by Charles Bausman for Russia Insider
In the past two weeks persistent rumors that Kiev has been hiding thousands of killed and wounded Ukrainian servicemen and ‘volunteers battalion’ casualties have forced their way into the Ukrainian press.
The most vocal allegations of a cover-up of Ukrainian combat deaths comes not from Russian media or the leaders of the ‘separatist’ Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, but from right wing MP and Radical Party leader Oleh Lyashko, and from the commander of Kiev’s ‘Donbas Battalion’ Semyon Semchenko.
Last month on his Facebook page Lyashko directly accused President Petro Poroshenko of hiding over 8,000 Ukrainian combat deaths — a number nearly eight times the ‘official’ KIA figures reported by the English-language Kyiv Post, which as of Friday was still stubbornly reporting ‘only’ 974 confirmed Ukrainian combat deaths – a highly dubious figure that has barely budged since the disastrous battle for Ilovaisk in early September.
According to Myroslava Petsa, a correspondent for Ukraine’s 5th Channel, Defense Minister Valeriy Heletey refused to discuss the casualties from in the Ilovaisk disaster in a recent parliamentary hearing. Ms. Petsa tweeted on October 1st that Heletey referred to the casualty lists from the Ilovaisk battle as classified. But who is Lieutenant General Heletey trying to hide Kiev’s true losses from, the Donbas militias or the Ukrainian people?
It’s easy to dismiss Semchenko as an incompetent battlefield commander seeking to excuse his failures, and to call Lyashko a fascist clown who kidnaps alleged ‘separatists’ and strips them down to their underwear for videotaped interrogations. But Lyashko’s estimate of Ukraine’s total KIA is consistent with numbers put forward by pro-Novorossiya sources such as Colonel Cassad’s blog. It’s also consistent with the grim casualty reports from the bloody battle underway as of this writing for the Donetsk airport.
The ruins of the airport were reportedly 95% controlled by the Novorossiya armed forces (NAF) as of this past weekend after Ukrainian units rejected offers to pull out under the terms of the Minsk ceasefire agreement, which places an armistice line 20 kilometers behind the doomed airport garrison’s positions.
Novorossiya spokesmen have told Col. Cassad’s site they estimate Ukrainian losses at the airport will eventually reach 600 wounded and 1,000 dead.
Western journalists covering the Ukraine conflict can plead ignorance until now about Ukraine’s true as opposed to admitted casualties. They can cite Carl von Clausewitz’s maxim that “casualty reports on either side are never accurate, seldom truthful, and in most cases deliberately falsified”.
But the truth is at least one BBC journalist has been aware of Ukrainian rumors about horrendous losses for weeks.
In an interview with a Ukrainian journalist translated and subtitled into English by Russian-Canadian attorney Gleb Bazov’s team of Russian translators in mid-August, members of the Mykolaiv-based 79th Airmobile brigade complained bitterly that Kiev has been hiding enormous casualties. They state [at 6:38] that Ukraine has already lost more soldiers fighting the Donbas rebellion since April than the Soviet Union lost during nine years of occupying Afghanistan.
(For those readers who may not be familiar with the cost of the USSR’s disastrous Afghan campaign, that number exceeds 14,000 combat deaths and 53,000 wounded. If one considers that the soldiers may have been referring to total combat deaths in the Ukrainian SSR to the Soviet Afghan War during the 1980s, over 8,000 combat deaths in the War for Donbas is possible.)
In the same video, the 79th brigade survivors also claim that they were abandoned by the Ukrainian high command, and refuse to concede that the forces that defeated them with weeks of shelling in the so-called ‘Southern Cauldron’ near Saur Mogila were Novorossiya rebels and foreign volunteers rather than the Russian army.
It is noteworthy that BBC journalist Daniel Sandford, whose Twitter feed is widely followed among Western journalists covering Russia and Ukraine, tweeted the video on August 20, 2014 saying “Both pro-Ukrainians AND pro-Russians are now citing this video to support their views of the conflict.”
In other words, Western journalists covering the Russian and Ukrainian beat cannot plead ignorance.
The 79th brigade members’ stories of losing hundreds or thousands of comrades to artillery and GRAD rocket fire are corroborated by another video interview with Ukrainian journalists hundreds of miles to the west, this time with survivors of the 30th brigade based in the western Ukraine town of Novohrad-Volysnki.
In the video veterans of the 30th brigade and their furious relatives confront a Ukrainian officer about the whereabouts of the unit and its pathetic supply situation. The officer admits near the end that only 83 out of 4,700 soldiers who deployed with the brigade have returned unhurt. Which begs the question — what happened to the rest? Are they dead, or wounded?
The Hromadske TV journalists, whose salaries are funded by the Dutch and American tax payer through government grants, certainly weren’t asking those questions on camera. Neither are Western journalists like Sandford who are very likely to be aware of this clip which was also translated and subtitled by Gleb Bazov’s team of translators at the Slavyangrad blog in mid-August.
Pro-Kiev Twitter warriors have denounced Lyashko’s claims that Ukraine is disposing of thousands of its servicemen or labeling as ‘Missing in Action’ thousands of combat dead as Russian misinformation — without explaining how the Kremlin could have recruited the viciously Russophobic Lyashko and Semchenko to repeat the allegations.
But many of these sources are the same fanatics who insist Ukrainian troops hold the Donetsk airport and will never lose it despite overwhelming video evidence to the contrary. They insist that Kiev could never silence all of the relatives of the dead, wounded and missing even if it were to try.
But in a country where Right Sector goons now beat opposition politicians on camera with impunity, silencing angry relatives and imposing a blackout over the subject of hidden casualties is entirely plausible.
Especially when Western journalists have refused to question Kiev’s fraudulent casualty figures and simply wait around for Kiev’s mouthpieces to sell them their latest bill of goods.
I suspect the government has no idea of the casualties and fatalities, partly through the ‘fog of war’ and also lack of knowledge of how many are actually fighting and where. This mass cemetery near Dneprpetrovsk suggests someone knows of or is expecting masses of fatalities.
I would bet they have a very good idea of the total missing of the regular army. Things got out of hand so fast that they are busy trying to hide the facts from the families of the dead. This is one story that eventually will undermine the Kiev regime, if the West ever acknowledges the truth.
In the source document in “Russia Insider” there are couple of comment. One of the comment stated “The first volunteers have already arrived at the location of the militia units in Donetsk. In the near future the arrival of a new batch of Chinese anti-fascists in the Donbass is expected.”
There is no doubt that, the world is witnessing today the ‘official launch’ of Russia-China core partnership that has been actually initiated around 2000 when VV Putin got comfortable in the leadership role of Eurasia.
China is among the top two countries that bore the brunt of Nazi-Fascist imperialists between 1931 to 1945 – while Soviet Union suffered catastrophic casualties from Nazi Germany, China suffered gruelling massacres by Fascist Japan. It was the soldiers of Soviet Union whose blood and sweat became the most crucial element (as external support) in China’s liberation from Japanese agression. Chinese will never forget that, and in the current scenario when Nazi-Fascists are again raising their ugly head (controlled by AngloZionist global Plutocracy), Chinese will surely do the needful to jointly (with Russians) smash the evil power.
With this news in “Russia Insider” about ex-servicemen from china volunteering in Novorossiya, the peoples of Asia and Europe can conclude that in any unfortunate eventuality of war in the Eurasian landmass, Russia-China core partnership will keep no stone unturned to destroy the ‘evil forces’ to establish the truth-justice-humanity. We look forward to see other big Asian countries like Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Mangolia-Iran-India-Bangladesh-Vietnam-Indonesia forming a humanitarian alliance with Russia-China and push the AngloZionist Plutocracy out of Eurasian landmass.
Straight-Bat
Frightening remark made by the director of the Carnegie Institute in Moscow (CIA officer) that implies he knows that NATO would have attacked Russia if the surrounding of Mariupol had continued just before the Minsk “agreement”:
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/europes-nightmare-could-still-come-true-nato-russia-war-over-11418
Was this the real reason for Minsk? Was Russia threatened with what could become a nuclear war? I thought Obama and the Pentagon had confirmed many times that there would be no physical war over Ukraine? Rebel movements seem ready to go all over eastern Ukraine which makes it all the more frightening that the US neocons think this is all about Putin and his desires.
The Ukrainian fighter attrition rate story is irrelevant, mostly, if attrition has mostly stopped since early September and not even the Debaltsevo pocket is seriously in danger now.
It may be that Poroshenko is expecting to make federalism real if he gets his parliament on October 26, in which case Putin really has nothing to do but make nice to Germany, etc, and ride out the clock over the next 3 weeks. That would explain Roshen opening up again in Russia already. Under that scenario, Poroshenko would continue to order his enemies into bad situations but on a smaller scale.
More posts on polling surveys please.
The defection of a Zhitomir and a Cherkassy unit sounds like a big deal because these men could never again go home to those cities if they didn’t somehow expect that Poroshenko will soon end the hatred on a national scale. That could be done easily by, for instance, passing a law banning Nazi symbols again and then fighting the reaction to that. The Zhitomir and Cherkassy soldiers must have felt some general feeling at home that let them dare defect from the Maidan war party line.
Still American neocon ignorance about the situations still frightens. They have no clue that support for Russia (or at least peace and trade with Russia) is rising in Ukraine and not, as they want to believe, that the war has hardened “the Ukrainian people” more against Russia than ever. The phrase “Russia won Crimea and lost Ukraine” sounds good to ideologues but isn’t really true via any objective analysis. It mostly comes from surveying the Maidan people who hated Russia before the first Maidan demonstrator was killed last November.
Fox News always has closed comments on Ukraine stories now, because Fox News readers now include a lot who don’t buy the neocon pov. The comment sections were ridiculing the articles before comments were closed for all Ukraine articles.
Anyhow, there was no big Ukrainian Army advance today or Monday which was what everyone was predicting. Videos from Xromadske from the Debaltsevo Pocket show women and male students in the ranks at the front lines where, before, videos made for Ukrainian TV showed professional soldiers that looked a lot like Americans (but mostly weren’t). If these women and students are really what makes up most of the Debaltsevo Pocket and Poroshenko has peace in mind, then I can see why the pocket isn’t being seriously closed and hit.
It is true that more women are joining volunteer squads to fight against the rebels while writing on social media that they are disgusted that male locals are “hiding” from the conscription. There probably won’t be a major groundswell of female soldiers, however.
But if the USA is threatening nuclear war as the above link implies, then the Ukraine Army isn’t about to collapse anytime soon and further defections aren’t guaranteed.
Some of the Ukrainian troops are doing their best to minimize losses in the Junta Forces. This report claims a couple of battalions have crossed over to the Novorossian side. The have decided they do not want to die fighting their countrymen for the benefit of the oligarchs. These are going to be ordinary Ukrainians who have now seen through the propaganda. Even better, their family and friends will know of it too.
If this is true and the move is genuine, it may mark the start of the collapse of the remaining regular Ukrainian military, leaving the oligarchs and their thugs as the enemy.
Is Colonel Cassad’s blog still active? I haven’t been able to get anything after Sept.24th….
I have come across a repeated meme that the Ukrainians have behaved like monkeys with a grenade. The reality is much worse. One Ukrainian unit launched a Tochka ballistic missile against a supposed militia base. Unfortunately the base was occupied by Ukrainian forces. The video of the aftermath shows the effect of a 450kg conventional explosive warhead. The crater is left behind (at 2:40) is seriously impressive.
God forbid one of these things actually hitting a civilian setting.
Is the US Wildly Understating Combat Deaths?
I was talking to an analyst and when I asked how so few US soldiers died he laughed. After all he has been to war zones and seen things. Knows a thing or two about how it is done and what is done.
The US don’t count non citizens, Soldiers who died after they left the battle field. Special forces which are used almost every where. Actually more special forces were used and regular marines. So many tricks were used that the numbers published were massively under stated. Dont forget contractors dont count either or people who died in accidents and outside the combat area..
But the one thing that the US does is, they do not leave anyone behind. Do we have a list of Ukrainian soldiers dispatched to the field and who died? Or who were discharged?
They bury fallen soldiers right there in the field even when it is possible to send them back but they dont. They also dont have the money to bury them with dignity in zinc coffins.
So I do believe they publish known deaths of Ukrainian soldiers. The rest which include volunteers and militias etc are unknown soldiers and deserters. After all we have seen many interviews with Soldiers who say they saw reports of 2-3 dead when 20-30 were killed that day. So the actual deaths would be exponentially higher just like with the US military operation. Like more than the 50% causality rates for US soldiers in Kuwait for the 91 Iraq invasion.. But we know only like a total of 40 or so US soldiers died in Iraq Invasion 1.
Poroshenko admitted that 60-65% of the army’s mechanized equipment was destroyed or captured in Donbass.
By extension from the fate of the equipment, 60-65% of the forces deployed with that equipment had to have become casualties or captured. I.e., over 36,000 casulaties, and probably over 40,000.
This fits in line with combat deaths of 10,000+, wounded of 20,000+, and POW’s of ~2000.
Back in July when even people here were ridiculing NAF claims to have destroyed 50 vehicles in the attempt to break-through to Lugansk Airport, it is now very clear that these types of losses are exactly what were happeneing. If each vehicle had 5-20 soldiers with it, we are talking about hundreds of casualties per day spread over the 90 day period mainly June 1 to September 1. Even 300 casulaties per day and a concomittant loss of 20+ vehicles wouldn’t account fully for what really happened.
It was a real meat grinder and scrap maker.
http://en.ria.ru/analysis/20141007/193776092/Ferocious-Fighting-in-Donetsk-Inflicts-Heavy-Civilian-Casualties.html
Is the airport worth all this?
Thanks for the article on actual casualties. The Saker has become one of the few media sources I put any faith in.
Canadian journalism has gone into full blown propaganda mode lately. Keep up the good work.
http://rt.com/business/193896-ruble-6-questions-ben-aris/
Why sanctions aren’t coming off no matter how accomodating Putin is.
Oil sanctions especially
5. Who benefits from a weak ruble?
“What it does is it makes Russian products cheaper, makes it easier to export, you can add more revenue- the oil companies in particular benefit do extremely well because their costs are in rubles, but revenue in dollars.”
http://rt.com/business/193816-germany-eu-austerity-sanctions-russia/
I don’t understand how Europe can go into recession on behalf of the Americans.
Is the hegemon so powerful that it can get 28 nations plus Norway, Finland, Oz and Canada to collapse their economies so Obama can start Cold War II?
When will a nation like Italy, Greece or Cyprus say no to more sanctions or a continuance through winter.
Lack of gas also puts a crimp in industry. Obviously there is no individual state sovereignty in Europe.
Yet they call Russians the dictatorial state. What a bunch of stupid lemmings in Europe.
Freeze and grovel to your American overlords, fools.
And you’re doing it all for 21st Century Nazis in a backwater like Kiev.
http://rt.com/op-edge/193936-eu-us-sanctions-economy-ukraine/
See my previous post. This one compares Obama to Dracula.
This is the only war where the gov’t troops are taking 10 to 1 casualties. Usually it is the reverse.
Does Kyiv Post print obituaries? Some enterprising journo should visit Ukrainian mortuaries and start collecting coffin sales stats.
How many “punishers” were left in the field to rot as their commanders skipped out, buried in shallow graves?
There has got to be a real story here if the journalist can do it without getting snuffed out himself.
Why would any Ukrainian parent, whether Galician or otherwise send their kid to be killed by these fools?
I read the Transcarpathian sitreps. They have their own fundraising for their boys b/c they know the Uki army is just sending them into the meat grinder.
There needs to be what happened in Argentina where the Desperaceidos were mothers taking to the town square with pictures of their missing children shaming the gov’t.
A Mother’s March on Kiev
Frightening remark made by the director of the Carnegie Institute in Moscow (CIA officer) that implies he knows that NATO would have attacked Russia if the surrounding of Mariupol had continued just before the Minsk “agreement”
He knows NOTHING ! Just another stodgy blogger. We have plenty of them these days.
Now you know why they are toppling statues of Lenin all over Ukraine.
The futility of this coup gov’t and its junta forces are the most inept fighting force in recent memory.
Getting your asses kicked by Moskals “foraging off the land” has got to be a bitch on your ubermensch ideals as Supermen.
Easy to kill civilians, much harder to kill people who fight back.
Bandera must be looking on from hell in utter disgust at this “failure”
Wow, that video is worth every second.
Take aways:
“No rotation, no replacement.” Conscripts have only one way out: a shallow grave in Donetzsk or an unrefrigerated cattle truck back home. No wonder the moblilzations are taking 50 year olds. Oh well, killing your youth means you don’t need to find jobs for them that don’t exist as the economy collapses (snark)
“They say 30 dead, it’s 300”. So do the math folks: 895 admitted dead means at least 9000k
“We’re fighting Russia.” You keep telling yourselves that. That’s the defeatism talking of being kicked by a bunch of Moskals living off the land turning those “trophies” into lethal payback.
Those filthy Moskals are fighting for home and hearth. What are these conscripts fighting for? Oligarchs, Nazi dead enders and dual citizen yahuds.
If and when Russia were to invade. They won’t tiptoe. The whole world will know. This thing will over in 2 days max.
I love the statement of how they dropped the wrong calibre ammo. This is the “chickens coming home to roost” of 2 decades of kleptocracy in action. Serves them right. I have no sympathy for recruits or punishers.
Just like WWI let the elites bungle the fight back in Kiev while lower rank officers are arrested for not sending their troops over the trench for one more futile charge.
NATO is gonna have to step in if they want to win this thing.
I wonder how many of these soldiers if and when they get back home will take up against Pol Pot Shenko and the other members of the Tribe?
If I were a Nazi I would open recruiting stations to welcome these wretches back “home” right at the train station or the funeral parlor.
Do you realize how fortunate the NAF is to have Porky in charge? Most of them (in the east) should/would vote for him if they could b/c they have been “own goaling” the fight since their “victory” at Slavyiansk
Wow. Just….wow!
Was this the real reason for Minsk? Was Russia threatened with what could become a nuclear war? I thought Obama and the Pentagon had confirmed many times that there would be no physical war over Ukraine?
===
You gonna take anything out of Obama’s mouth as truth? He does the opposite of everything he says. Makes a purty speech and then does evil on the sly.
He is the 21st century “banlity of evil” in action.
Wait til after the Nov. elections when some false flag will give him “no choice” but to put boots on the ground in Syria
That would explain Roshen opening up again in Russia already. Under that scenario, Poroshenko would continue to order his enemies into bad situations but on a smaller scale.
===
Is this true? What Russian in his right mind would pay hard earned rubles for chocolate from a man killing Russians?
There should be boycotts and then some against any establishment selling these “blood chocolates”
Nuland has come to ukraine.
That wi__tch tnwhat ever you say but it is clear to the world who are russophiles that putin acted foolishly by not doing anything in the 1st month of crisis in ukraine and acted as ciward to let deteriorate thinking of autumn and winter being its freind.
Now autumb is here and Russia is in reak danger.call your partners mr. Delusional putin.
a little background on Ukraine troop losses:
Ukraine has lost about 360 armored vehicles not including the Donansk airport: http://lostarmour.info/armour/
this does not include trucks Artillery, planes, helicopters and cars. Given that about 10 troops ride into battle on each armored vehicle and the vehicle doesn’t come back this adds up to about 4000 lost troops and another 4000 on the trucks and cars assuming that these transport vehicles didn’t take several trips to drop off additional troops.
As for the 30th brigade losses, it was later reported that in addition to the 83 members of the 30th brigade that reported back at base, an additional about 500 support troops got home and went into hiding rather than report for duty. It is likely that there are thousands of Ukraine deserters hiding to avoid being sent back to the meat grinder.
All the Ukie soldiers dead. They died in a training accident & car accident & maybe some train accident.
Trust me ! I am a “respected” journalist from the free western democratic media.
The Boeing-made aircraft, known as the AH-64, is particularly accurate and adept at operating in enemy territory at night, and has countermeasures to defeat missiles that home in on the heat generated by its exhaust. However, the guide points out each of the Apache’s weak spots in order to inflict the most amount of damage on the aircraft and ensure that the pilot and navigator are killed. At least 10 Apaches have been shot down in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to a tally from several published reports.
The guide, posted by an ISIS supporter using the name Nasser Al-Sharia, says that the aircraft should be ambushed at a distance of 1,500 meters or slightly less than one mile, while the helicopter is in the clear line of sight of the shooter. It then says that a sniper should shoot the crew as they try to bail from the aircraft.
http://www.ibtimes.com/isis-guide-explains-how-shoot-down-us-apache-helicopters-1700768
Perception is not the sole determinant of ability to implement.
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/ukraine-iraq-and-black-sea-strategy#axzz3EakkbQYi
http://orientalreview.org/2014/10/07/black-sea-strategy-threshold-of-world-war/
Saker: It could be 8, 10 or 20000 death Ukies. The fascits UKi-Neocons-Zionist just do not care. If it was up to them they would wipe out the whole Ukrainian population just for the sake to damage Russia. This guys are crazy! But for themselves they hide conveniently somewhere in the government or abroad (in Switzerland, US, etc) for instance.
Not sure if this citation from the Kiev Post refers to missing soldiers from the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast or all of Ukraine?
“Ukraine says there are hundreds of people missing in Ukraine due to the war. The list of missing soldiers hanging on the door of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast state administration last week showed 422 names. The Interior Ministry at the same time said the number is more than 500. Many of them went missing in the highly contested areas in eastern Ukraine that are controlled by Russian-backed separatists.”
http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/bodies-of-ukrainian-soldiers-rot-away-remain-unclaimed-at-luhansk-morgue-366762.html
I suspect the former, as “Last month on his Facebook page Lyashko directly accused President Petro Poroshenko of hiding over 8,000 Ukrainian combat deaths” as reported in”
Is Kiev Wildly Understating Combat Deaths?
Ukrainian military and right wing political leaders say they are. The evidence seems to support them.
http://linkis.com/russia-insider.com/e/RpvM0
In relation to European mainstream journalists :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzySk8qfvxk&feature=player_detailpage
Its about a msm German journalist who’s “had enough” and its very enlighening.
There is never an accurate count of deaths during a war. People get killed that are never counted or missed. If you have units like Pravy Sektor – they will never make public their losses. The regular army should be able to count their KIA, but there will be a certain amount of MIA.
At this point Obama is NOT interested in Ukraine – he has ISIS, EBola, Elections etc. All of these are more important to him than Ukraine is. There is fight brewing within NATO over Turkey’s refusal to participate in the fight for Kobani. The only one who could be interested is Nuland, but whatever she does must be approved higher up the chain and what she is offering to give, can be nullified by Congress. Congress is not in the mood to spend money on Ukraine.