No Laughing Matter

"We go through the border in full uniform, totally decked out, with weapons sticking out of the window, five people in the car. A border guard comes up to us. He looks at us for a long time. Looks at the weapons, then back at us."
"And then he says: 'Open the trunk?'"
Ethnic-Russian rebel fighter, Krasnodon, Ukraine

Sunday, Aug. 17, 2014 file photo of a pro-Russian missile launcher as it drives in the town of Krasnodon. A column of several dozen heavy vehicles, including tanks and at least one rocket launcher, rolling through rebel-held territory on Aug. 17. AP reporters say convoys of military weaponry and supplies have been coming from the direction of Russia into rebel-held Ukraine. Rebel fighters also described how Russian border guards did nothing to stop them. Associated Press reporters in the eastern Ukrainian town of Krasnodon observed three such convoys last week. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits, File)

 

And another urban warfare legend is born. Don't the rebels like to consider themselves superior because they are, after all, Russian, not Ukrainian. They may have been residents of Ukraine for awhile, perhaps for generations, but they speak Russian, they think Russian, they are Russian, so why should Donetsk and Luhansk be Ukrainian when their counterparts living all over those areas far prefer their allegiance to Russia than to Ukrainian where border guards are so unspeakably stupid? Wink-wink.

Krasnodon has been a hub for supplying the rebels with their much-required weapons. Along with 'humanitarian' supplies for the residents of the town, not for the rebels' use, gracious no. The town with its 40,000 people is located 15 kilometres from the Russian border. The town's residents go out in the morning for their groceries, emptying the streets by the evening hours, leaving them to the rebels, to sit and drink at the few remaining bars.

Convoys of military weapons have passed on a regular schedule through KIrasnodon, lately Three times the convoys were spotted by Associated Press reporters. One of the convoys was seen to be carrying some 30 units of weaponry and supplies, all of them emanating from Russia, heading west to the 'pro-Moscow' separatists, to give them aid and comfort in their conflict against Ukrainian troops who appear to have finally gained the upper hand.

The leader of the largest rebel-held city, Donetsk, said that his forces were supported by 1,200 fighters who had taken training in Russia. Alexander Zakharchenko also said the fighters have with them 150 armoured vehicles and 30 tanks, gathered close to a "corridor" along the Russian border. Naturally, all the military hardware was taken from Ukrainian forces when the rebels succeeded in conflict, he insisted.

And then, on three evenings between the 19th and the 23rd of August large convoys of military hardware passed again through Krasnodon heading toward the fighting. They were seen again, on their return from where they had come from across the border, empty of their cargo. And this did not represent the first time that heavy weapons were seen in eastern Ukraine. Casting one's mind back to July 17, Associated Press reporters in Snizhne reported seeing a tracked launcher with four SA-11 surface-to-air-missiles on a street.

Those missiles mysteriously disappeared three hours later when people west of Snizhne heard loud crashing sounds and witnessed wreckage and bodies falling out of the sky, from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17's wreckage, with the death of 298 people the result. The separatists do indeed have old weapons at their disposal, but that is alongside new weapons, like the four Tigr SUVs that happened to have been spotted on August 19 on a country road near Krasnodon.

Covered with tarps, a column of five trucks carrying fuel and ammunition also plied their way forward over the border, returning later, mission completed, the trucks now empty of their cargo. Reporters spotted an array of heavy armaments; tanks, armoured personnel carriers and rocket launchers in Ukrainian villages along the border with Russia. A ragtag militia of homegrown rebels miraculously coming into possession like manna from heaven, of modern weaponry.

How providential....