The Struggle For Ukraine

[Boethius]

Stories of war crimes now being documented.

http://www.hrw.org/news/2022/04/03/ukraine-apparent-war-crimes-russia-controlled-areas

But a researcher claims this was always planned.

http://mobile.twitter.com/Jack_Watling/status/1510391427427147778

Today, Odesa infrastructure was hit by missiles. No deaths were reported.

[Chelseaboy]

Ukraine now has total control from Kyiv to the Belarus border.


Multiple Russian convoys were totally destoyed over the last 48 hours as the Russians fled in disarray to Belarus,with huge amounts of military equipment abandoned.


Russian forces made an attack right along the Donbas region front and made no ground.


Outside Donetsk a three hour battle resulted in a Russian Tactical Battalion Group being trashed with at least 23 of their Military vehicles being destroyed.

[krimster2]

courtesey of "Daily Mail"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10680875/Two-Russian-troops-dead-28-hospital-POISONED-laced-Ukrainian-buns.html

note to Ukrainians:
wine with cork tops are the easiest
take a large needle and syringe, withdraw some of the wine
inject toxin
bottle appears completely untouched

this is good to put in your basement if you think it's gonna be looted, put a piece of paper with sign on it saying it's "POISON- DON'T DRINK" warn family/friends
before looters come, remove and destroy the sign....
my Pinot Noir is VERY NOIR
hmmmm hmmmm
I got "good stuff" from the Russian KAMERA documents
this is the best wine to be served with your looters "last supper"

[ML]

Ukraine now has total control from Kyiv to the Belarus border.
Multiple Russian convoys were totally destoyed over the last 48 hours as the Russians fled in disarray to Belarus,with huge amounts of military equipment abandoned.
Russian forces made an attack right along the Donbas region front and made no ground.
Outside Donetsk a three hour battle resulted in a Russian Tactical Battalion Group being trashed with at least 23 of their Military vehicles being destroyed.

Chelseaboy, please post your reference sources to these stories.
Thanks

[Patagonie]

courtesey of "Daily Mail"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10680875/Two-Russian-troops-dead-28-hospital-POISONED-laced-Ukrainian-buns.html

note to Ukrainians:
wine with cork tops are the easiest
take a large needle and syringe, withdraw some of the wine
inject toxin
bottle appears completely untouched

this is good to put in your basement if you think it's gonna be looted, put a piece of paper with sign on it saying it's "POISON- DON'T DRINK" warn family/friends
before looters come, remove and destroy the sign....
my Pinot Noir is VERY NOIR
hmmmm hmmmm
I got "good stuff" from the Russian KAMERA documents
this is the best wine to be served with your looters "last supper"

Good tip against looters... But it seems to be that they are not also Russians, there are locals too...
It is said that Irpin and Butcha are infested with booby traps dropped by the Russian forces before they left.

[krimster2]

Russians used German POWs after great Patriotic War to clear mines...
Ukrainians have Russian POWs
who I am sure would gladly volunteer for this job

[Chelseaboy]

Chelseaboy, please post your reference sources to these stories.
Thanks

My source is a good friend with very good contacts ...everything is coming from satellite images which he has access to.


I'd better not say more than that.


There could be something HUGE happening in the next week or two..depending on how everything pans out in Ukraine over that period...this is first-hand from another source actively involved whom i know well.

[krimster2]

http://liveuamap.com/

map sez yes, of course the usual caveat that "the map is not the territory"
and also YES, something BIG is gonna happen in the near future!!!
it HAS to be done before "Victory Day"

[Patagonie]

For the West, the civilians murdered in North East of Kiev are the perfect pretext to accelerate their military help and especially to deliver heavy weapons like planes, SAM, Harpoons, tanks, and so on.
I hope that they will take this opportunity.
 
In the logic it works like this: RF, you have your red lines (no NATO soldiers, no NATO fly zone, and so on), but we have ours, genocide (if proven) is a red line.

[Boethius]

For the West, the civilians murdered in North East of Kiev are the perfect pretext to accelerate their military helpand especially to deliver heavy weapons like planes, SAM, Harpoon, tanks, and so on.
I hope that they will take this opportunity.
 
In the logic it works like this: RF, you have your red lines (no NATO soldiers, no NATO fly zone, and so on), but we have ours, genocide (if proven) is a red line.

I agree 100%.

[Chelseaboy]

Sumy has now been re-taken by Ukrainian troops.


A state of the art  Russia's most advanced Aircraft SU-35 fighter jet was shot down over Izyum and the pilot captured.


Ukraine's Deputy Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko commented "$50 million of damage for the ogres ".


Putin might have to sell his Palace and live in a tent to raise funds to replace all the military equipment he's managing to lose at this rate.

[Nightwish]

Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Bucha today. I wont share the images coming out of there, His face says it all.

[Boethius]

This is a synopsis of an article in a Russian paper today. There is little intent to hide the true nature of this invasion. It’s goal is deUkrainization.

http://mobile.twitter.com/francska1/status/1510898134481788930

[Boethius]

This is a refutation of Russian claims Bucha is faked.

http://www.bellingcat.com/news/2022/04/04/russias-bucha-facts-versus-the-evidence/?s=09

[Boethius]

Unspeakable.

http://mobile.twitter.com/Mariana_Betsa/status/1510966912724963328?t=ocdsDAKYEZ5jd4xm3rhxRw&s=19

[krimster2]

"n the logic it works like this: RF, you have your red lines (no NATO soldiers, no NATO fly zone, and so on), but we have ours, genocide (if proven) is a red line."

computer says no....

[Patagonie]

"n the logic it works like this: RF, you have your red lines (no NATO soldiers, no NATO fly zone, and so on), but we have ours, genocide (if proven) is a red line."

computer says no....

[Boethius]

This is from Wali, a French Canadian, who is the best sniper in the Canadian army. He volunteered to go to Ukraine.

I can now say it. We were in Irpin. We were in Bucha. We've heard a lot from these cities recently. The Russians have committed many crimes against humanity there. We had known that for weeks, because the civilians were telling us about it.

I will tell you two stories. One sad and the other happy. That pretty much sums up why I do what I do.

The crimes were not carried out on the front line. Like Nazis, the Russians were killing civilians behind the front. We could see the areas occupied by the Russians. They were ghost towns: dark, gloomy, where the only light comes from fires. The Russians, often drunk, fired into houses where they heard children crying. We have many testimonies to this effect. Curiously, the Russians killed many teachers, because teachers represent culture, history, knowledge. And to destroy a people, you have to kill its memory.

And now for the happy story, because this is how the release of Irpin and Bucha ended a week ago now...

We had just been reinforced by Ukrainian Army units. We were going back to rest. We were several soldiers in a car and we were moving through debris of all kinds, avoiding from time to time the electric wires lying in the middle of the street. My gun was sticking out the window like a gangster. I saw a lady of about 50 years old. She was in the middle of a parking lot, covered in tree branches, broken glass and other debris. We saw burnt out cars. The lady was in the middle of this sort of sample of the apocalypse. Our eyes met. I smiled at her tilting my head. She smiled back, grateful. A sad smile, but a smile, We had just liberated her city. We had just liberated her city.

http://m.facebook.com/TorcheEtEpee

Above post in French

http://tinyurl.com/2p8k89up

[SteveInBoston]

This is a refutation of Russian claims Bucha is faked.

http://www.bellingcat.com/news/2022/04/04/russias-bucha-facts-versus-the-evidence/?s=09

Also,

"Fact-checking Russian claims about Bucha killings", BBC:

http://www.bbc.com/news/60981238

[Boethius]

Also, satellite images of the bodies lying in the streets when the Russians controlled the town.


http://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/04/world/europe/bucha-ukraine-bodies.html

[Boethius]

Ukraine has published the names of the Russian soldiers in the unit that was in Bucha.


http://gur.gov.ua/content/voennye-prestupnyky-neposredstvenno-uchastvuiushchye-v-sovershenyy-voennykh-prestuplenyi-protyv-naroda-ukrayny-v-h-bucha-voennosluzhashchye-64-otdelnoi-motostrelkovoi-bryhady-35-oa-vvo.html

This is by Maxim Levada, a Kyiv born archaeologist, and nephew of Yuri Levada, founder of the Moscow based Levada Centre. (translated from Polish)

The thirty-second day of war
Chernihiv

It is an hour and a half drive from Kyiv to Chernihiv. You can leave in the morning, spend the whole day in Chernihiv and return home in the evening. It has always been like this. Before I first came to Chernihiv as a student, in 1978. At that time I belonged to the archaeological school club, and in the summer we went to the excavations in Chernihiv region. We arrived in Chernihiv by bus, and there we had to wait several hours for another bus to take us to our destination.

A few boys from the circle, including myself, excused ourselves and went into town. One of us had a grandmother in Chernihiv. He didn't know her address, but he remembered that she lived next to a square with the strange name of Five Corners Square. It turned out that such a square really existed, several streets branched off it.  A cosy two-storey house in an old garden, a quiet street. Immediately, we had the impression that we were not in the city, but somewhere in the countryside. For me, who grew up in the centre of noisy Kyiv, this was a joyful addition to the journey that was only just beginning. Grandma lived alone. Our bustling group fell on her like snow on her head. Of course, we immediately said we were very hungry; at a young age the appetite is always good.  I still remember our excellent lunch in that old house; we almost missed the bus and were reprimanded by the management.

Later, on our days off, we would go on excursions to Chernihiv. The management arranged with friends in the archaeological reserve and in the museum, and these excursions were real lessons about the history of the old city.

Chernihiv was very impressive. In Kyiv, all the monuments were scattered between newer buildings. The centre of Chernihiv was completely different, here you could literally be transported into some medieval story. We were guided not by ordinary guides, but by "real scientists", who told us children in detail about their research. Years later, when I was in Chernihiv, I would recognize the places where we walked. I stopped suddenly in the streets, when these memories came so unexpectedly and strongly that I could even smell the smells of my childhood.

From Kyiv to Chernihiv is an hour and a half drive. All the houses in the area where a childhood friend's grandmother lived have been destroyed by shelling. The city has been without heating, light, medicine and food supplies for a fortnight. Most importantly, there is no drinking water in the city. It is close to Kyiv, and nothing can be handed over, the city is cut off. Several times familiar volunteers tried to get through to bring food and aggregates, each time without success. They are constantly being shot at; there are, of course, wounded.

The volunteers, now dealing with supplies, are the ones who are risking the most. They are not soldiers, they are not armed, they cannot defend themselves. They are risking constantly, all over the country - in Ochtyrka, Irpin, Boyarka, Mariupol and Chernihiv. They bring aid, they search for and transport people. My friends went to Irpin for three days looking for an old woman with dementia. They did not know exactly where she was. They drove under constant fire, but did not find her.

Everything took an hour and a half. There is no water, no heating, no food. We have everything, we can bring everything, but the city is blocked.

My friend, the director of the museum in Chernihiv, lives in the museum cellar. He could have left, but he stayed. Every day he makes it known that he is alive, and every day he does something for his city. Just like all those who stayed. Today he wrote: "No water? The rain is our water. 50 litres overnight!".

Such is old Chernihiv. Glory to the heroes!

Thirty-fifth day of war

My parents experienced the war as children. They were both evacuated. I only learned about the war from stories, books and films. My parents often said how good it was that there was no war. I thought I would be the first generation to live in peace. It didn't work out. Now I too have my war, and only those born after it will be able to try to become a 'generation without war'.

I spent my childhood in the Soviet Union. One of the main slogans then was to fight for peace, we were constantly told about it at school. I remember our surprise when, on 9 May, our form teacher, a maths teacher, came with her orders. How could this be? It seemed to us children that war was something very far away. Suddenly we found out that our Eugenia Ivanovna was at the front. It turned out that she went to war as a volunteer. Her husband, Joseph Lvovich, also a mathematician, was also at the front. I don't know if they met during the war or if they went to the war together, they didn't tell us, but when they pinned their medals on the holiday, we involuntarily tried to be quiet and obedient in their presence. We felt that Victory Day was their personal holiday, which we did not understand as they did.

These people taught us to value peace. My grandfather used to drive me, a child, to Glory Park on Victory Day. He would buy a bouquet of carnations and we would walk down the avenue to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. There he would lay flowers and stand, silent. I was very small, it seemed to me that this was a holiday when you should be happy, have some entertainment, eat ice cream. I would pull him by the hand and bore him, and he would stand, silently, for some time and lead me home. In the evening, my grandfather's friends would come to our house. They would sit at the table, eat dinner and begin their endless conversations. I was not allowed at the table that day, my grandmother gave me to eat in the kitchen. Today I understand that they did not want the child to hear about the war.From the university, I remember a display case next to the dean's office, showing lecturers who participated in the war. I liked looking at it, there were old, just post-war photos. They made a strange impression; it turned out that our old professor was a brave, handsome guardsman, and the old female professor had a lot of war decorations - after all, they weren't given to those who were at the back.

I think that for those in the USSR who survived the war, 'fighting for peace throughout the world' was not empty words. They had war experiences and understood what peace meant.

My friend, an associate professor at the university, joined the territorial defence immediately after the attack on us and has been serving in it ever since. Nobody called him, he went alone. Another good friend, the dean of the history faculty, also volunteered for the army. He is a doctor of history and a professor. By all rights he could have received a discharge from the army, but he went. I think I know why they did - it's hard to be a teacher if your pupils or students are at the front. Also voluntary.

I recently read that in Russia many university employees, rectors, deans, heads of departments, support the war. I saw a whole roster of them. But none of those who have signed there, as I understand it, are going to the front, and I am sure they will not. I don't think any of them can imagine what the bodies of boys, peers of their students and PhD students, rotting in the fields, torn apart by bullets and mines, look like.

There was another tradition in the Soviet Union which might be called social conformity. This was the compulsory and public expression of support for party and government policies. Without it, no one could hold on to a leadership position. Every Soviet rector or dean was obliged to act in accordance with Communist Party policy, and on top of that to keep a close eye on suspicious or iniquitous elements. If he fulfilled these tasks, nothing threatened him under any circumstances. Even if war broke out, he would be placed far away, at the safe rear. Authority always needs obedient, conscientious and sold-out lackeys and relies on them, especially those among the lecturers. They, after all, bring up the likes of themselves.

Burnt libraries and raped teenagers

Last night in Chernihiv the Korolenko regional library was bombed. The roof was smashed, windows shattered, walls cracked. Until the 1917 revolution there was the Noble Bank, in a beautiful palace in modernist style. It was built in 1910-13 to a design by the St Petersburg architect Alexander von Hohen, the same who designed the Suvorov Museum in St Petersburg, the villa of Matilda Krzesinskaya and many others.

On 11 March, the regional youth library building in Chernigov was destroyed by shelling. This was also a historic palace, once owned by Vasyl Tarnovsky, a patron of culture and collector. Since 1897, when Tarnowski donated his unique collection to the Chernihiv region, it has housed the Museum of Ukrainian Antiquities.

In Ivankov near Kyiv, the "liberators" burnt down the building of the museum of Maria Prymachenko, the most famous Ukrainian representative of folk primitivism. In 2009, the centenary of her birth was celebrated, and UNESCO declared the year the Year of Prymachenko.

The museum in Ochtyrka, the art museum in Kharkiv, the theatre in Mariupol, the Popov Mansion museum, dozens of temples, monuments to Holocaust victims in Babi Yar and Drobitsky Yar...

These were not military facilities. Cannons and rockets were not hidden there, anywhere. You can see it clearly in the photographs, broken display cases and cabinets, scattered books.Is what is happening a coincidence?

Even before the war began, the commanders of the "liberator" army confiscated all telephones from the soldiers. But one wants so much to call home! That is why they take the telephones of the inhabitants of the occupied areas and use them en masse. Little do people realise that every phone call to Russia is automatically recorded and saved by the Ukrainian mobile operator. There are already plenty of these records, and very many of them are available on the Internet. So the picture that emerges is this:

Firstly, marauding on a massive scale is taking place. Literally everything is being looted. The liberator cheerfully informs his wife that she now has a fur coat, and he himself the wheels for the car, the television, the notebook, the stereo and so on. And then there are the pictures recorded by cameras, present even in small shops. They carry crates of alcohol, sweets, sausages. Often they bite off a piece of sausage on the way and drink it from the tap.

Secondly, mass rapes take place. They also talk about this on the phone. Three tankmen captured a sixteen-year-old girl and raped her one by one for several days. There are many such stories. And not only do they tell, but they brag! After the recapture of Irpin, Ukrainian soldiers began to deport those who did not manage to save themselves. And among them are very many sixteen- and seventeen-year-old girls. They need psychologists, they are afraid of people, even their own parents.

In the Kyiv region, one of the 'liberators' shot the father and repeatedly raped the mother in front of the eyes of the minor son. However, our special forces found this monster. He no longer rapes anyone. There was a similar case in Mariupol. The woman died and the child is speechless and reacts to almost nothing.

That is the picture - destroyed libraries and dead raped women. It is therefore clear that peace, unfortunately, cannot be expected. In view of what is happening, there can be no peace - these images will return sooner or later.

http://wyborcza.pl/magazyn/7,124059,28297963,spalili-muzeum-starozytnosci-ukrainy-muzeum-marii-primaczenko.html?disableRedirects=true

[Boethius]

Story on looting, naming soldiers.


http://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/04/4/7337132/

[Boethius]

Germany temporarily nationalizes Gazprom Germany.


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-04/germany-to-temporarily-run-gazprom-unit-to-safeguard-gas-supply

[SteveInBoston]

Hello all,

Checking in on the forums again.

Krim, yes, a bit odd.  Not not entertaining, and not not correct at various times.  Hopefully things are going well for you in Uzbekistan. 

ML and others with friends and family in Ukraine, I hope they are safe and sound.


T will be returning this week.  She's getting burned out over there and misses home.  She hasn't made any plans, but I think she will go back in May to keep helping as best she can.

My life has turned a bit surreal.  I have spent more time on various online news and information portals than ever.  I have joined various support groups on Facebook, when in the past I maybe checked once a month and posted 3 or 4 times a year.


One comfort has been the subreddit r/FarmersStealingTanks.  Some humor to relieve stress.


T met someone who evacuated with her sister from Mariupol, a woman named Oksana.  T calls her Cyborg.  I asked her why:

We lost contact with T's sister in early March.  The last message from her was that she tried to evacuate but the road ahead was being shelled.  She didn't return to the house because the day before a fragment from an explosion tore a roof above our older nephew's bedroom.  While looking for a better shelter, they met Oksana and her son.  The two of them were going to a shelter they heard about, so N (my SIL) and the boys joined them.  The shelter had about 200 people, and as with N's house, was without electricity, heat or water.

This is where Cyborg came in.  Oksana and 4 men went out everyday with various containers to collect water from a spring or stream under a destroyed bridge.  The bridge was about a kilometer away.  Every day they made their way around debris and various bodies lying about.  A few days the shelling was too close so they went out and collected snow or rainwater.  Oksana also scavenged various abandoned apartments and buildings to find food or useful supplies.

They day N left, Oksana went out on one of her supply scavenging trips.  The deadline to leave was approaching and Oksana was not around.  An adult couple asked to leave with N, and she agreed if Oksana didn't return in time.  15 minutes before the final convoy group needed to depart, Oksana showed up.  N had to turn away the couple and let Oksana and her son join.  The 5 of them drove slowly towards Zaporizhzhia, past several russian checkpoints.  Our youngest nephew didn't realize these were soldiers.  He said they looked like street gangs in camo outfits.  Some waved them on without issue, some stopped and threatened a group in this car or that.  But all eventually got to Zap without further harm.  This was March 15.

The group rested a day in Zap and then 2 days near Dnipro.  They stopped again somewhere near Vinnytsia.  On March 20 they finally made it to a small town near the Polish border where T was waiting.  She had housing arranged for them and they spent two nights there.  That's when T met Oksana and heard their stories.  Oksana credits N for saving her life, and N credits Oksana for saving all their lives.  T calls Oksana Cyborg after she heard their stories.

Oksana and her son are now in Spain, reunited with her boyfriend there.  She has invited all of us to stay with them whenever we want.

N and the nephews are in small town in the Carpathians.  They stayed at a lodge there during the winter holidays several years ago.  The owner said the place is vacant and they can stay there for free.  They do not want to leave Ukraine because our oldest nephew is 19 and cannot leave.  They will stick together.

[Noch1]

its incredible what Russian troops are doing.
Anyone who tries to defend these actions for Russian
are as bad as the people who do this.

THis war is being played out on social media, satellites
for the world to watch, I am sure Putin had no idea
how many people would see this and how fast.