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Admitting that “we cannot win” the war, Russian Lt. Col. Vitaly Votanovsky has spoken out against the conflict in Ukraine. For the Russian player, President Vladimir Putin is responsible for Russia’s unwinnable situation.
“Putin has destroyed mobilization resources with his own hands, and now the fool is at war with the whole world,” Votanovsky said. The Moscow Times.
senior He has been detained several times since the start of the Russian invasion, on 24th February. Just this month he was arrested while filming new graves of soldiers buried in Digoretsk. At stake are Russian laws banning the spread of “fake news” about the military, seen as an attempt by the Kremlin to silence voices opposed to the invasion of Ukraine.
“My experience in opposition politics tells me that everything in our country is based on lies,” he said.
Nikolai Prokhudin, 61, who fought in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion, is agitated by the war in Ukraine and says he is not alone. “We are [veteranos] We all talk and discuss what is happening (…). There are people who have similar views to mine, others who are less extreme… But most are fooled by the propaganda“, he explained.
They are [ucranianos] They were my friends, my comrades, so I was very angry to see what was happening.
Prokhudin is ready to defend Russia from Ukrainians, Belarusians or Turks, but “only” in case of an attack.
Russian veterans interviewed by The Moscow Times listed a variety of reasons for their opposition to the war, ranging from an “unjustified” attack on a neighboring country to the effects of the conflict on Russia. For Serhii Kulya, there’s another one that stands out: He owes his life to the Ukrainian soldier who saved him in Afghanistan.
“A soldier helped me out of a very difficult situation in Afghanistan. The son died while defending the Donetsk airport … his only son (…). My nation killed your son,” he said. The young man died in 2014 fighting against Russian-backed separatists.
For now, he does not know if he will be called up for mobilization, but he guarantees that he will not fight against Ukraine: “It’s better to arrest”. His appointment cost him the post of head of the Afghan Veterans Organization in his hometown of St. Petersburg.
“I told them, ‘Guys, I’m not going with him [Putin] for war. He does not lead our troops on a white horse, but sits in a bunker in the Kremlin or in a palace in Gelendzhik with his yachts and his prostitutes,” he told a Russian newspaper. For Gulyaev, corruption in Russia and incompetence at the top are among the reasons Ukraine’s battlefield victory is unlikely. “Putin and Shoigu [ministro da Defesa russo] He did not serve a single day in the army We have a vague idea of the state and capabilities of our armed forces and the Ukrainian“.
In the most recent developments, Ukraine claimed to have recaptured the town of Lyman in the Kharkiv region. On Sunday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky explained that the military was making progress, but was tight-lipped on details. “The story of the liberation of Lyman in the Donetsk region has become very popular in the media, but the victory of our soldiers is not limited to the Lyman region,” he said in a statement. Speech. It added only that the towns of Arkhanhelske and Myroliubivka in the Kherson region had been “liberated”.