Bakhmut Is Gone: An Aerial Look at the War’s Destruction

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/22/world/europe/bakhmut-ukraine.html

by lisasays • 3 years ago

59 231 3 years ago

maerF0x05• 3 years ago

It's incredible to me how anyone — including Russians — can look at this and decide that Russia is on the right side of anything. Just flatly, what is wrong with you?

This was a real functioning city of 75,000 people. They did nothing except exist. Now it is ruins. What are you bringing to the world? What are you accomplishing? Do you think this city is liberated?

Even if you buy into the full Russian story of Ukraine "shelling Donbas for 8 years", do you see anything in Donetsk that could possibly compare to this? You've destroyed more in a year of war than Ukraine would have shelled in three centuries of skirmishing with the Donbas.

maerF0x05• 3 years ago

Russia is on the right side of anything

By that argument essentially no war, ever, is on the right side of anything. Perhaps that's your position, but I'm sure some folks would differ and believe sometimes war is justified.

If war is sometimes justified, then the argument comes down to goals and values. Russians, apparently, value "unification" and strategic buffer zones more than the world believed, and it might even be the West's fault this is such a protracted war.

for example see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4

or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKpU1fEiTjQ (nb: "today" is Dec 2022 in this)

maerF0x05• 3 years ago

Btw: Reminder that HN voting system is not reddit's agree style upvote. It's instead to function on the quality of argument and evidences presented.

Would love to hear a rebuttal to both the Professor's and Editorial content that demonstrates that Russia isn't the only one who should be demonized here.

jfghi• 3 years ago

Same way that meta “values your privacy”

contrarian1234• 3 years ago

My guess is that they aren't happy about the day to day, but they've been sold a narrative that NATO's expansion into Ukraine was an existential threat to them.

You can look at it like the Battle for Fallujah. It was horrible and bloody - but in the global narrative of eliminating islamic extremists that pose a threat to the west the battle was sort of seen as an unavoidable

I'm not trying to make a moral equivalence between the two - just explain how one horrible thing in the context of something bigger might feel inescapable

justrealist5• 3 years ago

Fallujah was never burned to the ground. Fallujah's population never dropped to 0. Apartment blocks were never shelled to the ground.

Fallujah has a population of 275,000. Bakhmut will never again have more than a handful of people.

It's not the lack of moral equivalence, it's the lack of any equivalent whatsoever.

vasergen• 3 years ago

but they've been sold a narrative that NATO's expansion into Ukraine was an existential threat to them

When the war started there were no talking what's so ever about NATO expansion to Ukraine. After the war started Finland joined NATO and it is the longest border between NATO and Russia and nobody from Russia said anything about that.

lostmsu4• 3 years ago

islamic extremists that pose a threat to the west

What a funny twist. I thought islamic extremists pose treat to non-islamic civilian population, and to a large degree to the moderate islam followers.

paganel2• 3 years ago

These were the people of Bakhmut in 2014 [1], after the events of Maidan in Kiev. Notice the Russian flag. It's unfortunate that the Ukrainian State hasn't allowed the people of the city to choose their own way so that it had to come to all this destruction, I agree with you on that.

As for the buildings, they will be re-built, look at today's Grozny.

[1] https://twitter.com/CheburekiMan/status/1660124734871453697/...

justrealist5• 3 years ago

The people of Bakhmut wanted to be part of Russia, so Russia had to destroy the city? Is that what it means to be part of Russia?

revskill• 3 years ago

The Americans also destroyed other countries, too.

Noone said Russia is right, neither the Americans.

ChuckNorris892• 3 years ago

The Americans also destroyed other countries, too.

Hey, don't look over there, look at Russia, they're the bad guys.

wsc98110• 3 years ago

I think this situation is sad for all involved, but I do feel a big part of the blame lies with the USA who have been expanding NATO closer and closer to Russia's borders, even though Russia warned against this many, many, many times in the past. Ukraine was too close for comfort (kinda similar to Russia trying to plant nukes in Cuba during Cuba crises, now USA is doing the same).

All of this could have been avoided if USA respected Russia's wishes regarding NATO expansion [0].

And also, Ukraine bombing Donbass region for many many years prior to the war, also didn't help for sure.

And I don't understand why the USA and UK still tried to push this war, with Boris Johnson personally visiting Zelensky when Ukraine was close to signing a peace deal with Russia [1]. Boris Johnson blocked the deal, but why? What did Boris Johnson believe was to gain here?

---

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/28/nato-e...

[1] https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/09/02/diplomacy-watch...

amanaplanacanal• 3 years ago

Why are Russia wishes regarding who Ukraine allies with more important than Ukraine’s wishes?

justrealist5• 3 years ago

NATO has been on Russia's borders via the Baltics for years. Ukraine adds nothing.

lawn4• 3 years ago

All of this could have been avoided if USA respected Russia's wishes regarding NATO expansion [0].

Nah, it would play out exactly as it did with Hitler before WW2.

They would just keep taking countries until they were stopped.

Russia has done more for NATO's expansion the last year than all other countries have done the last decade.

imbusy1112• 3 years ago

Do you see Ukraine as a sovereign country, that can define its own future, or is it just a puppet state of Russia, like Belarus? Should we still allow redefining borders in Europe in the 21st century?

kurthr2• 3 years ago

Wait, so it prevented the annexation of Crimea? The annexation of Georgia?

Wouldn't this be more like the US annexing Cuba, or really Venezuela, because of Russian/Chinese influence? I mean they are "Violent Socialist pedophiles invading our boarders and poisoning our children", and it's really American Oil put there by God anyway? Again, propaganda doesn't need to make sense when is serves a political and economic purpose.

My personal opinion is that dictatorships and democracies have a very hard time figuring each other out, which leads to great miscalculations. The dictator sees peoples elected representatives and decisions as great calculated moves, and seeks to threaten "the real power behind them". While democracies fail to plan (other than institutionally), but are driven by the beliefs of their populations, and need to be elected to make moves that are not "real politik".

padjo9• 3 years ago

I love when people say the USA or UK pushed this war. Russia tried to perform a decapitation attack on Ukraine and failed. There was no reasonable cause for this, they just thought they could get away with it and keep Ukraine as a vassal state rather than let it turn west like the Baltics etc.

Curious, do you think Russia is to blame at all for violating the terms of the Budapest Memorandum?

golergka5• 3 years ago

USA who have been expanding NATO closer and closer to Russia's borders

It's not NATO that have been expanding. It's sovereign countries that wanted to join.

Why? Because they were afraid of exactly what happened to Ukraine.

This war proves them right.

sajforbes• 3 years ago

I disagree for three reasons:

1. While Russia warned against NATO expansion, it wasn't (and still isn't) in their power to do anything to stop it. Its actions have resulted in the expansion of NATO, a reasonably forseeable result.

2. NATO is a defensive only alliance, and can't be invoked for an invasion of Russia. If their concern is the ability of the US to store missiles and other military gear on its border, too late - the Baltics are already members. It would be an odd choice to invade purely based on the likely future expansion of an alliance that is designed to prevent you from invading its members.

3. NATO expansion or no, an independent, westward-leaning Ukraine is not an acceptable outcome. This would make NATO expansion irrelevant or at best an ancillary cause.

It's also worth noting it's not like this is the first time Russia has invaded and occupied one of its neighbours. AFAIK Georgia wasn't about to join NATO. We can't see counterfactual universes, but in my view an equally valid possibility is that NATO has stopped what is happening in Ukraine from happening in the Baltic states.

Overall the facts don't line up well with the theory that this is a response to NATO expansion, and therefore the US is to blame - it might be a factor, but more serves as a rhetorical justification Russia can use that it knows people in the US and UK can use domestically.

If you're a realist about international relations it's pretty easy to see why the UK and US might see it as in their geostrategic interest to prolong the war, and that might have been a factor. It's also worth noting there was a huge amount of public pressure for both to react. Either way, in their view, a longer war is worth it for a pro-western Ukraine, and Ukraine seems to agree. As for acting to prevent an agreement, that's largely speculation, but either way, the final choice was still Ukraine's.

dragonwriter18• 3 years ago

All of this could have been avoided if USA respected Russia's wishes regarding NATO expansion

No, the Russo-Ukrainian war that has been active since 2014 could not have been, and the reason I know this to 100% certainty is because the US and NATO did accede to Russia’s request to not offer Ukraine and Georgia Membership Action Plans to set the path for NATO membership in 2008, which was followed immediately (less than two months, IIRC) by Russia invading Georgia, and in 2014—with a Ukrainian government that had disclaimed interest in NATO largely because of the 2008 action—Russia following up with an invasion of large parts of Ukraine, starting the war.

If anything, NATO showing it was willing to abandon Ukraine and Georgia is what greenlit both wars.

kurthr2• 3 years ago

Well, you have at least temporarily stabilized the Russian state (or at least Putin's position within it). I suspect this was the primary purpose, along with the belief that Ukraine and Crimea in particular are fundamentally Russian. Though things didn't go as planned and the longer this persists the more authoritarian (rather than simply depoliticized kleptocratic) the state must become to maintain it. It's a delicate balance, and the economic costs are high, but Putin is quite skilled at maintaining it. Concern for individual lives has never been a great concern in Russian wars.

From a state propaganda point of view, they have patriotically battled the Nazi Jew Gay Needle Freaks who, along with NATO and "the West", are plotting the extermination of Russia and right thinking culture, but are doomed to fail due to their degenerate beliefs. It doesn't need to make sense.

4bpp3• 3 years ago

This level of destruction appears to be the outcome of modern urban warfare against an entrenched and motivated defender every time. At https://news.sky.com/story/the-battle-for-mosul-how-the-reca... and https://www.csis.org/analysis/real-lessons-mosul-and-sixteen... you can see similar pictures of Mosul, a city around 50 times the size of Bakhmut, after it was reconquered by a US-led coalition in 2017. Do you have trouble looking at it and deciding that the US is on the right side of anything? If yes, you will run out of "right sides" very fast; if not, your criteria for determining the right side are actually not mostly about the reduction of real functioning cities to rubble.

lostmsu4• 3 years ago

Well yes. The other side means slavery for half the population.

0zemp2c3• 3 years ago

Zelensky now seems to be talking down Bakhmut, describing it as a pile of rubble not worth dying for...so why did so many Ukrainians die in the last few months trying to retake it?

people continue to not understand the way Russia wages war - since the time of Napoleon, Russia has embraced scorched earth and brutal attrition

ppeetteerr• 3 years ago

It may have been a way to grind down Russian forces. The next few weeks will tell if this was also a trap for the Russians as the Ukrainians look to surround the city.

0zemp2c3• 3 years ago

its too late for Ukraine to try to encircle, they would have to push through Russian defensive positions on both flanks

this is why Zelensky is talking down the value of the city, he knows too

andyp-kw• 3 years ago

I don't think it was a pile of rubble when they started defending it.

The city previously held strategic value.

dragonwriter18• 3 years ago

Zelensky now seems to be talking down Bakhmut, describing it as a pile of rubble not worth dying for…so why did so many Ukrainians die in the last few months trying to retake it?

They didn’t die trying to retake it (since it hadn’t fallen to need retaking, until arguably very recently, though even that is disputed), they died trying to pin the Russian Army/Wagner down and kill them (and did kill vast numbers of them) to prevent advances elsewhere. Just as the Ukrainian effort now to encircle the Russian forces that are still fighting the Ukrainian forces in and around the citiy is not because control of the rubble matters, but because cutting off and removing from combat the Russian forces in the rubble matters quite a bit.

rrauenza• 3 years ago

I've been watching The Telegraph's analysis videos recently. It's complicated.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJnf_DDTfIVAddjHY3ss1...

ramesh31• 3 years ago

so why did so many Ukrainians die in the last few months trying to retake it?

It's called fixing. War involves, many times, sending people to certain death in a hopeless situation to provide room for manouvre and force generation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_strategy

wsc98110• 3 years ago

Solid strategy, a variant worked for Zapp Brannigan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF3g4Ua5e7k

fauxpause_9• 3 years ago

Ukrainian military and third party analysts have been very clear on this for a long time. Bakhmut had little strategic value. But Russia was hellbent on taking it. So Ukraine was using it as a way to pin down Russian forces and kill them en masse as they used their stupid human wave tactics. It’s worked well.

Russia spent 9 months on this offensive. They got Bakhmut and lost immense combat power. Now Ukraine is readying a counter offensive.

toyg• 3 years ago

I don't think there was any particularly clever strategic plan. And sadly I don't think any Ukrainian counter-offensive is going to make any particular difference.

Ukraine is the new Syria, the conflict will probably never end.

hef198984• 3 years ago

Your inderstanding about the way Russia, and the USSR, wage war seems a bit incomplete and influenced a lot by common, and often repeated, internet memes. Most of which are contain just enough truth, among the complete falsehoods, to be incredibly dangerous.

0zemp2c3• 3 years ago

refute me then, with facts, I'll even accept Wikipedia links

here's an appetizer for you: the Brusilov Offensive in WW1 was only a strategic operation inside a single war and Russia lost more men in that alone than have ever died on behalf of the US in all wars

NohatCoder• 3 years ago

The turning into a pile of rubble was gradual, there was something worth defending not that long ago. But mostly I suspect it is because they have to kill the Russians somewhere. If they have a strategic advantage defending the pile of rubble they will cause more damage to the invaders than they will take themselves. Who ultimately holds the rubble is less important than what the battle cost each side.

jcranmer3• 3 years ago

The original reason for Russia to take Bakhmut was because it's a useful operational point on the way to Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, and pinching those cities out would have enveloped a decent fraction of skilled Ukrainian troops. However, the rout in Kherson and the Russian evacuation from all the towns there meant that there were no longer any forces pushing Slovyansk from the north, so the resulting operational picture no longer makes much sense.

The continued reason for Russia to take Bakhmut at that point is largely attributed to inter-service rivalry within Russia: Wagner was hell-bent on taking it, to prove greater competence than Russia military (conscript or professional) forces. Ukraine continued fighting to defend it because it gave them such favorable casualty ratios, although it has been suggested that the casualty ratio became unfavorable to Ukraine in the past few months. (Whether or not it was still a good idea for Ukraine to continue contesting Bakhmut rather than withdrawing entirely is a question that has no clear answer right now, and will be hard to properly assess likely until well after the war is over. Fog of war is hard!)

Hypergraphe2• 3 years ago

This made me sad.

maerF0x05• 3 years ago

It made me think how post war Ukraine is going to be a potential target/victim of Chinese imperialism / evergrande style construction projects

Hypergraphe2• 3 years ago

I don't think that far in the future... We don't even know what will remain of Ukraine. This war does not make any sense.

runsWphotons9• 3 years ago

If Ukraine draws a truce, it will be western banks and firms doing the reconstruction. Though I suppose these companies may be partly chinese, if thats what you mean?

colpabar2• 3 years ago

Did you mean to say blackrock? Is this one still a conspiracy theory?

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/28/zelenskyy-blackrock-ceo-fink...

_a_a_a_2• 3 years ago

I think the one who will be milked by the chinese are the russians, for stupidly making themselves dependent upon the one major power that will deal with them. Chinese government must be drooling.

fauxpause_9• 3 years ago

I suspect it will be within full Ukrainian control within less than a year. It’s not a strategic priority. And it is costly to try and take inch by inch. So Ukraine is not going to be in any rush to take it back. But I also expect the priorities for Russian troops will be stretched extremely thin. Wagner appears eager to leave and blame the Russian MoD for failing to hold it.

The news today of Russian freedom fighters “liberating” a Russian settlement around Belgorod is the most interesting thing to happen in a while. Keep an eye on that one.

api• 3 years ago

I've read that the whole strategy was to use it to bleed Russia.

hef198984• 3 years ago

Kind of the same idea the USSR applied during the defence of Stalingrad.

fauxpause_9• 3 years ago

Yep. They’ve been very transparent about it.

wsc98110• 3 years ago

How many more young men does Ukraine have to expend in this war?

rainworld10• 3 years ago

And it is costly to try and take inch by inch.

They lost it inch by inch and paid a very high price. Why do you think they sent some of their best units there, like the “Da Vinci Wolves“, and lost good chunks of them, including, incidentally, said unit’s founder and national hero “Da Vinci“? This is not a secret, the obituaries are all public.

Gud3• 3 years ago

Makes a lot of sense to me.

So the Ukrainians took heavy losses. For the Russians it was much worse. The Ukrainians has managed to build up an enormous defense around the city and the Russian offense has been effectively halted, and for what? So they can rule the ruins of Bakhmut, for a little while?

The Ukrainians will push back now. My bet is they will encircle what's left of Bakhmut, forcing the Russians to surrender the city(or whats left of it).

fauxpause_9• 3 years ago

I mean it’s sucks that this guy died but it was still a successful op. 9 months of Russian offensive and they got nothing of value.

golergka5• 3 years ago

They lost it inch by inch and paid a very high price. Why do you think they sent some of their best units there, like the “Da Vinci Wolves“, and lost good chunks of them, including, incidentally, said unit’s founder and national hero “Da Vinci“?

To make Russia lose much more forces in the attack. It's a simple gambit — lose 1 soldier to make enemy lose 2 (or more).

Makes sense to lose an unimportant and pretty small piece of territory like that. Doesn't make any sense to retake it with reverse proportion of losses.

netbioserror5• 3 years ago

This sounds like outright coping. As far as I can tell (having paid next to no attention to this conflict), the media got the entire invested US population hyped up about some Ukrainian counter-offensive, retaking Bakhmut, Russian army out of ammo...and this is the result? Spinning the loss of the city while realizing the aftermath was near as makes no difference a human woodchipper?

I really hope we have an Iraq-style mea culpa over this conflict very soon, because far too many people are up to their chins in moral hazard by walking straight into the fog of war equipped with only talking-head propaganda and Hollywood-informed notions of how and why wars are fought.

fauxpause_9• 3 years ago

If it would convince you otherwise, I’m happy to provide citations of third party analyses and Ukrainian defense statements stating Bakhmut had little strategic value months prior and that it was being used to pin Russian troops in a costly offensive.

Edit: the Russia being out of ammo thing was an internal politics thing of Prigozhin claiming Russia MoD was not supplying Wagner with enough ammo. It was not a western talking point. Nor was it particularly true.

lawn4• 3 years ago

You've got a lot of opinions for someone who hasn't paid any attention to the conflict.

For those who have been following, it's pretty clear it's been disastrous for Russia.

pjc506• 3 years ago

Iraq-style mea culpa over this conflict very soon

How exactly? Given that it was chosen and started by Russia, and the initial fightback of the first few days done by Ukraine, what US decision do you want rolled back?

archagon3• 3 years ago

Who is "we"? We (the US) are not at war. Ukraine is trying to survive as a nation. Who cares what the US population thinks?

tptacek9• 3 years ago

Nobody in the US knows what Bakhmut is, let alone where it is, let alone its strategic importance. Whatever the reasoning behind contesting it, none of it ties back to US sentiment.

dragonwriter18• 3 years ago

I really hope we have an Iraq-style mea culpa over this conflict very soon

(1) there was never a mea culpa over Iraq, though there should have been, and

(2) while it would also be nice for the lying aggressors to admit they were, well, lying aggressors in this war, Putin’s not going to do that any more than Bush the Younger did.

TekMol• 3 years ago

I'm surprised no one here is arguing in favor of Russia's actions in Ukraine.

Russia has 140 million people. How many of them are in favor of their government? Shouldn't some of them find their way to Hacker News?

EA-3167• 3 years ago

Why bother? Surely the community + mods here would crack down on that, and this isn't a site where you can just throw out a load of nonsense and expect that no one will analyze it to find flaws. Add that to the low user count (a few million a month compared to hundreds of millions or more for things like TikTok, Reddit, Twitter and FB) and limited resources are clearly better spent elsewhere.

Plus ideologically the people who support Russia most vocally online are Western tankies, and I don't think those guys would do well here.

happytoexplain• 3 years ago

I keep Show Dead on, and I often see one or two pro-Russia posts whenever the topic comes up. However, pro-Russia sentiment on this war is corollary to a trollish sarcastic attitude, so they get flagged.

pjc506• 3 years ago

They are, and obviously they're getting downvoted to oblivion.

lisasays15• 3 years ago

From their language they seem not to be Russian natives, but rather Westerners who have bought into the Russian (government's) narrative.

Pure mindfuck all the way down, in any case.

4bpp3• 3 years ago

Are you, or anyone you know, arguing against its actions in any forum that is Russian-operated and overwhelmingly pro-Russian in this war? Few people have a taste for deliberately exposing themselves to overwhelming social disapproval and hostility, and HN is not even primarily a political forum. As a hypothetical pro-Russian user, why would you choose getting yourself dogpiled and possibly risking a ban which would prevent you from using HN to discuss technology, rather than just steering clear of the topic?

lisasays15• 3 years ago

As a hypothetical pro-Russian user, why would you ...?

Because as a troll, your goal certainly isn't to be popular. It's to dilute the narrative, and wear people down. For which getting dogpiled is just par for the course.

maerF0x05• 3 years ago

I did, but as you see HN's culture has turned from quality of discussion voting to agree/disagree voting.

Meanwhile we have distinguished political science professors being dismissed without rebuttal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4&t=1s

themgt• 3 years ago

There's a very large difference between arguing in favor of Russia's actions versus attempting to posit any degree of complexity and nuance in explaining how we reached this point, who shoulders responsibility, what a realistic end to the conflict is likely to look like, etc.

The recent piece in Harper's does a good job of laying out "the other side" i.e. realism and historical context against the "Putin is a delusional Hitlerian madman bent on dominating Europe" theory: https://harpers.org/archive/2023/06/why-are-we-in-ukraine/

On the current trajectory though, the west's belief in its own eschatological hegemony looks like it's already collapsed the "unipolar moment" of the last 30 years and there's a good chance of us continuing to climb the escalation ladder into World War 3, so the narrative that none of the sowing of this conflict was remotely our fault is providing an important psychological bulwark to steel everyone's nerves for what we may reap.

kvonhorn• 3 years ago

Thanks, I've been looking for an article like this for over a year. Whenever I've requested this perspective in the past, the only reply I've received is that I'm an ignorant, brainwashed American.

timaios• 3 years ago

Any such post is immediately flagged and dissapears. Actually it does not have to be in favor of Russia, it is enough that you contest "facts" as they are presented in the western media.

First hand experience.

TheLoafOfBread• 3 years ago

It would be like arguing in favor of Germany's actions ... in 1943

photochemsyn• 3 years ago

The NYT at least provides a historical record, though their day-to-day reporting involves a lot of historical amnesia. Take a look at this from 2002:

"President Bush heads to Moscow this week for his first summit meeting there, one that his advisers call a historic start to Russia's integration with the West... By breeding and experience, Mr. Putin may be the most Westernized leader in Russian history... The American view, as espoused this month by one senior Bush administration diplomat, is that the summit meeting 'really puts the Russian-U.S. relationship on a firm course of long-term partnership, even a long-term alliance.'"

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/20/world/in-czar-peter-s-cap...

It's curious how little interest the media has in examining why this one-promising 'alliance' failed to materialize, and instead broke apart, with arms control treaties torn up by both sides and escalating belligerence as bad as the worst episodes of the Cold War, such that an outbreak of nuclear war is now an ever-present risk. Any cursory news search will reveal that both Russian and American nuclear forces have moved to what looks like a hair-trigger status, as evidenced by various large-scale nuclear drills, public statements, etc.

Some plausible issues are economic conflicts over who gets to sell fossil fuels to European markets (and where that oil money ends up), the general desire of military-industrial interests in both countries to keep military spending intact, and the general political opportunism involved in nationalistic chest-beating and demonizing of the enemy, etc.

schizo89• 3 years ago

it's all forked

golergka5• 3 years ago

Looks exactly like Grozny in 1995. As a child, I was told stories about Chechen atrocities that let to first Chechen war. I was led to believe that Chechens are wild, uncivilised, dangerous people who wanted to kill Russians in neighbouring regions. I was 7 years old, so I didn't question it.

After Russia's invasion in Ukraine and completely crazy propaganda which painted LGBT-friendly country with a Jewish president as literal Nazis I don't have any other choice but to confirm that Russia has been doing literal genocides in regions that wanted independence since 1995.

ghostwriter17• 3 years ago

Let's see, in 1994 Ukraine supports military uprisal in Chechnya and aids separatists and their terrorist field commanders arriving from Saudi Arabia and Middle East [1] in a war against Russia on the territory of Russia. Namely, UNA-UNSO (a nationalist “patriotic” [2] organization in Ukraine [3]) leaders Anatoli Lupinos and Dimitro Korchinski led Ukrainian delegations to Grozny to meet with Chechen leaders. Fast forward in 1995, the UNSO fighters organized as the “Viking Brigade” under the command of Oleksandr Muzychko (a man who vowed to fight "communists, Jews and Russians for as long as blood flows in his veins" [4]), are illegally crossing the Russian border in Chechnya and join Mujahideen terrorists in their fight against Russian regulary army.

Twenty years after, when the chickens of the foreign policy had come home to roost in Donbass of 2014, someone nicknamed "golergka" thinks that everything that contradicts his worldview must be a "completely crazy propaganda".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mujahideen_in_Chechnya

[2] https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=una+unso&form=HDRSC3&fi...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_National_Assembly_%E...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleksandr_Muzychko

vladgur• 3 years ago

Ukraine SUPPORTS military appraisal in Chechny in 1994?

Do you want to actually read the Wikipedia article about UNA that you linked to? UNA barely got 0.5% during 1994 elections and that was their best year.

In other words what youre saying is that actions leaders of some nationalistic organization that does not represent 99.985% of Ukrainians is representative of Ukraine? That is absurd!

dirtyid• 3 years ago

Any aerial time lapse out there?

eMSF• 3 years ago

This thread stinks of cabbage to high heaven. Can you actually fool even yourselves anymore? Russians have lost the war a long time ago, it's barely a nasty procession that's left.

Bakhmut Is Gone: An Aerial Look at the War’s Destruction

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