Every morning folks in Ukraine wake up to news of death.
Earlier this week in Kyiv, residents learned that an 11 year old girl, her 34 year old mother, and a 33 year old woman had been killed in overnight strikes.
In the Dnipropetrovsk region, the body of a two year old girl was found under the wreckage of a building that Ukraine claims was destroyed by a Russian missile. The attack was done by Iskander short-range cruise missiles, the governor of the region said.
Here’s the latest tally: 485 children have been killed, and 1,005 have been wounded since the full-scale invasion began, says Ukraine’s prosecutor general.
The total number of “crimes of aggression and war crimes” now total 91,230.
It’s in this context that Zelenskyy announced that Ukraine was prepared to launch its much-anticipated counteroffensive. Zelenskyy and other top officials have been signaling this for a while, though the timing remains vague.
“I don’t know how long it will take,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “To be honest, it can go a variety of ways, completely different. But we are going to do it, and we are ready.” The WSJ also reports that, in the assessment of the U.S., the Ukrainian military is waiting for the ground to dry out in order to start the counteroffensive.
Almost as important as the counteroffensive is the prospect of NATO membership. Zelenskyy told the newspaper that he is pressing the alliance’s leaders to give them a “signal” ahead of the upcoming July NATO summit in Vilnius that Ukraine would be admitted after the war.
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The Chernobyl museum is the scariest museum I’ve ever been to in my life.
I’ve been to the nuclear museum in Hiroshima, which is much more focused on peace and disarmament.
The entrance and exit of this museum, in the Podil neighborhood of Kyiv, is marked by signage showing all the towns and villages affected by the nuclear disaster of 1986, when an accident caused devastation to the surrounding area.
Oleksandr Selyverstov and I visited the museum to talk more about the hazards of nuclear disaster. We spoke about the potential for death and suffering if another nuclear incident were to happen.
There’s a very interesting exhibit here. It shows the facade of a centuries-old Ukrainian church, split in the middle by images of the Soviet Union, right in front of a mockup of a reactor core. The message is obvious — the Soviet Union destroyed Ukrainian culture and was responsible for the Chernobyl incident:
And there’s a new exhibit there, on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Oleksandr paused to look at a photo of the reactor where he once worked.
He said 99.9 percent of the preconditions for a nuclear disaster were present at the Zaporizhzhia plant, that safety precautions had become lax, and that with some small miscalculation or mistake, untold numbers of people could suffer – his biggest fear.
He believes it is incredibly important for the Ukrainian forces to take back the plant during the coming counteroffensive, but without fighting.
He is hoping that if Ukrainian troops can take over nearby towns, the Russians would be forced to retreat. No fighting around the plant could possibly occur, he said, because it is too dangerous.
“I think [Putin] will not blow up the reactor because he understands the danger to his life. By the way, half of Russia will also be affected by a possible tragedy at the ZNPP,” he told me. “But they can blow up the distribution substation unit to cause critical damage that will leave the power plant inoperable for the next 5 years.”
Selyverstov also warned us to be prepared for a nuclear, biological or chemical attack.
He said that Potassium Iodide, a medicine used to address radioactive emergencies, was a must-have in Ukraine right now, but not to take any unless it is 100 percent sure that there was a nuclear disaster, since it’s very harsh on the body. Stay in your home, he said, and make sure to have stockpiles of food, medicine and water.
“Okay. Well, now I’m appropriately terrified,” I told him.
He assured me I could call him if I ever needed any context for news-gathering if there’s a nuclear catastrophe.
“I like you a lot,” I said. “But I hope nothing happens, and I don’t have to call you.”
Today’s dogs of war are these sleeping homeless pups, resting in the hot midday sun outside of a business on the outskirts of Kyiv.
Stay safe out there.
Best,
Tim
This story was written by The Counteroffensive with Tim Mak, which publishes regular intimate stories on the war in Ukraine, live from Kyiv. You can find more from The Counteroffensive by subscribing free or paid here.
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