Free Republic

Russian forces occupied Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, for just under a month. Across those 29 days in early 2022, they committed acts of such barbarity that this Ukrainian town will forever be synonymous with war crimes; this conflict’s Srebrenica. Residents were killed and tortured in their hundreds; more than 100 were buried in a mass grave outside the Orthodox Christian church. Others were murdered as they fled. The basement of a children’s summer camp was converted into a torture chamber where women and children were systematically raped. Soldiers slashed throats, mutilated victims and killed parents in front of...

Interestingly enough, a Donbass commander relayed the story of how Ukraine faced disastrous losses in the SMO partly for this reason. When NATO came to overhaul the AFU into their much-vaunted Western NCO system, the Ukrainian officers subsequently saw opportunity to “pull back” from the frontline, considering that to be an obsolete “Soviet” tactic, and figuring the new NATO-trained sergeants can handle leading the charge. The problem is that in the U.S., as Ryan Mcbeth repeatedly emphasizes, sergeants undergo many years of progressive training in order to truly develop the leadership and famed “initiative”-building qualities touted in the West. You...