The Russian invasion of Ukraine hasn’t been able to secure some of the key strategic aims that the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin has been after, and now, Ukrainian defenders have apparently retaken control of Makariv, a suburb of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. Russian forces have been held back from encircling Kyiv, for now, although fighting has continued there and across the country. Some 10 million Ukrainians have been displaced by the war, with many of those having fled the country as refugees, and thousands of civilians have died, although exact numbers are difficult to determine as the war rages. As for Makariv, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said that the “Ukrainian flag was raised over the town of Makariv,” according to The Kyiv Independent.
As the Associated Press explained: “Early Tuesday, Ukrainian troops drove Russian forces from the Kyiv suburb of Makariv after a fierce battle, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said. The regained territory allowed Ukrainian forces to retake control of a key highway and block Russian troops from surrounding Kyiv from the northwest.” However, suburbs of Kyiv including Bucha, Hostomel, and Irpin have apparently partially fallen under the control of Russian forces, according to the same outlet based on revelations from the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. Ukrainians have been widely regarded to have launched a more robust defense than the Putin regime expected, and the war has now been raging for weeks with reported steep losses on the part of the Russians, who were conservatively estimated by U.S. intelligence to have already lost over 7,000 troops. Adding a reasonably imagined higher number of wounded troops to that suggests that Putin’s invaders have taken a major hit to their fighting capacity — although horrors continue to unfold.
⚡️On March 11, Russian occupation forces fired on a nursing home in Kreminna, Luhansk Oblast, killing 56 people.
15 people survived, Russians took them to the occupied territory in Svatove
— Hromadske Int. (@Hromadske) March 20, 2022
One point of particular although far from isolated concern has been Mariupol, a city of hundreds of thousands that has been besieged by Russian forces who’ve apparently already killed thousands in that city alone. A theater and a school, both of which were apparently sheltering hundreds amid the fighting, were among recent Russian targets in Mariupol. As of last Friday, hundreds of people were believed to remain beneath the theater wreckage. The Russian word for children had been written in large letters on the ground outside of the theater in an attempt to keep Russian invaders from striking it. Those in the city have lost access to key resources like running water. And elsewhere in Ukraine, Russian violence on civilians has been widespread — in one incident, Russian personnel were reported to have fired on a nursing home in the Luhansk region, killing 56 people. Survivors of that attack were forcibly moved elsewhere. In Mariupol, thousands of residents have apparently been forcibly relocated to Russian territory, local officials say.
Putin takes another page out of Stalin’s book:
New – Mariupol residents are being taken to Russia against their will by Russian forces, says Mariupol City Council. “Over the past week, several thousand Mariupol residents have been taken to Russian territory,” the
Council said.— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) March 19, 2022
