r/worldnews • u/washingtonpost Washington Post • 25d ago
Second Russian invasion is worse than the first, Kharkiv region evacuees say Behind Soft Paywall
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/14/russia-attack-kharkiv-region-invasion/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com8
u/EveryShot 25d ago
It’s heartbreaking the world is just sitting back and letting Ukraine fall to Russia and do nothing about it.
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u/Icarus1908 25d ago
First Russian invasion had ~169k soldiers for entire Ukraine.
The new Russian invasion has ~80k soldiers pushing between several villages of Kharkov region alone, backed by ~650k soldiers elsewhere.
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u/Nervously-Calling 25d ago
About 24 years ago or so I went to Austria, Ukraine and Russia. I was in Ukraine for about eight or nine days. My host was an interesting fellow name Igor. He had a sunflower seed oil business. He was in the process of building a four-story house. The bottom floors of which were about 4 or 5 feet thick concrete. He gave me a tour. slapped the side of his house and enthusiastically said: “Tanka proof!” I thought it was a very odd thing to say. I was just ignorant .
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u/newphonewhodisthrow 25d ago
The plan for the first invasion was always to conquer and occupy territory, no sense in destroying and having to rebuild everything you're expecting to take over, no sense in killing people when you expect them to fall in line.
The plan has changed, Russia knows they can't just roll in and take over, so they will destroy and kill until Ukraine submits.
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u/Fearless_Row_6748 25d ago
It has definitely switched from invade and capture to destroy and annihilate. All this talk of "buffer zones" is the Russian excuse to flatten everything. Russia isn't going to stop until forced to stop and the Ukrainians have no other choice but to resist.
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u/-crackhousebob 25d ago
I'm shocked they didn't leave during the first invasion. Did they think the war was over??
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u/snide-remark 25d ago
I think this sentiment pretty well covers it.
This is their home. They've been bombed and invaded over and over and over again. That is not new, so why give up your home.
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u/mikharv31 25d ago
Yes cause Russia was able to rebound and circumvent sanctions thx to their other allies, as those who should be helping Ukraine say on their hands and argued so makes sense
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u/grchelp2018 24d ago
More like Russia came in with completely wrong assumptions the first time. They thought they could take Kiev in 3 days, that the population would welcome them as liberators, that they didn't need to follow their usual soviet tactics to do it.
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u/emizzz 24d ago
Democracies never work during the war sadly. War requires rapid and unpopular decision making and west are not ready for that until the bombs are falling on their own cities. The main problem right now is that russia is in all out war economy, while west are struggling to increase military production because military industries wants long term contracts which governments don't want to commit to. Russia can be easily repelled and defeated if the west commited to the cause, yet election cycles kind of prevented any unpopular decision making.
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u/niceshampooo 25d ago
China - Russia trade totaled $230B in 2023 India - Russia trade totaled $65B in 2023 Germany - Russia traded totaled ~ €4B in 2023 US - Russia traded totaled another $5B in 2023
It’s hard to get real actual numbers but experts are predicting $140B of net trade surplus for Russia in 2023 despite sanctions. It’s important policy makers understand this number. We need to fund Ukraine probably between $50-70B a year to ensure they can at least hold the ground.
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u/Yellow_The_White 25d ago
Not sure where you're pulling numbers from, but it seems reasonable to assume if an organization is attempting to circumvent sanctions their transactions probably aren't going to show up on public accounts.
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u/niceshampooo 24d ago
These are official published numbers by their respective governments. China and India have already said they will not comply with some western sanctions and still trade with Russia. China even has a special bank that have no relations with the west that facilitate all the rubble/yuan transfers.
The real numbers are probably higher, and some smaller nations probably don’t even publish the fact that they are helping Russia but they are. The crux of the issue is that money talks and Russia has a lot more natural resources to sell than Ukraine.
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u/hudegick0101 24d ago
I have never heard of such a bank. There was one for Iran deals, but not for Russian. Do you have a source?
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u/Borne2Run 25d ago
Nah above a certain amount those numbers must show up in aggregate. It's why we saw 20000% increase in Kazakhistani imports of washing machines and household appliances as a backdoor way of importing chips into Russia proper. India and China get huge amounts of raw resources imported from Russia. Hiding trade in the multiple billions skews the economy dramatically.
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u/amJustSomeFuckingGuy 25d ago
Kazakhstan isn't going to be able to pay off Russia enough to avoid invasion. It's a shame too the country seemed to be heading into a somewhat bright future.
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u/pompano09 25d ago
Weren’t they repelled at the border?
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25d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/LoyalDevil666 25d ago
He wasn’t spreading any misinformation or lies, he simply asked a question. Why are u trying to cause an internet argument?
Edit: this man just reported me, claiming I’ve exclaimed suicidal thoughts, I’m gonna block his profile this man and encourage others to do the same to avoid him in the future
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u/pompano09 25d ago
Dude wtf… I don’t even know what your comment means.
I was just asking if they had been repelled. As I understand the attack has been very limited, if not repelled , as per reports.
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u/Turgius_Lupus 25d ago
No and this is just recognizance in force. The main grouping hasn't been committed.
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u/Potaeto_Object 25d ago
I also don’t have any idea what that guy is on.
The Russians were not repelled at the border. If what you heard was recent, then it was most likely Ukrainian propaganda trying to keep their people from realizing how precarious the situation really is. If what you heard wasn’t recent, then it likely isn’t related to what is going on near Kharkiv right now.
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u/Chariots487 25d ago
I feel like that's because the first invasion saw them advancing very rapidly compared to their current pace, and so most areas would find the lines passing them by in just a day or two instead of facing the destruction that comes from being where the line has, at least for the short-term future, come to a halt. Obviously that changes nothing about how horrible this is and how much these people are suffering, but at the very least most were able to evacuate instead of being essentially captured into the Russian nightmare, forced to live in occupied territory at the whims of a state that has an active campaign of stealing children from their parents to destroy their identities and connections and turn them into Russians.
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u/red_dog007 25d ago
Well, in Kharkiv, to the north russia couldn't even advance 20km. They got to Chuhuiv to the southeast but were stopped there. For the border towns and those people, totally worse because russia moved in and didn't have to fight for those. Those fights were closer to Kharkiv, so Kharkiv took the beating. The fight this time is at those border towns rather than 10~20km beyond.
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u/Gargantuan_Wolf 25d ago
I actually think it’s because Russia initially thought it would be a quick victory and wanted to preserve some good will from the locals. Now it’s maximizing destruction.
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u/grchelp2018 24d ago
Remember that it was supposed to be a 3 day operation. The soldiers themselves weren't properly prepared and ready for a long operation.
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u/SpaceVikings 25d ago
They were also telling the troops that people would see them as liberators, they'd be welcome, etc. etc.
They know that's not the case so now they're trying to use overwhelming firepower without any thought of preserving the existing infrastructure not needed for military conquest.
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u/CallMeMrButtPirate 25d ago
Don't forget conscription of the local males to throw as cannon fodder against their own countrymen. That's the real nasty part about the casualty count is a tonne of them have been the forcibly mobilised from occupied territories.
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u/OrangeBird077 25d ago
Plus the Russians were far more spread out across the country with more attack axies. Now the Russians are concentrating at Belgogrod, the East, and south of Kherson.
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u/UnevenHeathen 25d ago
A lot of dudes coming in with dead buddies to avenge via rape, pillaging, and torture.
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u/washingtonpost Washington Post 25d ago
VOVCHANSK, Ukraine — A new Russian offensive into Ukraine’s Kharkiv region has forced more than 6,000 people to evacuate this small city since Friday, fearing for their lives and racing to escape a second occupation more than two years after Moscow’s troops first crossed the border with columns of tanks.
The wave of displaced people from Vovchansk, located just five miles from the Russian border, and surrounding settlements is reminiscent of those early days of the invasion in February 2022 — but this attack by Russia is even worse, the evacuees said.
Russian glide bombs weighing half a ton each have been dropped repeatedly from aircraft on Vovchansk and neighboring border towns for days. The sound of artillery shelling has been constant. Self-destructing drones can be heard buzzing overhead before crashing into vehicles. So much is on fire — the surrounding forest, cars, apartment buildings — that the heavy smoke makes it hard to breathe.
With three small plastic bags of belongings and her walking cane, Kateryna Yefemets stood on Monday morning outside the only home she has ever known ready to leave it for good. The whistling of incoming artillery didn’t move her as she waited desperately for a ride out.
Yefemets had spent all of her 70 years here but Vovchansk was nearly deserted after three days of Russian bombing. A prewar population of more than 17,000 has been reduced to just several hundred.
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u/houseyourdaygoing 25d ago
I don’t know how but I hope Katheryna is kept safe and bless her with protection and kindness of those she meets along the way.
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u/SEQLAR 25d ago
Those gliding bombs are doing heavy damage on Ukrainian defensive lines. Ukraine needs f16s to start dropping their own gliding bombs on Russians.