Russia is depopulating parts of eastern Ukraine, forcibly removing thousands into remote parts of Russia
Washington (CNN) Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been processed through a series of Russian “filtration camps” in Eastern Ukraine and sent into Russia as part of a systemized program of forced removal, according to four sources familiar with the latest Western intelligence – an estimate far higher than US officials have publicly disclosed.
After being detained in camps operated by Russian intelligence officials, many Ukrainians are then forcibly relocated to economically depressed areas in Russia, in some cases thousands of miles from their homes, and often left with no means of returning, sources said.
Although some Ukrainians have voluntarily entered filtration camps to try to escape the fighting by entering Russia, many have been picked up against their will at check points and in bomb shelters. After spending an average of around three weeks at the camps — where sources and eyewitnesses say they are held in inhuman conditions, interrogated and sometimes tortured – some are sent across the border into Russia and given state documentation.
From checkpoints in Rostov and other Russian towns, many Ukrainians are then relocated to far-flung corners across Russia, the sources said. In some cases, Ukrainians have been sent to Sakhalin Island, a distant spit in the Pacific Ocean on Russia’s far east — 10,000 miles from the Ukrainian border. If they are fortunate, sources tell CNN, Russia will provide housing in residential areas and perhaps a Russian SIM card and a small amount of money.
Others are simply dropped off with nothing and expected to survive on their own. Still other Ukrainians are stuck in filtration camps inside Russia, close to their own homes, with no way to leave, other sources added.
Taken together, western intelligence reporting described by CNN sources offers new details that go beyond scattered eyewitness accounts from the region and paints a disturbing picture of a comprehensive resettlement process.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/26/politics/ukraine-filtration-camps-forcibly-remove-russia/index.html
Comment: The title phrase is “to Siberia” in Lithuanian. It was seared into my mind as I read a letter to my grandfather from his brother still in Lithuania. It was to inform my grandfather that his other brother was sent to Siberia. The letter was written in the late 1950s. I read it in the early 1960s. That phrase remains seared into my mind.
My great uncle wasn’t part of the mass deportations from Lithuania when some 280,000 Lithuanians were deported to remote settlements, labor camps and Gulags across Siberia. He was deported to a Gulag for his dissident activities. He was never heard from again.
Deportation was a widespread Soviet practice across the Baltics and Poland. Many Finns and Germans also ended up in Siberia on orders from Moscow. The Tatars were deported from Crimea. Other peoples within Moscow’s reach were sent to Siberia in even larger numbers. In 1956, Nikita Khrushchev declared that the earlier massive deportations were arbitrary and criminal acts. Many of the deported were rehabilitated ant allowed to return home. That change in Moscow policy never helped my great uncle. He was a troublemaker and the Gulags remained. The Tatars were also never allowed to return to Crimea.
Now it is the practice of deportation that has been rehabilitated by Moscow. Earlier this month, Sergei Shoigu announced that more than 1.37 million Ukrainians have been “evacuated” to Russia. Given the devastation in occupied Ukraine, some of these deportations can be seen as humanitarian in nature. Some deportations are even voluntary. However, the bulk of them are done in the style of Stalin and Beria. Especially sinister is Russia’s Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova boast that more than 190,000 children had arrived in Russia from Donbas by early May, including about 1,200 coming from orphanages in the DPR and LPR. I guess that’s one way to replace the war dead and the many still fleeing Putin’s Russia.
TTG
“some of these deportations can be seen as humanitarian in nature”
All of them can be “seen” as voluntary, just as the 3.5 million Ukrainians currently in Eastern Europe can be. Unlike the The Trail of Tears.
joe90 is tolerated by me, but he is Russian IO.
Leonid Khrushchev?
Fredw,
Sure. He was Nikita’s younger brother. What a joker he was.
Actually Leonid was Nikita’s son, but I wasn’t thinking of him. I guess I was mixing up my commies when I wrote that last night. Of course I meant Nikita. Thanks for spotting that.
“Russia is depopulating parts of eastern Ukraine, forcibly removing thousands into remote parts of Russia”
It certainly doesn’t seem surprising that the Russians would remove civilians from the occupied territory. What did anyone expect the Russians to do in a naked war of agression, leave a population of millions in place to spawn partisan after partisan? What is surprising is that the EU is going to continue funding the Russian War by continuing to buy Russian oil and gas, and that the US will not “drill, baby drill” to make up for any global shortfall (the later because “climate change” will cause the sea levels to rise and all that). Plus is would not allow the continued war on the Western middle class that is the only block to the Western monied oligarchy and their bureaucratic sycophants now meeting in Davos to decide how the world should be run.
“Ursula von der Leyen: “We need to buy Russian oil so Putin doesn’t make more profits elsewhere””
https://twitter.com/backtolife_2022/status/1530600648051392518
Davos:
https://twitter.com/suzseddon/status/1530719019581546496
Fred,
It’s equally surprising Russia continues to supply NATO with the oil and gas needed to sustain itself and support Ukraine. I guess all the talk about existential threats by Russia and the EU is just empty rhetoric. The oil companies won’t produce more oil and gas because they and their investors make more money with the current high profits. They certainly don’t want to go back to the horrible days of $40 a barrel oil.
TTG,
The US government has revoked numerous drilling leases, stopped pipeline permitting and made a host of other regulatory changes at the very beginning of the Biden administration. That is all well documented and publicized, including the run up in prices predating the war. But by all means “gredy oil companies and their investors are behind it.” Maybe somebody should tell the head of Blackrock and Vanguard since they vote the shares held in street name by all those 401ks they manage.
Fred,
US oil companies have 9,000 existing permits to drill more oil and gas wells. They won’t. Oil companies decreased production in response to decreased demand during the pandemic slowdown. Even those who now want to drill have trouble getting the supplies and equipment needed and hiring the workers necessary to begin that drilling. Those greedy oil companies and investors want increased profits, not solved world energy problems. They’re capitalists, not socialists.
TTG,
“Those greedy oil companies and investors want increased profits, not solved world energy problems. They’re capitalists, not socialists.”
you convinced me!
Joe Biden save us! Issue a Defense Production Act exuctive order now! Order those ‘greedy oil companies’ to Drill Baby Drill! Save us Joe Biden, save us from the greedy oil companies! (ps. if you don’t know if that will work call Mar-a-Largo and ask Trump how he managed to get all those ‘greedy oil companies’ to keep pumping oil at such a low price per barrel that Russia was going broke.)
Fred,
Both Trump and Biden refuse to invoke the DPA on a routine basis. That’s a good thing. We all know how resorting to a command economy works out. Trump also oversaw the collapse of oil prices and production, but we can’t blame him for that. That was wild supply/demand fluctuations due to pandemic shut downs worldwide, which Trump also oversaw in the US. Again, can’t really blame him for that, although he didn’t do anything to alleviate the situation either. Outside the pandemic fluctuations, prices dropped dramatically during the Russia-Saudi oil price war. Trump had nothing to do with that.
TTG,
“Trump also oversaw the collapse of oil prices and production, but we can’t blame him for that. ”
That sounds like a whole lot of feldercarb to me. WTI crude was under $50 a barrel on this day in 2017. The “pandemic” didn’t exist as an excuse for politicians to use then. I’ll “blame” Trump for getting oil prices down, and plauging us with a booming economy and $2/gallon gas too.
Washington Post reports:
“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday that it is impractical for Ukraine to use force to regain all territory lost to Russia since 2014.
“’I don’t believe we can regain all of our territory by military action,’ he said in an interview with Dutch TV channel NOS. ‘If we decided to do that, it would cost us hundreds of thousands of lives.’
“‘We want to fight to the last gasp, but not to the last man,’ he said.”
drifter,
He’s right. The DPR and LNR, with Russia’s help, have been building the same kind of defensive fortifications on their side of the line of contact that Ukraine has built on their side of that line. Breaching those defenses would be extremely costly. The same with Crimea. Ukraine has no amphibious landing capability. Are they supposed to send human wave assaults across the isthmus? Even armored assaults across that isthmus would exact a terrible cost.
TTG,
Then they shouldn’t attack there. Maybe they should take some Russian territory elsewhere and offer to make a trade.
It occurs to me that perhaps the easier way to deal with the Russian fortifications might be to encircle them from behind by going through the unfortified Russian flank to the east.
Regarding your thought the Ukraine should take territory elsewhere to trade for Crimea, I agree and propose Rostov-on-Don and Krasnodar as suitable areas.
PeterHug,
In addition to being extremely difficult and costly, invading Russia for any reason, by anybody, would be counter-productive.
TTG,
How so, as we’ve been informed almost constantly that the Russian army is essentially wrecked and the Ukrainian ranks are increasing weekly as their reserves and volunteers join up. Perhaps the publicly available information we’ve been relying on hasn’t been all that accurate?
TTG,
Doing that to access the DPR and LNR certainly would be difficult and costly but possibly a better option than a frontal assault; the only point at which it would be a realistic option to consider would be after a pretty massive Russian collapse, which is frankly something I no longer think is completely off the table. It’s in any case not anything the Ukrainians would do without careful consultations with NATO.
As far as Rostov and Krasnodar go, I’m not being particularly serious – until the Ukrainians get to a point where the need to compel Russian payment of reparations and repatriation of all the Ukrainians (and in particular the kidnapped children) is an issue on the table. I do really think that the Russians will only do that under duress, and a temporary occupation of territory to compel that is certainly not without precedent.
“‘We want to fight to the last gasp, but not to the last man,’ he said.”
Only ‘to the last gasp’ of the second to ‘last man’?
If this – forcible permanent deportation of a civilian population, is found to be true, which I doubt, then this amounts to a crime against humanity. However I’m not losing any sleep over it just yet because of the source- CNN, the lack of independent confirmation and the existence of alternative explanations.
For example are family units and communities being kept together or broken up? Do refugees have communication rights humane treatment and access to the Red Cross?
If civilians were temporarily removed for humanitarian reasons, wouldn’t you keep them grouped for administrative convenience?
As for POWs, that’s a different matter again.
Walrus,
Grouping several hundred thousand people might serve administrative purposes would be an operational nightmare, unless one had large camps all set up and waiting for them. I suspect the Russians are foisting them on small communities in the sticks because howls from the locals in the sticks do not carry anywhere near the weight of howls of Moscowvites, St Petersburgans, et al.
They probably have hotel and hostel capacity from the time of the Football World Cup. They had numerous visitors and would have prepared for more than arrived.
F and L –
Most of the filtration camps are in tent cities in Donetsk. Or some are in warehouses. When the get to Sakhalin there won’t be any hotels waiting for them either. If they’re lucky and not in lumber camps they’ll be in drafty Stalin era 5th story walkups.
A few years ago I was near Belgorod near to the Ukrainian border, to bury a dear friend. And no, I am not Russian, I am German. Back then the locals were complaining how Ukrainian refugees were pampered by the authorities with housing, cash a.s.o. I suspect something like that is happening again. At least I read that in Meduza. That is a Russian internet publication from Riga and forbidden in Russia. Considering the source I believe the publication to be valid
And furthermore the refugees would be stripped of identity and citizenship if the intent was permanent deportation.
Walrus,
That’s exactly what’s happening.
refugees would be stripped of identity and citizenship if the intent was permanent deportation.
What examples are on your mind here, Walrus?
That’s exactly what’s happening.
(irony alert) Russians presently creates their own future species of inner malcontents in far away economically not viable regions? Putin feels he needs something like the Chechen terrorists earlier in his career?
Were did the CNN authors collect the details for their reports, make the interviews, TTG. Partly Open Source? You recall the context of the collected identity cards/papers? Was that inside Mariupol or in Russia? Would that restrict you to the faraway to be economically developped region?
Inside Mariupol you could only move around if you had been checked by Russian intelligence, I recall. I don’t recall your papers were taken in that context. They kept your papers there too?
Were would it make more sense? Inside Russia? Or in the Ukrainian regions Russia presently occupies and intents to keep in whatever politically pro-Russian state?
I don’t believe any of this. It’s likely about as true as the story of Iraqi WMDs, or the Syrian moderate rebels narrative, or Russian bounties in Afghanistan story, which is to say: mostly fabricated.
Klapper,
So Shoigu and Lvova-Belova are making this up? They’re boasting about these deportations.
They’re boasting about forced relocation to Siberia?
I have no doubt that fighting aged males are being held in filtration camps. I have not seen any indications anywhere that women and children are being held in filtration camps … although it is possible and I would be very interested to see any references that indicate that it is the case. That said, are we not ourselves holding women and children in filtration camps in north eastern Syria by means of our proxies there?
I personally think that women and children should be afforded freedom of movement. Even if a woman was married to an ISIS fighter, if she has UK citizenship she should be allowed to move back to the UK. Fighting aged males should be treated according to a different set of rules than those for women and children.
“He was a troublemaker” God bless him. My father’s older brother, from whom I take my middle name, was shot in the back of the neck by a communist in Italy after the end of WWII. My wife grew up in a little village a bicycle ride from South Vietnam and was in Phnom Penh when Angkar declared day 1. As the Colonel noted, armies and intelligence agencies seldom change unless completely uprooted, so the Russian is likely going to regress to the Soviet and the Gulags.
Didn’t CNN tell us for 4 years that Trump was a Russian agent?
Didn’t CNN tell us that George Floyd was a victim of racist violence?
Didn’t CNN lie to us about Jesse Smollett, Kyle Rittenhouse and Nick Sandmann?
Didn’t CNN tell us that we were all going to die from the flu?
Didn’t CNN tell us that the moron in the Whitehouse got more votes than any candidate in history?
Didn’t CNN tell us that the protests on January 6 were an “insurrection”?
TTG How many times do you have to be lied to before you wake up and smell the coffee?
Russia is depopulating parts of eastern Ukraine, forcibly removing thousands into remote parts of Russia
A CNN report based on sources and eyewitnesses and anonymous Western intelligence is the thinnest form of gruel.
This type of “reporting” is simply a continuation of the psychological warfare operation that is used as the sole source in Western commercial media – ie a tissue paper thin ruse used to demonize and bash anything/everything Russian or which ever nation happens to be the enemy du jour (eg China, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, North Korea, etal).
It is clear the group that is running this psy-op is intent on tarring Russia as the USSR reincarnate and brazenly attempting to equate the term filtration camp with that of concentration camp – please.
The fact of the matter is that war unfortunately creates refugees (as Europe, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt can recently attest).
Italicized/bold text was excerpted from a Pew Research Center report titled:
Most displaced Syrians are in the Middle East, and about a million are in Europe
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/29/where-displaced-syrians-have-resettled/
Italicized/bold text was excerpted from a United Nations Refugee Agency report titled:
DESPERATE JOURNEYS Refugees and migrants arriving in Europe and at Europe’s borders
https://www.unhcr.org/desperatejourneys/
Italicized/bold text was excerpted from an Amnesty International report titled:
Libya/EU: Conditions remain ‘hellish’ as EU marks 5 years of cooperation agreements
The number of people intercepted at sea and returned to Libya in the last five years is over 82 000. Men, women and children returned to Libya face arbitrary detention, torture, cruel and inhuman detention conditions, rape and sexual violence, extortion, forced labour and unlawful killings.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/01/libya-eu-conditions-remain-hellish-as-eu-marks-5-years-of-cooperation-agreements/
Italicized/bold text was excerpted from a Watson Institute report found at Brown University titled:
Costs of War Refugees & Health
The U.S. post-9/11 wars have displaced at least 38 million people in and from eight countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya, and Syria
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/refugees
Italicized text below was excerpted from CNN’s “report”:
Lokshina, the Human Rights Watch official, said hundreds of Ukrainian men were taken from Mariupol and have been held in two eastern Ukrainian towns, Bezimenne and Kazatsoe. Some have been there for more than a month, held in school buildings and a local event hall.
These fellows should count their lucky blessings they are not residing in a nation the US was conducting a counterinsurgency campaign within as they would be considered military aged men (MAMs) and potentially targeted for assassination via drone strike – using the US’s signature strike doctrine which is based solely upon a MAMs observed behavior – so much for due process and rules based international order.
Detained Ukrainians are able to use their cell phones when they get Wi-Fi, she said.
The horror! Being able to use your cell phone while being detained – terrible even.
“They are fearful that so-called DNR will forcibly draft them to serve in their armed forces,” she said, using an acronym to refer to the self-proclaimed breakaway eastern territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic.
That would make for a very effective fighting force.
Basing your “analysis” on CNN reporting that was sourced from Western intelligence and eyewitness accounts does your readers a great disservice and simply acts to amplify the psy-op of the day.
The Apocryphal Twain: “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you do, you’re misinformed.”
https://marktwainstudies.com/the-apocryphal-twain-if-you-dont-read-the-newspaper-youre-uninformed-if-you-do-youre-misinformed/
War is hell which is why it should never be waged for light and transient causes (Thank you Thomas Jefferson).
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
very well said. “sources said, according to CNN” should have been the giveaway to anyone reading the article.
if that didn’t raise alarm bells, then nothing ever will.
newan
You new here. You have not absorbed my teaching that holds that sources and information must be evaluates separately.
TTG –
I wonder if your grandfather knew the Ramanauskas family from New Britain Connecticut. They moved back to Lithuania around 1930. The son, Adolfas, was nine at that time. Near the end of WW2 he became a partisan commander and fought against Stalin for 11 years. When they finally caught him he was tortured badly by the KGB (genitals cut off and blinded by puncturing his eyes) before being finally executed. His wife was sent to the camps in Siberia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolfas_Ramanauskas
PS – I note that many Lithuanian ladies are forgoing their latte and are passing on buying the latest spring fashions in order to donate to Ukraine. So far they raised five million Euros to buy a Bayraktar or two. We should start one here.
https://www.businessinsider.com/bayraktar-lithuania-crowfunds-54m-to-buy-feared-drone-for-ukraine-2022-5
Leith,
It’s possible, but not to my knowledge. My family settled in and around Waterbury and was just beginning our American odyssey in the 1920s. There was a huge Lithuanian community in Waterbury as in several Connecticut cities. I’m sure there were many with the Ramanauskas name. Vanagas was a legend throughout the community. I knew of him before I started grammar school.
That crowd funded Bayraktar was done in three days. Šlovė Ukrainai, šlovė Lietuvai.
From the Atlantic:
The War Won’t End Until Putin Loses
Offering the Russian president a face-saving compromise will only enable future aggression.
Excerpt:
… Buoyed by oil and gas revenues, the Russian economy is experiencing a much less severe recession than Ukraine. Unconcerned by public opinion, the Russian army seems not to care how many of its soldiers die. For all of those reasons, Putin may well believe that a long-term war of attrition is his to win, not just in southern and eastern Ukraine but eventually in Kyiv and beyond. Certainly that’s what Kremlin propagandists are still telling the Russian people. On state television, the Russian army is triumphant, Russian soldiers are protecting civilians, and only Ukrainians commit atrocities. With a few minor exceptions, no one has prepared the Russian public to expect anything except total victory.
The second assumption made by those advocating off-ramps is that Russia, even if it were to begin negotiating, would stick to the agreements it signed. Even an ordinary cease-fire has to involve concessions on both sides, and anything more substantive would require a longer list of pledges and promises. But brazen dishonesty is now a normal part of Russian foreign policy as well as domestic propaganda. In the run-up to the war, senior Russian officials repeatedly denied that they intended to invade Ukraine, Russian state television mocked the Western warnings of invasion as “hysterical,” and Putin personally promised the French president that no war was coming. None of that was true. No future promises made by the Russian state, so long as it is controlled by Putin, can be believed either.
Nor does Russia seem to be interested in adhering to multiple treaties it is theoretically obligated to follow, among them the Geneva Convention and the United Nations’ Genocide Convention. Russian troops’ behavior in this war demonstrates that there is no international agreement that Putin can be counted on to respect. Regardless of what he might promise during peace negotiations, Western officials would have to assume that any Ukrainian populations handed over to Russia would be subject to arrests, terror, mass theft, and rape on an unprecedented scale; that Ukrainian cities would be incorporated into Russia against the will of the public; and that, as in 2014, when Russian proxies in the Donbas agreed to a truce, any cease-fire would be temporary, lasting only as long as it would take for the Russian army to regroup, rearm, and start again. Putin has made clear that destroying Ukraine is, for him, an essential, even existential, goal. Where is the evidence that he has abandoned it?
The third assumption is that this Ukrainian government, or any Ukrainian government, is politically able to swap territory for peace. To do so would be to reward Russia for invading, and to accept that Russia has the right to kidnap leaders, murder civilians, rape women, and deport anybody it chooses from Ukrainian territory. What Ukrainian president or prime minister can agree to that deal and expect to stay in office? Russian cruelty also means that any territory that is temporarily ceded will, sooner or later, become the source of an insurgency, because no Ukrainian population can promise to endure that kind of torture indefinitely. Already, guerrillas in the city of Melitopol, occupied since the first days of the war, claim to have killed several Russian officers and carried out acts of sabotage. An underground is emerging in occupied Kherson and will appear in other places too. To concede territory for a deal now will simply set up another conflict later on. The end of one kind of violence will lead to other kinds of violence …
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/why-ukraine-must-defeat-putin-russia/629940/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-weekly-newsletter&utm_content=20220529&silverid=%25%25RECIPIENT_ID%25%25&utm_term=This%20Week%20on%20TheAtlanticcom
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/why-russia-is-wooing-south-africas-white-farmers/2018/09/23/3308a7c4-b6a3-11e8-ae4f-2c1439c96d79_story.html
Russia has the land and rainfall but needs farmers.Those Ukrainians sent to Russia will probably end up farming.Mao did the same
I have made the point before that if Putin is allowed to be victorious, he will keep going after others and this war will be much wider. I know that he has made some extraordinary moves to bolster the Russian economy, but they are essentially band aids and not sustainable. From what I consider reliable sources, a lot of things are coming apart in Russia, as they are on the battlefield. But it imperative that the current policies are maintained and give Putin the choice of going bigger and also losing bigger, or get out and start to fix the damage he has already caused. The biggest long term threat to Russia is that for a foreseeable future, nobody trusts them, nor want to have anything to do with them and that will become increasingly expensive. Obviously, Putin, et al, have not heard about holes, where if you find yourself in one, quit digging. I expect that rather soon Putin’s war management will be compared to Hitler’s, with many corresponding aspects and we know how that ended.
In a secondary matter, Turkey will eventually not afford to stop Sweden and Finland from joining NATO.
Yes Finland and Sweden have finally glimpsed the shadow of the Russian soul and asked for room on the NATO “life boat”. Can Austria be far behind??
TTG along with the Kagans, Kristols, Nulands, Vindmans, etc… have an ancient hatred of Russia.
Leave us true Americans out of it. Russia has dominated Ukraine on and off since the early 1700s.
psc,
It’s not just me and a few families who have an ancient hatred, or at least a deep mistrust, of Russia, there are many millions of us over multiple generations who learn from family experience, a study of history and now current events.
@TTG
The part that I don’t understand is why do the current governments in the Baltics go all in, every single time, against Russia and everything Russian? Is there any other acceptable solution, except for the wishfull breakup of Russia and mini Drang nach Osten? Tell me, do they even think about other solutions, because if hate is someones predominant spritus movens, then his visions are clouded.
Following the attempted coup’d’etat in Belorussia, in which the Baltic states were openly all in, the result was shifting the transport of Belarusian coal and other goods from Lithuanian to Russian railways and ports, although the Lithuanian ones are closer and hence cheaper.
Having asked the question, I am aware that this history is very complex, and that it’s a two sided story (beautifully and sadly depicted in the first part of your comment), which affected many millions of people on both sides and is full of paradoxes. E.g. correct me if I’m wrong and don’t put me in a cannon for saying it, but if the Soviet’s hadn’t invaded Lithuania, Vilnius today would have probably been Polish. Another twist of fate – the beautiful Orthodox Russian Pskovo-Pechersky Monastery was in pre WWII Estonia, which in some form saved the monastery and monkhood from the years of the strongest communist oppression.
Jovan P,
The history of the region is long, but not that complex. Russia, whether she be czarist, communist or now under Putin has consistently sought to control the Baltics. Moscow has given those nations no reason for trust and good will. I and many others thought a new relationship would possibly begin in the 1990s when the Baltics became free once again. That didn’t last long.
Pilsudski’s invasion of Lithuania sparked massive resentment and hatred towards Poland. I saw vestiges of that in my own family, but it was not near as strong as the virulent animosity towards the Russians/Soviets, even among those who lived through Pilsudski’s invasion. Now Poland ans Lithuania are best of friends and united against an old foe. Old hatreds can be broken, but only if old behaviors change.
I have seen some reports that many Russian contracted soldiers are at the end of their contracts. Does anyone know anything about this aspect? I would imagine that if they are not allowed to go home, there will be an even deeper morale problem.
Lars,
I’ve seen that, too. The contracts may be extended by decree. We have a similar process with stop-loss, when soldiers are not released from active duty even after the enlistment contracts have expired. It was done for a time during the GWOT. How Russian soldiers will react to anything like this isn’t yet known. Given their widespread disdain for authority, it probably won’t be too well. Individual threats, trickery and cajoling to have soldiers extend their contracts may be more effective. Morale will suffer yet another blow.
TTG,
You mean something like the “stop loss” program for troops being forced to remain in Iraq?
Steve,
Absolutely and isn’t that what I said? I had friends caught up in that stop loss action. I’m waiting to see the faux outrage if Putin merely follows the same policy that we did. Even in WWII, our draftees were in for the duration of the war, however long that took.
TTG,
You did. I apologise, that was only my first double espresso….:)
This article smells like pretty standard boiler plate propaganda intended to depict the “enemy” as utterly bestial….Kuwaiti infants dumped on the cold floor, Belgian babies barbecued on German bayonets. I don’t believe a word of it.
Many things will become clearer in the next 6 months as Russia prevails, which it will.
Maybe you prohibit links? If so, my apologies, but I found this video by a guy in Maine rather interesting. https://youtu.be/dLFEjXjE_kg
First thing that dies in wars is the truth… What news and official “intelligence” to believe?
Recalling a book i read from a historian what was the first the get permission to view gulag related records around the time the Berlin wall fell. The historian was a good researcher and even though there were some serious bonfires (record destruction) prior to her approval for travel she still learned a lot. I recall the map of her travels – one area she saw some children picking berries using a white ‘bowl’ to put the berries in; closer examination it turned out to be a weathered portion of a human skull… she walked the woods and noticed scattered, weathered bones… everywhere… it began to bring reality to the sheer magnitude of the loss of human life.
Rhetorical question: If the Ukrainians realty are being brought there- how do we get them back?