-yada-ism.
And meanwhile, it can be credibly asserted that untold thousands of Ukrainian lives have been lost, both civilian and military, directly attributable to the Cold-War mythology of the 'red lines doctrine' and the attendant terror of 'nuclear escalation' which has been a primary determinant of the quantity, types, ranges, and capabilities, of weaponry systems supplied to Ukraine by the US and various other allies.
General Ben Hodges has been a leading, but certainly not the only, voice in criticizing this policy of manipulating the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) into fighting a long-drawn-out and extremely bloody stalemated war, with one hand tied behind its back by setting such 'red-line' limits on the equipment thus provided.
The contrary view which Hodges and others have articulated, at length and repeatedly, is that Moscow has nothing to gain and everything to lose by deploying nuclear weapons, at any stage against any target, and that the most efficient (and ultimately most merciful and humane) way to seek an end to this war is for Ukraine's supply-chain allies to adopt the exact same position as Kyiv's own Ten Points demands for peace have laid out for months: Russian forces and all their assets are to exit all of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea and all other lands as defined by Ukraine's 1991 declaration of statehood, or else whatever force Ukraine deems necessary toward enforcing this demand must be used until it is met.
In terms of the long-term precedents to be set by this war's ending in any other way, the implications are vast.
If Russia is allowed to simply over-run and seize whatever neighboring territory it decides to, on the flimsiest of premises or none at all, this establishes a whole new benchmark around the world for how nations with adjacent lands may conduct their business with one another and expect to get away with it.
For such aggressions to be no longer allowable is probably the most crucial and (until now) consistently-upheld outcomes of the second world war. (The one which did NOT end as a result of nuclear weapons; see also: Operation August Storm, Manchuria, Red Army, 1945...)
Judging by the Kremlin's own seemingly vexed oblivion over just how to respond to literally hundreds of attacks carried out on targets inside Russia all along for over a year now, it may well be that the Hodges narrative acknowledges best that this post-1962 mythology of a Russia with its finger permanently poised on the apocalypse button and waiting for one hurt feeling too many to press it, might have been total bullshit ever since Comrade Khrushchev parked those big empty metal tubes in Cuba to try and force Kennedy to get those missiles out of Turkey (at which aim he proved ultimately successful.)
I have been convinced for a long time that the primary threat Russia has ever posed to 'the West,' both during and since the Soviet era, is a threat that dwells purely in the fevered imaginations of Western politicians, who remain convinced that Russia is some big psychotic loose cannon just waiting for an excuse to go off.
I don't believe the 'Cuban Missile Crisis' was ever any such thing. I don't believe the 'missile gap' or the 'bomber gap' or the supposed armada of Russian missile-launch submarines swarming the world's oceans have ever been anything more than a colossal bluff, held up by Moscow, yes, but mostly made to seem real by its global rivals' having bought it all along, hook, line, and sinker.
I had been aware, for months, of the fact that Ukraine aims weapons into Russia constantly and has since last February. But this article (from Novaya Gazeta Europe, a longtime Russian 'opposition' outlet, one of several such which have proven to be the most plausible and reliable sources of war coverage for my purposes, far more than Ukraine's own media, and galaxies beyond what any 'western' media even dares attempt to cover) is the first time I have seen the entire topic summed up so concisely as a story in itself.
thoughts from an aging bachelor of no particular consequence who is in command of more opinions than facts (but occasionally the facts, or the lack thereof) and can make a thing seem worth writing about.