War updates. Day 232
Dear friends,
As the illegal invasion of Ukraine and genocide of the Ukrainian people continue, Ukrainians stay as strong and fearless as ever. Here’s the latest brief on battlefield developments, successes of the Ukrainian army, and war crimes russia keeps on committing in Ukraine.
The blitz in Kharkiv oblast in September which no one expected, led to the Ukrainian liberation of the strategic eastern railway hubs of Kup’yans’k and Lyman and left the russian forces retreating, leaving their weapons and equipment behind. This successful Ukrainian counter-offensive was followed by the partial destruction of the Kerch Bridge which was illegally built in 2016 by russia and holds important strategic and symbolic value to the terrorist state that russia is.
Ironically, russia declared the blast on a bridge an act of terrorism, simultaneously continuing to bomb Ukrainian cities and kill Ukrainians just for being Ukrainians. After Bucha and Irpin massacre, horrible findings of tortured civilians in liberated Izium, Olenivka slaughter of Ukrainian prisoners, and continued attacks on Zaporizhia, russia dares to name the partial collapse and a fire on a bridge a terrorist act. By doing this, russia once again confirmed it is a state described in Orwell’s 1984 – substituting names and interchanging notions to justify their crimes and keep living a lie.
The country of killers and rapists feels that its end is near. Instead of preparing for the inevitable, it strikes Zaporizhia and the majority of Ukrainian city centers with cruise missiles aiming to destroy our infrastructure and terrorize the nation, and scare it into submission. But once again, they have failed. Ukrainian grit and the will to win have never been stronger.
Restoring the electricity supplies on the go, Ukrainians are donating unimaginable amounts to charities that help the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which is something that the terrorist state of russia will never have and understand. Rather than instilling fear, russians have made Ukrainians angrier and forced the whole world to take notice.
(Lviv city center during a partial blackout
Image by: Roman Baluk via Andriy Sadovyi, Lviv City Mayor’s Facebook)
As you also might have heard, russia recently officially annexed new Ukrainian territories to include them under their “nuclear umbrella” as part of russian territory. They are failing on the battlefield, and the nuclear threat is their last argument to try somehow save the situation. They want to freeze the war for a few years, regroup, rearm and make another try with lessons learned.
Here in Ukraine, we believe nuclear risks are real, so government and people get prepared for the worst. Much information circulates in the media on preparing and behaving during a nuclear attack. At the same time, this threat has 0 influence on our spirit or counter-offensive efforts. Why? Some westerners seem to misunderstand our stubbornness. They think we are adrenaline junkies who have fun fighting. People like Elon Musk would be happy if we gave up our occupied territory (the size of Greece or half of the UK) in exchange for “peace”.
There are two main reasons why we cannot give up:
- It’s not just territories. Millions of people are living there. In every village or town we liberate, we find mass graves with brutally tortured and killed civilians. Only from Mariupol, a city of 430k pre-war population, did we receive reports of about 100k dead civilians.
- We know russia too well. We’ve been fighting for our independence for a couple of centuries. And we know they will not stop at these territories. Look at their size. Do you think it’s a coincidence that they are the biggest country in the world, enslaving hundreds of nationalities?
So not to shift this war to our kids and future generations, the empire must be destroyed now. And so we fight with 90+% of our population supporting this despite all the “inconveniences.”
As for us
This summer in Lviv was much like any other. We are still far from the frontlines and are mostly engaged in spreading information about the war to the world and donating.
Despite power outages in Lviv over the last week, the city and its inhabitants are showing incredible resilience. The joke that the first thing we did after the air raids and missile strikes was to go buy coffee from our favorite cafes, is not a joke. Compared to Feb. 24, we are calm and collected, knowing exactly what to do to keep working and supporting our army.
As to Euristiq, we continue delivering solutions as planned and have started cooperation with new clients. We continue working and providing software development services according to our agreements with clients despite minor setbacks.
Ivan Muts
