How Edinburgh’s twin city Kyiv is standing up to Russian tyranny - Steve Cardownie

His name is Yuri, a Ukrainian, who was formerly a tank commander in the Soviet Army and who now devotes his time to assisting the war effort, as his country continues to defy the Russian armed forces that invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Yuri told me at that time that it never occurred to him that he would be involved in a conflict where Russia was the enemy.

Yet here he was doing all that he could to ensure that the marauding Russian forces were repelled and expelled from Ukrainian territory.

A great deal has happened since the first Russian boot stepped on Ukrainian soil over two years ago.

And Putin’s assumption that his army would be welcomed by the Ukrainian people, and his “special military operation” would be over in the blink of an eye has proven to be a gross miscalculation.

For example, the UK’s Ministry of Defence stated that Russia is facing its highest rate of losses during the invasion so far, with over 70,000 soldiers likely killed or wounded in May and June of this year.

The BBC also issued a statement in April of this year that “Russia’s military death toll has now passed the 500,000 mark, the BBC can confirm.”

It further stated that “In the second 12 months on the front line - as Moscow pushed its meat grinder strategy – we found the body count was 25 per cent higher than in the first year.”

It also explained “The term meat grinder has been used to describe the way Moscow sends waves of soldiers forward relentlessly to try to wear down Ukrainian forces and expose their locations to Russian artillery.”

And despite all these horrifying statistics, Putin and his propaganda machine continue to feed the Russian population a diet of lies to perpetuate his manufactured myth that Russian is merely carrying out a “special military operation” in Ukraine.

The war is continuing apace and Yuri was at pains to point out that Ukrainian civilian casualties are still mounting daily.

He told me yesterday that if one person dies in the West “the whole world knows about it” but when civilians are killed in Ukraine it is regarded as “normal.”

Yuri still insists that the only way to stop this current aerial onslaught is to allow Ukraine to use the missiles supplied by the West to hit military targets deeper inside Russia, thereby neutralising missile launch sites and military airfields that are having such a devastating effect on Ukraine.

The New York Times recently reported that President Zelenskyy appealed to Western military leaders last Friday for “faster weapons deliveries on the heels of a flurry of major Russian missile strikes”.

It added that the ability to hit back at targets in Russia would help Ukraine put military pressure on Moscow “so that Russia is motivated to seek peace.”

I’m looking forward to seeing Yuri again for a pint and a chat. He has visited Edinburgh on several previous occasions and played a part in our twinning agreement with his home city, Kyiv.

It is a shame that we now meet in these circumstances and it can only be hoped that he and his fellow Ukrainians, will know the meaning of peace again sometime soon.