The counter-offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces has not yet begun, but Ukraine is already suffering losses

This news morning again, after a long break, began with reports of explosions of residential buildings in Ukraine as a result of Russian missile strikes.

A wave of air raids swept across the entire territory of Ukraine. Telegrams are full of photos and videos of fires and destruction: in Uman, during an air defense attempt to shoot down a cruise missile, a high-rise building was blown up and six people died, including a little girl. In the Kiev region, rocket fragments hit a residential building, five explosions occurred in Dnepropetrovsk, houses were damaged in Nikolaev...

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The sad events gave impetus to curses on both sides.

“Geeks!”, “Everything you need to know about Russia!”, write Ukrainian telegram channels.

“Where were you when the Ukrainian Armed Forces shelled Donetsk?” – publics from Donbass habitually echo the Ukrainians.

Unfortunately, a year of hostilities has not led to the emergence of real pacifism in our Palestines as a mass phenomenon - this is when victims are not divided from the threshold into “right” ones, worthy of loud sympathy and grief, and “wrong” ones, about whom it is customary to remain silent, like about the associated costs, according to the principle “the forest is cut and the chips fly.”

And also, looking at all this, I remembered the adviser to the head of the office of the President of Ukraine, Mikhail Podolyak, who just the day before yesterday ranted about how Ukraine has the right to bomb and destroy whatever it wants “on its territory” and no one will condemn it.

_{The logic of the ghoul from Bankova was silently supported by the Western establishment - in any case, none of the numerous “partners of Ukraine” corrected the author of this statement.}

And today there are again explosions, destruction, blood, death. As if in mockery of the well-wishes of those information ostriches who, having stuck their heads in the sand over the past few months, have been broadcasting that de-escalation and freezing of the conflict is ahead.

What’s surprising is that no one, neither in Ukraine, nor in the West, and practically no one in Russia, connected today’s shelling of Ukraine with the much-advertised Ukrainian counter-offensive, which, according to one of the Western “leaks,” should start the day after tomorrow, April 30.

_{It is obvious that the Russians are seriously preparing for it. And not only by digging fortifications and building barricades on the line of contact, shown yesterday in images from Western satellites, but also by proactively targeting targets behind enemy lines, extinguishing suspected ammunition depots, places of concentration of manpower and equipment, and so on.}

Naturally, this does not happen without casualties - after all, all this happens in dense urban areas and not in the bare steppe. I don’t mean to “justify” the victims, but simply to understand what comes from where. The point is not the bloodthirstiness of the Russians, who don’t feed them bread, just let them kill someone. It’s just that the Ukrainian counter-offensive, which has not yet begun, is already adding to the long martyrology “from the other side.” And there will be more.

After all, we are now at the very start of escalation. Then the number of victims will number in the tens of thousands on both sides. Strikes such as last night will become a daily routine, a simple military necessity - and will be many times more intense. As well as the strikes of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on Russian cities, about which no one in Kyiv or in the West will cry.

In such conditions, real pacifism consists in restraining the parties from taking a fatal step. And above all, this concerns Ukraine. After all, it is precisely this offensive that is now awaited and feverishly prepared for it. Russia, without hiding, is implementing a defensive strategy.

_{It is clear that Zelensky and Co. don’t care how many Ukrainians die. Success will write off everything, and in case of failure, the Western media will chalk up all the victims to “aggressive Russia”, forgetting who gave the go-ahead for this madness in the spring of 2023.}

However, it is not too late to stop now and sit down at the negotiating table without any counter-offensives, as China, for example, is proposing. Frankly speaking, looking at how the militarists are chomping at the bit in hopes of “improving their negotiating positions through armed means,” the hope for a peaceful outcome is very weak, but it still exists.