And the little faggot loving butt grabbing twerp that's leading the Ukraine sticks a pistol in his mouth while he's waiting for the end in the Führerbunker.
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Afghanistan: Marking five years since US attack on MSF hospital in Kunduz
we also trained and equipped terrorists to fight in syria, and we knew it and brennan wanted to expand the program anyway.
trump ended it, and no surprise, that "civil war" had turned into a clean up operation to eliminate the terrorists we armed in the first place.
mcstain, graham and other war mongers that fund their campaigns with blood started it my giving arms to the muslim brotherhood, who gave them to isis and any other sunni extremist groups.
Behind the Sudden Death of a $1 Billion Secret C.I.A. War in Syria (Published 2017)
The shuttering of the C.I.A. program, one of the most expensive efforts to arm and train Syrian rebels since the 1980s, has forced a reckoning over its successes and failures.
And what an asset it was! Priceless
…BND russian mole, right-winger, russian symphatizers see where this goes or has been going more accurately…
Soon push will be for citizens to report suspicious activities (such as this thread) to identify and oust possible russian agents and far right persons…
Still if Steves news are correct than Russians know and have known exactly what NATO knows, will do and can do and their SMO strategy is exaclty in tune with that - which kind of explains all the “ammo problems”, “huge russian losses”, “dishwasher chips in missiles that are about to run out” and slow grind to Ukie oblivion.
In short west is fucked or better yet fucked itself and what better example of this then “the special one in this thread” projecting own faults on Soviets… The rot in political caste in EU and US is appalling. Worst of all there is no exit strategy as more and more people turn “far right” as they wake up to reality, and those rotten fuckers will turn on the people as they find out they cant touch Russia nor China..
Is it just me or does that photo look faked as fuck?
So they were hit with an artillery shell that blew the guy's pants and one arm of his jacket to shreds but strangely didn't put a scratch on his clearly visible exposed skin?
Kind of like the pictures of the "missile attack" with all the cars overturned but the glass on the vehicles is perfect and unbroken just the same as the windows on the building right beside the "strike"?
Those look like some foreign mercs posing for fake propaganda pictures.
Also the background, where was this supposed double strike they are "fleeing" from?
Yet more Ukranian Nazi propaganda.
Explosives do weird shit.
Blast will rip one guys pants while ripping another guy in half.
You may be right as the whole thing is a mountain of lies but you also may be wrong.
Are you saying all Slavs look alike?ok, help me out then. was he the guy saying that Putin is immortal, or was that someone else?
What’s next they can’t drive and you want more borscht a half hour after you finish a bowl?
That’s fucked up.
Without help from the "West" Russia would have already over run Ukraine.
No money to be made should Russia over run Ukraine.
Just one big Casino where the players stream in, lose their money and the house rakes it in.
US military spending in Ukraine reached nearly $50 billion in 2022 – but no amount of money alone is enough to end the war
The US is giving record-high amounts of money to Ukraine, signaling it is invested in this war for the long run – a political science scholar explains 3 important things to know.
theconversation.com
in all seriousness, Joe Biden is the one person everyone should be blaming for all of this. He may only be a puppet for the NWO, but he's a puppet that has enabled this bullshit to occur.
and here is how his inflation and higher interest rates are affecting people's biggest investment;
Yes! As heartless as some of your shit sounds at first it's really the best case scenario for the region. No standoffs, no dragging this shit out, way way less people dying. Steamroll and kill all the Nazis fuckers and be done with it, send NATO back to where they should be, on their side of Europe.
It is astounding, absurd, and if you told me a year ago that we were actually funding honest to God real Nazis, I would have never believed it. But, we are funding Nazis, arming them, training them, empowering the fourth reich. People here show their abject stupidity when they lobby for Ukraine to some how push Russia back or kill Putin. There is just one thing.... Ukraine will loose, we will take in an influx of the loosing team, and that means we will have a bunch of actual fucking Nazis running around here, on US soil. The left loves calling your average American moderate a "Nazi" well now their wish will come true, they are going to be dealing with the real Nazis living right next door.
US foreign policy at it's finest!
I remember reading a story of a german soldier that had a soviet grenade thrown under the bunk he was sleeping in escape unharmed as well as another soldier during ww2 stepping on a landmine and only receiving a small scratch on his arm. I'm sure for every one of these stories there was probably a dozen people that were killed but when you have tens of thousands of combatants and high explosives going off everywhere, odd things happen.
When it is not your time to go, it is not your time to go.
I wholeheartedly agree.
But I've found that consuming prune juice and fiber regularly in my diet goes a very long way toward alleviating that for me.
Joe Biden has a hand up his ass controlling all his mouth movements and the words that come out of it.
I wonder if this will be the next Iran Iraq war or Russia Afghanistan war? Arm one side in the proxy war and a few years later.....
Its not just the Dems
IDK its likely lost quality after being digital transferred. I have this blown up on a 50" high definition flat screen. Back of his right calf looks fucked. Judging by the orientation of the shards of fabric hanging below his knees, looks like the blast hit him from the rear.
I wonder if his Go-Pro was working... I always had issues with the batteries dying(cold weather) on snowboarding trips.
These guys don't look very Ukrainian... One of the reason's there is a nearly complete media black out. I am amazed by the number of "Ukrainians" that fluently speak other languages, with regional dialects and all...
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That Norwegian flag on his helmet may provide a clue…
In Germany, Ukranian tank crews are greeted with a notice that you can receive up to five years in jail if caught posting images of swastikas on the tanks or bareks.
In other words "verboten."
In other words "verboten."
So in other words:
We know you are a bunch of Nazis and we are secretly happy to be helping our fellow Nazis kill Russians again, but please don't actually post symbols showing what you really are (like you do at home) because it will look bad to the rest of the sheep that we keep promising no we are not Nazis anymore to...
Why the world is what it is. The leadership of our leaders brought us here.
www.rt.com
Putin must turn ‘360 degrees’ – German FM
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has mocked German FM Annalena Baebock’s grasp of mathematics
the people that support this war think you can have a cock and be a girl.Why the world is what it is. The leadership of our leaders brought us here.
Putin must turn ‘360 degrees’ – German FM
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has mocked German FM Annalena Baebock’s grasp of mathematics
the argument ends right there.
After the Governor made a public speech stating he spoke with Biden… any thing you need… he said he said
Wanna know how the pro Ukraine crowd really feels about the country. You can see it in what they say.
2 USELESS VILLAGES!!!!! They do not care about these villages, just happy to be killing Russians
They never did care about these people!
2 USELESS VILLAGES!!!!! They do not care about these villages, just happy to be killing Russians
They never did care about these people!
‘Our Losses Were Gigantic’: Life in a Sacrificial Russian Assault Wave
Poorly trained Russian soldiers captured by Ukraine describe being used as cannon fodder by commanders throwing waves of bodies into A warden kept watch this month over prisoners of war at a camp in western Ukraine.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times
By Andrew E. Kramer
Feb. 13, 2023
6 MIN READ
LVIV, Ukraine — Creeping forward along a tree line late at night toward an entrenched Ukrainian position, the Russian soldier watched in horror as his comrades were mowed down by enemy fire.
His squad of 10 ex-convicts advanced only a few dozen yards before being decimated. “We were hit by machine-gun fire,” said the soldier, a private named Sergei.
One soldier was wounded and screamed, “Help me! Help me, please!” the private said, though no help arrived. Eight soldiers were killed, one escaped back to Russian lines and Sergei was captured by Ukrainians.
The soldiers were sitting ducks, sent forth by Russian commanders to act essentially as human cannon fodder in an assault.
And they have become an integral component of Russia’s military strategy as it presses a new offensive in Ukraine’s east: relying on overwhelming manpower, much of it comprising inexperienced, poorly trained conscripts, regardless of the high rate of casualties.
There are two main uses of the conscripts in these assaults: as “storm troops” who move in waves, followed by more experienced Russian fighters; and as intentional targets, to draw fire and thus identify Ukrainian positions to hit with artillery.
In interviews last week, half a dozen prisoners of war provided rare firsthand accounts of what it is like to be part of a sacrificial Russian assault.
“These orders were common, so our losses were gigantic,” Sergei said. “The next group would follow after a pause of 15 or 20 minutes, then another, then another.”
Of his combat experience, he said, “It was the first and last wave for me.”
By luck, the bullets missed him, he said. He lay in the dark until he was captured by Ukrainians who slipped into the buffer area between the two trench lines.
The New York Times interviewed the Russians at a detention center near Lviv in Ukraine’s west, where many captured enemy soldiers are sent. From there, some are returned to Russia in prisoner exchanges. The Times also viewed videos of interrogations by the Ukrainian authorities. The prisoners are identified only by first name and rank for security reasons, because of the possibility of retribution once they are returned.Though they are prisoners of war overseen by Ukrainians, the Russians said they spoke freely. Their accounts could not be independently corroborated but conformed with assessments of the fighting around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut by Western governments and military analysts.
The soldiers in Sergei’s squad were recruited from penal colonies by the private military company known as Wagner, whose forces have mostly been deployed in the Bakhmut area. There, they have enabled Russian lines to move forward slowly, cutting key resupply roads for the Ukrainian Army.
Russia’s deployment of former convicts is a dark chapter in a vicious war. Russia Behind Bars, a prison rights group, has estimated that as many as 50,000 Russian prisoners have been recruited since last summer, with most sent to the battle for Bakhmut.
In the early phases of the war, the Russian Army had copious armored vehicles, artillery and other heavy weaponry but relatively few soldiers on the battlefield. Now, the tables have turned: Russia has deployed about 320,000 soldiers in Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s military intelligence agency. An additional 150,000 are in training camps, officials said, meaning there is the potential for half a million soldiers to join the offensive.
arily by Wagner in the push for Bakhmut. Last week, the head of Wagner, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, said he would end the practice of recruiting convicts. But Russia’s regular army this month began recruiting convicts in exchange for pardons, shifting the practice on the Russian side in the war from the Wagner private army to the military.
Some military analysts and Western governments have questioned Russia’s strategy, citing rates of wounded and killed at around 70 percent in battalions featuring former convicts. On Sunday, the British defense intelligence agency said that over the past two weeks, Russia had probably suffered its highest rate of casualties since the first week of the invasion.Interviews with former Wagner soldiers at the Ukrainian detention center aligned with these descriptions of the fighting — and shed light on a violent, harrowing experience for Russian soldiers.
“Nobody could ever believe such a thing could exist,” Sergei said of Wagner tactics.
Sergei, sat, shoulders slumped, on the sofa in the warden’s office of the Ukrainian detention center. He was balding and wore shoes without laces.
The soldiers arrived at the front straight from Russia’s penal colony system, which is rife with abuse and where obedience to harsh codes of conduct in a violent setting is enforced by prison gangs and guards alike. The same sense of beaten subjugation persists at the front, Sergei said, enabling commanders to send soldiers forward on hopeless, human wave attacks.
“We are prisoners, even if former prisoners,” he said. “We are nobody and have no rights.”
Sergei said he had worked as a cellphone tower technician in a far-northern Siberian city, living with his wife and three children. In the interview, he admitted to dealing marijuana and meth, for which he was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2020.
In October, he accepted an offer to fight in exchange for a pardon. The arrangement, he said, was not offered to rapists and drug addicts, but murderers, burglars and other prisoners were welcome.
“Of course, any normal person fears death,” he said. “But a pardon for eight years is valuable.”
The fighting would turn out to be far more dangerous than he had imagined.
In three days at the front south of Bakhmut, Private Sergei first served as a stretcher bearer, carrying out mangled, bloody former prisoners who had been killed or wounded in an omen of what awaited him when ordered to join an assault.
On the night of Jan. 1, they were commanded to advance 500 yards along the tree line, then dig in and wait for a subsequent wave to arrive. One soldier carried a light machine gun. The others were armed with only assault rifles and hand grenades.
The sequential assaults on Ukrainian lines by small units of former Russian prisoners have become a signature Russian tactic in the effort to capture Bakhmut.
“We see them crawl for a kilometer or more,” toward Ukrainian trenches, then open fire at close range and try to capture positions, Col. Roman Kostenko, the chairman of the defense and intelligence committee in Ukraine’s Parliament, said in an interview. “It’s effective. Yes, they have heavy losses. But with these heavy losses, they sometimes advance.”
It could be, Colonel Kostenko said, that such infantry assaults on entrenched defenses will remain mostly confined to the fight for Bakhmut and that they are being used to conserve tanks and armored personnel carriers for the expected offensive. But they could also serve as a template for wider fighting.
The former convicts, Colonel Kostenko said, are herded into the battlefield by harsh discipline: “They have orders, and they cannot disobey orders, especially in Wagner.”
A private named Aleksandr, 44, who shaved three years off a sentence for illegal logging by enlisting with Wagner, said that before deploying to the front he was told he would be shot if he disobeyed orders to advance.
“They brought us to a basement, divided us into five-person groups and, though we hadn’t been trained, told us to run ahead, as far as we could go,” he said of his commanders.
His dash toward Ukrainian lines in a group of five soldiers ended with three dead and two captured.
Another captured Russian, Eduard, 22, enlisted to get four years cut from a sentence for car theft. He spent three months at the front as a stretcher bearer before being ordered forward. He was captured on his first human wave assault. From his time as a stretcher bearer, he said, he estimated that half of the men in each assault were wounded or killed, with shrapnel and bullet wounds the most common injuries.
Private Sergei said he had initially been pleased with the offer of a pardon in exchange for service in Wagner. “When I came to this war, I thought it was worth it,” he said.
But after his one experience in an assault, he changed his mind. “I started to think things over in a big way,’’ he said. “Of course it wasn’t worth it.”
Notice the trident and other crests you see in Ukraine... ever wonder why and who they are connected too? Learn some history...
I'm sure there are plenty of Russians that still remember the stories told by their grandparents of how the battles against the Germans were fought.
Worked for the Russians against the Germans, worked for the Chinese against the Americans.
Rot in prison or be one of the honoured dead.
The gamble is that the CIA runs out of Ukrainians to feed into their war machine before the Russians run out of prisoners and dissidents...
Until German tanks start rolling into Russia (the flag they are flying won't matter) and then the balloon finally goes up and we get the global nuclear war we have been being promised for the past 50 years.
Remember that one time Ukrainians committed Genocide in Poland?‘Our Losses Were Gigantic’: Life in a Sacrificial Russian Assault Wave
Poorly trained Russian soldiers captured by Ukraine describe being used as cannon fodder by commanders throwing waves of bodies into A warden kept watch this month over prisoners of war at a camp in western Ukraine.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times
By Andrew E. Kramer
Feb. 13, 2023
6 MIN READ
LVIV, Ukraine — Creeping forward along a tree line late at night toward an entrenched Ukrainian position, the Russian soldier watched in horror as his comrades were mowed down by enemy fire.
His squad of 10 ex-convicts advanced only a few dozen yards before being decimated. “We were hit by machine-gun fire,” said the soldier, a private named Sergei.
One soldier was wounded and screamed, “Help me! Help me, please!” the private said, though no help arrived. Eight soldiers were killed, one escaped back to Russian lines and Sergei was captured by Ukrainians.
The soldiers were sitting ducks, sent forth by Russian commanders to act essentially as human cannon fodder in an assault.
And they have become an integral component of Russia’s military strategy as it presses a new offensive in Ukraine’s east: relying on overwhelming manpower, much of it comprising inexperienced, poorly trained conscripts, regardless of the high rate of casualties.
There are two main uses of the conscripts in these assaults: as “storm troops” who move in waves, followed by more experienced Russian fighters; and as intentional targets, to draw fire and thus identify Ukrainian positions to hit with artillery.
In interviews last week, half a dozen prisoners of war provided rare firsthand accounts of what it is like to be part of a sacrificial Russian assault.
“These orders were common, so our losses were gigantic,” Sergei said. “The next group would follow after a pause of 15 or 20 minutes, then another, then another.”
Of his combat experience, he said, “It was the first and last wave for me.”
By luck, the bullets missed him, he said. He lay in the dark until he was captured by Ukrainians who slipped into the buffer area between the two trench lines.
The New York Times interviewed the Russians at a detention center near Lviv in Ukraine’s west, where many captured enemy soldiers are sent. From there, some are returned to Russia in prisoner exchanges. The Times also viewed videos of interrogations by the Ukrainian authorities. The prisoners are identified only by first name and rank for security reasons, because of the possibility of retribution once they are returned.
Though they are prisoners of war overseen by Ukrainians, the Russians said they spoke freely. Their accounts could not be independently corroborated but conformed with assessments of the fighting around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut by Western governments and military analysts.
The soldiers in Sergei’s squad were recruited from penal colonies by the private military company known as Wagner, whose forces have mostly been deployed in the Bakhmut area. There, they have enabled Russian lines to move forward slowly, cutting key resupply roads for the Ukrainian Army.
Russia’s deployment of former convicts is a dark chapter in a vicious war. Russia Behind Bars, a prison rights group, has estimated that as many as 50,000 Russian prisoners have been recruited since last summer, with most sent to the battle for Bakhmut.
In the early phases of the war, the Russian Army had copious armored vehicles, artillery and other heavy weaponry but relatively few soldiers on the battlefield. Now, the tables have turned: Russia has deployed about 320,000 soldiers in Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s military intelligence agency. An additional 150,000 are in training camps, officials said, meaning there is the potential for half a million soldiers to join the offensive.
arily by Wagner in the push for Bakhmut. Last week, the head of Wagner, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, said he would end the practice of recruiting convicts. But Russia’s regular army this month began recruiting convicts in exchange for pardons, shifting the practice on the Russian side in the war from the Wagner private army to the military.
Some military analysts and Western governments have questioned Russia’s strategy, citing rates of wounded and killed at around 70 percent in battalions featuring former convicts. On Sunday, the British defense intelligence agency said that over the past two weeks, Russia had probably suffered its highest rate of casualties since the first week of the invasion.
Interviews with former Wagner soldiers at the Ukrainian detention center aligned with these descriptions of the fighting — and shed light on a violent, harrowing experience for Russian soldiers.
“Nobody could ever believe such a thing could exist,” Sergei said of Wagner tactics.
Sergei, sat, shoulders slumped, on the sofa in the warden’s office of the Ukrainian detention center. He was balding and wore shoes without laces.
The soldiers arrived at the front straight from Russia’s penal colony system, which is rife with abuse and where obedience to harsh codes of conduct in a violent setting is enforced by prison gangs and guards alike. The same sense of beaten subjugation persists at the front, Sergei said, enabling commanders to send soldiers forward on hopeless, human wave attacks.
“We are prisoners, even if former prisoners,” he said. “We are nobody and have no rights.”
Sergei said he had worked as a cellphone tower technician in a far-northern Siberian city, living with his wife and three children. In the interview, he admitted to dealing marijuana and meth, for which he was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2020.
In October, he accepted an offer to fight in exchange for a pardon. The arrangement, he said, was not offered to rapists and drug addicts, but murderers, burglars and other prisoners were welcome.
“Of course, any normal person fears death,” he said. “But a pardon for eight years is valuable.”
The fighting would turn out to be far more dangerous than he had imagined.
In three days at the front south of Bakhmut, Private Sergei first served as a stretcher bearer, carrying out mangled, bloody former prisoners who had been killed or wounded in an omen of what awaited him when ordered to join an assault.
On the night of Jan. 1, they were commanded to advance 500 yards along the tree line, then dig in and wait for a subsequent wave to arrive. One soldier carried a light machine gun. The others were armed with only assault rifles and hand grenades.
The sequential assaults on Ukrainian lines by small units of former Russian prisoners have become a signature Russian tactic in the effort to capture Bakhmut.
“We see them crawl for a kilometer or more,” toward Ukrainian trenches, then open fire at close range and try to capture positions, Col. Roman Kostenko, the chairman of the defense and intelligence committee in Ukraine’s Parliament, said in an interview. “It’s effective. Yes, they have heavy losses. But with these heavy losses, they sometimes advance.”
It could be, Colonel Kostenko said, that such infantry assaults on entrenched defenses will remain mostly confined to the fight for Bakhmut and that they are being used to conserve tanks and armored personnel carriers for the expected offensive. But they could also serve as a template for wider fighting.
The former convicts, Colonel Kostenko said, are herded into the battlefield by harsh discipline: “They have orders, and they cannot disobey orders, especially in Wagner.”
A private named Aleksandr, 44, who shaved three years off a sentence for illegal logging by enlisting with Wagner, said that before deploying to the front he was told he would be shot if he disobeyed orders to advance.
“They brought us to a basement, divided us into five-person groups and, though we hadn’t been trained, told us to run ahead, as far as we could go,” he said of his commanders.
His dash toward Ukrainian lines in a group of five soldiers ended with three dead and two captured.
Another captured Russian, Eduard, 22, enlisted to get four years cut from a sentence for car theft. He spent three months at the front as a stretcher bearer before being ordered forward. He was captured on his first human wave assault. From his time as a stretcher bearer, he said, he estimated that half of the men in each assault were wounded or killed, with shrapnel and bullet wounds the most common injuries.
Private Sergei said he had initially been pleased with the offer of a pardon in exchange for service in Wagner. “When I came to this war, I thought it was worth it,” he said.
But after his one experience in an assault, he changed his mind. “I started to think things over in a big way,’’ he said. “Of course it wasn’t worth it.”
Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia - Wikipedia
Dude, you don't get paid by the word. Past a link next time.‘Our Losses Were Gigantic’: Life in a Sacrificial Russian Assault Wave
Poorly trained Russian soldiers captured by Ukraine describe being used as cannon fodder by commanders throwing waves of bodies into A warden kept watch this month over prisoners of war at a camp in western Ukraine.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times
By Andrew E. Kramer
Feb. 13, 2023
6 MIN READ
LVIV, Ukraine — Creeping forward along a tree line late at night toward an entrenched Ukrainian position, the Russian soldier watched in horror as his comrades were mowed down by enemy fire.
His squad of 10 ex-convicts advanced only a few dozen yards before being decimated. “We were hit by machine-gun fire,” said the soldier, a private named Sergei.
One soldier was wounded and screamed, “Help me! Help me, please!” the private said, though no help arrived. Eight soldiers were killed, one escaped back to Russian lines and Sergei was captured by Ukrainians.
The soldiers were sitting ducks, sent forth by Russian commanders to act essentially as human cannon fodder in an assault.
And they have become an integral component of Russia’s military strategy as it presses a new offensive in Ukraine’s east: relying on overwhelming manpower, much of it comprising inexperienced, poorly trained conscripts, regardless of the high rate of casualties.
There are two main uses of the conscripts in these assaults: as “storm troops” who move in waves, followed by more experienced Russian fighters; and as intentional targets, to draw fire and thus identify Ukrainian positions to hit with artillery.
In interviews last week, half a dozen prisoners of war provided rare firsthand accounts of what it is like to be part of a sacrificial Russian assault.
“These orders were common, so our losses were gigantic,” Sergei said. “The next group would follow after a pause of 15 or 20 minutes, then another, then another.”
Of his combat experience, he said, “It was the first and last wave for me.”
By luck, the bullets missed him, he said. He lay in the dark until he was captured by Ukrainians who slipped into the buffer area between the two trench lines.
The New York Times interviewed the Russians at a detention center near Lviv in Ukraine’s west, where many captured enemy soldiers are sent. From there, some are returned to Russia in prisoner exchanges. The Times also viewed videos of interrogations by the Ukrainian authorities. The prisoners are identified only by first name and rank for security reasons, because of the possibility of retribution once they are returned.
Though they are prisoners of war overseen by Ukrainians, the Russians said they spoke freely. Their accounts could not be independently corroborated but conformed with assessments of the fighting around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut by Western governments and military analysts.
The soldiers in Sergei’s squad were recruited from penal colonies by the private military company known as Wagner, whose forces have mostly been deployed in the Bakhmut area. There, they have enabled Russian lines to move forward slowly, cutting key resupply roads for the Ukrainian Army.
Russia’s deployment of former convicts is a dark chapter in a vicious war. Russia Behind Bars, a prison rights group, has estimated that as many as 50,000 Russian prisoners have been recruited since last summer, with most sent to the battle for Bakhmut.
In the early phases of the war, the Russian Army had copious armored vehicles, artillery and other heavy weaponry but relatively few soldiers on the battlefield. Now, the tables have turned: Russia has deployed about 320,000 soldiers in Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s military intelligence agency. An additional 150,000 are in training camps, officials said, meaning there is the potential for half a million soldiers to join the offensive.
arily by Wagner in the push for Bakhmut. Last week, the head of Wagner, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, said he would end the practice of recruiting convicts. But Russia’s regular army this month began recruiting convicts in exchange for pardons, shifting the practice on the Russian side in the war from the Wagner private army to the military.
Some military analysts and Western governments have questioned Russia’s strategy, citing rates of wounded and killed at around 70 percent in battalions featuring former convicts. On Sunday, the British defense intelligence agency said that over the past two weeks, Russia had probably suffered its highest rate of casualties since the first week of the invasion.
Interviews with former Wagner soldiers at the Ukrainian detention center aligned with these descriptions of the fighting — and shed light on a violent, harrowing experience for Russian soldiers.
“Nobody could ever believe such a thing could exist,” Sergei said of Wagner tactics.
Sergei, sat, shoulders slumped, on the sofa in the warden’s office of the Ukrainian detention center. He was balding and wore shoes without laces.
The soldiers arrived at the front straight from Russia’s penal colony system, which is rife with abuse and where obedience to harsh codes of conduct in a violent setting is enforced by prison gangs and guards alike. The same sense of beaten subjugation persists at the front, Sergei said, enabling commanders to send soldiers forward on hopeless, human wave attacks.
“We are prisoners, even if former prisoners,” he said. “We are nobody and have no rights.”
Sergei said he had worked as a cellphone tower technician in a far-northern Siberian city, living with his wife and three children. In the interview, he admitted to dealing marijuana and meth, for which he was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2020.
In October, he accepted an offer to fight in exchange for a pardon. The arrangement, he said, was not offered to rapists and drug addicts, but murderers, burglars and other prisoners were welcome.
“Of course, any normal person fears death,” he said. “But a pardon for eight years is valuable.”
The fighting would turn out to be far more dangerous than he had imagined.
In three days at the front south of Bakhmut, Private Sergei first served as a stretcher bearer, carrying out mangled, bloody former prisoners who had been killed or wounded in an omen of what awaited him when ordered to join an assault.
On the night of Jan. 1, they were commanded to advance 500 yards along the tree line, then dig in and wait for a subsequent wave to arrive. One soldier carried a light machine gun. The others were armed with only assault rifles and hand grenades.
The sequential assaults on Ukrainian lines by small units of former Russian prisoners have become a signature Russian tactic in the effort to capture Bakhmut.
“We see them crawl for a kilometer or more,” toward Ukrainian trenches, then open fire at close range and try to capture positions, Col. Roman Kostenko, the chairman of the defense and intelligence committee in Ukraine’s Parliament, said in an interview. “It’s effective. Yes, they have heavy losses. But with these heavy losses, they sometimes advance.”
It could be, Colonel Kostenko said, that such infantry assaults on entrenched defenses will remain mostly confined to the fight for Bakhmut and that they are being used to conserve tanks and armored personnel carriers for the expected offensive. But they could also serve as a template for wider fighting.
The former convicts, Colonel Kostenko said, are herded into the battlefield by harsh discipline: “They have orders, and they cannot disobey orders, especially in Wagner.”
A private named Aleksandr, 44, who shaved three years off a sentence for illegal logging by enlisting with Wagner, said that before deploying to the front he was told he would be shot if he disobeyed orders to advance.
“They brought us to a basement, divided us into five-person groups and, though we hadn’t been trained, told us to run ahead, as far as we could go,” he said of his commanders.
His dash toward Ukrainian lines in a group of five soldiers ended with three dead and two captured.
Another captured Russian, Eduard, 22, enlisted to get four years cut from a sentence for car theft. He spent three months at the front as a stretcher bearer before being ordered forward. He was captured on his first human wave assault. From his time as a stretcher bearer, he said, he estimated that half of the men in each assault were wounded or killed, with shrapnel and bullet wounds the most common injuries.
Private Sergei said he had initially been pleased with the offer of a pardon in exchange for service in Wagner. “When I came to this war, I thought it was worth it,” he said.
But after his one experience in an assault, he changed his mind. “I started to think things over in a big way,’’ he said. “Of course it wasn’t worth it.”
I’d say your pretty much on the mark, the arms going over to Ukraine are being paid for by the taxpayer then we have Ukrain locked into a “Lend Lease” deal for it all so they are in Washington’s pocket and will be virtually owned by Washington cronies even more than before… I just wish the average American could wise up to it but I’ve given up on it at this point. COVID pissed me off but Ukraine broke me I embarrassed to admit. I’m not coming back out of the rabbit while after this anymore
here's the thing about Steve's liberal leftist article, and others like it. They try to convince ignorant people that Russia is a huge prison camp where everybody gets arrested and thrown away for years, for even minor crimes. PUTLER's GULAG, right?
In reality, the USA has vastly more people in prison. Statistics say we have 2,068,800 people in prison. that's 25% of the entire world's prison population. Russia has 471,490.
But wait, The population of the USA is much higher than Russia, so that explains it, right? Nope again. We also have the highest rate of incarceration, 629 per 10k people. #1 on the list. Russia isn't even in the top 10. They are around 400 per 10k people.
In reality, the USA has vastly more people in prison. Statistics say we have 2,068,800 people in prison. that's 25% of the entire world's prison population. Russia has 471,490.
But wait, The population of the USA is much higher than Russia, so that explains it, right? Nope again. We also have the highest rate of incarceration, 629 per 10k people. #1 on the list. Russia isn't even in the top 10. They are around 400 per 10k people.
Those dirty dirty, vile, nasty Trumpler and Putler's are all conspiring to overthrow the world and kill people of color, including LatinX. Those nasty dirty birdies are gonna burn in hell with Hitler, boo hoo, because all my problems, and all the worlds problems are their fault. And Trump had his finger on the nuclear buttons, even though he kept us out of any wars, he still wanted to nuke the world, I know it. And that evil Russian wants nothing other than to destroy all of Europe and America because he hates freedom, and because he's he DEVIL... THE DEVIL I TELL YOU!!!
Do some of the retards here realize this is how they sound to the rest of the rational world?
Perhaps length like a novel, but without style or substance...just predictable and trite.
Whitney: A US-Led 'Coalition Of The Willing' Foreshadows The Splintering Of NATO | ZeroHedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
Watch this….Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Just change the accents in some cases and it’s the same shit all over again.
I think the detail I keep coming back to in the movie is the ever present observation aircraft.
How does that aircraft differ from the cameras at every exit on our highways today.
I guess "never done before" = "move out and draw fire". Been a technique as long as humans throwing rocks.
Zelenskyy says wants Ukraine to become a ‘big Israel’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the main issue for Ukraine after Russia’s invasion ends will be security.
Ukraine first. America last. Biden admin.
www.breitbart.com
Biden's Remarks on Paying Ukrainian Pensions Resurfaces, Stoking Anger
A video clip from April 2022 of President Joe Biden pledging to pay Ukrainian pensions resurfaced over the weekend, prompting anger.
www.breitbart.com
Zelensky is "winning" in that he still has the backing of the West and the USA. As long as the $ keeps flowing to him, Ukraine is "winning".
All it cost are the lives of Ukraine's youth, future, and existence as a viable sovereign country.
With Poland gearing up and our president doubling down on Ukraine... it won't matter that Ukraine is running out of warm bodies. They will soon be replaced with NATO country warm bodies.
In war, the poor people die.
All it cost are the lives of Ukraine's youth, future, and existence as a viable sovereign country.
With Poland gearing up and our president doubling down on Ukraine... it won't matter that Ukraine is running out of warm bodies. They will soon be replaced with NATO country warm bodies.
In war, the poor people die.
This is the sad reality, for sure. Now that I’m not a young man looking for shit to blow up and opportunities to gamble with the big chips, things are a big more clear.
The Poles are all gung ho once again to figure out how to play a central role in kick starting a major world war.
You would think they learned their lessons from WWI and WWII but nope seems they want to be the ones to turn a little CIA war designed to enrich the MIC and the bankers and the politicians into an actual global nuclear war.
My guess is the war they get is going to end much differently than their glorious delusions of grandeur.
Probably with a good part of Europe being a radioactive wasteland
If they think the Russians won't go all in the moment actual flagged Nato troops start pouring across the border, they are deluding themselves.
i have not seen that before, not very “hollywood”.
Pretty sure the German with the Monkey is supposed to be Oskar Dirlewinger, who orders the torching of the barn.
As to the observation aircraft and modern day surveillance…
"Labor camps"... you know.. just like they had "Auschwitz".
- Status
