WAR IN UKRAINE: April 16, 2022 — Michael Bociurkiw

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 52

Multiple air raid sirens in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities overnight as fears grow over a harsh retaliation from Russia over the sinking by the Ukrainian Navy of its prized warship, the Moskva. The Armed Forces of Ukraine said they destroyed four rockets Saturday morning that were headed towards Lviv. Missile strikes were also reported on the outskirts of Kyiv (Darnytsky district), Kharkiv, in the Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Kirovohrad and Miykolaiv oblasts, and Kherson. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced the strike in Darnytsky on his Telegram channel and he also urged displaced residents to resist the temptation to come back to the capital region just yet.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has asked US President Joe Biden to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. Doing so would place Russia in the same club as Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba and trigger specific harsh sanctions. It is unclear whether the White House will act upon the request. Biden has already labelled Russian President Vladimir Putin as a war criminal and has suggested regime change in needed in Moscow. As I commented to MSNBC’s Katy Tur a few hours ago, I believe sanctions, no matter how biting, have largely failed to deter Mr Putin. Additionally, as long as they do not have a huge impact on the Kremlin leader, Russia will continue to act with impunity. My longer take: The reason why sanctions (no matter how stringent) will have no effect on Putin is because these sanctions hurt the Russian people, not him. And as we all know, Putin has no regard for human life, not even his own people. He knows that if he ever loses power then his days are numbered on this earth. So just like a terrorist, if he goes down, millions of others go down with him. Every day that the US fails to directly engage the Russians, more and more innocent civilians will be slaughtered. But the end result will be the same - Putin will get what he wants: a direct engagement with the US. Better for the West to have that engagement on its own terms and on their time, than his.

“The reason why sanctions (no matter how stringent) will have no effect on Putin is because these sanctions hurt the Russian people, not him”

— Michael Bociurkiw

During some time spent yesterday with management of Ukrzaliznytsia, the state-owned rail company which has moved some 3.7 millions of migrant across Ukraine to safety, we learned plenty about the challenges of operating keeping the rails active during war. One interesting factoid provided by Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, its director of passenger operations: when the war started in February there were about 15,000 rail cars from Russia and Belarus on Ukrainian territory. Ukrzaliznytsia has taken possession of the rolling stock. There were also staff from both countries on Ukrainian territory and they were eventually traded back. Yesterday the company re-opened the route between Kyiv and Chernihiv.

Pertsovskyi said that after the tragic bombing of the railway station in Kramatorsk, where around 50 people were killed when a Russian missile struck, Ukrzaliznytsia has changed its operations on the ground - avoiding having large numbers of people crows on station platforms. This means bringing trains into stations one at a time and schedule announcements to avoid having people group in large numbers. The railway executive said staff feel proud playing a role in “iron diplomacy” - bringing various world leaders to Kyiv to meet with Zelensky.

The railway company helped some 500,000 people to go overseas, but is reducing the frequency of trains that cross Ukraine’s western borders. “We feel it is our responsibility to channel people more within the country.” The biggest concern of migrants is housing. Now the government is working on housing so there is support to help people find accommodation within Ukraine.