Ukrainian troops on the Donbas frontline (Diego Herrera Carcedo/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Barbed wire knots together sky and earth. Burned-out vehicles, modern-day carcasses of industrial warfare, dot the landscape. The ground is strafed and cratered: Eastern Ukraine has been disembowelled by shelling. The war here is fought with 21st-century drone technology, but it flies over soldiers who carry 50-year-old Kalashnikovs. The black snouts and brown handles of these guns line the eastern front, which is a frieze cast in metal and wood, and is where, in the late afternoon of a warm spring day, I see Jesus.
He is about a foot tall and half as wide, and is being carried by a man with a ponytail and scraggly black beard. Dressed in jeans and a tracksuit top, he cradles the icon in his arms. “Is this the way to Mariupol?” he asks the group of us standing by the road: me, Dima, the soldier taking me to the front, and my friend the journalist, Vladislav Davidzon. Mariupol — which has been almost destroyed by the Russian army — is almost 300km south. “Um, not really,” Dima replies. “Who are you?”
“I am a pilgrim,” he replies. “I’m going to get people out of the city.” He shows me what appears to be the business card of a UNHCR official — a psychologist it appears. I look at him. He has the glazed, trembling look of a pilgrim; of a smaller, scrawnier Rasputin (and, disconcertingly, Harry Kane). We talk for a few minutes before I watch him walk off into the distance, a lone madman clutching his Christ amidst the destruction.
“Well,” says Dima as we get back into the car. “If he makes it to Mariupol, it really will be divine fucking intervention.”
***
Several hours earlier, in a cafe in the city of Dnipro, Dima shows me an image on his phone. Four bodies lie in the dirt. The image is grainy, but their ragged outlines are clear. Just 20 or so metres away, their comrades sit and eat. “It’s incredible,” says Dima. “They’re eating lunch right by the decomposing bodies of their friends.” He continues: “I don’t understand the Russians. Sometimes they just drop the bodies of their mates into trenches. We found a grave of 15 bodies. They’d thrown a bit of dirt on them, but that was it. They don’t even respect their own people.”
Dima is an officer in the Drone intelligence section of the Dnipro 1 Volunteer Battalion fighting in the Donbas on the frontlines. It was here that I saw Russian troops trundle across the border back in April 2014. They had come to aid local “separatists” seize key cities in the region. Back then, the Kremlin didn’t want to conquer Ukraine, merely destabilise it to stop it drawing closer to the EU and Nato.
A few months ago, Moscow decided destabilisation was no longer enough; it was time, it said, to take Kyiv and “denazify” the country. It failed. Now its goals have shifted again. Now it hopes to “liberate” the Donbas by holding a bogus referendum. The eventual goal is to create a landbridge from the Russian border to Crimea, cutting off a large part of Ukraine’s access to the sea.
In their way stands Dima — and tens of thousands like him. Now 32, he was 24 when the war began in 2014 and he volunteered to serve in Dnipro 1. He fought for two years before leaving to work as an IT product manager. But when the war started earlier this year, he re-joined.
“We are fighting over [the town of] Rubizhne at the moment,” he tells me. “It’s one of the hottest spots right now. We’re desperately trying to hold it. But it’s close to Sievierodonetsk and [Russian-occupied] Luhansk so it’s tough. The Russians are throwing everything at us there. Missiles, artillery, tanks, men, drones: the works. A guy I know who was in Afghanistan twice said it was like a playground compared to eastern Ukraine.”
Yet the Ukranians remain confident, having already pushed the Russians back from Kyiv. More than this, they are angry. Mass graves discovered in towns such as Bucha mean no one I meet is interested in territorial compromise. “Even if they drop a nuclear bomb on Kyiv they will not win,” Dima tells me. He snorts at Russia’s plans to take southern Ukraine and link Russia up with Transnistria. “Sometimes you play poker with a bad hand, but Russia is playing without any cards at all. Their tactics are insane. Take Chernobaivka: it has a small military airport. Seventeen times they’ve tried to take it. Seventeen times we’ve smashed them. Still they come. Our soldiers ask: ‘Are they dumb?’ No, just incapable of independent thought. They just follow orders — no matter how crazy.”
Ukraine’s problem is resources: the army doesn’t have enough ammunition and artillery, but this is also something of a blessing: it forces them to be creative. “The Russians use Soviet military tactics that were out of date 30 years ago,” he says. “But we study the Afghanistan war and Israeli tactics. Russia just tries to press with mass.”
What about the feared Chechen soldiers, I ask? “We call the Kadyrovites [named for Chechnya’s leader Ramzan Kadyrov] TikTok soldiers. They’re always filming. We found one who was wounded and trying not to fight, but to take a selfie. I heard a story from the [battle for] Hostomyal airport. There were a load of conscripts refusing to fight. So the Kadyrovite commander asked them: ‘Who doesn’t want to fight?’ One guy raised his hand and the commander shot him. ‘Now, who else wants to go home?’ he asked. It’s Soviet tactics.”
From the beginning, Dima tells me, the Kadyrovites had a reputation for committing war crimes. The locals hate them and there are sometimes problems when the Ukrainian army captures one and the locals want revenge. But he says he’s never seen anyone mistreat a prisoner. “Our guys understand the Geneva convention, and also that prisoners are a resource. For every Russian we capture we can get one of ours back. I’m not a general, but at a guess I’d say maybe 1,000 of our guys are prisoners. Prisoner exchanges take place continuously and quietly.”
***
I convince Dima to take us to his base on the frontlines near Rubizhne. He’s reluctant: its location is classified as it’s so close to Russian firepower. Not even the BBC or CNN have been given access to a place like this. But in the end, he relents. “Ok, I’m in charge of your security now. You need to do what I say.”
We drive out of Dnipro and onto the highway; after a couple of hours we enter the Donbas. On the Donetsk Oblast (region) sign hangs a small flag showing a flower sprouting from a prostrate human. “Russian occupiers make the best fertiliser,” it reads.
Dima continues to talk as we drive. He’s from Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown. “I knew him a bit when I was younger,” he says. “I used to see him around the place in a cheap coat. I thought he was a great guy but not suited to running a country. Now I support him 1,000%. The most important thing that he did was stay. It was vital that the people saw that the head of the government didn’t flee.”
Beyond Ukraine, Dima is especially positive about two things, or rather, two people. “Elon Musk’s Starlink is what changed the war in Ukraine’s favour,” he tells me. “Russia went out of its way to blow up all our comms. Now they can’t. Starlink works under Katyusha fire, under artillery fire. It even works in Mariupol.”
“I know you British have a complicated relationship with your Prime Minister, but here Boris Johnson has become something of a national hero,” he continues. “The NLAWs you have given us are the best. Easy to use — lock, load and move. Without them we wouldn’t be taking out so many Russian tanks. We knew from the beginning that Britain was a very ancient and important nation. Now we know it’s a country that stands by its word.”
The closer we get to the front the more the world morphs into something profoundly alien. Almost all the vehicles on the road are military. We breeze through a succession of checkpoints manned by soldiers hardened by war. The Ukrainians have been fighting here for eight years. We pass through several villages. On each side of me I see small, perfectly kept houses with immaculate gardens. I’m told it’s a Ukrainian thing. Even war is no excuse to let standards slip.
As we draw closer to the front, we meander around potholed roads. Dima tells me there’s intense fighting at the moment. We get stuck behind two pheasants waddling in front of us. “They’re totally deaf,” he says. “Shelling has blown out their eardrums. We can hoot all day and they’ll never hear.”
He becomes reflective. “I won’t survive being a POW,” he says. “Dnipro I is considered a terror group by Russia. If caught, I expect to be tortured and summarily executed.”
***
Out on the base, soldiers are everywhere — in their green and beige camouflage, as if they’ve sprouted from the earth itself: from the forests and fields that dot the Donbas. Daily life here is quietly relentless. In a small courtyard, crates of supplies are stacked on top of one another. Soldiers sit around and smoke and talk and clean their weapons. They tinker with armoured vehicles caked in mud and grime.
Everything is geared toward staying hidden. We are asked not to gather in groups outside for fear of Russian drones flying overhead. Night falls. Inside, the lights must be switched off. Windows are always covered.
The base’s command centre sits in a compact bunker. Flat-screen TVs fixed to cement walls show live feeds of the battlefields. In a storage room, crates of ammo stand five feet high. A bust of Lenin, sitting in the corner, gazes over them.”Our commander is keen to give the old boy a good burial,” says Dima. “Come on,” he continues. “You’ll laugh your arse off when you see where our office is.”
We pile into a small room filled with an array of detritus: Kit Kats, vacuum-packed meals and old Soviet uniforms. I meet some of Dima’s drone team. All of them are volunteers who work in IT. They could have paid bribes to leave the country, he tells me. But they chose to stay.
The drone reconnaissance unit has a vital job. They travel ahead of the artillery to a sector, usually just 1 or 2km from the front, and send up a drone to look for a target — anything from armour or troops (or sometimes to cover their infantry). Then they figure out the coordinates, telegraph the artillery guys and observe the subsequent strike. If it’s not accurate, they calibrate accordingly. Each evening, they return to base and watch a video of the day’s work.
They are watching one as I walk in. The footage could be from a video game: I see artillery strike a building and a Russian soldier run out and start hopping around. “He’s having a panic attack,” says Dima’s friend, Pasha. In another, a Russian soldier writhes on the ground after a strike scythes him almost in half. “And here’s half a Russian,” says Dima. “Yup, 50% of a Russian,” his friend Pasha chips in.
The door opens and in walks the battalion commander, Yuriy Bereza. A former politician famous for attending parliament in his military uniform, he is one of Ukraine’s most famous fighters. Everything about Bereza is big. His head is big. His smile is big. His belly and arms are big. His hands are huge. He is something very rare: a man who is tough to his core.
He beams at me. “With your permission?” he asks before taking a bite of chocolate and sitting down. “First,” he says. “I want to tell you about one of my heroes, John McCain.” Bereza tells me he met McCain in Washington DC following an official invitation. Bereza had commanded Ukrainian forces at the battle of Iloviask in which many of his troops had died — a disaster Bereza blamed on then-President Petro Poroshenko. He was filled with rage. “I didn’t view Poroshenko as my president, but McCain told me: ‘You have a bright future, but understand if you wear the uniform you must accept him as your president. You can throw him out at the ballot box later.’ And then we got drunk together. Then McCain came here to visit us. We showed him videos of what the Russians were doing in Ukraine. He watched the whole thing and all he said at the end was ‘fucking Russians’.”
Bereza has his own — unvarnished — thoughts on war. “When I was in the Soviet army in the Nineties so many Russians told me: ‘You fucking Banderites, we’re going to conquer you.’ I knew we were going to have to fight these fucking paedophiles.” He continues: “By 2014 I knew with every fibre of my being that there would be war. For me, the IDF is the ideal army because like Israel, Ukraine is surrounded. Israeli citizens live normally despite their fucked-in-the head neighbours who continually fire rockets at them. I told Poroshenko back in 2014: this is just the beginning; we need to militarise society; everyone needs to go to the supermarket with a gun.”
I ask him why the Russians have fought so badly. “For the reason the guy who looks after their tanks shot himself,” he replies. “Me and Dima were buying equipment from those fucks for ten times less than it was worth. Thanks to their very effective corruption we very effectively killed their own guys.”
I ask if he minds if I take photos of him. “Take as many photos as you want,” he replies. “I spit on these bastards.” He’s into his stride now. “Look at General Zhukov, the ‘Great Marshal’ who was just a butcher. The Russians are fighting like Zhukov. They send wave after wave but our guys figured out they fight just like Soviets. The tank commander is always in the first tank, so we shoot it. Once you shoot the first and last tanks, they’re immobilised.”
He leans forward and gives me his final thoughts. “Look, we are standing with our blood for Western values. The more you focus on us the more we will break the back of the TV, the press, the foggy mind — all of it: the collective Putin inside Russians.”
That night I bunk down with the soldiers. There must be 20 of us in the room, which is filled with cots and mats; sleeping bags and blankets are strewn across the floor. Everyone is constantly on alert, leaving to go on missions to the front throughout the night. Alongside rucksacks and helmets and uniforms, the room is filled with weapons. Everything from pistols to AK-47s and even a light machine gun is here. But that’s not the most striking thing about the room: that’s the smell. That mix of feet and sweat and fear and testosterone that I know so well. Next to me, Vlad leans over and whispers: “You know what that is,” he says with a chuckle. “That’s toxic masculinity.”
***
At breakfast the next day before anyone is allowed to eat, the chef makes them recite a line or two of Ukrainian national poet Taras Shevchenko. It’s a poem about death. “When I die…” it begins. The soldiers laugh.
That afternoon we begin the long drive back to Dnipro. Dima, it turns out, is a big Queen fan. “Another one bites the dust — this is the song for war,” he laughs. Then he suddenly becomes serious. There is silence for long stretches of road. “I want it all!” sings Freddie Mercury. I think of the soldiers I’ve met. How many of them may not return. “You know,” says Dima as we turn off the motorway and enter Dnipro once again, “there should be no wars of nationalism between people who listen to the same music.”
David Patrikarakos is UnHerd‘s foreign correspondent. His latest book is War in 140 characters: how social media is reshaping conflict in the 21st century. (Hachette)
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SubscribeAbsolutely outstanding war reporting, David. Keep up the good work.
This was so well written, with such a strong and powerful story.
I have not read anything from Unherd before, but have made an account in order to give you and this story the praise it deserves.
Thank you for risking your life to give us a window into the lives of these heroic brave warriors and telling their story. May they have many many more victories. Slava Ukraini.
Slava Ukraini!
Brilliant David. Just brilliant.
Best Unherd article in a very long time, head and shoulders above a lot of the unimportant rubbish trotted out by some of the more socially aware journalists.
Some socially aware journalists appear to think that they have a right to benefit from pre-moderation and censorship of opinions that they, presumably, disagree with.
I was discussing with another subscriber as to why below the line posts on some articles were being held back for a day or two, or just vanished altogether. – One discussion that we were having reached a farcical state as our posts appeared, vanished, re-appeared, got resent etc. We had to clarify by email.
I suspect that if you need to click on “comment” at the end of an article in order to post a comment, then you are being subjected to pre-moderation.
I’ve just had a long comment on the SNP article disappearing due another comment further up the chain having been censored. The whole thread is gone. It’s happened before a few times. When will Freddy get this censorship rectified?
Hear hear! But this has been going on for many months and most of the ‘old gang’ are now long gone………………sadly.
My posts are being censored.
Thank you so much for this very powerful cameo of life on the Ukrainian front. I would imagine that there is not a single Ukrainian patriot who is not saying “Long live toxic masculinity!”
I might also add that this is what real war correspondents do – they take risks to report from what really is the front line. The author’s courage is both appreciated and admired.
So you didn’t think that perhaps their gender equality wasn’t good enough, let alone world-beating?
What on earth is the point of your comment?
This article puts everything back into perspective. The gender wars seem a little out of touch when you read this. Everything else is just nonsense when you’re fighting for your life and way of existence.
I’ve only recently registered with Unherd, and like others this is my first post. What a brilliant insight into the unrelenting spirit that drives people to defend their families and nation from tyranny.
Lest anyone (else) misinterpret the perhaps tongue-in-cheek quote about “toxic masculinity”, i think its simply meant to reflect that there’s a place in the world for such outright masculinity in defence of freedom. But at the same time, there are women who also fight, perhaps some of them on the front line so they shouldn’t be forgotten. To continue the ironic take on the phrase, perhaps they might be accused of “toxic femininity”!
Nuance and understanding is all, and it was all present in this great article. Well done Unherd, and many thanks to David.
Registered just to add to what’s already been said. Exceptional reporting on exceptional people. Thanks, David.
Terrific article, and hugely provocative on the intellectual level. We really have become soft in the west because we’re constantly making the perfect the enemy of the good. Ukraine may have a lot of “far-right” and “ultra nationalists”, but so what? Are they really worse than a society which physically mutilates its children in the name of gender reassignment or which uses ukrainian women as incubators for surrogate births? We seriously need to rethink our priorities in the west, and we can start with accepting that nobody can have it all and that it’s OK to fight for what IS important.
Well said.
“Barbed wire knots together sky and earth.”
What an opening. I immediately imagined the Ukrainian flag – blue skies above golden fields of wheat – with a coil of razor wire stretched across the horizon where earth meets heaven.
Thanks, David, for the gritty reporting. Keep safe out there …
I thought some of the mass graves were less results of atrocities, and more the standard “bury the dead on either side to avoid disease”. Basic battlefield health policy.
If the Russians aren’t burying their dead and are eating right next to them… yeesh. Just like with HMS Royal Sovereign. What kind of commander fails to teach their troops basic healthcare? Even Eastern militaries do better than that.
H.M.S Royal Sovereign?
Fantastic portrait of these warriors. Feels brutally authentic. Loved the comments on Musk, Johnson, and McCain. Well done, David. More, please…
This is the best article on this website that I have read in ages.
it’s great journalism to tell it how it is, without trying to tell the reader how to interpret it / what to think.
thanks for writing this.
Thank you for this raw insight. It is vital.
“Toxic masculinity” made my day. Thanks for the good work.
A fine look at the front lines of this war. Understandable characters presented with care. Thanks.
Brilliant article.
The Ukranians seem to be masters of creative thinking. Kind of funny sometimes, too.
Do you think the two things go hand in hand?
All propaganda. Check out “The Duran” for the other side.
This is really the crazy world full of madness and stupidity. Please imagine the possible outcomes of this situation. You take your pick.
1. The “boring scenario”: in early 2022, Ukraine agrees to Russia’s demand to stay the same neutrality as Austria in order to avoid the war. The whole world goes on as usual.
2. The “best scenario”: Ukraine wins the war, at the cost of tens of thousands of Ukraine and Russia soldiers lives, millions ordinary Ukraines lost their homes, the whole Ukraine is in shamble. The rest of the world suffers high inflation and food shortage.
3. The “2nd best scenario” is Russia wins the war. Similar outcomes as above, except Russia takes the southeastern part of Ukraine. Ukraine lost large part of her resource rich region and the access to black sea. Pretty screwed.
4. The “worst scenario” is the breaking out of nuclear WW3. Europe becomes a wasteland.
Regrettably so, most readers here seem to glorify 2. ”The best scenario”. I have a strong impression that they don’t actually believe the Ukrainian victory scenario, but choose to go with it in avoidance of reality. Why so..? Possibly because postponing of reality is a well established way of life and thinking. We see a catastrophic course of events approaching but we prefer the ”risk” of trusting any crazy idea we have. Like, defeating Russia once and for all, despite the growing danger and the total irrationality of the winning presuppositions..
I don’t think either of you seem to be aware of the last 100 year’s history in Europe with Stalin and Hitler. Our inconvenient suffering in terms of standard of living and financial standing pales in comparison to that of the Ukrainians under Stalin, the Jews under Hitler, the Poles under both Hitler and Stalin. Russia has been a blot on the surface of the planet for the last 100 years at least, their citizens permanently brainwashed, their forced movement of other peoples and minorities abhorent, their threats are never ending and it’s just not getting any better. At least scenario 4 would give other species a chance to expand their territories, it has happened in Chernobyl and Pripyat.
How do you know you are not brainwashed? Why do you think the history is so simple, black and white? The Self-righteous and lazy people always thinks that anybody on the opposite side is evildoer. They are our enemies, thus they are also God’s enemies. Oxford historian Peter Frankopan wrote in his ” The Silk Road” that before the war Hilter and his gang had an idea of sending all Jews to Palestine. Maybe the talking of the war makes them abandon the project. Do you know which country was controlling Palestine back then?
I’m fairly sure I’m less brainwashed than 99.99% of the Russian population, although it’s not 99% of Russians who are responsible for Russia’s and the USSR’s policies and downright disregard for human rights over the last 100 or so years. My wife’s first 30 years were spent in communist Poland, her aunts spent their years from 1940-45 in labour camps in Germany and Russia. Just see how Poland has flourished since the mid 90’s. The thing is that the threats will just not cease, irrespective of Putin remaining in power or not. It seems to be a national characteristic to maintain oppression within its realm and hostility towards others both near and far. Do you honestly think the west has any desire to set foot over the Russian border? OK,they have resources but in the near future the planet will be better off for not exhausting these. As for the geopolitical factors in Russia, no other country aside from maybe China would be remotely interested in engaging in the Russian future.
Don’t you think that the communist China is also as flourishing as Poland providing that you have ever visited China? Do you honestly believe the Russians are going to invade the rest of the Europe? I condem war, any war and also any intentions and actions to provoke wars. There is no just war, or winnable war. The biggest loser of war is humanity. We have only one earth to live. Why can’t we be realistic and compassionate towards each other and let our biology to unite us, instead of letting ideology to divide and destroy us.
When you said that Russia is geographically unimportant except to China is so inaccurate. Russia is one of the top energy, fertilizer and grains producers in the world. Have you thought of the consequences for those poor countries that are not involved in this war but have to endure food shortage?
Firstly: a really excellent piece of reporting, much appreciated.
Now for the reply:
Was your number 1 ever an option? I do know that in the peace talks in Turkey this was proposed but later dropped. Unclear why.
It seems possible that a coalition of the US and the Ukrainian far right scuppered the effort: the NATO fighting to the last Ukrainian scenario.
It was also very suspicious when Denis Kireev a negotiator was shot at the beginning of March while “resisting arrest”. Maybe he was actually in favour of peace?
You would ask yourself whether Ukrainians have any says after taking so much money and weapons from US and NATO. It seems that they have been hijacked and have to fight until the “last Ukrainian”. Such a cruel world!
Stocks. Rifles have stocks, not ‘handles’. Picky, picky…
Superb war reporting.
Whatever era, and whatever weapons, it’s always about fear and misery–and if your unit is good, knowledge that the people beside you will stand by you.
And the latter is what makes the difference between victory and defeat.
I have not heard the MSM refer to the importance of Starlink. A strange omission.
“Toxic masculinity”???? I think it is quite the opposite.
To me toxic masculinity occurs when masculine attributes, which many women share, are used to dominate or exploit others instead of protect them.
Putin is showing toxic masculinity, not these courageous men.
Another one missing the intended irony? The phrase was used with a sense of humour in the context of the natural odours arising from a group of men in cramped conditions and lack of washing facilities, not as you’ve misinterpreted it!
Mr. Patrikarakos’ experience reminds of the book, “War” written by Sebastian Junger in 2010. Junger followed a platoon in the Korangal Valley of Afghanistan, otherwise known as the Valley of Death. It was a Battle Company platoon. During its tour, Battle Company experienced about 20% of all the combat that was occuring in Afghanistan. To put this in perspective, all NATO troops at the time numbered about 70,000. Battle Company was 150.
It takes guts to get that close to the fighting in order to capture on-the-ground realities. Well done sir.
What’s gone wrong with the comment system?
22.18.BST.
Real reporting. Better than anything I’ve read from the war. Keep it up!
Outstanding.
Terrific piece, thank you
Best bit of war reporting I’ve come across for quite a while. Reminds me of my time in Bosnia
Tremendous journalism. That’s all.
That one article was worth my annual sub. Outstanding !
fgbhsrt
Superb, thank you
Great war reporting, David
I have just paid my first annual subscription to UnHerd (have been a registered member for a long time) – this was because I so appreciated this amazing article on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Keep up the good work! (David Patrikarakos, UnHerd and all you intelligent comment posters!)
Why has this article been re-posted? Can’t Patrikarakos cozy up to some more neonaughties, hipster IT specialists and/or Karens, and write a tear-jerking article that proves his earlier triumphant contention that Ukraine is winning the information war?
Come on, Unherd, it can’t be that difficult to continue following the successful herd-formula of ‘Ukraine Wonderful, Russia Evil’.
Why has this article been re-posted? Can’t Patrikarakos cozy up to some more neonaughties, hipster IT specialists and/or Karens, and write a tear-jerking article that proves his earlier triumphant contention that Ukraine is winning the information war?
Come on, Unherd, it can’t be that difficult to continue following the successful herd-formula of ‘Ukraine Wonderful, Russia Evil’.
They let the US put a bunch of Nazis in charge. Terrible they let that happen. They will be lucky if Russia only takes the South and the East. God bless the Russian armed forces for putting a stop to this evil. NATO and the US need to be knocked down a few pegs
They let the US put a bunch of Nazis in charge. Terrible they let that happen. They will be lucky if Russia only takes the South and the East. God bless the Russian armed forces for putting a stop to this evil. NATO and the US need to be knocked down a few pegs
Truly discouraging to read such propaganda in Unherd.
Brezea can go and f himself “We are just like Israel”?? So Ukraine is an apartheid state that kills and jails freedom activists and journalists? You get zero support from this American
…
The war propaganda articles seem to have slowed to a trickle. LOL. Is Ukraine still winning? How many Russian generals are dead now? It is like all the dead “second in command” ISIS leaders from the middle eastern wars. We must have killed at least a 100 second in commanders. Are we up to 100 dead Russian generals yet?
Obama, George Soros, the CIA and Biden overthrew the democratically elected President of Ukraine with the help of the neo-NAZIs they funded and trained and installed the chocolate oligarch in 2014. Prior to that Bush and the CIA launched the Orange Revolution in 2004 to install their puppet who was trained in the US and married to a U.S. state dept official close to the Bush family.
Half of Ukraine is made up of Russian Ukrainians. After the 2014 coup, different parts of eastern Ukraine held a referendum and voted to secede. Eastern Ukraine has been under attack ever since. France, Great Britain, Canada and the US among others have been funding and training and working alongside the neo-NAZI AZOV battalion. France asked Russian and the eastern Ukrainian for sea DPR to allow their experts stuck inside the Avostal steel mill to be allowed to escape. Zelensky has refused to tell his Avostal troops to surrender and has instead order his troops to execute any soldier who wants to or tries to surrender.
Meanwhile politicians, soldiers and civilians and celebrities flock to Ukraine. All they have to do is step foot in Ukraine and they don’t have to pay taxes for that month and they get danger pay and other perks.
Joe Biden could have easily avoided the devastation of Ukraine but he didn’t want that. He wants endless war and the money laundering and kickbacks and graft to continue. He’s a war monger just like John McCain, the Bushes, Obama and the Clintons. Money hungry blood thirsty megalomaniacal psychopaths.