While Waiting for Patriots, Explosions Are Not Successful Intercepts, They’re Russian Missiles Hitting Civilian Targets

“During the night, Ukrainian air defenses failed to shoot down a single Russian ballistic missile” – morning news reports like this are common. It seems we have nothing with which to counter Russia’s super-fast and extremely destructive weapons. Only Patriot missiles are a match for them, and recently, when asked by journalists about the supply of Patriot missiles to Ukraine, Trump said the US needed them for their own defense.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. So, we can be sure that the explosions we hear at night are not shots fired at missiles, but rather Russian missiles hitting their targets: warehouses, gas depots, or railway station platforms where passengers are gathered, waiting for their train. Since the beginning of August, numerous large warehouses belonging to supermarkets, Ukrainian manufacturers, and retail chains that import building materials, white goods, and auto parts have suffered in this way. The list of affected companies is long. The owners of the storage facilities dotted around our large cities know that if they haven’t already fallen victim to Russian missile attacks, they certainly will, and businesses are starting to restructure logistics. Goods must be distributed immediately to stores, while any stockpiles are broken up and stored in smaller, less conspicuous facilities. This requires greater coordination, more gasoline, and more time. Supermarkets have warned that prices on some products will rise by at least 20 percent. The official explanation to customers for the impending price increase is succinct: “Due to Russia’s destruction of food products.” Other Topics of Interest US Military YouTuber Paid His Own Way to Cover Ukraine's Front Line Refusing outside funding to preserve his credibility, US veteran Justin Taylor spent two weeks in Ukraine, witnessing nightly drone attacks and life near the front line firsthand. In the stores of the supermarket chain Novus, “out-of-stock” signs read: “This item is unavailable because it was destroyed by Russians.” Ukraine’s largest online purchase platform, Rozetka, the equivalent of Russia’s Wildberries, was recently hit hard when a key warehouse and logistics center, on the outskirts of Kyiv, was destroyed. At the same time, the private courier service Nova Poshta, which is often used to deliver Rozetka goods to customers, was also targeted by ballistic missiles. Customers who paid for their goods in advance are waiting to see if their purchases will arrive, while others are posting photos of their Nova Poshta parcel with a sticker reading: “Your parcel survived the fire.” The other day, we stopped at an Epicenter hypermarket – a huge retail space for hardware, construction goods, and much else besides. In the event of an air raid warning, it would be impossible to evacuate such a store and find shelter within the five minutes it takes for a Russian ballistic missile to travel from its launch pad to its target. While we were looking for a new axe and some drill bits, I automatically memorized the route to the exit, but I noticed that other shoppers were perfectly calm, despite several recent ballistic missile and drone strikes on other Epicenter hypermarkets. Over the past few weeks, Russia has also destroyed Ukrainian warehouses containing newly printed books - more than 10 million copies. The destroyed volumes are mostly school textbooks, which are published under government contracts and are a vital source of revenue for several publishing houses. How will these lost textbooks be accounted for now? Who will pay for them? The publishing houses that fail to deliver to the Ministry of Education, or the state itself? In any case, the destruction of book warehouses has pushed a number of well-known publishing houses to the brink of bankruptcy, including Ranok, which specializes in children’s books. The affected publishers will try to offset some of their losses by raising the price of new books. However, the margin for increase is small because prices have already risen beyond what is psychologically acceptable for most buyers, and book sales are falling. Two of the three Readeat bookstores located in busy areas of Kyiv, are closing. The chain’s owner, Dmytro Feliksov, initially tried to sell the businesses, but there were no takers. What will happen to the book market next is difficult to predict. As with almost everything in Ukraine at the moment, much depends on Ukrainian air defense capabilities. The general sense of uncertainty now extends to the previously impeccable passenger Railway service, Ukrzaliznytsia. Trains are repeatedly stopped en route. Recently, trains from Poland to Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia were delayed by up to 10 hours. Even in this precarious situation, the Ukrainian government is managing to find cause for a modicum of cautious optimism. For example, there’s the recent agreement with Turkey for the purchase of hundreds of thousands of artillery shells and several hundred missiles. President Zelensky has also announced that the United States still intends to supply Ukraine with some Patriot missiles each month. Indeed, any deliveries, no matter how small, will have a positive impact on the grim statistics of the war – the number of destroyed warehouses, factories, and residential buildings and, most importantly, on the number of lives lost.