Posted on 06/12/2022 2:42:40 PM PDT by Mount Athos
A big part of the problem in defending this part of Donbas, Ostap believes, is that the people who have stayed behind — the people who haven’t fled — don’t really believe they are part of Ukraine. In his view, the civilians who remain are all separatist sympathizers. He says they help the Russians navigate backcountry roads that aren’t on the maps.
He asserts there have been instances of local collaborators getting caught providing information about Ukrainian troop movements or locations. Indeed, Slovyansk fell to Russian separatists in 2014: The retaking of the city by the Ukrainian military later that summer was the first major battle in Donbas.
“Almost everyone here is pro-Russian. But you can’t arrest people just for that,” Mace says. In any case, the police and the SBU —Ukraine’s internal security service — were doing what they could. “The SBU even arrested a couple of people in our brigade,” he says.
(...)
“I nearly beat to death one of the men in my unit,” he confides. “We were in trenches on the front lines. He was using his cellphone.”
“The Russians tracked his signal and located our position. He called his mom for 15 minutes, then his wife for 15 minutes … and then his girlfriend for almost two hours. They bombarded us all night. That’s why I beat him.”
“We lost six men on our first patrol,” he says. “Six out of 10. They were all my friends.”
He breaks down and begins to cry.
Sasha eventually admits that he has been given leave to go to a hospital to seek therapy, for what soldiers a century ago would have called shell shock and what we now call PTSD. He has been given 10 days to recover from his battlefield trauma and return to his unit.
Sasha doesn’t want to return to combat. All he can think about are the soldiers who were killed on his first patrol.
“Those six men were my friends, they were my brothers, and I love them very much,” he says. “I can’t just leave them behind. I will always carry them with me.”
“What is in my heart is that I never wish to see Donbas again in the future. Nothing you do there makes any difference.”
These are the same Russian-speaking people Ukraine has been shelling/exterminating ever since the CIA/Soros coup of 2014.
Karma is a female dog.
They must have good cell coverage.
Victoria
Nuland
They must have good cell coverage.
—
Starlink.
Demilitarization and de-nazification have always been the stated goals of this “special military operation” . A very different kind of operation.
Possibly even free! Who can resist free?
Ok...that is just funny right there.
“He called his mom for 15 minutes, then his wife for 15 minutes … and then his girlfriend for almost two hours.”
Dude...
Did you ever think you are the baddies?
Gee, ya think the dumb Orc Russkies might have thought to set up cell phone repeaters among their EW gear, for this purpose?
Nah, Orcs are too dumb. Ukraine is going to be marching on Moscow any week now.
See #10.
No, not at all. The Azov Battalion, Nazis, are to blame for this war, which is why I want no part in this conflict at all.
Btw, as critical as this was regarding emitting RF from a cell phone, you'd think they would have ordered them leave their phones behind when going on missions. Or scan/search them. I guess not.
That's the last thing I'd want is a platoon full of people texting to the world.
Where did the 40+ billion we sent them went go? I wonder how many got a piece of that action?
Nuland. Exactly. And don’t forget her diplomatic “f**k Europe” contribution to the whole. An Obama era and now Biden era arms merchant....
Nah, Orcs are too dumb. Ukraine is going to be marching on Moscow any week now.
Napoleon as well as Hitler had the same dumb idea, and it did not work out very well as Russia beat the you know what out of them.
No. It’s difficult for the Ukrainian army for now, because Russian artillery guns outnumber theirs 10 to 1 or more.
A high intensity third world war will be much more likely to start sooner, if the Russians get what they want in Ukraine.
Nah, Orcs are too dumb. Ukraine is going to be marching on Moscow any week now.
It was certainly brilliant of the Russians to deploy wheeled truck based AA systems aboard ship after their flag ship cruiser was sunk by a nation with no navy.
It is nice of the Russians switch to wiping from the earth rather than raping from the earth as we saw near Kyiv recently. How charitable of them.
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