It's not some big event in the grand scheme of things, but I w | Russians With Attitude

It's not some big event in the grand scheme of things, but I was happy to see the news that an old pedestrian bridge in Novoazovsk has been replaced. This small town had been close to the frontlines since 2014, and now it's far enough for it to be safe to invest time and effort into construction.

Not long ago, a friend with relatives in Severodonetsk told me that they're even fixing the playgrounds there -- which had been built under Brezhnev and then never touched again. The aggregate of these little things, building new infrastructure that Kiev was neither willing nor able to do during all of its 'independence', building new schools and hospitals, repairing and replacing everything that has been run down by 30 years of incompetence and kleptocracy, returning basic human dignity to the people -- it's just as important as the military side of things.

A shiny new bridge, a modern school, a functioning road -- all these things are just as effective against the false idol of Ukrainian nationalism as artillery barrages.