Surrounded and low on ammo, the elite troops out to spoil Putin’s New Year
www.thetimes.co.uk
One of Ukraine’s finest brigades has been sent to defend the key city of Avdiivka. Without more gear their chances are dwindling, they tell Maxim Tucker

archived https://archive.ph/CKroW

Some key points from it:

The war in Ukraine is at a critical moment. The fall of Avdiivka would mean Ukrainian forces fall back to the reservoirs of Karlivka and the heights at Ocheretyne. Karlivka supplies water to the remaining Ukrainian-held territory in the Donbas, with any battle there severely disrupting its flow. Seizing the heights at Ocheretyne, two miles away, would allow the Russians to begin razing Myrnohrad, a city of 50,000. Unless the West provides brigades like the 47th with ammunition, they will be unable to stop Putin’s troops. The Russians could run on to Dnipro, with a population of one million, and sweep north towards Kyiv, cutting off Ukraine’s army in the Donbas.

Holding Avdiivka is also key to maintaining morale. Its defence is a tribute to the thousands of soldiers who have died there since Russia’s hybrid invasion of 2014. And the Ukrainian positions here are a dagger at the throat of the occupied city of Donetsk, which is central to any future Ukrainian counteroffensive to recover the Donbas region.

“It’s a shitty situation,” Sausage said. The shell shortage forces soldiers like Sergeant Taras “Fizruk”, a 31-year-old mortar gunner, also from the 2nd Battalion, to make impossible life and death decisions. “We had ten times more ammunition over summer, and better quality,” he said. “American rounds come in batches of almost identical weights, which makes it easier to correct fire, with very few duds. Now we have shells from all over the world with different qualities and we only get 15 for three days. Last week we got a batch full of duds.”

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆OP
      31·
      7 months ago

      It’s an interesting phenomenon for sure. People grow up in an environment where they’re constantly bombarded with this sort of soft propaganda, and it necessarily ends up shaping how they think about the world. And understanding that this is fiction at an intellectual level doesn’t appear to make much of a difference. This becomes a subconscious bias that people simply aren’t aware of.