Dnipro, Thursday evening, 4 April
The past couple days have had plenty of air raid alerts in Dnipro, but as far as I know, no actual drone or rocket attacks. Kharkiv also had a reprieve, but was again struck last night quite heavily.
Power is still OK in Dnipro, it's unstable, but apart from a couple of days of no power, things seem to be managed atm, thankfully. The dtek and power guys are truly hero's in my mind. Given the level of damage, what they do to mitigate the power outages is nothing short of a miracle.
A lot of ambulance traffic, the front lines are heavily fought over now, and I have been again asked to help out driving evac for emergency evacuations by freinds assisting the armed forces. I haven't had to do these trips for a couple of months, which has meant I have been able to do the longer drives to the west to take families leaving the country, and checking on our build at the same time, so happily helping out. There is a noticeable uptick in flags in cemeteries as you drive through villages and smaller towns, 5-6, sometimes 10 flags in a cemetery of a small village of several hundred people is the norm. In the bigger towns the cemeteries have been told to fly only one main flag at entrances, I assume to not depress people or provide propoganda opportunities for those against the war, a number that is fast growing and I think approaching a critical mass. For me the sight still makes me tear up. This war is so frustrating, and was so avoidable.
I haven't seen as many munitions supply trucks of late, but there is a lot of fuel tankers coming from the west bringing fuel reserves to the military further east.
Talk of western forces in Ukraine is not heard much around Ukraine, only in western media, and no one I know believes it, nor will it make any difference. Russian artillary, bombs and rockets/missiles don't distinguish between nato or Ukrainian men when they explode. For my part I think it's merely a bluff, much like the F16's to try and pressure Russia into negotiations from a position of less strength. The F16's will never arrive, even Ukrainian leaders are saying this, and others that it's too late as Russia is ready for them. Not surprising given how much warning they had. But it's a nonsense, Russia couldn't care less where the soldier it kills comes from, if they are on what Russia now sees as its land, fighting its forces, then they will die. No nato leader will send his troops here to be killed, they are way too cowardly, and none would survive the political upheaval when their troops come home in pieces.
Even Pedo Joe knows this and his admin, as stupid as it is, is clearly telegraphing this to European countries and I think is getting very concerned about the prospect of nato countries sending troops into Ukraine under nato command. They created this monster, and this runaway train led by the terrorist in chief is going to do a lot more damage to the west than it has already done, which is saying something as it has already destroyed the collective wests hegemony, credibility, support and ended its dominance in the world's financial markets, and foreign policy leadership.
I believe zelensky has signed into law a new mobilisation bill, but my friends who are in the rada say it has not passed through the rada, and will be ignored. It's also a nonsense. With 30,000 casualties per month, even forcibly recruiting 10,000 a month sees the country weaker and weaker every month, whilst the Russian army continues to grow. Even if the mobilisation law gets approved, and adopted, anyone who thinks that by dropping the age a couple of years to 25 that it will result in 500,000 mobilised doesn't understand basic maths, or Ukrainian men. No one is going to be mobilised without a fight. Anyone over 18 could have already volunteered if they wanted to fight. No one does. No one will. The western leaders pushing for Ukraine to mobilise more men, against their will, when not sending their own actual trained and equipped soldiers here, to fight their proxy war, is a reprehensible fool. Those who support them, and enable them have my never ending contempt. When this is over, if we all survive, there will be millions claiming to have never supported Pedo Joe and his bad of wankers, millions more who will say they were lied to, or misled. But the truth has always been in plain sight since 2014 for anyone who wanted to look, so their cries of foul align them with Germans who during the second world war watched the trainloads of jews being taken away and doing nothing about it.
I for one won't forgive, nor will I forget. And I am not alone.
