Zaporizhzhia: 40 dead, dozens possibly still under the rubble

The toll keeps climbing. According to Al Jazeera, Ukraine has put the number of dead at 40 following the Russian strike on the Zaporizhzhia region. In Komykhuvakha, dozens of people may still be trapped under the rubble. Rescuers are continuing their search, but Russian drones force them to stop from time to time.

What we do not know at this stage: the exact nature of the target, the weapon used, the number of missing, the identity of the victims. The dispatch does not say, and we will not fill that gap with guesswork. It tells us the essentials: people are dead, others may still be alive under the stone, and those searching for them are working under the threat of another attack.

From here on, this is our reading, not an established fact.

A war is measured first in lives, and they are almost always those of ordinary people. The workers, clerks and pensioners of a Zaporizhzhia town decided nothing. They pay. The states that send them to their deaths, or expose them to strikes, speak of sovereignty, security and the defence of the homeland. Lenin saw through this old trick: cloaking the predatory interests of "his" bourgeoisie in phrases about defending the fatherland. He was aiming at the social-chauvinists of 1914. The formula has not aged a day, and it applies to every camp.

Cui bono? Not the residents of Komykhuvakha. This war fits into a rivalry between powers over territory, resources, routes and spheres of influence. Sanctions, arms contracts, alliances: all of it forms the political envelope around economic competition. We do not claim the dispatch demonstrates this for this particular strike. We say it is the framework within which it should be considered. While the bodies are being counted, the arms industries on both sides of the front line, and their backers, have full order books. That deserves a close look.

There is also the question of the state. It presents itself as the protector of society, yet it remains an organised force, with its army, its civil servants, its taxes and its borrowing, standing above society. In wartime this machine demands sacrifices in the name of all. The rescuers, for their part, follow a different logic: rescuers, often poorly equipped, digging with bare hands at the edge of danger. Their courage owes nothing to the general staffs.

For now, the priority is simple: find the survivors, honour the dead. The rest, the responsibilities and the interests at stake, will come with the facts. We will return to them, without the usual diplomatic doublespeak.