A modest local view from the Kharkiv region of increasing fatigue among
Russian and Ukrainian frontline troops during the summer of 2023. ----Assembly.org.ua ---- Join our fundraising team to work on thisinternational column and offline volunteering activities. A couple ofcups of coffee in your country, even before the war, could be equivalentto a day's salary of a worker in the Ukraine. Thank you all so much inadvance! ---- The bloody counteroffensive that lasted for months, whichbecame a new meat grinder on the Somme after the new battle of Verdunnear Bakhmut, is being noticeably reflected in the social atmosphere. Aninterlocutor of the Assembly, a train conductor in the Kharkov metro,recounted anonymously on June 25:"My brother is fighting near Bakhmut, the 31st assault brigade. Lastweek they went on the offensive and received such a response that theyretreated further than where they were before the offensive. The nextday, the colonels arrived with threats. And where to attack, there arecannons, mortars, planes. The day before yesterday, two battalionsrefused to fight. They were not fed, they threatened to imprison them.Three battalions laid down their weapons, because they were forced toslaughter without support. 30 people were shot down immediately Theygave them a new commander, but everything remains the same. They barelytook any villages. There are no tanks, there are no Bradleys, they aretaking care of it, so as not to bother the West. But they are not takingcare of the infantry: they were given two sniper rifles Poles and theytook them away. There is no food, only a dry ration. They threatened toimprison us, they answer: imprison? And who will come to our positions?Now they continue fighting in some way, but in situ, without humor.Things like that".The same informant confirms Der Spiegel's June article about UkrainianArmed Forces tankers imitating tank damage to prevent them from movingon to the southern counteroffensive. "They stay stationary. They gavethem a combat vehicle with a plastic hood. When they went somewhere, itstayed stationary, they barely dug it up. These vehicles are stationary,no one wants to drive them, a capsule of death," said that driver. August 5.Also in the first half of August, a video interview of political bloggerYury Romanenko, close to Zelensky's Office, with sniper KonstantinProshinsky, who fights near Bakhmut, appeared. It had resonance, even inthe Western media, with the words that the army would not be against the"Korean scenario", as well as criticism of the "harsh mobilization" andthe ban on the men leaving Ukraine, because "we will never win." a waragainst Russia by numbers". But in addition to this, Proshinskyconfirmed the Assembly's information about saving Western heavyequipment by infantry attacks in the style of Russian "cannon fodderraids" and about those rejected in the Ukrainian army. According to themilitary, among the recruits recently sent to Bakhmut, the youngest was52 years old. Among the rest were men with tuberculosis, hepatitis anddiabetes. They were mobilized, allowed to spend the night in theenlistment office, and the next morning they were sent to the front.Many of these fighters after the first battle wrote a refusal toparticipate in hostilities. This is not desertion, therefore it does notentail criminal liability - the applicant must be transferred to asupply company, and soon such companies "will have thousands of people,"said the guest of the program.Meanwhile, the advance of the Russian Armed Forces on the territory fromKupyansk to Kremenna, apparently, is even less successful than theUkrainian attempts to break through to the Azov and Bakhmut coasts. Thefighting spirit of the occupiers is also mediocre. On August 9 and 11,our colleagues at ASTRA published new evidence about a clandestinecellar for Russian rejects in Zaytsevo, northeast of the Lugansk region.Mobilized members of the "Storm" detachment (military unit 31134)complained to their families about how they were forced to go to certaindeath. Relatives of several soldiers reported this to ASTRA, presentingtheir complaints to the Investigative Committee, as well as an audiorecording of a conversation with one of those mobilized. In therecording, the combatant says that they are going to have a fourthconsecutive assault, that they launch their attacks without weapons andwithout rest: "We only have 20 of 100 of "Storm" left. It's almost 20minutes of combat. <... .> They are forcing us into the minefields. Whyare they taking us there? Because the authorities have already reportedthat they have taken everything. <...> Those who refused, the commanderpersonally shot in the legs". The 24 survivors were sent to the Zaytsevobasement, contact with them disappeared. As the channel's editorAnastasia Chumakova added to us, the inmates there they are constantlydifferent.The Siberian opposition outlet "People of Baikal" published an articleon July 25 about a mobilized Irkutsk resident named Alexander, whoserved in the "Storm" unit of the 90th tank division. At the beginningof March 2023, he and three colleagues left the post and went toAlexandrovsk, where they rented an apartment and drank alcohol. Therethey were detained and sent to the commander's office. Later, Alexanderwas found dead near Chervonopopovka (also on the Lugansk-Kharkov border)with remains of a noose around his neck. "I realized that this was notthe war that I had imagined. This is extermination, they prepared us asbait. Let them put me in jail, I will not die for this," his brotherSergey recounts the words of the deceased. He is trying to clarify thecircumstances of the death through the military prosecutor's office andthe Investigative Committee.And the deadlines for both states are running out. More or less warmSeptember, and that's it: again cold, mud and positional confrontations.Judging by the sharp tightening of Russian legislation on conscription,a new wave of open mobilization is coming there. However, until the 2024presidential elections, its authorities try to limit themselves byforcing the most servile social layers to sign contracts: convicts,recruits and Central Asian immigrants.Along with those who refuse to fight, on both the Ukrainian and Russiansides, it is already easy to encounter a front-line soldier who vaguelysuspects that he is being used as expendable material, but is afraid toadmit it to himself. They like to ask random civilians why they are notin the trenches and are not going to go there, but they somehow do notask the owners of life anything about doing business withrepresentatives of the enemy and corruption in army purchases. How manyof them will come to anti-war positions is still unknown. The onlycertainty is that if everything continues as before, one day both statessimply will not have the strength for new offensives.The front line may not even change much from today, but it may alsoshift to the Ukrainian borders of 1991. Defeats of one army againstanother are not capable of ending the war - only They force the losingregime to more actively pour new tons of human splinters into thefuneral pyre...Recently, we have already talked about the growing disappointment ofUkrainians in the prospects of overcoming poverty and corruption, whichfuels the desire to leave Ukraine immediately after the war or even before.In addition to this, we invite you to take a look at how in our Kharkovcompanies male workers are being replaced by women and pensioners likein Europe 1916 due to mobilization.https://alasbarricadas.org/noticias/node/52966_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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