Posted on 05/27/2014 4:44:13 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
"Our president [Ramzan Kadyrov] gave the order. They called us and we came,” 33-year-old Zelimhan tells VICE News. The bearded fighter, a member of a unit known as the “Wild Division,” says he arrived a week ago with 34 Chechen men who volunteered to come and support their “brothers” in the People’s Republic of Donetsk.
Russia and the authorities of the rebel republic have repeatedly denied allegations that foreign groups are crossing into Ukraine to fight alongside the rebels.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry has said that the country is under “undisguised aggression” from Moscow, which is “exporting foreign terrorism” to the country.
The Wild Division is just the latest unit to join the swirling mix of militia groups that are descending on eastern Ukraine to join in a conflict that increasingly looks to be turning into a civil war.
Fighting in the region has killed scores in the last week.
“We know how it looks when people are humiliated, so we have come to help,” says 30-year-old Magomed, another member of the Chechen unit. The fighter reclines against a wall outside the hospital, dragging heavily on a cigarette. His ragtag military fatigues are bloodstained and he looks exhausted. Yesterday he was shot twice, once in the ankle and once in the groin, during the fierce clashes between pro-Russian rebels and Ukrainian forces for control of Donetsk airport.
On his chest is a home-inked wolf tattoo: “It’s like me, independent and self-sufficient,” he says with a broad grin.
The battle over the airfield in the administrative capital of the region came just one day after Ukraine elected a new president: the so-called “Chocolate King" Petro Poroshenko. The oligarch-cum-politician has made clear that he will not negotiate with the “terrorists” operating in the country’s east, who he says are leading Ukraine to a Somalia-like scenario.
Following a bid by the rebels to take over the airport, Ukrainian helicopters and fighter jets fired overhead as a gun battle raged below. The rebels claim they were caught unawares after being lured inside for "negotiations," but what sparked the fighting is unclear.
Most of the pro-Russia militia groups operating in the area are local, but many have traveled from neighboring regions of the country, including Crimea, which was annexed by Moscow last month following a Putin-backed putsch.
Numerous loosely coordinated paramilitary units now operate in the country’s east. Some, such as Oplot, a Russian nationalist group based in Kharkiv, pre-date the crisis, while others like the Unit of Bes ("demon" in Russian) have formed in response to it.
On the other side of the fence, pro-Ukrainian fighter groups are also weighing into the conflict.
Last week, “Right Sector,” a nationalist group with strong ties to neo-Nazism, attacked a rebel checkpoint in Karlovka. The fighting, which raged for several hours just meters away from residential houses, killed at least a dozen. The far-right group coordinated the assault with Donbass Battalion, a newly formed group of so-called “patriotic volunteers” rumored to be financed by the Kiev-appointed Governor of Dnipropetrovsk and owner of Privat bank Igor Kolomoisky.
Another Ukrainian paramilitary unit, financed by Oleh Lyashko, leader of the Radical Party and presidential candidate in the recent election, were implicated in a botched anti-terrorism assault led by the Ukrainian army in Mariupol. The operation killed several unarmed citizens when nervous troops opened fire on an angry crowd. Lyashko’s unit openly claimed responsibility for another operation which “cleansed” pro-Russia rebels from an administration building in Torez; one was killed and two were wounded in the attack.
Both Russia and the West have engaged in mutual finger-pointing over the deepening Ukraine crisis, which has rocked the country since the Maidan revolution ousted the pro-Russia president Viktor Yanukovych in February.
America has openly supplied the Ukrainian army with food rations, but the rebels accuse the West of sending weapons and mercenaries to fight in the region.
The Ukraine’s porous borders with Russia allow easy access for those who want to send weapons, or men, to aid the rebel groups operating the country’s east. Ukraine’s border guard has made numerous reports of trucks with arms crossing into the country in the last few weeks.
Vasya, a 25-year-old formersmall-time gangster who now runs an intelligence and police unit for the rebels in Gorlovka – a town just thirty minutes drive from Donetsk city – told VICE News that he had run two trucks of weapons across Russian border into Ukraine this week. “It’s easy,” he bragged. “There’s nothing to stop you doing it.” The pro-Russia rebels are appearing on the streets with increasingly sophisticated weaponry including rocket-propelled grenade launchers and air to land missiles.
The journey from their native Chechnya via Rostov to Donetsk was equally straightforward, Sayid, one of the Wild Division’s fighters told VICE News. The Chechen unit tells VICE News they are fighting alongside 16 “brothers” from Ossetia, who have been on site for around two months.
Today, fighting continued to flare on the outskirts of Donetsk. Standing at a police cordon that marks a three-kilometer zone around the airport, the intermittent dull boom of shells was audible. A few anxious rebels armed with automatic weapons paced near the barricade, keeping their fingers on their triggers. Molotov cocktails were stacked up at the side of the road.
Speaking to VICE News, head of the Donetsk municipal police Yuriy Sednyev called the situation was a "mess," and reported that "neither side bothered to inform police about military actions."
"We are advising all civilians to stay inside their homes," he added.
In the city where most shops were closed and the streets were quiet, rebel leaders today announced a 10 PM curfew.
At the morgue the bodies continue to pile up. According to the police officer, stationed outside the cordoned-off hospital building, there were at least 35 bodies stretched out inside, including 10 civilians caught in the crossfire. Many were nearly unidentifiable due to their heavy wounds, he said.
Signs of war were visible on the streets of the Donetsk center this morning. Less than a kilometer down the road from the city’s central trauma hospital, the carcass of an overturned Kamaz truck lay outside a block of administrative offices. Another of the Soviet-era military vehicles sprawled across the highway near the bridge, body parts scattered on the road around it. The Chechen fighters told VICE News that they were transporting the rebels’ dead and wounded from battle in the vehicles when they were hit by heavy sniper fire.
Alexei Dmitrashkovsky, a spokesperson for Kiev’s “counter-terrorism” effort, claimed that his forces have killed at least 200 men. “The anti-terror operation in Donetsk will continue until all the terrorists will be destroyed or until they surrender,” he said in a statement.
The depths the country will sink to before that goal is achieved, however, could be catastrophic. “In our country there is a meaning to 'blood feud',” says tattooed Chechen fighter Magomed whose lost one comrade in the battle yesterday. “We will not forget this. If you kill one of ours, we will kill one hundred of yours.”
What’s a burden is being the only one who can read, and who can see that The Daily Beast sources none of its claims, is merely repeating claims from Russian propaganda sources without independent confirmation, and ignores the obvious contradictions in the story.
But that's what Putin lovers like you do: lie in the service of a dictator.
The Daily Beast is Tina Brown’s reincarnation of TIME MAGAZINE.
Are they Putinista toady’s, as well now?
Really dude, your schtick has gotten laughable.
Russia accused him, without any evidence - and many years after the supposed incidents alleged - of crimes in Chechyna.
Yet, Russia never sought extradition.
However, you yourself are excitedly bragging that Muzychko was murdered by Russians extrajudicially on Ukraine soil.
That tells us a lot about who you are and what you value.
Blah, blah, blah...
I know, if it isn’t EuroMaidanPR-approved as printed in the Kiev Post, it cannot be sourced, right??
You do nothing on this site except praise Vladimir Putin. You should probably refrain from accusing anyone else here of having a schtick.
lol...
And I’ll bet you believe that he killed himself.... TWICE... too?
Thanks, I needed a good laugh tonight, after the Pacers stinkathon.
I try to actually think about what I read, not match propaganda with propaganda.
After all, you have just informed us that he was extrajudicially murdered by Russian thugs, right?
“You do nothing on this site except praise Vladimir Putin.”
I’ll bet you say that to all the boys, doncha?
OH WAIT.... You do. You call anyone who doesn’t completely tow the approved propaganda line names, like a Jr. High bully.
I can’t help but note YOU haven’t provided, or ever provide, any evidence to dispute the claim?
“that he was extrajudicially murdered by Russian thugs, right?”
So, you are CONFIRMING for us that Arsen Avakov is a “Russian Thug”, right?
That’s the thing about flame-trolling, you see. It never works on someone who has taken the time to inform themselves.
Projection instead of reasoning? I'm not surprised.
After all, you seem to think that the burden lies on me to prove a negative, instead of you backing up the unsubstantiated charges you made in the first place.
You're the one blaming Avakov, while claiming that Russians wanted him dead.
I provided the link, from a western media source. All you have provided is the whining. And the insulting...
Good point.
Who ever killed him...did the world a favor.
Do you deny that it was Avakov that ordered his arrest?
Or that Right Sector Demanded his resignation for ordering “the Murder” of Bily??
As I said, Google can be your friend. Try it sometime.
“Who ever killed him...did the world a favor.”
Lots of reasons for the coup Gov to take out Bily at the time.
He was one of the ones pronouncing the end of Russian Culture in Ukraine, was directly involved in the Maidan violence, and more than once the Russians suggested that he was directly involved in the sniper attack that set off the coup, (those men have never been identified). In addition, he was making threats against people like Avakov, publicly.
His involvement in killing Russian POW’s in Chechnya was being played up by Russian Media. That was a HUGE dog-whistle to average Russians.
Removing him from the field of play was likely a good move.
Easier to kill him, than to deal with him, and his Right Sector buddies, if he is in Jail.
You are Russian correct comrade?
All information coming out of Russia including RT media and territory held in eastern Ukraine by Russian terrorists is disinformation. You can pretty much be sure any information the Kremlin-waterboys here at FR are spreading is the same. Want facts? It is the opposite of what the Russians and their useful idiots are saying.
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