“This NATO war kills more of us than what the world realizes. Folks in Donbass know suffering and loss from constant shelling for 9 yrs since USA launched a coup d’etat,” explains Alona Adamovich, a humanitarian medical worker in the Donbass region of the former Ukraine.
“But we never see in the media the story of the lives this American proxy war is taking. They just pile up our bodies and claim they are winning something. Nobody is winning anything. This is a human catastrophe supported by the United Nations, the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, all led by American money and influence,” she continued.
“Every day we hear the UN asking for more money donations and hear the NATO saying countries must buy more weapons to explode in Ukraine while Zelensky demands millions of tons more ordnance and killing machines. They are putting the money in their pockets. Ukraine is dead already.
“That bastard that nobody voted for, Zelenskyy, is now an oligarch worth over $USD 1.5 billion, I heard, and all we Ukrainians do is suffer and die or suffer and lose our loved ones and all our dignity. There is no dignity in having no food or roof or bed, but oligarch Zelenskyy and his oligarch friends would not know that,” she added.
“Amid rampant corruption in Kiev and as US troops gather at the Ukrainian border, does the Biden administration have an endgame to the conflict?”
“Trading with the enemy” by Seymour Hersh
“One estimate by analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency put the embezzled funds at $400 million last year, at least; another expert compared the level of corruption in Kiev as approaching that of the Afghan war, “although there will be no professional audit reports emerging from the Ukraine.”
[CIA Director William] “Burns presented Zelenskyy with a list of thirty-five generals and senior officials whose corruption was known to the CIA and others in the American government. Zelensky responded to the American pressure ten days later by publicly dismissing ten of the most ostentatious officials on the list and doing little else. “The ten he got rid of were brazenly bragging about the money they had—driving around Kiev in their new Mercedes,” the intelligence official told me. writes Seymour Hersh in “Trading with the enemy”
“On Wednesday [12 April 2023],” said Alona, “the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic. Mr. Denis Pushilin took some young people on a tour to see the monuments and pay respect to the fallen heroes who have defended the Donetsk and Luhansk republics in this past nearly a decade. He conducted what has been billed as a learning tour for the youth of the Donetsk People’s Republic, which is an independent state formed after the Donetsk Oblast [province] broke away from Ukraine in spring 2014,” she added.
“The tour took place around the recently renovated memorial complex known as ‘Saur-Mogila’, going back to the second world war. It is for the people of all of Donbass in Ukraine, Donetsk, Luhansk and even Crimea a ‘sacred’ place, really, where war dead have been memorialized,” said Ms. Adamovich, who since 2014 has been the team led in Ukraine for the women’s rights and safety NGO, RINJ Women. Currently the group’s volunteers are running safe houses, shelters, birthing clinics and other women’s services depending on the region, from the Russian border to Lviv.
Youth in Donetsk PR join with Denis Pushilin to lay flowers for the “defenders of the republic” lost between 2014 & 2023. “It was a somber moment,” said one of the participants. Photo courtesy Government of the Donetsk PR.Photo is enhanced (lightened) and cropped. Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective-Magazine
“All residents of Donbass know about Saur-Mogila, they know a lot, because for us it is a place of remembrances, a sacred mound, taking into account the events in 2014 that we saw, know and heard,” said Denis Pushilin as he addressed the young people.
The Acting Head of the DPR spoke about the battles for the mound during World War II and more recently in 2014 (watch freelancer video above), and also shared the details of the restoration of the memorial complex by the Military Construction Complex of the Ministry of Defense of Russia and the Russian Military Historical Society.
During the German Nazi occupation of Donbass, from 1941 to 1943, an observation post of the 6th Army of the Wehrmacht was located on top of the mound, and the defensive structures of the Mius Front were built nearby. On July 17, 1943, the troops of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army with a surprise attack broke through the front to a depth of 10 km and occupied a bridgehead on the west bank of the Mius River at the foot of saur-Mogila. However, the German command quickly transferred reserves and SS units to the area, and on August 2, the Red Army forces were forced to withdraw to their original positions.
On August 18, Soviet troops launched a counteroffensive and approached Saur-Mogila. On the night of August 30, a group of scouts of the 96th Rifle Division of the Red Army, led by Junior Lieutenant Shevchenko, broke through to the top of the mound and took up defense there. The very next day, the Wehrmacht units began to retreat, and a red flag was raised at the height.
In 2014, hot battles were again fought for Saur-Mogila with the revival of fascism in Ukraine. At the end of July, militiamen from the Vostok battalion under the command of Oleg Grishin (call sign Bear) stood up against Ukrainian militants.
“It’s become popular to dismiss Russian President Vladimir Putin as paranoid and out of touch with reality. But his denunciation of “neofascist extremists” within the movement that toppled the old Ukrainian government, and in the ranks of the new one, is worth heeding. The empowerment of extreme Ukrainian nationalists is no less a menace to the country’s future than Putin’s maneuvers in Crimea. These are odious people with a repugnant ideology,” wrote Robert ENglish in the L.A> Times at noon on 13 March 2014. (Ukraine’s threat from within.)
After the mentoring tour, Denis Pushilin with young men and women, some of them university classmates of Alona, laid flowers at the graves of the dead defenders of the Republic.
Denis Pushilin is one of many youth mentors, like Luhansk People’s Republic leader Leonid Pasechnik. Across the Russian Federation, active young people participate in the excursions, and the heads of their regions take on the role of youth mentors, explained Ms. Adamovich.
“We defend this memory, that is the first. Second, we’ve enhanced this memory today, this history, we’ve filled it with our own history, modern history, the history of our contemporaries who repeat the feat of our grandfathers and great grandfathers today,” Luhansk leader Leonid Pasechnik said last September following the restoration of the memorial.
“Absolutely the same, ordinary guys from all Russian regions regardless of their nationality, true patriots of their country who love it wholeheartedly and are ready to give their lives for its freedom and independence,” Leonid Pasechnik said, last 9 September.
“It is our history. Today, we’ve preserved this memory, we’ve preserved this history, we’ve restored the ruined memorial adding our memory to it, and are passing it to next generations so that they remember and venerate their grandfathers who shed their blood on this land, our Russian land,” the LPR head explained.
“Both Luhansk and Donetsk in the Donbass region border Russia, are former Russian real estate and entirely ethnic Russian populations,” explained Lana, an EMS medic who accompanies Alona during the interview.
“These are extraordinary young people, university students, not ‘rebels’, seeking the right to external self-determination,” explains Ukrainian Alona Adamovich, humanitarian worker like some of those on this tour of learning and mourning. Photo courtesy Government of the Donetsk PR.Photo is cropped. Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective-Magazine