Many thanks for David’s terrific reporting from Ukraine – such vivid accounts of the war.
Mary Thomas
1 year ago
A wonderfully graphic picture of war in a fundamentally proud but impoverished country, thank you. As my husband’s family is Ukrainian I’m feeling heartbroken and proud in equal measure – and they are determined and strong people who will return, rebuild, regenerate.
martin logan
1 year ago
Some great reporting on the ground–and a good explanation of why Russia has failed and will fail.
As in 2014, the Ukrainian resistance is a bottom-up effort. Ukrainians immediately volunteer, whereas Russians wait to be mobilized (or, more often, find creative ways to avoid any participation in the war at all). Despite many similarities, the national characters are also very different in important respects.
It also shows how all Putin’s efforts to recreate a strong Russian empire have really only created a house of cards.
Correct, but don’t be surprised if Mr Putin ops for a Tactical Nuclear Strike on or about he 9th May next.
What is there to stop him? This conflict is not worth Armageddon.
Awe inspiring. The Ukrainian spirit is so reminiscent of Britain in the 1940’s. How the West has shrivelled. Too pathetic and the less said about the UN’s hand wringing apathy, the better.
Yana p
1 year ago
Please, correct “Dnieper” to “Dnipro”. The river is called the same as the city. “Dnieper” is Russian transliteration, it’s incorrect and can’t be used. “Dnipro” is the only correct option. When we are fighting Russians on the battlefield, it’s also important to eliminate any influence they have on us in all other spheres.
chris brenton
1 year ago
…“separatist” republics in the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts (regions) which have nested like lice on the Ukrainian body politic ever since. The word lice refers to the created republics, the 2 regions, NOT to human beings as such.
Jerry Carroll
1 year ago
If Putin thinks he will be back in charge a few days after cancer surgery, his doctors have been deluding him. Or, more likely, they are telling him what he wants to hear. He is a very ill man and evil. Who knows how he will react when the prospect sinks in of death before long. Will he want to take as many people with him as he can? Hitler at the end wanted to see the destruction of the Germany he led to war for much the same reasons as Putin has.
How do you know he has cancer? That’s only conjecture on the part of journalists isn’t it?
Terence Fitch
1 year ago
My two pennorth: Putin consolidates East Ukraine puppet state; Ukraine joins EU. Korea type scenario. At this point, whatever you think of the EU, Ukraine joining is a crucial symbolic step. As for the next step, Russia realising that it has lost it’s superpower status to China. That’ll take a while to sink in whilst Russia continues to glower away in self pity as Ukraine gradually becomes a nicer place to live.
The Russian Army does not have enough manpower to hold half of Ukraine against an insurgency, let alone conquer half of Ukraine. A full Russian mobilization would take 8 months to a year to train and equip all of the new forces. Keep in mind that a lot of the existing experienced Russian officers and sergeants will be dead by then.
The Russian Donbas Offensive hasn’t gone anywhere in 2 weeks. The Russian initial offensive to take Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy failed so badly that those Russian forces were forced to retreat completely out of Ukraine. There is no reason to expect that Russian forces can do any better now, particularly since most of the forces for their new offensive are the same folks who failed before.
The Russian Army has lost at least 600 tanks, visually confirmed by posted photos/videos on social media. The Ukrainian Army estimate is over 1000 Russian tanks lost. Most European countries don’t have that many tanks to start out with.
The corruption in Russian Army maintenance, supply and even manning can’t be discounted. Published estimates say up to 60% of Russian precision guided munitions are duds. Many Russian reactive armor pockets on tanks, intended to defeat anti-tank missiles, have no explosive in them. It’s been stolen. The behavior of Russian tank and armored fighting vehicle turrets may indicate that they are being driven without full crews. The turrets seem to be locked in the 12 o’clock position, and don’t react to point toward hostile fire. Russian vehicles running out of fuel on the road to Kyiv might be the result of the fuel being stolen and sold, not just bad logistics planning.
Neven Curlin
1 year ago
Standing between the left and right banks, Dnipro is accordingly of neither. It lies between Ukraine’s two worlds: West and East; Europe and Russia.
If this is true, it shouldn’t be too hard to find someone to balance your pro-Ukrainian interviewees. Are there people who are pro-Russia, or who are critical of the role of their own corrupt government in the escalation of this war? Are they afraid to talk? If there aren’t any, where are they? Have they fled, were they killed?
In other words, where is the balance? Mr Patrikarakos, if you went there to paint a one-sided story of the heroic Ukrainians against the Russian orcs, you might as well have stayed at home. We’ve got plenty of that sentimental drivel in 98% of media.
When I first came to Ukraine to cover the war in 2014, the state was so broke
…something like this, you mean? That was certainly the mood in Crimea, when they decided that the Russia of the time was the better option: they got their pensions paid. Your guess that Russian-leaning or -speaking Dniprovians may well have fled East seems likely.
I think any community has to be careful of those who “help out”, lest they start asking for bigger and bigger favours afterwards. I mean that’s the way Mafia-ism works. Military battalions would like to make sure they keep a hand on the country, then Generals become Dictators; that’s happened all over the world. So, what you are trying to save needs to become something that you then let go of, just like you would if you were raising kids.
Truth has very odd ways of revealing and therefore undermining evil…. hence hope and heroes. Begone small man. Oh and its 99.3% media (as I reckon Putler owned media is 0.7%) and 100% of sensible humans….for many very good reasons.
Balanced discussions about which government is more corrupt – Russian or Ukrainian – were all good before the war. In fact, Unherd’s audience used to hold rather pro-Russian views discussing geopolitics, history, NATO expansion and such.
This war, however, changed the game completely.
Two neighbours were very unhappy with each other, each had some valid points in the dispute. But the moment one of them took a gun and went to his neighbours’ house to kill in order to resolve all the issues once and for all, he became a criminal, and decent people just want to end the bloodshed and bring him to court.
It is next to impossible “to find someone to balance your pro-Ukrainian interviewees”. I know a few Ukrainians who used to be pro-Russian before the war, they are all extremely anti-Russian today, they even refuse to speak Russian and use broken Ukrainian instead.
Exactly what Irene says. Even before the war it would have been difficult but now? Forget about it. Of course, it’s not like there aren’t any but including a voice from 0.5% isn’t what makes “balanced”.
Edit: Just to establish relation, Dnipro is my home away from home, I speak the local language and I have certainly spent there enough of time to know the sentiments.
In 2019 I traveled to Sumy, Ukraine to see a lady I had met online. Sumy is in eastern Ukraine, north of Kharkiv and about as close to the Russian border as you can get. Her family emigrated from Russia in the Soviet era. Her primary language is Russian. She used to tell me about the better living conditions in Russia, more generous pensions, etc. Now she’s more or less a refugee in France, completely distraught and horrified at what the Russian government is doing to her country. So I would agree with you – the war has changed the perspectives of many, and primarily those who have been most impacted by it.
I have a friend whose family fled from Kharkiv 25 years ago, and she will tell you that no one was treating Russian speakers with any prejudice that she could see, and that of course the government in Ukraine is corrupt, but any of its actions absolutely pale compared to Putin’s vicious KGB tactics. She will also admit to corruption she sees in Canada (her home since she was 15) and in the US, but can not impress enough the sentiment that those of us in western democracies are mostly not able to understand just how cruel and evil Putin is and can be. I know it’s complicated, and there are Ukrainians who like the idea of seceding from the nation to be under Russian rule, and there certainly seems to be a faction of neonazis involved (which is also flat-out repulsive), but this war appears to me to be a disgusting disaster that never should have gotten this far.
Since when is hatred of injustice – the injustice of unprovoked invasion of another country, turning its cities to rubble and murdering its citizens – ‘sentimental’? You’ve lost your moral bearings, my friend.
Those responsible for the war are:
1/ Ukraine which refuse to accept that they should let the Russian inclined areas separate and become Russian (as has happened in the Crimea).
2/ The USA and its consortium represented by NATO which is eager to support a proxy war against the Russia they hope will be crippled by the conflict – a conflict which they are eagerly arming to ensure continuation and the hoped-for result, The Ukraine is just the tool they are using regardless of the increasing damage the tool suffers. That glory-seeking head of the Ukraine should be aware of his real role as far as the USA and its followers are concerned and get out of the mess by letting the Donbas go
Sarah H
1 year ago
I got as far as “lice”. I will not support or condone any description of fellow human beings like that, no-one. Factually, the Donbas republics refused to support the coup installed government and declared themselves independent. This course did not involve Russia and the Minsk Accords that Russia signed up to after the militias gave Ukrainian forces a bloody nose was for the republics to rejoin a neutral Ukraine, a plan sponsored by Germany and France but reneged upon. While the reporting on the ground is possibly fair, this vile slur and factual inaccuracy kicking it off invalidates it. Unherd, you should be ashamed of yourselves for letting the word “lice” appear in your journalism like this for a racial/cultural group. This word has been used historically, hasn’t it. Have we all forgotten.
The problem, of course, is that both Crimea and the Donbas republics are simply illegitimate.
No internationally supervised referendums have ever been held there–in sharp contrast to Ukraine. No Ukrainian (or Tatar) has ever been allowed to campaign there. If Russia had allowed Blue Helmets to come in and restore order for both sides, it might have some room to talk.
So this is a direct assault on the international legal order. It was (and is) colonialism at its very worst. Putin sent in people like Girkin to start a war in Donbas in 2014, when there was no war. They failed–so then he had to use the Russian army surreptitiously to prevent total defeat. Now, in 2022, it is simply an overt–and very incompetent–land grab. It is facilitated by suppression of all dissent. Yes, this also brings out the worst on both sides. Things far worse than calling people “lice” are well documented.
But the sole person responsible for all this horror is someone called Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
Those responsible for the war are:
1/ Ukraine which refuse to accept that they should let the Russian inclined areas separate and become Russian (as has happened in the Crimea).
2/ The USA and its consortium represented by NATO which is eager to support a proxy war against the Russia they hope will be crippled by the conflict – a conflict which they are eagerly arming to ensure continuation and the hoped-for result, The Ukraine is just the tool they are using regardless of the increasing damage the tool suffers. That glory-seeking head of the Ukraine should be aware of his real role as far as the USA and its followers are concerned and get out of the mess by letting the Donbas go..
Many thanks for David’s terrific reporting from Ukraine – such vivid accounts of the war.
A wonderfully graphic picture of war in a fundamentally proud but impoverished country, thank you. As my husband’s family is Ukrainian I’m feeling heartbroken and proud in equal measure – and they are determined and strong people who will return, rebuild, regenerate.
Some great reporting on the ground–and a good explanation of why Russia has failed and will fail.
As in 2014, the Ukrainian resistance is a bottom-up effort. Ukrainians immediately volunteer, whereas Russians wait to be mobilized (or, more often, find creative ways to avoid any participation in the war at all). Despite many similarities, the national characters are also very different in important respects.
It also shows how all Putin’s efforts to recreate a strong Russian empire have really only created a house of cards.
Correct, but don’t be surprised if Mr Putin ops for a Tactical Nuclear Strike on or about he 9th May next.
What is there to stop him? This conflict is not worth Armageddon.
Withdrawn.
Awe inspiring. The Ukrainian spirit is so reminiscent of Britain in the 1940’s. How the West has shrivelled. Too pathetic and the less said about the UN’s hand wringing apathy, the better.
Please, correct “Dnieper” to “Dnipro”. The river is called the same as the city. “Dnieper” is Russian transliteration, it’s incorrect and can’t be used. “Dnipro” is the only correct option. When we are fighting Russians on the battlefield, it’s also important to eliminate any influence they have on us in all other spheres.
…“separatist” republics in the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts (regions) which have nested like lice on the Ukrainian body politic ever since.
The word lice refers to the created republics, the 2 regions, NOT to human beings as such.
If Putin thinks he will be back in charge a few days after cancer surgery, his doctors have been deluding him. Or, more likely, they are telling him what he wants to hear. He is a very ill man and evil. Who knows how he will react when the prospect sinks in of death before long. Will he want to take as many people with him as he can? Hitler at the end wanted to see the destruction of the Germany he led to war for much the same reasons as Putin has.
How do you know he has cancer? That’s only conjecture on the part of journalists isn’t it?
My two pennorth: Putin consolidates East Ukraine puppet state; Ukraine joins EU. Korea type scenario. At this point, whatever you think of the EU, Ukraine joining is a crucial symbolic step. As for the next step, Russia realising that it has lost it’s superpower status to China. That’ll take a while to sink in whilst Russia continues to glower away in self pity as Ukraine gradually becomes a nicer place to live.
The Russian Army does not have enough manpower to hold half of Ukraine against an insurgency, let alone conquer half of Ukraine. A full Russian mobilization would take 8 months to a year to train and equip all of the new forces. Keep in mind that a lot of the existing experienced Russian officers and sergeants will be dead by then.
The Russian Donbas Offensive hasn’t gone anywhere in 2 weeks. The Russian initial offensive to take Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy failed so badly that those Russian forces were forced to retreat completely out of Ukraine. There is no reason to expect that Russian forces can do any better now, particularly since most of the forces for their new offensive are the same folks who failed before.
The Russian Army has lost at least 600 tanks, visually confirmed by posted photos/videos on social media. The Ukrainian Army estimate is over 1000 Russian tanks lost. Most European countries don’t have that many tanks to start out with.
The corruption in Russian Army maintenance, supply and even manning can’t be discounted. Published estimates say up to 60% of Russian precision guided munitions are duds. Many Russian reactive armor pockets on tanks, intended to defeat anti-tank missiles, have no explosive in them. It’s been stolen. The behavior of Russian tank and armored fighting vehicle turrets may indicate that they are being driven without full crews. The turrets seem to be locked in the 12 o’clock position, and don’t react to point toward hostile fire. Russian vehicles running out of fuel on the road to Kyiv might be the result of the fuel being stolen and sold, not just bad logistics planning.
If this is true, it shouldn’t be too hard to find someone to balance your pro-Ukrainian interviewees. Are there people who are pro-Russia, or who are critical of the role of their own corrupt government in the escalation of this war? Are they afraid to talk? If there aren’t any, where are they? Have they fled, were they killed?
In other words, where is the balance? Mr Patrikarakos, if you went there to paint a one-sided story of the heroic Ukrainians against the Russian orcs, you might as well have stayed at home. We’ve got plenty of that sentimental drivel in 98% of media.
Or isn’t this news site called Un-herd?
…something like this, you mean? That was certainly the mood in Crimea, when they decided that the Russia of the time was the better option: they got their pensions paid. Your guess that Russian-leaning or -speaking Dniprovians may well have fled East seems likely.
I think any community has to be careful of those who “help out”, lest they start asking for bigger and bigger favours afterwards. I mean that’s the way Mafia-ism works. Military battalions would like to make sure they keep a hand on the country, then Generals become Dictators; that’s happened all over the world. So, what you are trying to save needs to become something that you then let go of, just like you would if you were raising kids.
Truth has very odd ways of revealing and therefore undermining evil…. hence hope and heroes. Begone small man. Oh and its 99.3% media (as I reckon Putler owned media is 0.7%) and 100% of sensible humans….for many very good reasons.
Is that splendid dog in your cartouche a Bavarian Mountain Hound by any chance?
Balanced discussions about which government is more corrupt – Russian or Ukrainian – were all good before the war. In fact, Unherd’s audience used to hold rather pro-Russian views discussing geopolitics, history, NATO expansion and such.
This war, however, changed the game completely.
Two neighbours were very unhappy with each other, each had some valid points in the dispute. But the moment one of them took a gun and went to his neighbours’ house to kill in order to resolve all the issues once and for all, he became a criminal, and decent people just want to end the bloodshed and bring him to court.
It is next to impossible “to find someone to balance your pro-Ukrainian interviewees”. I know a few Ukrainians who used to be pro-Russian before the war, they are all extremely anti-Russian today, they even refuse to speak Russian and use broken Ukrainian instead.
Exactly what Irene says. Even before the war it would have been difficult but now? Forget about it. Of course, it’s not like there aren’t any but including a voice from 0.5% isn’t what makes “balanced”.
Edit: Just to establish relation, Dnipro is my home away from home, I speak the local language and I have certainly spent there enough of time to know the sentiments.
In 2019 I traveled to Sumy, Ukraine to see a lady I had met online. Sumy is in eastern Ukraine, north of Kharkiv and about as close to the Russian border as you can get. Her family emigrated from Russia in the Soviet era. Her primary language is Russian. She used to tell me about the better living conditions in Russia, more generous pensions, etc. Now she’s more or less a refugee in France, completely distraught and horrified at what the Russian government is doing to her country. So I would agree with you – the war has changed the perspectives of many, and primarily those who have been most impacted by it.
I have a friend whose family fled from Kharkiv 25 years ago, and she will tell you that no one was treating Russian speakers with any prejudice that she could see, and that of course the government in Ukraine is corrupt, but any of its actions absolutely pale compared to Putin’s vicious KGB tactics. She will also admit to corruption she sees in Canada (her home since she was 15) and in the US, but can not impress enough the sentiment that those of us in western democracies are mostly not able to understand just how cruel and evil Putin is and can be. I know it’s complicated, and there are Ukrainians who like the idea of seceding from the nation to be under Russian rule, and there certainly seems to be a faction of neonazis involved (which is also flat-out repulsive), but this war appears to me to be a disgusting disaster that never should have gotten this far.
Since when is hatred of injustice – the injustice of unprovoked invasion of another country, turning its cities to rubble and murdering its citizens – ‘sentimental’? You’ve lost your moral bearings, my friend.
Those responsible for the war are:
1/ Ukraine which refuse to accept that they should let the Russian inclined areas separate and become Russian (as has happened in the Crimea).
2/ The USA and its consortium represented by NATO which is eager to support a proxy war against the Russia they hope will be crippled by the conflict – a conflict which they are eagerly arming to ensure continuation and the hoped-for result, The Ukraine is just the tool they are using regardless of the increasing damage the tool suffers. That glory-seeking head of the Ukraine should be aware of his real role as far as the USA and its followers are concerned and get out of the mess by letting the Donbas go
I got as far as “lice”. I will not support or condone any description of fellow human beings like that, no-one. Factually, the Donbas republics refused to support the coup installed government and declared themselves independent. This course did not involve Russia and the Minsk Accords that Russia signed up to after the militias gave Ukrainian forces a bloody nose was for the republics to rejoin a neutral Ukraine, a plan sponsored by Germany and France but reneged upon. While the reporting on the ground is possibly fair, this vile slur and factual inaccuracy kicking it off invalidates it. Unherd, you should be ashamed of yourselves for letting the word “lice” appear in your journalism like this for a racial/cultural group. This word has been used historically, hasn’t it. Have we all forgotten.
The problem, of course, is that both Crimea and the Donbas republics are simply illegitimate.
No internationally supervised referendums have ever been held there–in sharp contrast to Ukraine. No Ukrainian (or Tatar) has ever been allowed to campaign there. If Russia had allowed Blue Helmets to come in and restore order for both sides, it might have some room to talk.
So this is a direct assault on the international legal order. It was (and is) colonialism at its very worst. Putin sent in people like Girkin to start a war in Donbas in 2014, when there was no war. They failed–so then he had to use the Russian army surreptitiously to prevent total defeat. Now, in 2022, it is simply an overt–and very incompetent–land grab. It is facilitated by suppression of all dissent. Yes, this also brings out the worst on both sides. Things far worse than calling people “lice” are well documented.
But the sole person responsible for all this horror is someone called Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
Those responsible for the war are:
1/ Ukraine which refuse to accept that they should let the Russian inclined areas separate and become Russian (as has happened in the Crimea).
2/ The USA and its consortium represented by NATO which is eager to support a proxy war against the Russia they hope will be crippled by the conflict – a conflict which they are eagerly arming to ensure continuation and the hoped-for result, The Ukraine is just the tool they are using regardless of the increasing damage the tool suffers. That glory-seeking head of the Ukraine should be aware of his real role as far as the USA and its followers are concerned and get out of the mess by letting the Donbas go..
How nice of you to be outraged for using word “lice” by someone who has seen the atrocities of the war, you clearly got your priorities straight.