DISPATCHES FROM UKRAINE
How to Achieve Three Bayraktar Drones in Two Days
If you somehow skipped this news from the last week
Ukrainians raised 600 million UAH ($15 million) to buy more Bayraktar drones for our army. On June 22, the fundraising was announced by famous volunteer Serhii Prytula and blogger Ihor Lachenkov. They planned to collect 500 million UAH for a week but have done 600 million for two days. After it, the Baykar company announced it’d give Ukraine three Bayraktars for free (wait, dudes, we have money for four :) but still). Anyway, spending this money on other goods needed for our future victory is not a problem.
Bayraktars are mostly symbolic for me in the current case. In the war’s first days, there were a lot of videos where they destroyed enemies and their vehicles. Now they’re used primarily on reconnoitering. And 3 or 4 drones is a low count anyway. The essence is another.
The essence is we continue to fight. Ukraine has a reputation for being one of the poorest countries in Europe. But, it’s not a problem for its population to gather $15 million in two days. (And we even didn’t begin to change our private dollar stashes to hryvnias, as we joke. And if it would freely buy an atomic missile somewhere to hit fucking Kremlin, we’d close this fundraising in two weeks, I guess). I realize how all people worldwide can be tired of the Ukraine theme, but it’s one more reminder that war isn’t over and we should fight in it. We don’t have a choice.
Russia’s responses were typical: massive air strikes, mostly on civil buildings in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Mykolaiv. A wholly destroyed shopping mall in Kremenchuk by a giant X-22 missile. More and more dead or injured children. In the Russian news, they all magically become weapon warehouses and military factories. But they know what they aimed for.
They do it to sow fear in our souls and break our resistance. But instead of it, they’ll get only more of our anger and desire to fight until the end.
They can still kill us all but cannot take our freedom.
