(As Moon of Alabama notes in his blog, the claim of a cluster bomb is likely wrong. An exploding 152mm high explosive artillery round spreads many fragments of deadly metal around.)
Steve Hendrix, Serhil Korolchuk – Washington Post June 26, 2022
OUTSIDE OF LYSYCHANSK, Ukraine — The Ukrainian Airborne unit was relieved to be pulling back from the front Sunday morning, riding a column of armored personnel carriers away from the embattled city of Severodonetsk, which had already fallen to the Russians, and Lysychansk, which was on the brink.
“Nothing happened to us to when we were at the front,” the unit commander said. “It was while we were retreating that we got hit.”
They were hit, and hit badly.
As the convoy moved into the farm village of Verkhniokamianske, with many of the soldiers riding on the outside of the vehicles, the first blast struck right by them. It was a cluster bomb, they would later surmise, something that tore through the contingent of men clinging to that side of one truck.
Ukrainian soldiers lie exhausted after their unit was hit by Russian cluster bombs while pulling back from the front on June 26. Click to enlarge
Several men were wounded, with blood pouring from limbs and, in one case, a soldier’s head. But there was no time to treat them while the convoy remained in the crosshairs of Russian artillery. The uninjured applied tourniquets where they could, dragged the hurt back onto the vehicles and raced out of the village, across rutted farm lanes to a line of trees across a golden wheat field about a kilometer away.
It was just one of the many chaotic scenes that keep unfolding as Ukrainians give up ground to Russia’s relentless push to control the eastern Donbas region.
One soldier assists as the wounded are treated outside a farm village in the eastern Donbas region. Click to enlarge
Some soldiers pushed their unit’s vehicles into the tree cover, piling on branches to keep them hidden from drones used for targeting. The others did what they could for the injured, making do with their personal first aid supplies because they had become separated from the unit’s big field medical kit.
There were eight men wounded, at least two of them seriously. The soldier with the head injury was drifting in and out of consciousness.
The commander had just radioed their location and requested medical evacuation teams when several Washington Post journalists covering the retreat came upon the group. The soldiers yelled for the journalists to get out of the area: “It’s not safe!”
But The Post team’s security escort, a former combat medic, had a well-equipped trauma kit in the car. “Come, come,” the soldiers said.
For the next harrowing half-hour, the security escort worked with the unit’s medic to stabilize the most serious cases. It was a purely humanitarian impulse, he would explain later. Combat medics are trained to treat the injured, no matter the flag on their uniform.
The convoy’s medic removed the one man’s helmet to show a heavy bandage. “He was hit in the head,” he explained as a Ukrainian interpreter helped with communication. “But I don’t find an exit wound. The shrapnel is still in there.”
The pair administered IV fluids and considered the soldier’s breathing, which was labored. A nasal tube was inserted and oxygen levels checked.
Barely an hour after the Russian attack, the Ukrainian unit starts to load its wounded members for evacuation. Click to enlarge
Nearby, another soldier was lying in a pool of his own blood on a canvas stretcher, his thigh heavily bandaged.
“Where is Cat?” the man asked, his eyes opening. “Is Cat all right?”
The others assured him his buddy was fine. “He’s up walking around.”
Across the field, a Ukrainian artillery battery fired a series of shells, barrels belching smoke and flame into the sky.
“We need to get these men going,” said the commander, who asked that he and the soldiers not be named for security reasons. “Then we need to move on.”
The Post’s security escort administered a shot of morphine and handed the unit’s medic a bottle of four antibiotic pills. “Give him one now, and tape the bottle to his body so the doctor knows what he’s had,” he said.
The soldier needed to be kept awake, he added, so that his condition could be monitored. With that, another soldier squatted by the stretcher and said something to the injured man. They both laughed.
“Here they come,” the commander said a short time later, eying two plumes of dust racing along the edge of the field. The road out of Lysychansk had been filled with ambulances all morning.
In minutes, the military ambulance rolled up. The medics jumped out, but the soldiers were ready to load their own men.
“Give them room, give them room,” the commander said. “Take these two first.”
Are these the White Helmets? This looks so poorly staged. The “victims” look too clean for a start. They don’t appear to have been in the field for a long time. No grime in the wrinkles of the face or especially the hands. In the first image the plasma bag looks more like a bottle and the tube it feeds is too long; the fluid would have air-blockages where the tube loops several times. No blood anywhere on the patient.
Third photo, the bloke on the stretcher, the sleeve of one arm and both pants legs blasted apart yet no blood on him. (Actually no bloodstains on any of them.) The bloke holding the plasma bag, his camo applied like blackface, overdone instead of usual streaky patterns to break up the outline of your face like real soldiers in the field apply it. Or is it done like that to hide he’s Middle Eastern?
This war was instigated quite deliberately by the West in order to bog Russia down in a demoralising, energy-sapping and bloody quagmire – to do to RF as they did for a decade to the Soviets in Afghanistan. Except, this time, instead of funding, training and arming Jihadi extremists, they’re giving the same backing to neo-nazi extremists.
Up to two million people are thought to have perished in the West’s 1979-89 proxy war on the USSR, with the result being the ultra-hardline Islamist Taliban’s eventual seizing of power and all to which that led.
Such is the Western establishment’s callous disregard of human life that they’re fully prepared to drag out the Ukrainian conflict in similar fashion, as they funnel tens of billions of dollars worth of arms into the country in a cynical effort to prolong this cycle of death and destruction, all the while wringing their hands and issuing pious sermons over the carnage their own actions have wrought.
But the Russians are gaining territory and winning more comprehensively than the cabal had hoped, and they are now finding it impossible to maintain the previous mendacious ‘Ukraine winning’ narrative, as the MSM now slowly prepare the public for the Zelensky regime’s inevitable defeat.
‘Biden officials privately doubt that Ukraine can win back all of its territory’:
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/06/28/politics/white-house-ukraine-projection/index.html
Hey Nico X,
What do you get when you NGO into a country, engineer a coup d’état, finance and arm an army of fanatic anti-Russian bigots and general purpose mercenaries, convince them the West has got their backs with infinite cashisch and weapons, declare that Crimea belongs to you, and prepare a full frontal assault against mostly civilians in the Donbass?
Let me tell you what you get:
You get what you fooking deserve!!!
i have 2 kids aged 6 and 9
i just found out the school has been allowing transvestites to go into the school to talk about the delights of recreational buggery
no way i am taking them out of schooland going to teach them t home
do not give money to ukraine
hungary busts huge jewish money scams
https://www.timesofisrael.com/hungary-busts-massive-israeli-led-fraud-and-money-laundering-ring/
I doubt that Russia waited till these troops were in a farm village to shell them. Russia has taken extra care to avoid civilians casualties, so this does not add up. They could of shelled or bombed them after leaving the town.
President Flamer is desperate for more weapons, even going so far as to shell & attack with rockets his own ppl, so I bet a dozen shekels this was Zeli doing this, not Putin.
I heard Boner of U2 is already writing anudda song for President Flamer, called “I Suck the Big Ones.”
#1 it wasn’t bombs plural it was bomb and #2 it wasn’t a bomb singular it was one precision artillery shell, message sent, punctuation mark. If it were a cluster bomb or heaven forbid cluster bombs, everyone of these men would be dead or wounded as well as any animals in the vicinity.
Or maybe I missed the part where there was more than one blast. Too lazy to reread and I’m sure someone will be happy to tell me if I’m wrong. Appreciate it ahead of time, lol.
A staged photo designed to push the ‘banned munitions’ line.
I think the bandaging over the top of the tunic is the biggest give away that this is staged propaganda footage.