Russia Invading Ukraine Didn’t Count On Country’s Heroes

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A senior US administration official told reporters on a briefing call Friday that Russia had only committed about half of the troops it has massed around Ukraine, suggesting that the Kremlin is far from finished with its brutal campaign. But if the initial Russian plan was a blitzkrieg operation to immediately take over key cities and force the central government in Kyiv to surrender or else be overthrown, it has largely failed. A Ukrainian military that has grown to more than 220,000 active-duty soldiers, plus tens of thousands more National Guard troops, police, reservists, and Territorial Defense Brigades of civilian volunteers — still dwarfed by Russia’s million-person-strong military — has downed 27 Russian planes and 26 helicopters, destroyed 146 tanks and 706 armored fighting vehicles, dozens of other military equipment, and killed more than 4,300 soldiers, according to Ukraine’s Defense Ministry.

In doing so, the Ukrainians have beaten back Russian forces trying to reach the seat of government and the office of Zelensky, who counts himself as Russia’s “target No. 1.”

“It is the third day when we all made sure how powerful and unbreakable is the Ukrainian Spirit!” Ukrainian Parliament Chair Ruslan Stefanchuk wrote Saturday.

That evening through early Sunday morning, Ukrainians fought pitched battles across the country as Russian forces continued to bombard Kyiv, Kharkiv, and other cities with air strikes and artillery fire. Zelensky, whose leadership and defiance many Ukrainians have looked to in this defining moment, said that the fate of the Ukrainian nation is “being decided right now.”

Among those helping to decide the country’s fate is Alexander, a 50-year-old who on Saturday was armed with an American-made Remington shotgun and guarding a checkpoint built of sandbags and concrete blocks on the outskirts of Kyiv. Born in Russia, he moved to Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, when he was 8 years old and lived there until 2014.

“I always felt like a Russian, but in 2014 I said that I’m a Ukrainian, because I saw [Russia’s] aggression, because I saw what Russia was trying to do with Ukraine, and I said to myself, ‘No, that’s it, I’m not Russian,’” he told BuzzFeed News, referring to Putin’s undeclared invasion of eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions. “I became Ukrainian that day.”

The former owner of a women’s fashion shop described his new profession as “a hunter of Russian occupants.”

Alexander had never fought in a war or fired a gun before this week, but he said he was ready to defend Ukraine against his country of birth. “Of course, if it’s a tank, in this terrain there’s nothing we can do and we need to run. But if it’s anything less than a tank, we will fight.”

Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/christopherm51/videos-ukraine-heroism-russia-invasion-tanks

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