New Years Missile Attack
This is the beginning of the traditional Ukrainian holiday season. Today Russia let loose one of it’s largest missile attacks targeting major Ukrainian cities including the capital Kyiv and Lviv in the West, Odessa in the South, and Kharkiv in the East. This assault was the latest round of attacks on civilian infrastructure, mostly aimed at the electrical power grid. These attacks have little military value and are designed to dampen the spirits of Ukrainians so that they want to surrender. The attacks are having the opposite effect. In fact the Ukrainians are getting very good at repairing the damage. But a lot of damage has been done and repairs take time.
So it was a bad day here in Lviv and throughout Ukraine. When air raid alerts happen, all government offices close during the raid and for an hour after, as do many of the larger stores, malls, banks, etc. All morning today there were no communications – no cell service and no internet. We were also under air raid alerts. Now, we will be lucky if we get 8 hours of power a day for who knows how many days. I have become very good at the routines of warming the house and charging batteries whenever power comes back online.
Since everything was shut down because of the attack, I’m trying to reschedule the van registration for tomorrow morning if possible. It will be nice to finally have the van registered officially as a Ukrainian vehicle. I’m hoping for a better day tomorrow, but Putin wants Ukraine to be blacked out for New Years Eve. So it is likely he is assessing the situation now, and planning for more strikes tomorrow.
We will see.
It is 8:41pm Ukrainian time on Thursday evening, and power has been out for most of the day.
The cacophony of generators everywhere is maddening.
My next 4 hour window for power is 9am tomorrow morning, but if Russia strikes again as we believe it will, who knows. I’m wiped out and going to bed.
Slava Ukraini
