From the start of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has insisted his goal is to conquer the country’s people and incorporate it into Russia. Three and a half years on, his regime’s airstrikes are targeting civilians, but failing to break the resolve of working people to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty, the backbone of the country’s resistance.
Moscow’s bombing isn’t centered on combating Ukrainian troops along the front line, but bombarding densely populated areas to maximize civilian deaths, hoping to spread fear and demoralization and force a Ukrainian surrender.
In the largest aerial attack since the war began, Moscow fired 805 drones, nine cruise missiles and four ballistic missiles Sept. 7, in an attempt to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses. The assaults hit the capital, Kyiv, as well as Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia and Kremenchuk. Ukrainian forces downed most of the bombs, but four people were killed. The building housing the country’s Cabinet of Ministers in Kyiv was one of the targets.
Two days later a bomb hit the center of Yarova, a village in eastern Ukraine, targeting pensioners queuing at the post office to pick up their benefits. At least 23 people were killed.
Moscow’s airstrikes have escalated since June. Each barrage forces the Ukrainian government to use its limited stock of interceptors at a faster pace than they are being supplied by Washington and governments in Europe.
“We will have to resolve all our tasks militarily,” Putin said Sept. 3, during a visit to Beijing. Since 2022 he’s repeatedly claimed that Ukraine is an artificial state and its people are really all Russians.
But Ukraine does exist as a sovereign nation. Its working people have joined the fight with courage and in large numbers. Despite having the upper hand in manpower and military resources, Moscow has been unable to break them.
Their resilience is exemplified by Halyna Dovhopola, who ran a newspaper kiosk in Sevastapol, Crimea. Moscow seized the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. It had 25,000 troops stationed there as part of an agreement with previous Ukrainian governments. Dovhopola was arrested in 2019 by the police-state regime Putin installed there. She was charged with spying and imprisoned after she expressed opposition to Moscow’s occupation.
Now 70 years old, Dovhopola was visited by human rights activists in August at the prison colony in Russia where she’s held. “She has an incredible vitality which has helped her to not only not give up, but to support others around her,” her visitors told the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.
In an earlier letter, Dovhopola wrote, “Each of us is fighting for our life, so as to not ‘die in Russia’ behind barbed wire. We ask you all not to forget about us! Glory to Ukraine!”
In the Kherson region of Ukraine, Moscow recently began using drones to burn crops and destroy farm equipment. Grain farmer Oleksandr Hordienko equipped himself with tracking devices and a rifle. “We will fight for this land. For us, this land is everything,” he told the Wall Street Journal. Hordienko shot down 80 drones before Moscow’s forces killed him Sept. 5.
Undeterred, other farmers and farmworkers in the area are acquiring military equipment and working with army veterans to defend themselves and ensure the harvest is brought home.