Ukraine: Keeping my Helmet Warm

 

Ukrainian Drone hits airbase in Chechnya

 

Ukraine: Successful shoot-down of a Russian Missile during a recent attack on Ukraine's Power Grid

 

Ukraine: 3rd Brigade Interviews a Prisoner of War

 

Ukraine: Russian Submarine Missile Launch

 

This video reportedly shows a submarine missile launch, which targeted Ukraine in December 2024.

Ukraine: Monthly Salary over the Years

Right-hand column shows monthly salary in dollars.

 

Ukraine: The Cost in Dollars of Supporting Ukraine vs Letting Russia Win

 Elaine McCusker, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, provides a cost comparison: 

~112 billion:  Cost to the US so far, to support Ukraine with weapons and other equipment (most of this money goes to US arms manufacturers

vs 

~808 billion: Projected additional US defense spending that will be needed over the next 5 years, if Russia wins the Ukraine war, including:

    - $88 billion for 270,000 more US service members

    - $31 billion to harden US facilities

    - $109 billion to increase US air combat capabilities

    - $28 billion for drone development

    - $173 billion in air defenses

    - $63 billion to enhance munitions production capability

    - $50 in shipbuilding

    - $185 in additional training and exercises

    - $33 billion in spare parts stockpiling

    - $10 expanding special operations forces

    - $36 billion expanding space and cyber systems

The full article is available in Foreign Affairs magazine here: The Price of Russian Victory: Why Letting Putin Win Would Cost More than Supporting Ukraine

Ukraine: IAEA vehicle hit by Russian FPV

IAEA Director General Raphael Grossi reported significant damage to the vehicle, and called the strike "unacceptable". There were no injuries. 

Ukraine: Eliminating Enemy Surveillance drones and Shaheds

Over four months in 2024, drones of the 3rd Assault Division aerial defense units brought down dozens of Russian Lancet, Orlan, Zala, Supercam, and other drones. 

Paths of Russian aerial attack assets on 28 Nov 2024. Yellow triangles indicated Shahed drones, other colors are missiles.

 

 

Ukraine: Medical Evacuation Under Fire

 

Ukraine: Soldier survives 24 days with a tourniquet in place

 

This injured Ukrainian soldier was pinned down by enemy fire for 24 days. A tourniquet on his left arm

saved his life. After evacuation to a military hospital, the limb was amputated, and prognosis is good.

Ukraine: Maryinka, Donetsk Oblast, before and after the full-scale invasion

 

"A Testament" - Poem by Borys Humenyuk, MIA

Today we are digging the earth again

This hateful Donetsk earth

This stale, petrified earth

We press ourselves into it

We hide in it

Still alive

We hide behind it

Sit silently in it

Like little children behind their mother’s back

We hear its heart beating

Its weary breath

We are warm and comfortable

Still alive

Tomorrow we will die

Maybe some of us

Maybe all of us

Don’t take us from the earth

Don’t tear us away from our mother

Don’t gather our remains from the field

Don’t try to put us back together again

And — we beg you — don’t erect crosses

Monuments or memorial slabs

We don’t need them

Because it isn’t for us —

You erect these monuments for yourselves.

Don’t engrave our names,

Simply remember:

On this field

In this earth

Ukrainian soldiers lie

And — that is all.

We don’t need funerals

We know where our place is

Simply cover us with earth

And move on

It would be nice if there was a field

Where rye is swaying

A lark flies overhead

And — the sky

The endless sky —

Can you imagine the grain a field

Where warriors are lying will yield?

To remember us, eat the grain from the field

Where we laid down our lives

It would be good if there were meadows there

And many flowers

And a bee under each flower

And lovers who come in the evening

To weave wreaths

To make love till dawn

And during the day, let new parents

Bring their young children

Don’t keep children from coming to us

But this will be tomorrow

Today we are still digging the earth

This cherished Ukrainian earth

This sweet, gentle earth

And with a soldier’s spade we write as one

On its body

The last Ukrainian poem of the last poets

Left alive

- Boris Humenyuk, currently MIA

Click to text excerpt below to link to Luke Harding's full Dec 2023 story in The Guardian:

"A year ago, the poet Borys Humenyuk sent a final message. For 24 hours, he and two fellow Ukrainian soldiers had been under relentless Russian fire. Shells rained down on their trench outside the eastern city of Bakhmut. “We’re running out of ammo. Down to the last bullet,” Humenyuk said over a crackling radio. Those were his last words.

Humenyuk had volunteered to relieve a group of exhausted service personnel at “zero”, the hottest part of the frontline. Now, he explained, he was wounded in the shoulder and unable to drag his injured comrade to safety. “We are stuck,” he reported. By the time an evacuation team reached the trench in the village of Klishchiivka, Humenyuk had disappeared ...." 

-Luke Harding, the Gaurdian