Shh. Don’t let unegg see your post - might trigger another tantrum about US meddling.
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No information as to who. There is no footage of bodies and we only have the narrator’s assertion that the trucks are full of them, pro-russian commentators are saying this video is proof of nothing.
Others make the point that excavated trenches were used for mass burials outside Mariupol in 2022 and the trenches seen on this video are very specifically designed…
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Full post:
Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський
Feb 2 • 12 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
In my interview for Associated Press I highlighted that Russia doesn’t want to end the war fairly. It wants to end it by destroying Ukraine’s freedom and independence. This isn’t rhetoric—it’s their objective. They haven’t achieved their main goal: Ukraine still stands. Thanks to our people, our army, and our partners.
Putin fears direct negotiations with Ukraine. In his mind, that would mean defeat and weakness. Instead, he pushes the old narrative that this is a war between the West and Russia—because admitting he is losing to Ukraine is unbearable for him.
Putin desperately signals that he wants to talk—not with us, but with Trump, with America. But without Ukraine, such talks won’t lead to results, without us it would be wrong. If President Trump and I discuss concrete steps to end this war, and we clearly define the way forward—then, maybe, after that, he can talk to the Russians.
Putin doesn’t need to defeat Ukraine to claim victory. If the world compromises with him, if he remains unpunished, he will send a dangerous message: aggression works. Other authoritarian leaders will see that he destroyed Ukraine’s sovereignty and got away with it. This is why any U.S.-Russia talks about Ukraine without Ukraine are dangerous. No one can decide our fate behind our backs.
Putin doesn’t want real negotiations. He will insist this is a war between Russia and the West. When President Trump tells him Ukraine must be at the table, Putin will look for excuses—telling again this story about illegitimacy, stalling, and trying to avoid to end the war.
It’s not about individuals—it’s about Putin’s position within his own state. He wants to show that Ukraine is not a sovereign actor, that he is fighting NATO and the West, so why should he talk to Ukraine? In his mind, he is at war with America—and he believes he is winning. But on the battlefield, despite all difficulties, Ukraine has not allowed him to win.
The idea of a foreign military contingent is part of the security guarantees discussion—but it is not enough on its own. It cannot be just a symbolic presence on paper. If they are here to protect, we must know exactly who is in charge and what their mandate is in case of an attack.
Real security guarantees must be comprehensive. For Ukraine, security guarantees without the U.S. will not work. A real framework must include a strong Ukrainian army, defense industry investment and weapons production in Ukraine under U.S. licenses, and long-term technological and military support. Security must be mutually beneficial.
For the first time in decades, Russia has openly aligned itself with Iran and North Korea—not just in secret arms deals but directly in war. Iran supplies weapons, North Korea provides both weapons and troops. This is no longer just about Ukraine; it is a military alliance against the entire West, especially the United States.
North Korean troops are actively learning from this war, and that’s a major global threat. They arrived unprepared, but like Russian forces, they are not allowed to retreat—commanders execute their own soldiers for trying. Yet, they are adapting, gaining real battlefield experience, and absorbing critical military knowledge.
The combat tactics, drone warfare strategies, and battlefield survival skills they acquire in Ukraine will be taken back to North Korea and integrated into their military. This poses a direct security threat to the United States, the Indo-Pacific region, and many other countries.
We fight, we endure, we do everything to bring peace closer. And today, we are closer than ever before in these three years of war. We have defended our state, our independence, our country. We have also suffered immense losses. I am deeply proud of our heroic people. We must do everything to restore stability and ensure a just peace for all Ukrainians.
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Bump!
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2/ 40-year-old Alexey Zhilyaev from Murino near St Petersburg deserted from the Russian army in August 2024 after nine months of service as a medic. He fled Russia with the aid of a dissident group and is now in France, where he is seeking political asylum.
3/ Interviewed by Radio Free Europe, Zhilyaev says that he had trained as a medic as a student. He was inspired to join the army by seeing “crowds of people without arms and legs, on crutches and in wheelchairs, getting off the train” in St Petersburg.
4/ He was taken to Ukraine only a week after signing a contract with the army, but found the ‘liberated’ territories a desolate wasteland. “Everything is destroyed. Everyone who remains works in markets, shops, car repair shops, hotels.”
5/ “There is nothing else left there – no production, no work … No one is waiting for us there as liberators. Even if they smile at you, for example, in a store, you can tell from their look that they hate you. These are the ones who, according to Putin, must be liberated.”
6/ Zhilyaev was sent to the third line of defences, behind the front lines, where he was sent almost daily on evacuation missions to recover the wounded and dead. It was an extremely hazardous task because of the aerial dominance of Ukraine’s kamikaze drones.
7/ Although the Russians had electronic warfare systems, they often weren’t effective. Zhilyaev says there were entire “swarms” of Ukrainian drones in his sector, averaging five per Russian soldier. Men were killed within minutes of arriving at the front line.
8/ "A guy, 18 years old, [had] 20 minutes at the front, an FPV drone flew at him with a TNT block – that was it. They turn [you] to dust straight away. It’s the same at our “zero” [base].
9/ "The soldiers from the second battalion arrived, the drone tore off a guy’s leg in a dugout at the old “zero”. We run up, provide assistance. It’s clear that they’re still flying.
10/ "They covered him with a second stretcher and jumped into another dugout saying “we want to live too”.
11/ “There really are a lot of drones. The guys once took a position and said: the Ukrainians have a 3D printer, control boards, motors there. And they assemble drones right on their front.”
12/ He is harshly critical of Russian commanders, who he says direct their troops as if they were playing a game of Command & Conquer: Red Alert. The Russians rely on crude ‘meat assault’ tactics, with the Ukrainians constantly preparing traps for them as they withdraw.
13/ "The Ukrainians safeguard their personnel. If the Russians go on the offensive, they retreat, and the Russian army occupies a point. And at this point, the Ukrainians have already zeroed in on all positions, and where they haven’t zeroed in, they drop sensors from drones.
14/ “And they start to encircle them. An assault detachment of 15 people left, three came out, the rest stayed there. That’s usually how it goes. I can tell about losses in general by the ratio of evacuated bodies of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers, [which is] 1 to 7.”
15/ Zhilyaev says that Russian commanders treat their men brutally, sending individual soldiers into near-suicidal assaults on the basis of personal animosity or, in one case, because a commander objected to a man being unshaven.
16/ "An assault battalion is suicide bombers. The average survival rate in an assault squad is 20%.
17/ “In a penal assault unit, [survival] tends towards zero. It mainly includes those who are undesirable to the command and those who screw up, for example, drink or use drugs,” as well as “those sick with hepatitis C.”
18/ Zhilyaev later met two convicts who had been part of what was probably a penal battalion. “They had a company [of] a hundred men in the Zaporizhzhia direction. There they were sent to storm every hour. The platoon runs out, the next one is sent. Only these two crawled out.”
19/ Pits in the ground, known as zindans, are used to confine "mostly undesirables … and keep them there from a day to two weeks. They give almost no food: about 20 people sit in a hole, and between them they get two loaves of bread and a liter and a half of water. For a day."
20/ “They are abused, not so much physically as morally. They are taken out to work – to cut down trees, build some fences. And all under the protection of the military police or the commandant’s company.”
21/ Other soldiers are tied to trees for days at a time as a punishment. In Ukraine’s harsh winter climate, open-air punishments can be hazardous.
One one occasion, a political officer ordered a lieutenant he disliked to be thrown into a pit.
22/ “He got frostbite on both his feet - they had to be amputated. But we filmed it on our phone and passed it on to the volunteers who deliver humanitarian aid. They posted the video on VKontakte, and the lieutenant was finally released, but without his feet.”
23/ At least one soldier a week committed suicide. Others deliberately injured themselves in an effort to get sent to hospital, but were instead thrown into a pit until they admitted they had shot themselves and pledged that they were ready to “atone for their guilt with blood”.
24/ Injured men were brought from the pit to Zhilyaev’s medical battalion, where they would be bandaged, injected with antibiotics, “and then, by decision of the division political officers, with the consent of the division commander, sent to assault. And that’s it [for them].”
25/ He says that nobody is interested in the politics of the war. “The privates and junior officers all want to go home, no one needs this war. The political officers basically forced them to go on the assault.”
26/ "Plus, as far as I understand, they planted rumours through their informers that the Ukrainians were torturing and killing prisoners, cutting off something. These are really planted stories, which then become rumours.
27/ “But there was never any political propaganda about ‘Nazis’ and ‘Banderites.’”
In February 2024, Zhilyaev was seriously wounded and was evacuated to Moscow for treatment. This, however, was perfunctory – antibiotics to stop infections and vitamin C for everything else.
28/ He says that military hospitals are “like a prison, there’s military police everywhere, you can’t get out. I already had thoughts of escaping, but I didn’t dare because of the patrols.” He decided to desert, and managed to escape to Belarus, from where he travelled to France.
29/ Zhilyaev reflects on "the senselessness of our work and my personal work. You rescue a person, they transport him on the evacuation route, he lies in the hospital for a month, and then… There are memorable names, funny ones.
30/ And when I had access to statistics to fill out reports, I look – and the person is already 200 [dead]. You rescued him, and he… And thirdly, the life cycle of any Russian soldier ends in assaults. There you either have to kill or die, and I don’t want either one." /end
Source:
“Ни о чём не жалею.” Военный медик дезертировал из российской армииВ ноябре 2023 года 39-летний айтишник из Мурино под Петербургом Алексей Жиляев решил отправиться на войну в Украине в качестве медика в составе ВС РФ. В августе 2024 года он дезертировал и перебрался …https://www.severreal.org/a/ya-ni-o-chyom-ne-zhaleyu-kak-voennyy-medik-dezertiroval-iz-rossiyskoy-armii/33255404.html
• • •
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Russian losses per 04/02/25 reported by the Ukrainian General Staff
+1270 men
+18 tanks
+24 AFVs
+66 (!) artillery pieces
+1 MLRS
+92 UAVs
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Very big tank number
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I think I’m getting to understand why Ukraine didn’t get the exemption granted to Egypt and Israel military equipment aid in the suspension of bilateral aid programs.
Resource rich Ukraine will be allowed to pay in kind under the Foreign Military Sales Act. The in kind payment would be the exclusive grant of mining concessions to the US , assessed as equivalent in value to the USD value of the supply of US military equipment. The USG could then transfer ownership of the concessions to its private sector.
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Not for the first or even the tenth time, what a fkg hero Zelenskyy is for not only standing up to this aggression for years so indefatigably, but also to respond with such clear, articulate and cogent speeches.
That last is something we rarely have seen in Australia. The last was Rudd’s apology in Parliament, and before that, several of Keating’s speeches.
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Not a bad point which Zelensky has also made. Ukraine’s army by troops is the biggest in Europe after Russia (maybe 4 times’ France?). If Ukraine falls, how vulnerable is the rest, particularly smaller neighbours of Russia like the Baltics?
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It’s not really about the numbers, it the experience they’ve developed - nothing beats hard won combat experience. NATO has more than enough to defeat Russia easily. But it would be expensive on lives and equipment purely due to the lack of experience.
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I agree about the Baltic nations. It is one of the main reasons why they have been among the most vocal and steadfast supporters of UA. All of them are worried, and with good cause, they know the RU game plan and track record.
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When UA win this war, NATO needs to hire large numbers of UA troops to train NATO forces. The equipment is evolving quickly with the rise of EW and drones, and UA is leading the world in these developments as well.
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Love this clip.
It’s a bit allegorical of the Russian state.
https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1886828862039896448?s=46&t=qXdNuWwBdpMEDBUMmKx9ug
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