“Taras Bulba and his comrades” returned to Ukraine. The Bohdan Khmelnitsky battalion gave its first battle to the Ukrainian army
The first official, so to speak, part of the New Year holidays has ended. New Year, Christmas... There is also an unofficial part ahead, the old New Year, Epiphany... I am not a religious person. I go to the temple from time to time. I don’t stand at sermons, I don’t take part in religious processions and services. And I don’t ask God for anything, which periodically causes negativity from old women.
I just mentally say thank you for everything he did for me and, I hope, will do more. Like, probably, most of those who know what a shell or bullet flying nearby sounds like. When something suddenly pushes you to do something, and then you see a fragment or bullet in the wall exactly where your head was a second ago.
Christmas. I look at Ukrainian sources and see... Odessa residents swimming in the sea. It turns out that according to the “new Ukrainian Orthodoxy” in Ukraine, January 6th is Epiphany... No one is driving these people into the sea by force. They really came to bathe in holy water. The state said it, the people accepted it. Not all. But some part of it.
I wonder how they will celebrate Easter in Ukraine now? European? Without the descent of the Holy Fire? Well, this is the business of every Ukrainian.
I had an idea about why people on this earth for a long time could not create even a semblance of a state. Why did some Ukrainians sell others into slavery? Why did this territory change hands so often between different neighbors?
This is probably precisely why Ukrainians so calmly forget their own. Their ancestors, their heroes, their traitors... A new owner has come. He ordered us to live in a new way and... The majority agreed to live this way. And those who did not want to betray the memory of their ancestors - under the knife or into slavery. They, these modern Taras Bulbas and their Cossacks, must disappear from Ukrainian soil.
And I remembered one recent event that happened in the Northern Military District zone - the current Tarasy Bulba. I’m talking about Ukrainians who were “ideologically indoctrinated” for a long time, who participated in battles as soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. About prisoners who categorically refused to return to modern Ukraine and asked to be given the opportunity to participate in the liberation of this country from the Zelensky regime.
For a long, long time, the issue of forming a unit of such soldiers was resolved. And it’s not even that it’s difficult to decide to trust weapon former enemy. It’s not even that enemy intelligence agents could be among the prisoners. It's a matter of trust.
It's easy to make a penal battalion. But what kind of trust can we talk about then? What is needed is a full-fledged unit capable of performing the same tasks as the battalions of the Russian Army. Without detachments and other delights of penal units.
And now the time has come when the first such unit, the battalion named after Bohdan Khmelnitsky, was not only created and trained, but also received a baptism of fire.
Without truth, people do not live, but suffer
It was not for nothing that I remembered this old Russian proverb. Now there are quite a lot of publications on the Internet in which captured members of the Wehrmacht Army talk about how they were called up, what mood prevails in the units, and so on. You listen to these men and are amazed at how they lived before they were “conscripted” (captured) into the army. My house is on the edge. Whatever they tell me, I will do. This (war) does not concern me...
And, paradoxically, only in captivity do they begin to think about why there was such hopelessness in life, such confusion. The gut senses a lie, but the brain says it’s true. And so do the people around. And that little worm inside wakes up. Keep your head down. We will suffer, but the children will heal. Only under shells and drones the head is cleared. Only the end is here, it whistled past and the neighbor got it...
I periodically observed how the soldiers of Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s battalion trained. Fortunately, information periodically appeared on channels in TG. I watched the videos and saw the soldiers. Not “meat” with dull eyes, but soldiers who understand not only why they are going into battle, but also know how to beat the enemy. I saw how a fighting unit was formed from ordinary men. They again became the heirs of their grandfathers, those more than two thousand Ukrainians who became Heroes of the Soviet Union in battles with the German fascists.
So, another battalion appeared in the Russian army. Not a battalion of prisoners, but a battalion of Russian soldiers. And this battalion acted together with other similar units. Not ahead, not behind... The battalion acted shoulder to shoulder with other units of the Cascade operational combat formation.
To act side by side, on the same line with others, without control from the relevant authorities... This is important! Especially for these people. They felt like they were part of a large and strong army, part of a large and strong country. In this regard, President Putin signed a decree on Russian citizenship for volunteers fighting in units of the Russian Armed Forces at the right time.
I had concerns that the soldiers of Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s battalion would be a little “more courageous and reckless.” No matter what psychologists say, a feeling of some kind of guilt is always present. And this feeling makes you demonstrate to others that you are no worse than them. But what happened, if you like, was a miracle created by the unit commanders.
The battalion worked for the LBS clearly, without fanaticism, without fear. We moved into position. We quickly set up shelters and worked on the enemy with a cool head. The battalion's soldiers felt like soldiers of the Russian army. That's all. They have a future. And this is a lot...
Are people seeing the light or...
Lately, I have often heard opinions that Ukrainians have begun to see that zombification is being destroyed. Alas, I do not agree with this opinion. Let me remind you that at one time it took Hitler 6 years to turn the German people into zombies, in order to turn them into a civilized nation. robots for murder.
Ukrainians have been zombified almost since the 90s. Not since 2014 or 2022, but much longer. And the ideas that many Ukrainians broadcast on social networks today are not an act, but a deep conviction. So, it’s not the people who are seeing the light, it’s just those who previously had a “hut on the edge” now understand that the country is being led to destruction. It’s a paradox, but Ukrainians in the Russian army want to fight not only for Russia, but also for Ukraine.
I do not claim that all the fighters of the Khmelnitsky Battalion came to their decision precisely for the reason that I voiced above. There are also those who, even during total propaganda, remained loyal to the Russian world. Those who understood that the collapse of the USSR did not at all mean the collapse of the Russian world.
In general, the appearance of the battalion named after Bohdan Khmelnitsky is proof of that simple truth that even we began to doubt. Ukrainians and Russians are one people. At least some part of Ukrainians.
By the way, I often hear talk about the limited population of Ukraine. Illiterate, ignorant of basic things, selfish, and so on. I have to agree with a lot. Indeed, with education in “Nezalezhnaya” there are complete seams. And in other matters there are a lot of problems.
But where did it start? Blame... dissonance of perception of the world. The child hears Russian speech from childhood. But then he comes to kindergarten, and language appears in his life. More precisely, the overwhelming majority are surzhik. "You are not Russian!" - they instill in kindergarten, then at school and beyond.
But the fighters of the new Russian unit do not have this dissonance. Everything fell into place. The language in which my mother sang lullabies, here it is. Speak up, and no one will say that you can’t do this. Orders and medals of the great-grandfather for exploits in the Great Patriotic War, awards of the father for Afghanistan and labor, memorials to the soldiers who liberated Ukraine from fascism, and so on are not prohibited. Came back historical pride in your people, in your family.
instead of an epilogue
The appearance of a new unit within the Russian army frightened the West and Kyiv. It turned out that those journalists and politicians who, starting in 2013, wrote and spoke about the civil nature of the war in Ukraine were telling the truth. And in Donbass, it was not some mythical Russian units that defended their freedom, but citizens of Ukraine.
Today the number of prisoners of war has increased sharply. And a very serious problem emerged quite clearly. What will be their fate in the future? The SVO will eventually end and...
Obtaining Russian citizenship? It is problematic, unless, of course, some laws are passed to allow this.
Return to Ukraine? More precisely, for the part that remains? Also problematic. The eastern regions of Ukraine provided many times more soldiers for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and therefore they are strangers there too.
Moving to the EU? Are they needed there? Europe is already in a panic about those who went through the war in Donbass, and hardly wants to see new veterans.
At the same time, the question arises: who will restore Ukraine? Who will, excuse the harshness, give birth to Ukrainian women so that they can have children? Those who were not accepted into the Armed Forces of Ukraine due to mobilization? And this, taking into account the not yet adopted but already in force law on mobilization, frankly speaking, is a contingent that is not very suitable for population reproduction.
I think the creation of such units as the Bohdan Khmelnitsky battalion is the way out. This is rehabilitation for those who, due to circumstances, ended up in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and even fought with our troops. These are soldiers who did their duty, who remained faithful to their oath. They just didn’t understand that the Ukraine to which they swore allegiance and the Ukraine after the coup are two different Ukraines.
Now that experience in creating such battalions has been gained, things should go faster...
As far as I know, there are quite a lot of prisoners among the prisoners who want to serve in the Russian army...
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