Posted on 03/06/2023 7:19:35 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
War is hell.
I will raise the BS flag not once on this story but multiple times. Keep in mind Ukraine uses Russian equipment and uniforms are almost identical. This is propaganda at its best.
What makes you think this is propaganda? I don’t know enough to tell.
It’s more like 25% on each side thinks the other side is propaganda while the 50% of logical folk think both sides use propaganda, or maybe that last group is the 25%
Yesterday the Kyiv Independent reported from near the frontline about the bad situation for the Ukrainian troops fighting there:
Ukrainian soldiers in Bakhmut: ‘Our troops are not being protected’
Russia’s relentless assault on Bakhmut is sacrificing waves and waves of unprepared men being sent to their deaths. But multiple defenders of this embattled city in Donetsk Oblast feel that they are in a similar boat, according to interviews with more than a dozen soldiers currently fighting in or around Bakhmut.
During their brief visits to the nearby town of Kostiantynivka, Ukrainian infantrymen told the Kyiv Independent of unprepared, poorly-trained battalions being thrown into the front line meat grinder to survive as best they could with little support from armored vehicles, mortars, artillery, drones and tactical information.
“We don’t get any support,” says a soldier named Serhiy, who has been fighting on the front lines in Bakhmut, sitting down with his friend, also named Serhiy, for a conversation in a small cafe in the Kostiantynivka market. Both men are in their 40s but one of them is a bit older than the other.
The soldiers lack about everything that would support their defense:
They say that Russian artillery, infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers are often allowed to strike Ukrainian positions for hours or days without being shut down by Ukrainian heavy weapons. Some complained of poor coordination and situational awareness, allowing this to happen or making it even worse.
Mortarmen spoke of extreme ammunition scarcity and having to use weapons dating back to World War II. Drones that are supposed to provide critical reconnaissance information are also scarce and are being lost at very high rates in some parts of the battlefield.
All this leads to terrifying casualties of both dead and wounded. "The battalion came in in the middle of December… between all the different platoons, there were 500 of us," says Borys, a combat medic from Odesa Oblast fighting around Bakhmut. "A month ago, there were literally 150 of us."
“When you go out to the position, it’s not even a 50/50 chance that you’ll come out of there (alive),” says the older Serhiy. “It’s more like 30/70.”
The soldiers describe the Russian operation as small reconnaissance followed by artillery fire. This is repeated again and again until it has reached the desired result. The very reasonable application of this tactic is why I disregard claims of 'waves or Russian cannon fodder storming forward' or of 'high Russian losses'. They are obviously nonsense:
The older Serhiy says that the enemy likes to send a team of three or four expendable foot soldiers to attack and make the Ukrainians expose themselves by shooting at them. At that point, the more elite forces zero in on the defenders’ position.
Once they begin exchanging fire, the Ukrainians are struck with heavier weapons like Russian mortars and rockets from Grad multiple launch rocket systems or BMP infantry fighting vehicles and BTR armored personnel carriers with machine guns.
“They get the positions where we are, establish the coordinates, then they hit us from seven to nine kilometers out with mortars,” as well as from closer by with grenade launchers, says the older Serhiy. “They wait for the house to fall so we have to jump out. The building catches fire and then they try to finish us off.”
“Their birds come out and they chase us with fire,” adds the younger Serhiy, referring to Russian UAVs, like quadcopters and Orlan-10 fixed wing drones that spot distant heavy weapons. “They hit accurately.”
As Russians destroy more and more buildings, Ukrainians keep losing more places where they can reliably take cover. Borys the medic says people have been lost when their entrenched positions collapsed from heavy Russian fire, suffocating them.
“I’ll put it like this, we should get our people out because if we don’t take off, then in the next few weeks, it’s going to be bad,” says Oleksandr. A mortarman named Illia agrees that Bakhmut is “practically encircled.”
For lack of ammunition there is no Ukrainian counter artillery fire. Infantry fighting vehicles are held back from the front. The little trained Territorial Brigades are send in at night to be killed the next morning:
Multiple soldiers say Bakhmut troops are barely given enough time to learn to shoot a rifle – sometimes their training is just 2 weeks, before they’re dropped into the hottest parts of the most intense current battle of the war. They would have preferred for troops to get a minimum of two or three months of training before being deployed to such a hot spot.
“Two weeks’ live training and they’re sent here. You can’t do that,” says the older Serhiy. “Or it’s a person who once served in the army, how long ago was that? Obviously they forgot everything.”
“We were promised that we wouldn’t be sent to the zero line right away, that at first we’d be sent to the second or third line,” he continues. “And then we came here in the middle of the night and they immediately sent us to Bakhmut.”
... According to both soldiers named Serhiy, most brigades are insufficiently trained and lack the experience for an environment as brutal as Bakhmut. People are taken at night to a place they’d never seen before and the battle starts in the morning.
“This is why positions are abandoned, people are there for the first time,” says the younger Serhiy. “I went to a position three times and was given six people who hadn’t fought at all before. We had a few dead and wounded that had to be evacuated… Our people are not being protected.”
Oleksandr confirms that while some battalions fighting in Bakhmut are well-trained and ready, most of them aren’t and many were thrown in at night without much preparation. “Yes, that’s true, my battalion was not prepared,” he says. After five months without a single break from the fighting, only half of Oleksandr’s battalion is left, he says.
“They shouldn’t have rushed to throw everyone in there,” says the younger Serhiy. “Better to abandon those positions, who cares? It’s better to properly train people.”
“ No proof whatsoever it was by Russia
Plenty of vids of Ukes being taken prisoner by Russians and treated humanely
Been speculated this guy knew the people he was with, by his relaxed demeanor, and was executed by his own troops…”
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There was certainly significant animus involved; sort of like the emotions involved with many “domestic incidents” that the cops hate so much to be called to.
Anyhow the killing of human beings, whether legally or extralegally, is nasty, nasty business.
Are you kidding? Why wouldn’t Russia release something they will try to use to demoralize their enemy?
But in the eyes of FReepers, everything is a conspiracy, and there is no such thing as subhuman Russian trash, produced by Communism's negative evolutionary selection, getting off on torture and murder despite all the evidence to the contrary.Death is the Russian national idea
So if something doesn’t fit your pre-conceived narrative, it can’t possibly be true?
A white spray-painting swastikas and nooses on a college campus has more chance of being true
It is relevant
It’s horrible, but, what do people think happens in war?
You’re taking to one of the major spreaders of lies. I remem er the flood8ig of the forum with stories of people supposedly saying, doctor, I wish I was vaccinated, it’s too late now. The idiot you’re talking to posted most of them.
The UK publications are total propaganda. They pride themselves in what ever misrepresentations they can put forth on Russia. Especially this source. They have caught and called out for it time and time again. So the truth is that we don’t know the truth.
Actually, Bush 1 was quite intent on trying to help Russia find its way to a stable democracy. Bill Clinton mostly agreed but had no background or real understanding, and less competence, in such matters.
Interestingly, Richard Nixon was, after the Soviet Union fell, also very much in favor of assisting Russia, although he worried that failure would lead to it resuming its old ways.
Can it be determined what the background voices are saying, and in what language?
I’m not so sure about that (soldiers wouldn’t post the vid. on social media).
Typical sociopaths would. Sort of a power trip thing.
Back in the day I did a lot of service work (repair and installation of electronics) @ bars. Some of the bouncers would exult about having beat up people. Not smart*, but a similar pattern.
*A few times it became part of lawsuits against both them and the bar’s ownership & management.
There are pretty harsh rules against killing unarmed POW’s. They actually get enforced when it’s possible (not often enough) to positively identify the perps and catch them. It’s usually some years later, of course.
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