We answer by burning Rostov refineries. Ryazan and Kirov region are under attack. We answer as the one who has dignity and freedom answers the one who has nothing. Two and a half years of the Great War and we are no longer surprised that we almost have our own ballistic missile. We are used to our Neptune striking deep into Russia. Our naval drones have turned the Black Sea Fleet into an underwater fleet.
Even the Russians are used to air alarms and the understanding that there is no distance that Ukrainian drones have not covered.
We have changed, and we are changing the rules of modern warfare. Our defence complex has evolved. Sometimes, on the contrary. Sometimes – thanks to. But definitely forward.
If in 2022 we marvelled at Bayraktar and the “three sevens”, now our Bohdans have already turned into a terrible dream of the enemy, and Lyuty disrupts refinery after refinery while the Russian air defence is silent.
In 2022, we brought dozens, if not hundreds, of industrial complex products into operation. In 2023 – more than two hundred. Today, the Ministry of Defense has codified new types of weapons twice as much as in the whole of last year. We do it in conditions of constant enemy shelling, with financial and personnel shortages. But we do it nevertheless. Daily. Weekly. Annually.
We reached a completely different level of Ukrainian arms production that was unattainable for the Russians with all their material resources. We produce our own ammunition, EW, UAVs, armoured vehicles, and self-propelled artillery. Some are unique, some are not. But – it’s our own.
What will happen next? There will be more. Faster. With better aim. The war will not end tomorrow, but it will definitely end with our victory. Not because I believe. Not because I want to.
And because we answer more and more in the way that the winner answers. And this is precisely what the weekly torches of burning refineries symbolise. Russia’s defeat, which has already come. Here and now.
By Petro Andryushchenko
*These opinions are solely those of the author. The Ukrainian Review takes no position and is not responsible for the author’s words.
Petro Andryushchenko was an adviser to the mayor of Mariupol. After the Russian Federation started war in Ukraine in February 2022, he became the de facto “voice” of Mariupol.
On his Telegram channel, “Andryushchenko Time“, he tells the truth about the horrors of the occupation, the deportation of people by the Russian occupants and the “filtration” camps in Donbas.
