Russia Intensifying “Moral and Psychological Pressure” On Civilians – As Russian forces continue to retreat from both northeastern and southeastern Ukraine, Ukrainian military officials claimed on Thursday that the Russian military is ramping up psychological pressure on civilians.
According to an update from Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command, Russian forces are deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure and depending almost entirely on remote missile and artillery fire.
“The enemy’s main efforts are focusing on holding occupied territories as well as assigning maximum losses to our troops by using the tactics of remote missile and artillery fire, air strikes,” an update shared on Facebook reads.
“The enemy intensifies moral and psychological pressure on civilians and launches missile strikes on social, industrial and critical infrastructure objections,” the update continues, adding that the Russian military is continuing its efforts to replenish supplies, manpower, equipment, and weapons over the Dnipro River.
“Our missile and artillery units maintain fire control over all crossings, locations of their preferred equipment and other alternative ways of moving across rivers,” it continues.
The news is good and bad for Ukraine. On the one hand, Russia is on the back foot. Ukraine has severely hindered Russia’s ability to resupply its troops in the south, destroying bridges over the Dnipro River and cutting away at the land bridge established by the Russians between Donbas and Crimea. On the other hand, Russia is growing increasingly desperate, and while attacks on civilian infrastructure have been commonplace throughout the war, they appear to be increasing in severity and brutality.
Russia Strikes Damn In Central Ukraine
Struggling on the battlefield, Russia’s attacks on civilian infrastructure have gone well beyond medical buildings and apartment buildings – though those are bad enough – and now include large structures. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy revealed on Wednesday how the Ukrainian military launched strikes at a major damn in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih. In his nightly address, Zelenskyy said that the Russians purposely targeted the Karachunivske Reservoir, despite the fact that it has no military value.
The Russian strikes destroyed a water pumping station, which caused the embankments to flood. Residential buildings surrounded those embankments, and emergency service workers were forced to work overnight to secure the area.
As a result of the strikes, water spilled out from the reservoir and into the Inhulets River, a tributary of the Dnipro River. Strikes like this not only cause a risk of flooding in residential areas in Ukraine, but also risk depriving communities across central Ukraine of a reliable supply of fresh water.

Russian artillery. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
In his address, Zelenskyy accused Moscow of being “weaklings” and slammed the Kremlin for “waging war on civilians.”
“Your missile attacks today, Russian missiles targeting Kryvyi Rih, the dam of the Karachunivske Reservoir, the objects that have no military value at all, in fact hitting hundreds of thousands of ordinary civilians, is another reason why Russia will lose. And not just this war, but history itself,” Zelenskyy said.
Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.

David Chang
September 16, 2022 at 9:11 am
God bless people in the world.
If nuclear triad is Queen, Russia President Putin may do that.
The Shortest Checkmate in Chess: The Fool’s Mate.
According to Joseph Stalin’s policy of war, socialism with nuclear weapons, so they have Seven Days to the River Rhine exercise. Each socialism party accuses the other socialism parties of waging nuclear war first, but Trump as president have a question, if America’s infrastructure is destroyed by non-nuclear weapons, shall America military do the same to the other country?
So Britain people should abandon socialism, obey Ten Commandments, and think about all consequences of war. After all people in Europe obey Ten Commandments, no war in Europe.
God bless America.
xheavy
September 16, 2022 at 10:15 am
The Flooding is to prevent Ukrainian Water Crossings to get at the Russian temporarily.
The Germans detonated the Ruhr Dams when directly attacked by special forces and rangers etc which delayed the entire Allied Drive towards the German Homeland 2 weeks. Buying the German Military precious time.
If you carried the logic of this hysterical civilian attacked by flooding, you can then go ahead and include all flooding events Natural or Man made as attacks on us all.
I dont buy that logic. Dam if you dont and dam if you do.
Jiri Novacek
September 16, 2022 at 12:57 pm
Every attrocity committed by Putin against civilians only increases resolve of the Ukrainian people, and their rightful anger against Russia. The attrocities may have worked for russia in Syria or Chechnya or against civilian uprisings elsewhere, but will not work against Ukraine. They suffered 5+ million dead by Stalin, they suffered 7 million dead by Hitler. Their grandfathers succesfully defended Stalingrad and conquered Berlin (25% of the Red Army were Ukrainians). Will they surrender now? No way. Not even a nuclear strike would break them.