Daily Report from the Ukraine Field for 2022-06-23
Daily Report from the Ukraine Field for 2022-06-23
News, Telegram, and Twitter Articles (Warning: Graphic)
"There is a great deal of Americans where it is uncomfortable that they're spending more, but they are not gonna go under," said Singleton, adding "You've got to stop complaining."
"You still have your job ... so I'm gonna need you to calm down and back off."
Ukrainian propaganda has elevated the Azov Battalion’s protracted but ultimately doomed final stand, in Mariupol, to heroic proportions. Adding further pathos to this sentimental story were the desperate calls for help from the commanders of the units entrapped in the bowels of the Azovstal factory and the photogenic young wives of the besieged fighters pleading with Pope Francis at the Vatican.
Yet, an observant eye could also wonder about the abundance of Nazi tattoos adorning the battalion’s POWs. The fighters of the Donetsk militia even came up with a joke about capturing “large numbers of pirates and electricians” in reference to the numerous individuals with the skull and crossbones and SS bolts – the widely recognizable Totenkopf and Schutzstaffel symbols – emblazoned on their skin.
Western media has been bending over backwards trying to explain how people covered in Nazi tattoos are not neo-Nazis. However, it turns out that sporting symbols related to Adolf Hitler's odious Third Reich is not even close to being the worst of the crimes committed by the Azov.
The battalion’s history pre-dates the current conflict in Ukraine. Between 2005 and 2010, the governor of the Kharkov Region, the major industrial hub of northeastern Ukraine, was Arsen Avakov. During Avakov’s tenure in office, nationalist Andrey Biletsky, known as the White Ruler, became very active in the area. The two were close acquaintances during Biletsky’s university years. In 2005, he founded an ultranationalist organization, The Patriot of Ukraine, which mostly consisted of aggressive football fans and low-level criminals of the street fighter variety.
According to media reports, the movement didn’t bother doing much that was patriotic but preferred involving itself in various semi-legal and shadowy activities. Biletsky ended up doing some jail time, though not for political reasons, but rather for plain and simple hooliganism.
After the 2014 Western-backed Maidan coup in Kiev, Biletsky was set free as a ‘political’ prisoner of the fallen Viktor Yanukovich government. He used his connection to Avakov, who by then had become Ukraine’s new minister of the interior, to set up a territorial defense battalion to fight in the east of the country. This became known as the Azov.
In Eastern Ukraine, the protests of locals in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions against the Maidan movement escalated to an armed rebellion, and Biletsky’s newly formed battalion was tasked with suppressing it.
Unlike many other territorial defense volunteer units, the Azov had a very distinct ideological flavor from the very start. It was a far-right organization that welcomed all sorts of neo-Nazis ranging from mild to radical ones. The Azov fighters were known for their obsession with pagan rituals and were considered freaks by regular military units.
That, however, was what made the battalion a good fit for the task. Being fanatics, these people did not shy away from killing. Before the Donbass militia was established, the Azov carried out killings of a number of pro-Russian activists.
These acts of individual terror had a philosophy behind them. “It will suffice to kill about fifty ‘vatniks’ {a pejorative term used for those with pro-Russian sympathies} in every town to put a stop to all this,” as one of the fighters with the battalion put it. On June 13, 2014, Azov put this motto into practice by defeating, as part of a larger combat group, a small unit of the Donbass people’s militia in Mariupol. The Azov Battalion was able to put forward quite a few combat-ready soldiers and several gun trucks, while the militia in Mariupol was weak and poorly armed. Five insurgents were killed. The Azov and Ukrainian security services did not hesitate to open fire on local civilians in the Mariupol standoff. There is a video showing the Ukrainians wounding and killing several unarmed people by gunfire. One of the victims is ‘armed’ with a plastic chair.
However, because it was not part of the army – at least formally – the Azov Battalion rarely engaged in actual combat operations. In the summer of 2014, a small group of its fighters attacked the town of Ilovaisk, and in the winter of 2015 they launched an assault on Shirokino, a village located on the Azov Sea coast, where they interacted with officers from the Ukrainian Army who later recounted that the battalion had left the impression of an undisciplined unit, one that was hard to deal with.
So, until 2022, Azov had no serious combat record of which it could boast. However, being stalwart followers of Ukrainian nationalist ideology, fighters of the Azov – which was by then transformed into a regiment – later played a significant role in the conflict with Russia. Meanwhile, a full-fledged nationalist movement featuring an array of diverse groups of nationalists had sprung up around Azov. Biletsky ended up eventually stepping down as commander and worked to integrate the regiment into Ukraine’s National Guard, while keeping the ideological slant of the unit. This ended up being confirmed by the large number of Nazi symbols and paraphernalia found on the captured fighters and in the regiment’s barracks seized during combat.
Full article at RT
https://www.rt.com/russia/557589-azov-battalion-documented-crimes/
Ugledar Ukrainian Counteroffensive SitRep, June 23, 2022
1—Ukraine had gathered a substantial offensive grouping numbering approximately 2-3 battalion-tactical groups (BTGs) or, in Ukrainian denomination, approximately a brigade's-worth of personnel, supplemented with tanks, pickups (jihad-mobiles), IFVs, and the like.
2—The intention of the Ugledar offensive grouping was to punch through Pavlovka and Yegorovka, en route to Volnovakha, with the eventual aim of threatening as deep as Mariupol. By all measures, this goal was cretinous.
3—The Ugledar offensive grouping was able (was allowed?) to push the Allied garrison out of Pavlovka and then to proceed in column formation to Yegorovka, in order to develop the early success. Evidently, the Ukrainian units were given an order to take Yegorovka by 8:30am on June 23. This may have been intended as a publicity coup to claim rapid success in the direction of Volnovakha/Mariupol, to distract from the Bakhmutka Cauldron and the developing Lisichansk/Severodonetsk catastrophe.
4—Considering the map, the Ukrainians did not make it very far at all. The column of the offensive grouping was smashed by Allied artillery en route to Yegorovka, with Ukrainian servicemen dispersing into the forested areas. Reportedly, fierce clashes ensued and are still continuing.
5—The column did not make it to Yegorovka. It looks like it will not make it anywhere. The Allied troops clearly were ready for this development, and I have an inkling that the Pavlovka withdrawal was a trap laid to invite adventurism from the Ukrainians, so as to eliminate the Ugledar offensive grouping once and for all.
