OPINION: Submariners, Fish Poachers and Drug Dealers – the Many Fronts of the War for Ukraine

While the word ceasefire hangs in the air, military action continues with the same intensity on all fronts, giving Ukrainians little cause to expect peace. Our military, however, recently gave us something to smile about by achieving a historic first in shooting down a military aircraft with a missile launcher installed on an unmanned sea drone. In fact, the Ukrainian sea drones shot down two Russian aircraft in the Black Sea, proving that drones are becoming more dangerous than traditional anti-aircraft systems.

The operation of Ukrainian naval drones near the military port of Novorossiysk in the North Caucasus of Russia confirmed that Ukraine controls the surface of the Black Sea to a greater extent than Russia.

Ukraine also successfully maintains control of the front line along the Dnipro River near Kherson. Dozens of islands on the Dnipro remain under the control of the Ukrainian army, although Russian soldiers regularly try to land there and prepare bridgeheads for a possible crossing of the Dnipro.

The Russian navy’s small surface crafts are very fast, but they easily become targets for Ukrainian drones. The Russian command has, therefore, taken to using submariners in scuba diving kit in operations involving increasingly large numbers of marine troops who try to gain the upper hand along the Dnipro in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. So far, all attempts to land on territory controlled by the Ukrainian military have failed.

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Russian Attacks Kill Railway Worker, Damages Energy and Logistics Site

Russian attacks targeted civilian infrastructure across Ukraine on Friday, killing a railway worker in the Sumy region and injuring another employee. Along with this, separate strikes damaged a logistics terminal in Zaporizhzhia and a solar energy facility in the Odesa region.

Ukrainian poacher fishermen sometimes create unexpected problems for the Russian submariners. Despite the obvious danger and prohibitions, poachers continue to set up their catch-all fishing nets inside the combat zones and in nearby reservoirs and bays of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.

It is not known how many Russian submariners have become entangled in these, but in April alone, the Kherson fishery patrol confiscated from poachers 35 fishing nets with a total length of 1,167 meters.

These nets were given to the military for making camouflage nets, which are very much needed on the front line. Since the beginning of this year, the Ukrainian military has received 181 nets with a total length of more than 6 kilometers (3.7 miles), all confiscated from poacher fishermen.

Fish poaching is flourishing in the occupied territories of Kherson region where the poachers are both Russian occupiers and Ukrainian collaborators and where the occupation administration is determined to ignore violations of Ukraine’s environmental legislation.

Kherson continues to live the dangerous life of a frontline city. Residents are killed daily by attack drones and by artillery shells which regularly fly across the river. Despite the frequency of explosions in crowded streets and markets, the city continues to live, and the stores and markets continue to work.

Kherson’s fishery patrols check vendors of live fish in city markets and punish traders selling live fish supplied by poachers. Recently, a patrol saved a sturgeon – a fish listed as an endangered species in Ukraine – and released it back into the river.

Since the very beginning of the war, Kherson has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance. At the beginning of the war, the city’s residents greeted the Russian aggressors with Ukrainian flags and shouts of “Go home!”

In recent weeks, many new Ukrainian flags have appeared on fences and the walls of buildings – neatly painted at about eye level. Oddly enough, these flags do not indicate renewed patriotism in the city. Despite the war (or perhaps because of it) the trade in drugs and psychotropic substances has grown increasingly active and commonplace.

On the walls of houses and on fences dealers leave Telegram messenger addresses at which you can place orders for drugs. At first, Kherson police used black paint to hide these drug adverts, but now they are supplied with spray cans of yellow and blue spray to do the same job and create lots of small Ukrainian flags all over the city.