Explosions in Western Ukraine May Signal Widening of Russian Offensive; Jews Flee Odessa, Again

The coming weekend likely will not spell much calm for a Ukraine now enduring what by all accounts is an increasingly ugly and violent Russian attack on multiple fronts. Explosions were heard this morning in Lutsk, a Ukrainian city near the Polish border, as well as southeast of Kiev in the city of Dnipro, the Guardian reported. Reuters reported that Russia said military airfields in Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk were “taken out.”Russian forces also reportedly attacked a psychiatric hospital near the battered city of Kharkiv, which according to a local governor suffered 89 airstrikes to residential areas in a single day recently. That number could not be confirmed.More evidence of how the poison of war leeches into the lives of everyone in its path comes from an article in Ukrainian daily Expres under a headline that reads in part, “Judas of Our Time.” It relates how a Kharkiv resident allegedly sold critical infrastructure secrets to the Russians, with destructive consequences. According to the article, this individual, who is referred to as a traitor and a cow, received a phone call the day after the initial invasion from a Russian operative who offered 40,000 hryvnis, or about $1,345, for providing details about the location of at least one Ukrainian military facility and possibly a factory. Kharkiv’s prosecutor general, Irina Venediktov, announced via Facebook that the local was detained, presumably after he or she received the money. Ms. Venediktov notes the quisling’s actions resulted in artillery fire coming dangerously close to the Russians’ intended targets.As Vladimir Putin’s war on neighboring Ukraine enters its 16th day, artillery is flying in all directions even as Russia announced that from today there is to be a daily opening of humanitarian corridors to facilitate civilian evacuations from some areas taking fire. In recent days similar announcements have met with mixed results, as evacuees from cities such as Mariupol have reportedly come under attack even as they attempted to flee. The International Committee of the Red Cross said today that people in that badly battered Black Sea metropolis are “attacking each other for food” — an indication, albeit a horrific one, that Moscow’s strategy to beat the city into submission is having its desired effect.Away from the steady flow of headlines about the steady flow of refugees from Ukraine to neighboring countries — a number the U.N.’s refugee agency claims has reached two million — it’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time Russia has caused this kind of mayhem in Ukraine. Regardless of whether Mariupol falls, Odessa, a city of one million, is an even more strategic Black Sea prize for Moscow and a likely candidate to be the next victim of Russian attack. Ukrainian Jews are once again being “forced into exile” from their “beloved Odessa,” Agence France-Presse reports. A series of anti-Jewish Russian pogroms in the 19th-century and a terrible one in 1905 made it clear that Jews were hardly welcome in the gracious Russian city founded by Catherine the Great. Most of those who remained perished in the massacres and deportations of World War II. Of the 40,000 Jews living in Odessa before this latest Russian aggression, according to head of the ultra-Orthodox Chabad community there, Rabbi Avraham Wolff, 20 percent have already left — many packing into buses and trains heading to Moldova or Romania, according to the AFP, which also notes that the rabbi is overseeing the evacuations from Germany.More clear-eyed reporting from Los Angeles Times on the destruction unfolding in Ukraine, demonstrating that the coast newspaper can still hold its own against the Gray Lady. A piece partly bylined by the perspicacious Nabih Bulos lifts a curtain on the chaos at Kiev’s doorstep: Across that great capital, “major road and bridge junctions were blocked with streetcars, buses and garbage trucks. Near the ring road that surrounds the city, trucks with rocket launchers parked in fields and released a fusillade toward Russian forces’ position to the northwest.” The deputy director of a hospital in Brovary, 15 miles northeast of downtown Kiev, gives a harrowing glimpse into the situation on the ground, telling his interviewers: “We’ve seen more civilians. Sometimes soldiers too, but much more civilians. Bullet wounds, shrapnel wounds; the ones we’ve seen are very severe, because many of them we see an appendage amputated.” Fighting has escalated near Brovary, also the scene of a successful Ukrainian ambush of a Russian tank column, in the past 72 hours.Reports of the Russian economy buckling under the weight of unprecedented sanctions abound, but less widely reported is the devastation that Mr. Putin’s war is bringing to the economy of Ukraine — or what’s left of it. Ukrainian news agency Interfax reports that the country’s losses due to the destruction of infrastructure and residential areas have reached the $100 billion mark and led to a total shutdown of half of all Ukrainian businesses. According to Interfax, an advisor to President Zelensky, Oleh Ustenko, said, “Currently, about 50 percent of our business is not working. The rest of the enterprises are operating at the limit of their capabilities.” Mr. Ustenko wants the frozen reserves of the Russian central bank to finance “the restoration of these destructions in Ukraine,” Interfax reports, while noting that the possibility of converting the seized assets of Russian oligarchs for these purposes “is being calculated.”Moscow, for its part, likely has other calculations in mind as the week comes to a close. On Friday morning the Times of London reported that “Russian convoy disperses to surround Kyiv.” The newspaper says that the column of Russian tanks that has been more or less parked north of Kiev for days has now “dispersed into towns and countryside close to the capital, raising fears that the city could soon be encircled.” Worse may yet come: According to the same report, American defense officials say that Russian forces have moved three miles closer to Kiev compared to hours before, with artillery being moved into firing positions.

Explosions in Western Ukraine May Signal Widening of Russian Offensive; Jews Flee Odessa, Again

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