April Events in Ukraine part 2
No demobilization, frontline poems of despair and beatings, protests against super-cemeteries, fragging attempts, memory battles
Not everything is sunny on the other side of the border.
Strange events have been transpiring in Romania. A boat with explosives attached to it was discovered by Romanian officials. Romanian, Ukrainian and Russian defense analysts all have their own interpretations of what it was, with Defense Romania even claiming it was a Ukrainian drone intended to destroy a Russian ship. Make of that what you will.
Meanwhile, the Romanian government has adopted a resolution stating that Moldova will be reincorporated into Romania ‘through the EU or otherwise’. In response, the anti-NATO region of Gagauzia declared that if Moldova joined with Romania, it would declare independence from Moldova. In less unusual news, a man was ‘saved’ by Ukrainian border patrol after wandering for a week in the Carpathian forest trying to reach Romania.
No shortage of morbid events
The government has been trying to construct a super-cemetery for fallen AFU soldiers in the Kiev region. Local villagers have protested against it, supposedly because they are against logging. The minister of veteran affairs has been quite displeased with their reaction, saying ‘they don’t want to listen, only shout’.
Villagers don’t like how 260 hectares of forest need to be cut down for the cemetery, and point out how money should be spent on drones rather than memorials.
If the chance to be buried in brand-new super-cemeteries isn’t enough, AFU officers have shared some new methods for how they motivate the newly-mobilized to fight. A well-known Ukrainian marine who goes under the name ‘Night Stalker’ on facebook revealed that he sometimes shoots over their head in the trenches. He mentioned at a range of other methods, including beatings, and more specific ‘methods’ that he didn’t go into. He also said that they can simply be sent to prison, ‘where they won’t fuck around for 10 seconds’. ‘If they don’t want to dig a trench, they have a slightly worse alternative, and that works quite well’.
While the government has announced some monetary and mortgage benefits for the mobilized, they and the ~$500 dollar fine for draft-dodging is unlikely to have much effect when the likely result of heading to the front is well-known. Uncharacteristically for the Ukrainian government, human rights ombudsmen Lubinets even said that there ‘have been shameful cases’ where unprepared men were sent to the front. Who would have thought.
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