rain destruction

KYIV, Ukraine — As Russia’s forces lose ground in Ukraine, they continued to rain destruction and death on Ukrainian civilian targets, using artillery and missiles on Thursday and Friday to strike multiple cities and towns, often far from any combat.

Moscow still holds the advantage in firepower and has threatened the use of a nuclear weapon to defend what it now calls Russian territory, and it has demonstrated repeatedly that it can rain destruction on Ukraine.

Moscow still holds the advantage in firepower and has threatened the use of a nuclear weapon to defend what it now calls Russian territory, and it has demonstrated repeatedly that it can rain destruction on Ukraine.

In both the Kyiv and Kharkiv battles, Russian air dominance would surely have made a major difference, by both protecting its own troops and giving its air force the freedom to rain destruction down on Ukrainian positions.

The breakthrough deal that allowed ships carrying grain to depart from Ukraine’s southern ports this week may have solved a diplomatic problem, but it left a more pragmatic one hanging over Ukraine’s farming community: growing and reaping crops in a war zone, as powerful weapons rain destruction across some of the richest agricultural land in the world.