The Battle of Stalingrad means nothing! Those who defended Stalingrad made Mariupol the new Stalingrad. Before the war, half a million people lived and worked quietly and secludedly in Mariupol!
This is history. The record expresses the writer’s position. You can submit articles and posts to VG here.
Andrej Kurkov, Ukrainian author
Now the city is in ruins. In the streets the corpses of residents. Constant bombardment makes it impossible to remove. The city was constantly bombed and bombed for days and nights.
A half-ton bomb targeting the city theater destroyed the Mariupol Cultural Center, where performances in Russian were held. Families with children have been hiding inside the theater for more than two weeks, and on the sides of the stage, in large letters on the asphalt, the word “child” is written specifically for Russian bombers. Is that why they dropped the bomb so hard that it destroyed the entire building? In the end, children are the future, and Ukrainian children are the future of Ukraine. It is clear that those who dropped the bomb do not want Ukraine to have a future!
In another news from Mariupol, I learned that Russian soldiers blew up the city’s art school, where about 400 residents sought shelter from the bombing.
Great interview: I think Putin will take Poland
The Russian soldiers surrounding Mariupol launched two columns of residents on board outside the city so that they could escape to the territory controlled by the Ukrainian forces – having to leave should be difficult, but for residents without a car, the situation is even more tragic. Russian soldiers prevented buses from the Ukrainian side from passing through the city to evacuate people. They have already made an “exit” from the city to the east, but this leads only to the “republics” of the separatists. Those who choose this path have their Ukrainian passports and documents confiscated, and papers are issued giving them “the right to live in Russia for two years”. These persons were incorporated into the Russian Federation.
I would call it “human trafficking”, but Russia defines it differently. Russia hopes to find among them people who are willing to engage in propaganda against Ukraine, who want these people to remain in Russia, if, of course, it is not possible to return them to Ukraine as Russian soldiers. Alternatively, they can be sent to the far east of Russia and Siberia, where the demographic situation is catastrophic, and villages and towns die simply because no one wants to live there.
Thousands of residents of the Donbass region, which was occupied by Russia and separatists in 2014, have already been sent to these harsh regions of the Russian Federation. Without money to recover, they are often doomed to remain in the taiga or on the border with China, where there are few jobs and few welfare benefits.
War will not solve Russia’s demographic problems. It will not solve any geopolitical problems.
In recent days, Vladimir Putin said that he has enlisted, among them the Syrian army of Assad, 16,000 soldiers ready to fight in Ukraine on the side of the Russian Federation. He had already tried to intimidate the Ukrainians with Kadyrov’s Chechen fighters, but with the loss of hundreds of people, including the commander of the Russian Chechen Guards Regiment, Magomed Tochaev, they returned to Chechnya.
Residents of Ukraine living in the lands of the separatist “republics” were also called up for conscription and sent to kill other Ukrainians. Now they have extended the maximum conscription age to 65, forcing men from the “republics” to go to war.
Why is Putin looking for fighters in Syria and Donbass? Why not send more Russians into battle against Ukraine? Perhaps because the death toll of soldiers and officers, including generals and colonels, is very high. He is afraid that sooner or later the funeral of a soldier or officer will turn into a demonstration against Russian aggression.
Meanwhile, up to 80% of Russians approve of the war in Ukraine.
This contradicts the German chancellor’s statement that only Putin is responsible for everything, and that the Russian people have nothing to do with this war.
Until now, the Russians actively supported Putin, who is now trying to force the illegitimate president of Belarus, Lukashenko, to go to war on the side of Russia. Lukashenko has already promised to do so. His soldiers are on the border with the Volyn region near Poland. If they cross the Ukrainian border, then the second front of this war, the Western, will be opened. And then surely some missiles and bombs will fall in the European Union.
Ukraine is ready to confront the Belarusian army in Volyn, but no one in Ukraine wants to kill the Belarusians, and the Belarusians themselves may not have an interest in the war. Can Lukashenko walk away from the brink of another catastrophe? The next few days will show it.
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Translated from English by Sian O’Hara
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