The Russian military physically withdrew from Kherson more than three months ago, but has not withdrawn its soundtrack from the city.
The Kremlin forces are located on the other side of the Dnipro River, and the sound of their heavy artillery has not disappeared.
Sporadic and distant impacts resounded yesterday on the posters that the European Union has placed on the streets of Kherson: “We are Europe. We are rebuilding.”
The intention of Brussels is good, but its poster can be improved: in an empty, dilapidated city, with almost no pedestrians, still threatened, with fear, the image of the ad seems to promote real estate.
Beneath the banner, the routine of this war continued as it had throughout the year that will soon be over: more deaths from artillery fire and more threats of an atomic apocalypse.
Ukrainian regional authorities reported that Russian fire killed six civilians and wounded five others, including the elderly and children, in a Kherson village near the river. From the Russian side, the Belgorod authorities reported the death of a girl hit by Ukrainian fire in a town in the region.
It is a daily trickle of civilian deaths that are difficult to quantify and that only appear in the international media if the impact of the projectile is shocking. That is, if the massacre occurs in a large city. War is all that the press can see, and when photographed, the dead are more dead.
As is also the dizzying number of fallen soldiers on both sides, dizzying even on a daily basis. Figures not confessed by both Moscow and Kyiv.
And yesterday another classic threat of this war also appeared, which has been rearing its monstrous head regularly for 12 months and which could not be missing on this black anniversary: ??the nuclear threat.
Russia accused Ukraine – without evident evidence – of planning a nuclear incident on its own territory in order to accuse Moscow before the UN. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, radioactive substances have been transported to Ukraine from an uncertain European country with the intention of launching a large-scale “provocation”.
Ukraine and its allies have rejected the Russian accusation as a cynical attempt to misinform, and have accused Moscow of planning this incident to blame Ukraine.
As the apocalypse is going back and forth, the Ukrainian secret services warned – also yesterday – that Russia is preparing to carry out “large-scale exercises of strategic nuclear forces” as “blackmail” on the eve of the president’s visit to Poland of the United States, Joe Biden.
The General Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense claimed to have confirmed – like the Russians, without providing obvious evidence – that the Kremlin is preparing components of its nuclear forces to carry out maneuvers that involve the launch of ballistic and cruise missiles.
The Ukrainian warning comes days after the Norwegian Defense Ministry in its annual report raised the possibility that the Russian army has transferred part of its nuclear capabilities to the ships and submarines of its Northern Fleet.
In this way, the week of the first anniversary of the war started by Russia begins as the war itself began: with uncertainties, misinformation, suspicions, accusations, suppositions and deaths, so many deaths that no one has been able to count and that probably will never be counted. with precision.
Between artillery bombardments and nuclear threats, what works like a Swiss watch forged from Soviet metals is the national network of Ukrainian railways.
Nocturnal or daily, with sleeping cars or armchairs, manufactured in Brezhnev’s five-year plans or earlier, they are punctual and efficient railways, the machine that keeps this invaded country alive.
With Rodalies, Ukraine would have already lost the war.
