Thirteen Dead in Russia, and Nobody’s Asking Who’s Getting Rich Off This War

Thirteen people dead in Nizhnekamsk, over a thousand kilometers from the Ukrainian border. A child among them. Seventy-five more injured. Drones lit up an oil refinery in the republic of Tatarstan and burned through the night, and the headlines rolled out like a scoreboard update. Just another day in the forever war.

Funny how the numbers always come packaged just right. Ukraine’s Armed Forces confirmed the strike on the Tanevo refinery. A Ukrainian defense manufacturer called FirePoint proudly announced its FP-1 drones did the work. A defense manufacturer putting out a press release about its product performing well in a strike that killed a child. Ask yourself who benefits when the weapons makers get to advertise their kill count.

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Andriy Kovalenko, who runs Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation, said every civilian death in Russia is on Putin. “Without Putin, there would have been no aggression. Without the aggression, these people would still be alive.” A tidy little formulation. Also one that works in every direction. Without the arms shipments, without the blank checks, without the defense contractors billing overtime, none of this happens either. But you won’t hear that from the Centre for Countering Disinformation, because their whole job is making sure you don’t think too hard about it.

Russia’s Investigative Committee says civilians who had nothing to do with military operations were present. The BBC couldn’t independently verify that. They also couldn’t independently verify Moscow’s claim that 450 Ukrainian drones were shot down overnight. Nobody can verify anything in this war, and that’s exactly how the people running it like it. Fog works wonders when you’re trying to keep a war going.

Here’s what we do know. Last week, a combined drone and missile strike on Kyiv killed 21 people. Overnight, five more died in a Russian artillery attack on Kharkiv. Over the past 24 hours, 13 people were killed and 90 wounded in Ukraine by Russian bombardment. So the same day Nizhnekamsk burned, Ukrainian cities were burning too. Ordinary people on both sides getting shredded while the men who started this sit in bunkers and palaces and conference rooms in Washington and Brussels.

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Rustam Minnikhanov, the head of Tatarstan, confirmed the strike and offered condolences. The mayor of Nizhnekamsk, Radmir Belayev, called it “a tremendous pain for all of us.” A period of mourning was declared. Good. Mourn. But then ask the next question, the one nobody in charge wants asked: why is this still happening? Why are refineries getting hit that were already hit in June? Why does the escalation dial only go one direction?

The establishment line is simple. Russia bad, Ukraine good, send more money, don’t ask questions. And if you do ask questions, you’re a useful idiot or a Putin apologist. That’s the trick. They’ve made it impossible to say “maybe endless war is bad” without some talking head on a cable news panel calling you a traitor.

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Meanwhile the defense contractors keep posting their earnings. The lobbyists keep writing the checks. The think tanks keep churning out papers about why we need to escalate just a little more. And the kid in Nizhnekamsk is just as dead as the kids in Kyiv and Kharkiv.

The official story never adds up because it’s not supposed to. It’s supposed to keep you nodding along while the war machine feeds. Thirteen dead here, 21 dead there, 90 wounded somewhere else. Just numbers on a screen until it’s your neighborhood.

Ask yourself who benefits. The answer is never the people in the blast radius.