Ukrainian Soldier Quotes

Take these sunflower seeds and put them in your pockets' said one Ukrainian woman to a Russian soldier on her street, 'At least when you die, something will grow.' Others ask soldiers, 'How do you explain to your mother why you are here?' The soldiers are disheartened, no shock and awe, no Zelenskyy slinking off to another country, not what Putin expected.

For twenty years, Peter had been playing with soldiers; first toys, then boys, then grown men. His games had grown from drills involving a few hundred idle stable boys and falconers to 30,000 men involved in the assault and defense of the river fort of Pressburg. Now, seeking the excitement of real combat, he looked for a fortress to besiege, and Azov, isolated at the bottom of the Ukrainian steppe, suited admirably.

Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion had good, solid, professional noncoms, and its troops had served together for a long time. It was a good rifle company and I was happy to get it. Captain Diduryk was twenty-seven years old, a native-born Ukrainian who had come to the United States with his family in 1950. He was an ROTC graduate of St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, New Jersey, and was commissioned in July of 1960. He had completed paratrooper and Ranger training and had served tours in Germany and at Fort Benning. Diduryk was married and the father of two children. He was with his mortar platoon at Plei Me camp when he got the word by radio of his company’s new mission.

The Soviet Union’s record before, during, and after the war isn’t pretty, so it’s easy to forget that in the early days of World War II, they were the underdog. The Third Reich regarded Russians and Ukrainians as racial undesirables fit only to be exterminated; Soviet soldiers were routinely slaughtered or starved if they were taken prisoner, unlike the more by-the-book treatment of French and English POWs. The Russians responded with equal savagery once the tide turned in their favor, but at the beginning of Germany’s terrifying and overwhelming invasion, all the under-equipped Red Army could do was mount a fighting retreat, letting the harsh terrain and Russian winter do to Hitler what it had done to Napoleon. That strategy came at a horrifying cost: millions of Soviets died wearing down the German advance. And many of those front-line lives at stake were women.

Edinolochniks [individual peasant farmers] are whitewashing their khatas [simple Ukrainian houses]. They look at us with a challenge in their eyes: ‘It’s Easter.’ The implication behind this strange remark in autumn was the hint that they were celebrating the arrival of the most joyful moment of the year. Some historians have suggested that the Germans, with black crosses on their vehicles, were seen as bringing Christian liberation to a population oppressed by Soviet atheism. Many Ukrainians did welcome the Germans with bread and salt, and many Ukrainian girls consorted cheerfully with German soldiers. It is hard to gauge the scale of this phenomenon in statistical terms, but it is significant that the Abwehr, the Germany Army intelligence department, recommended that an army of a million Ukrainians should be raised to fight the Red Army. This was firmly rejected by Hitler who was horrified at the suggestion of Slavs fighting in Wehrmacht uniform.

The Russians-especially the Ukrainians-are very gay and hospitable, and ready to celebrate almost any occasion. I remember several pleasant gatherings at the homes of these enthusiastic people, during which everyone managed to forget the rivalries of the war. And I remember the girls, shouting with laughter when they had every reason to hate us-on another human scale altogether from the affected Parisian beauty, obsessed by her appearance and her cosmetics.

The Battle of Konotop, fought near the present-day Russo-Ukrainian border in June 1659, ended in a spectacular victory for Vyhovsky. The Muscovite army, approximately 70,000 strong, was defeated, up to 15,000 soldiers were killed, and the flower of the Muscovite cavalry was annihilated. The Tatars moved on, pillaging the southern borderlands of Muscovy. Rumors filled Moscow that the tsar was about to leave the capital.

But that didn’t happen. Instead, a unit of about thirty1 Ukrainian soldiers wearing night vision goggles rode quad bikes through the forests around the capital that evening. They dismounted near the column’s head and launched jerry-rigged drones equipped with small explosives. These took out a handful of lead vehicles. Those disabled vehicles then clogged up the central road. Surrounding fields were muddy and impassable. The column, facing freezing weather and faltering supply lines, ground to a halt. Then the same small unit of drone operators managed to blow up a critical supply base using the same tactics, depriving the Russian army of fuel and food.

Principles are the first thing dictators attack. Various “Putins” around the world are undermining principles in their societies through propaganda and repression so that people cannot stand up for what they believe in. And then, when the dictatorship gains strength and resources, it tries to export its lack of principles, creating gray zones devoid of values. Europe has had to face this many times. Now we are experiencing another defining moment. Russia is trying to convince nations that it is easy to compromise principles—that they can ignore international law and turn a blind eye to injustice if it will supposedly bring stability. This is Moscow's main message - Putin invites everyone to forget about their principles, to show no resolve, to give up Ukrainian land and people, and then, he says, Russian bombing will stop. But throughout history, every time such agreements have been made, the threat has returned even stronger. Today, we have a chance to win in Eastern Europe so that we don't have to fight on the northern or other eastern fronts—in the Baltic states and Poland, or in the south—in the Balkans, where it is easy to ignite a conflict, or in African countries, whose problems are much closer to European societies than it may seem. We have to stand up for international law and the values on which our societies are built. We must be decisive. People matter. The law matters. State borders and the right of every nation to determine its own future matters. And while we know that Putin is threatening leaders and countries who can help us force Russia to peace, we must not give in. I thank you for every package of defense assistance to Ukraine. Every weapon you have provided helps to defend normal life—the kind of life you live here in Iceland or in any of your other countries, a life that no longer exists in Russia, where basic human rights have been taken away. We are now in the third year of a full-scale war, and our soldiers on the front lines need fresh strength. That is why we are working to equip our brigades. This is an urgent need. We are already cooperating with others—France has helped to equip one brigade, and we have an agreement on another. We invite you to join us in creating brigades, Scandinavian brigades, and demonstrate your continued commitment to the defense of Europe. I am grateful to Denmark and other partners who invest in arms production in Ukraine. Artillery, shells, drones—everything that allows Ukraine to defend itself despite any logistical delays on the part of partners or changing political moods in world capitals. We see that Putin is increasing weapons production, and rogue regimes like Pyongyang are helping him with this. Next year, Putin intends to catch up with the EU in munitions production. We can only prevent this now (...). - Translated from Ukrainian

The imperial Russian government's ineffectiveness in World War I had forced the tsar to abdicate in 1917. Following the February Revolution in that year the Provisional Government replaced the tsarist regime, but as a result of the October Revolution the Bolsheviks seized power, executing the tsar and his family, and the Russian Empire collapsed. The Ukrainian Central Rada, or governing council, proclaimed Ukraine an autonomous republic, but meanwhile the German and Austro-Hungarian armies, still at war with Russia, drove out the Russian army and occupied Ukraine. The Germans supported a coup led by Pavel Petrovich Skoropadsky (1873-1945), who in April 1918 declared himself the Hetman of All Ukraine, a position he held until the following December, when, following the end of the war and the withdrawal of the German army, he was deposed and fled. It is here, in December 1918, that the novel White Guard begins, in a Ukraine damaged by World War I and engulfed in the Russian Civil War, with all of its confusion, violence, and chaos. As the novel unfolds, the Germans have mostly withdrawn and the hetman, essentially a German puppet, is under siege by Ukrainian nationalist and socialist forces led by Semyon Vasilievich Petlyura (1879-1926), who fought unsuccessfully for Ukraine's independence following the Revolution of 1917. Petlyura's nationalism made him an enemy of the Bolsheviks, and his socialist ideas made him an enemy of the Whites, who were opposed to the Communists. The Russian forces (both political and military) who became known as the Whites fought against the Red Army in the Civil War from 1918 to 1921. Their military arm was known as the White Army, or White Guard. Ideologically quite diverse, the Whites were not so much a single army as a confederation of counterrevolutionary forces loosely united by their anti-bolshevism, and to a lesser extent by the idea of preserving and restoring the Russian monarchy and Russian Empire, as well as by their anti-liberalism and anti-Semitism. After the events described in the novel, the Soviet army recaptured Ukraine, driving Petlyura out, and held Kiev in 1919 from February 6 until August 31. From August 31 until about December 16, forces under Anton Ivanovich Denikin (1872-1947), a general in the imperial Russian army before the Revolution and one of the leaders of the Whites in the Civil War, were in charge. Then, from December 16 the Soviet government was back in the city until May 6, 1920, when it was occupied by the Poles, who on June 11 were forced out by the Red Army. Three centers of power, revealing the basic vectors of all the coups, had taken shape in Kiev: the military district headquarters (which included counterrevolutionaries, monarchists, and White Guards), the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies (Bolsheviks and other Communists), and the Ukrainian Central Rada (national-ist, independence-oriented, and Petlyurist).

Most onlookers dispersed before they reached the dreaded Umschlagplatz, and Irena stood a prudent distance away. If the day’s quota was not met, anyone nearby was liable to be seized and forced onto the train. There was no food or water, and not enough breeze to stir hair. The deportees’ meager belongings were bundled up in sheets or sacks, or stuffed into battered valises, many tied with twine. They relieved themselves where they stood on the dusty field for fear of becoming separated from children, a husband, a wife. SS and Ukrainian soldiers strutted through the pathetic crowd, cursing and whipping; the sadists laughed.

The operation in the Donbas has revealed that the level of skill of Ukrainian soldiers, police, and security officers, from the rank and file to the generals, is unacceptably low. The

The war in Ukraine probably will not be decided by fighting. And so far diplomacy and a cease-fire agreement have failed. The best hope is that the Ukrainian people will seek a solution. They have experienced nearly 5,000 casualties in the war with tens of thousands of people displaced. They may also tire of their churches blurring the line between the religious and secular spheres. Russians, too, may tire of the Orthodox Church being used for political purposes, especially as more Russian soldiers die in Ukraine. The front to watch in the war may not be on the battlefield or in the diplomatic offices of Europe. The people and their church leaders could finally set the conditions for peace. ========== The Christian Science Monitor (The Christian Science Monitor) - Clip This Article on Location 526 | Added on Thursday, February 5, 2015 5:43:08 PM

As Yanukovych went underground, Putin led the closing ceremonies in Sochi and ordered Russian special-operations forces and troops based at the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet to seize Crimea’s airfields and its regional parliament. Thousands of Russian soldiers, their uniforms bearing no insignia, took control of the peninsula. Putin insisted that they were local militias. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu denied that Russian troops were in Crimea even as Ukrainian soldiers surrendered to them. The Ukrainians started calling the invaders “little green men,” evidently from outer space.

An ordinary travel agency took care of the practicalities of chartering trains in exactly the same way as they dealt with such matters normally. Ordinary railway staff were deployed to organise the logistics of the transport, plotting train times into schedules, passing information on through the system. The camps were built, personnel received their orders, the industry began. Some of the soldiers must have been picked out on account of their brutality, many being obvious sadists who could find outlet and indulge themselves here, while others were ordinary and, in any context, considerate men doing a job for work. Two years later they tried to remove all traces; having demolished Teblinka’s every structure they built a farm on the site and instructed the Ukrainian family they installed in it to say they had lived there always. The same occurred in Sobibor, Belzec and Chelmno, all traces gone. All around, life went on as nothing had happened.

The lieutenant named a firing squad and the soldiers he selected slowly, almost grudgingly assembled in a firing line. They surely saw no point in it anymore. I was sitting in the ambulance and almost ready to vomit from the sheer senselessness of it. Not out of compassion, I'd left my compassion somewhere out in the Ukrainian swamps in '41, but out of the cosmic senselessness that was about to cause these old men to lose their lives on a spring day, against a backdrop of white mountains glowing in the sunlight.

I don't receive my TPI Pension because of the heavy wounds I received in the battle action on Crete. I get my TPI Pension because of the inhumane treatment I received in the Concentration Camp. It is a mistake to believe that the Germans had enough spare manpower to staff and run the concentration camps. The Germans only ever guarded the outer perimeter of the camps, we Prisoners hardly saw German soldiers, so it was not the SS or German guards that beat me up daily. No, the daily beatings that left me totally incapacitated, came from two fellow Prisoners called KAPOS. Kapos (or Camp Police) had extra privileges, such as their own room and they also had power, For example the Power to say who got to visit the Camp Sick Bay or the Camp Brothel, and because of the absence of the very disciplined Germans, these Kapos even had the Power over Life & Death. The two Kapos that beat me daily, using a heavy wooden baton they called 'Herr Doktor' (The Doctor) were both fellow Prisoners, both were Jewish, one from Hungary and the other was, I believe, a Ukrainian. I was often witness when they dragged other hapless prisoners from their cells on to the Appelplatz' and beat them to death with 'The Doctor'. So whenever I meet a ' Camp survivor' now, I look him deeply in the eyes to see what sort of a 'survivor' they are....whether they were really a Prisoner just like me, or whether they were one of the many 'Privileged' ones who survived the warbeing more inhumane to other Prisoners than the Germans ever were. As a matter of fact, it was a German SS Soldier who saved my life after the Kapos, who after beating me sent me outside the camp on a work detail, with a dangerously poisoned leg. The SS Soldier walking by, saw my mates helping me, came over and then gave me his medical kit. I now look deeply into the eyes of the 'survivors', because I know that not all Concentration Campsurvivors were innocent victims. I know that a lot of the Prisoners were brutal and inhumane criminals.The world has never been told the whole truth about what life in the Camps was like. All we ever hear or read in the media is , how bad the German guards were and how badly they treated their Prisoners. I was in more than 8 POW Camps and a Concentration Camp, so who would know the truth? Me or the Media !!

Tomorrow you are going to Ukraine to fuck up some shit,” a Russian commander told Corporal Nikita Chabin, a twenty-seven-year-old soldier in a unit posted on the Belarusian- Ukrainian border. The “shit” happened to be radioactive. That task force moved not only between the Chernobyl exclusion zone and the Prypiat marshes to the west of it but also through the exclusion zone itself.