Putin’s Rain of Terror

David Piepgrass
5 min readMar 25, 2022

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I’m writing this on March 24, 2022: the one-month anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Source. See also before & after footage.
Published video by War Studies PhD student & Ukraine watcher Rob Lee, original source not mentioned

This is the city of Mariupol, which Russia badly damaged after cutting off electricity, water and heat on March 1. Pre-war population: 431,859. Do you see any military targets here? No, these are homes that many people still live in. Russia has even made it dangerous to leave. An official told NPR: ‘When the people organised in evacuation points, they [Russians] started attack on evacuation points. Not all the city. Just evacuation points.’

Officially, as of 9 days ago, 2,400 civilians had been killed, but this is said to be an underestimate and the actual number of murders may have been as high as 20,000… nine days ago. This is the effect of less than one month of Russian attack.

I have donated to the Red Cross in support of Ukraine, and also to AVD-Info and Meduza in order to help give Russians access to information — the Russian internet is heavily censored, and independent media are banned unless they are pro-Putin. For wxample, this Moscow newspaper says “NOTHING IS HAPPENING. Walk on by. A special operation is underway. No one is growing poor. The economy is growing.”

Newspaper of “municipal district Lomonosovsky”, March 2022 Issue #1

For more donation ideas, see here. Personally, I would like people to ask their government to offer large rewards to those who desert from the Russian military (plus large rewards for delivering Russian military hardware to Ukraine). The free world is already spending billions of dollars on military aid to Ukraine, but buying out soldiers is potentially cheaper than killing them, especially if you consider human life to have any value. For talented Russian professionals, rewards should be offered for leaving Russia. Bring a brain drain to Putinland.

Without electricity, reports from Mariupol have been limited, but certainly there is enough information to see that the situation is very bad.

Captured by Mstyslav Chernov before leaving Mariupol

Here you can see the famous Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre, labeled “дети” (“children”) in huge letters, which held over 1,000 civilians. Russia bombed it anyway.

Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre, in which roughly 300 people were killed

For more images and stories from Mariupol, see here.

Meanwhile, I hope you don’t live in an apartment in Borodyanka, near Kyiv…

Or in these other places…

Chernihiv —apparently without electricity & heat, water limited for two weeks
Irpin
Kharkiv
Kharkiv

I’ve been frustrated, closely following events unfold but unable to find a meaningful way to help beyond giving some donations. I hope people think more about helping Ukraine by helping Russians to stand up to Putin, whether it be by leaving Russia or something else. Helping the Ukrainian military is a fantastic thing and I’m all in favor, but let there be sticks and carrots both. Let’s ask our governments to offer Russians more than just exploding bombs.

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David Piepgrass

Software engineer with over 20 years of experience. Fighting for a better world and against dark epistemology.