[Ukraine] U.S. gives up on sending $100,000 guided artillery shells due to 6% hitrate (2024)

This reporting tour of Ukraine was conducted upon the invitation and with the support of the Ukraine Crisis Media Center, a non-government organization based in Kyiv, with assistance from the Indonesian Association for Media Development, an NGO based in Jakarta.

I was taking photos of a monument to the 17th century coffee connoisseur Yurii-Frants Kulchytskyi at a park in Lviv when I first heard an air raid siren.

It was my first morning in Ukraine. It wasn’t even 10 minutes since I left the hotel. I was relearning how to operate a DSLR camera, having used only phone cameras for years. I was practicing on the statue because I was shy to photograph people.

I noticed Ukraine has many beautiful monuments of their historical figures, and this one is fascinating: besides being one of the earliest purveyors of coffee in this part of Europe, Yurii-Frants Kulchytskyi was also a war spy.

The air raid alert app notification went off first (the first thing you do upon entering Ukraine is download one). My phone suddenly produced this ugly, disconcerting sound, and I nearly dropped it. The next second, the city’s loudspeakers started blaring the siren. It was distressing.

My first thought was that I had to document what was going on. It’s what I came to do. I turned my phone camera on myself even as I tried to figure out what to do next: Will a bomb actually fall? If so, how soon? Do I really have 10 minutes before it possibly hits, as our hosts told us? I needed to get to a shelter. The nearest one I knew of was the hotel’s. Should I run? No one else around was running.

I told myself to calm down and just walk – calmly but briskly – back to the hotel. I spoke my half-formed thoughts into my phone. How a person reacts to his or her first air raid alert can add insight to the coverage of war, I thought. Just that in this case, the person I was using as a subject was also me.

I found the receptionist and her assistant at the front desk, as though everything was normal. Wait. This is normal to them, I thought. I asked where the bomb shelter was and whether we should go to it. The receptionist glanced at me, smiled, and then rolled her eyes.

“We should go to the bomb shelter,” she said, staying put. It was the correct answer to my question but not necessarily what she intended to do. “It’s up to you.”

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Ukrainians don’t call their situation with Russia a “conflict,” because “conflict” implies active, opposing interests, a disagreement between parties on equal footing.

“For us, it’s not a conflict,” Liubov Nepop, political director of Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told our group. We were inside the ministry’s headquarters facing St. Michael’s Square. Sandbags covered the ground floor windows. We were closely screened and inspected upon entry.

“We don’t have any disagreement with Russia. We just would like to stick to our internationally recognized borders. Russia attacked Ukraine. Russia invaded Ukraine. So we don’t have equal sides. We have an aggressor, Russia, and a victim, Ukraine.”

It is an “unprovoked war,” said Nepop, and the rest of the world cannot afford to stay on the fence because Russia benefits from the vacuum in the international community’s response to its blatant atrocities. If Putin goes unpunished, then there goes the international rules-based order.

“If Russia is allowed to neglect the rules-based order, and if the international society accepts it, then it means it is also allowed for other countries, players, everybody,” Nepop said. “So in principle, we will be in a situation where the architecture of international order, international security, which is based on rules, now depends on the outcome of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.”

Beyond principle, she warned that the current situation may devolve into a global catastrophe.

“What would it mean if Ukraine stopped resisting? It will mean that tomorrow, Russian troops will be on our western border, the border with NATO. What would it mean if Russia invaded any of our western neighbors? NATO will already be involved in this conflict. What would it mean if NATO is involved? It will be a real, full-scale Third World War.”

Then why not negotiate? Isn’t there a non-violent way of ending the war?

“Russia is not willing to end the war,” Nepop said. “Russia is not seeking compromises. They openly say that they want to control all of Ukraine.”

It shouldn’t be hard for Filipinos to comprehend the pitch. China also claims historic rights over the West Philippine Sea, as spurious as Russia’s claims over Ukraine. China’s warships are criss-crossing Philippine waters and harassing Philippine vessels. Experts believe Beijing is posturing to take Taiwan. Chinese jets have been flying over the self-governed island, violating its airspace.

“If Russia wins, it will not be just a regional crisis. It will have global repercussions,” said Dmytro Bryzhinsky, head of the Chernihiv City Military Administration. He led the city’s successful resistance to the invasion in 2022.

“That will encourage China, North Korea to act accordingly.”

“If Putin wins, none of the borders around the world is secure,” said Inna Sovsun, a Member of Parliament. Her partner is fighting on the frontline. She calls him every day to check if he is alive.

How Ukraine’s Western allies deal – or don’t deal – with this phase of the war will have implications for countries with similar dependencies such as the Philippines, a US treaty ally.

“If we’re seen to be walking away from support for Ukraine, not only is that going to feed doubts amongst our allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific; it’s going to stoke the ambitions of the Chinese leadership in contingencies ranging from Taiwan to the South China Sea,” CIA director William J. Burns told the US Congress in March.

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All Ukrainian men of fighting age are banned from leaving the country. Anyone of them aged 27 to 60 may be ordered to join the war any time. A letter from the Ministry of Defense could come any day, conscribing them to military service.

Not everyone is happy about this, of course, and many prospective conscripts avail of legitimate excuses to avoid the draft. But I sensed no kicking-and-screaming among any of the Ukrainian people we met on this tour. The rage they feel over Russia’s disrespect of their identity and humanity balances out any fear they might have of getting killed on the frontline.

“We have no other choice. We have to win,” Serhii said. “Because in any other case, he will just kill us. Putin will never stop until we stop him.”

The perverse logic behind Putin’s campaign must’ve been to break the Ukrainians’ spirit to seize their country. He must’ve known Ukraine could put up a fight. Russia’s intelligence and counterintelligence are the stuff of legend. He must’ve expected formidable pushback. But he also must’ve assumed that a display of absolute willingness and ability to kill and injure en masse would scare Ukrainians out of their wits and force their government to capitulate.

But reconnaissance can only size up armies and arsenals, not a nation’s spirit. Courage and heart cannot be quantified like munitions. Ukraine’s zeal is proving to be far less exhaustible than rocket fuel.

Just months into the war, the Ukrainian army liberated occupied towns including Moshchun, Borodyanka, and Yahidne, and forced the Russians to retreat eastward. The frontline in the country’s eastern flank has hardly moved in over a year. At the moment, Russia occupies roughly a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, although things can escalate in a flash.

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Myra was living in Canada when the full-scale invasion began. She came home right away and decided she would stay in Ukraine until “the victory.” Ukrainians refer to what would be the war’s end as “the victory” because they refuse to imagine any other outcome.

“It motivates me that I’m in Ukraine, that my Ukraine stands, that I’m able to live in the city where I was born and that I love very much. I am able to speak Ukrainian here. I’m able to read Ukrainian books. I can walk freely. I can see my friends and family,” she told us.

Myra is in her early thirties. One of her male friends was conscripted in March. She thinks the draft is unfair – women should be conscripted, too.

“I was even saying to my male friends that if they were all going to get conscripted, I would go, too. Because at least we would be somewhere together, help Ukraine together and work together, instead of me just staying in Kyiv and worrying about them constantly.”

At the end of our reporting tour on February 27, we said goodbye to Myra at the parking lot of the train station in Lviv. She was taking the 4pm back to Kyiv. We were to board a van to Poland.

She thanked us for visiting Ukraine and asked if she could give each of us a hug.

Of course, we said.

It was the golden hour. The domes, steeples, and cupolas of Lviv’s skyline gleamed in the warm afternoon light. The weather had changed since we arrived a week before. No longer as cold. No longer gray. Winter was giving way to spring.

“See you again here after the victory,” Myra told us.

A brief silence. Bittersweet smiles.

“Of course,” we said.

Then she walked back to the train station. We got in the van. It turned and exited the lot. We headed for the border.