Russian Plans to Free Ukraine From the Tyranny of Democracy

"If our guys in the East need backup and support, we are ready to do that."

"We are defending our land. It's important that we didn't go to anyone else's country. They came here and they are killing our women and children."

"So we are ready to fight and defend to the last one of us."

Hulk ('Hedgehog' pseudonym), 32, Irpin, Kyiv outskirts

"This is an artillery war now."

"Everything now depends on what [the West] gives us."

"Ukraine has one artillery piece to ten to fifteen Russian artillery pieces."

Vadym Skibitsky, Ukraine deputy head of military intelligence

"They have big shopping lists of everything they need. It's horrifying. I look at these men and think 'a third of you are not going to live'."

"You do not have enough time to thoroughly drill these guys on the basic principles. You have to go through the motions and hope that they live and learn but it's horrifying to see they are sending these men out to the front with these issues."

Matthew Robinson, Yorkshireman, international ex-military trainer, Georgian Legion, Kyiv

"The Russians have put everything they have into the fight. They don't have a renewable resource when it comes to their own troops and capabilities."

"[They could make limited gains in some areas where they focused artillery power but would] probably suffer equal or more losses [where they did not have similar resources."

"The Ukrainians will sniff that out and make the Russians pay for it."

Matt Dimmick, SOA (Spirit of America) regional director

The reconstruction of a destroyed home in a town in the Kyiv region. Photograph: Sergei Chuzavkov/AFP/Getty Images

 

Ukraine certainly hasn't been the easy pickings that Vladimir Putin anticipated when he launched his vicious 'special operation' against his neighbour to free Ukraine from the shackles of its government's free and democratic society in the interests of saving it for his own repressive autocracy. The barbarism of the Russian assault against Ukraine has been entirely visible to the world at large which can only guess at the horrors visited upon civilians by a well-armed and propaganda-motivated Russian military.

But those who lived those early days of non-stop, distant artillery fire, the unceasing shelling of hospitals, schools, high-rise apartments, civic offices and military bases alike, made the instant decision to pledge themselves to the defence of their homes, their towns, their families and neighbours and their nation. The suburb of Irpin, close to Kyiv was one of those. With the use of hunting rifles, shotguns and anything resembling a weapon neighbours assembled in a home-front pact to defend themselves from Russia's assault.

 

They still remain in their blackened, destroyed towns, guarding what is left of the homes their wives and children left to find temporary refuge elsewhere in Ukraine or in neighbouring countries. Shell craters are an entirely different civic landscape from the once-child-friendly suburb where the defenders enjoyed family life before February 24, when their lives changed completely and Donbas cities like Mariupol and Severodonetsk were yet to come under merciless assault. 

Moscow withdrew its troops when it became clear that the original strategy to take Kyiv and imprison or kill the couintry's government leaders met a solid wall of opposition as lethal as their own. Unwisely, the Kremlin decided under its president's orders to carry on but to focus their attacks on the east and the east is where the withdrawn troops along with others taken from other Russian-aggressive hotspots assembled.

 

Italy’s Mario Draghi, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Olaf Scholz in Kyiv, Ukraine. Photograph: Ludovic Marin/EPA

 

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks of 700,000 military personnel engaged in defending their country from Russian military savagery. There are reports of Ukrainians still joining the battle for their nation, motivated to meet and defeat the Russian advance. According to Konrad Muzyka, founder of Rochan Consulting, an independent defence consultant, armed forces recruits see numbers high enough to require a month's wait list for induction.

 

There are 40 international ex-military trainers who work with the Georgian Legion in Kyiv, teaching recruits basics of conflict tactics and the safe and properly effective handling of weapons. Among them, 39-year-old Matthew Robinson from Yorkshire who worries about shortened training sessions calling recruits still in training to be moved to the front. His concern is the exposure of unprepared recruits  being deployed; "ill-trained and ill equipped"; with insufficient body armour, firearms missing optics and sub-optimal ammunition at their disposal. 

 

Ukrainian troops repair an army tank in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region on June 7. Ukrainians have been urging the U.S. and its allies to supply them more weapons in their fight against Russia. Russia has massed greater numbers of combat units, as well as more artillery, than the local defenders in the Donbas have. Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images

"It seems that we were underestimated, and they were overestimated."

"[The Russian] professional army is losing to all of these people [and suffering the deaths of numerous high-ranking Russian officers, 12 generals among them]."

"Russians don't understand how bees operate. It looks like chaos but, in the end, they [Ukrainians] get the job done."

Ruslan Kavatsiuk, Ukrainian adviser for Spirit of America (SOA)

SOA is one of several groups that distribute non-lethal military gear to Ukrainian front lines, engaging a network of military commanders to donate buses and 155 tons of supplies, including bulletproof vests, ballistic helmets and first-aid kits to Ukraine's forces, "invisibly" transported in vans and cars everywhere the supplies are most needed.  

"We didn't invade Ukraine."  

"We declared a special military operation because we had absolutely no other way of explaining to the West that dragging Ukraine into NATO was a criminal act."  

"It's a great pity, but international diplomats, including the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Secretary-General and other UN representatives, are being put under pressure by the West. And very often they're being used to amplify fake news spread by the West."  

"Russia is not squeaky clean. Russia is what it is. And we are not ashamed of showing who we are."  Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

Sergei Lavrov (R) accused the BBC of not uncovering the truth of Ukrainian actions in areas held by Russian separatists since 2014