Insufferable Russian Sanctimony
Insufferable Russian Sanctimony
"They’re all [Russian servicemen] reporting being pressured, facing the threat of criminal charges, being discharged, or having their documents withheld.""For protection from a possible criminal investigation, please contact our lawyers."Pavel Chikov, head, Agora international human rights group
Ukrainian
sources speak of an unusually large death toll among Russian soldiers.
The number of casualties among the Russian military according to
Ukrainian sources is roughly 19,000 personnel. Russia, while admitting
it has lost quite a few servicemen, put the number of their deaths at
1,083. Of that total, 217 represent officers, from junior lieutenants to
generals, since it is customary for elite Russian officers to
frequently fight alongside their units in view of decision-making
derived through high-ranking personnel.
What
Russian military spokespeople will not admit publicly is the problems
facing the Russian command of downright refusals among their servicemen
to carry out Russian orders. Orders such as the one that led to the
bombing of a train station targeting Ukrainian citizens, men, women and
children along with the elderly attempting to move from high-impact
bombing areas to safer parts of Ukraine, or to cross the border to
safety. Dozens of people were killed and around 100 injured Friday in a
Russian
rocket attack on the Kramatorsk train station, of evacuees trying to
escape the Donbas.
Over
fifteen percent of confirmed Russian military deaths are represented by
the VDV, Russian elite airborne units. The issue of desertions is not a
matter of public discussion, however. Yet, the Pskoyskava Guberniya
newspaper revealed that some 60 Russian paratroopers after refusing
orders to deploy to Ukraine from Belarus where they assumed they were
stated for exercises, are now facing disciplinary action.
Members
of two national guard units, refusing to fight in Ukraine were reported
by Russian media, and that servicemen from over 17 cities have sought
assistance in avoiding being sent to Ukraine, or have asked for help to
enable them to return home to Russia from Ukraine. Obviously, morale is
at an historic low, Russian troops are unwilling to remain in Ukraine
to fulfill their government's aspirations to remove Ukraine's
government, in the process destroying the country's infrastructure.
A destroyed Russian tank in Borodianka, Ukraine. Photograph: Ceng Shou Yi/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock |
Whether
it is through Kremlin orders or through anger and frustration that
murderous atrocities in Mariupol and Bucha have taken place will
eventually come to light, even as German intelligence in intercepting
unencrypted messaging has revealed that civilian massacres were under
discussion among Russian commanders. In six weeks' invasion Russia has
caused over four million people to flee their homes, killing thousands
and made rubble heaps of towns and cities.
There
has been a price to pay, in a hobbled Russian economy and an isolation
it has brought upon itself by shocking the world through its snarling
no-holds-barred invasion and use of airborne bombs and distanced
artillery. Russia itself has been shocked by the unexpected resolve of
the Ukrainian people, their government and their military to thwart
Moscow's plans to disembowel Ukraine's governing body and cripple its
Western-oriented aspirations for the future.
When
Dmitry Peskov, spokesman and chief apologist/explainer for the Kremlin
decried his country's rising death toll, it was a departure from custom
for Russia: "We have significant losses of troops. It's a huge tragedy for us",
he said, speaking to the media. There is evidently no room in Russia's
sorrow for its misfortune through misadventure of the excruciating pain
they have caused to the people of an adjoining nation through
indiscriminate mass murder.
The
indefatigable Ukrainian Mayor Volodymyr Zelenskyy has rallied his
nation, inspired his troops, unceasingly addressed the United Nations,
NATO, the European Union, the United States, Canada and other nations'
heads imploring them to come to Ukraine's aid against an implacable
enemy. Sympathy for Ukraine's plight flows from all civilized nations of
the world, even those who hesitate to give Russia cause to call them
enemies and invoke its wrath, quailing before the prospect of being cut
off from their major energy source.
"Once and for all, we can teach Russia and any other potential aggressors that those who choose war always lose",
President Zelenskyy stated in his address to the Greek parliament. None
disagree with his carefully chosen words and their passionate delivery,
yet none while pledging material support, venture to offer physical
support for fear of offending Moscow, for fear of Vladimir Putin's
spite, for fear of Russia's nuclear threats manipulating a fearful
world.
Firefighters extinguish an apartment house after a Russian rocket attack in Kharkiv (Associated Press/Pavel Dorogoy) |
Moscow
insists the photographs of mangled civilian bodies in Bucha, the mass
grave, those who were mutilated, murdered and left in the streets to
decompose was in reality a staged plot by Ukraine to besmirch Russia.
Despite its losses -- in personnel and heavy war machinery -- Putin
insists on his agenda to denazify Ukraine carrying on; if not in
Ukraine's North, then in the East where he has a more secure foothold.
"Evacuate! The chances of saving yourself and your family from Russian death are dwindling every day!"
broadcasted Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai. A criminal investigation
has been opened by Moscow into claims that a Russian soldier was beaten
and given death threats while held in Ukraine as a prisoner of war. No
internal investigation, though, of the deaths of hundreds in Bucha by
Russian soldiers necessary of course, since it was all a Ukrainian plot.
According
to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Moscow had been presented by
Kyiv with a draft peace agreement containing "unacceptable" elements
and which deviated notably from previously agreed-upon proposals.
Unsurprisingly so, since Moscow will accept nothing less than the
complete neutering of Ukraine, a country with no history, no culture, no
authority, no sovereignty, according to Mr. Putin, and now he will
accord it no aspirations for its future, as well.
Local residents pass by a damaged Russian tank in the town of Trostsyanets, some 400 km east of Kyiv, Ukraine (Efrem Lukatsky/The Associated Press) |
Labels: Russian Atroctiies, Russian Invasion of Ukraine, Russian Troop Losses, Ukrainian Defences
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