The news media today is a vast wilderness of conflicting “facts” and often times hidden agendas, or not so hidden agendas. There are so many sources of information on such a wide variety of subjects. Some of those source cover one subject well, but not others. Others are consistently misleading, or at best superficial to the point of meaninglessness.
So it is with Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine.
No one can know for a certainty what is going on in Ukraine and Russia as to the current war. Such is the “fog of war.” War is by its very nature unpredictable, and this one in particular has proven itself to be. It seems that the only thing we can rely upon is that as soon as a prognostication is made with great confidence it will be proven to be wrong. I myself have made specific predictions about the course of the war that turned out to be off the mark.
But I think one thing we can say with confidence is the following. No one expected Ukraine to show the resiliency and resourcefulness they have. History would tell us for those who bothered to look that the Russian military would match their cruelty only with their incompetence. But was there any historical precedence for what Ukraine is doing to the so-called second best military in the world?
Case in point. At the very beginning of Putin’s full scale invasion story after story of Ukrainian civilians of all types, young and old, mail and female, making Molotov cocktails to be used against Russian tanks, armored vehicles, and transport trucks filled the coverage. For those who don’t know, a Molotov cocktail is a bottle filled with gasoline or some other flammable liquid that is then lit on fire and thrown by hand at the target. Certainly a very desperate person’s weapon. The range and accuracy of the weapon is how ever far and with whatever precision the defender could throw a flaming bottle at a tank. Not a very high-tech weapon, but one brave Ukrainians manufactured and used when that was all they had.
A little over a week ago, the Ukrainians carried out a much more difficult attack. The Ukrainians attacked the Russian ammo dump in Toropets, about 300 miles from Russia’s border with Ukraine, with about 100 drones. What kind of drone the Ukrainians used is unknown but the drones were almost certainly Ukrainian made. Some speculate that the kind of drones used in the attack were the recently announced Ukrainian manufactured long range jet drone, the Palianytsia. Whatever drones were used the results were spectacular. Despite the vast majority of the drones likely being shot down, enough drones hit the heavily defended ammo dump to cause a secondary explosion that registered as an earthquake and caused a fire and mushroom cloud that could be seen in space. And Ukraine is manufacturing more and better drones all the time.
Again, this from a country that two and a half years ago was chucking homemade Molotov cocktails at on-coming Russian tanks. A miracle.
Just imagine what Ukraine could do if their support in fighting against the common enemy of freedom and democracy was more real than rhetorical.