By Yury Kasyanov, Armiya SOS volunteer activist
11.12.2014
Translated and edited by Voices of Ukraine

People ask the same questions. How is the situation at the front? What do our soldiers need?… I will answer everyone at once: the situation is crap; the enemy is building up forces, creating multiple numerical superiority in tanks and artillery systems at the directions of impact. The equipment, artillery and personnel are Russian, of course. There is no need to prove it to anyone anymore. The homegrown separatists are cannon fodder; the dissenters are sent in as meat. The enemy constantly shells our forces to wear out the fighters, to find gaps in the defense, to take more advantageous positions, to tie down the defending forces. At the same time the Russian army threatens us along the entire length of the national border – from Chernihiv to Luhansk; from the side of Crimea and Transdniestria.

Where and how the big war will start is only known by Putin and his general staff. Most probably there will be a large-scale provocation – a staged attack of Ukrainian troops on “Novorossia” with multiple casualties among the civilian population. In response to this, Russian “peacekeepers” will get the “legal” right to advance right up to Crimea… The current limitations on the use of force, when troops are allowed to open fire only in extreme situations, and only in response to an explicit attack, increase the risk of the implementation of such a provocation, because any intensification of military action from our side can be used as a pretext for the Russian offensive. And for now the situation at the front is like in that proverb – “they beat us, and we grow stronger,” and every day we lose people… 

In the war nothing is easy. But there is nothing worse than the never-ending “standing” at checkpoints, constantly waiting at your positions for the next shelling… Wounded and dead comrades, a sense of your own powerlessness, an undermining of confidence towards the command… The righteous war for independence, which has enlisted under its banners the best people, patriots of Ukraine, is becoming a mad farce, a bloody theatrical production with absurd negotiations, unnecessary elections, with former “dear friends,” with unsinkable Regionals, and with very strange debts before the aggressor country… on the political scene of the country, the collective madness of the so-called “elites” continues, as they try to steal in the old ways while lying in new ways…

You can talk endlessly about the shortage of uniforms and equipment at the front, about the completely disastrous situation with warm winter footwear… it is possible to spend days talking about the bad diet of the fighters, about the fact that the once-endless supplies of ammunition are coming to an end, that most of the armour on the front is defective, and there is still an acute need of surveillance and communication devices – binoculars, thermal imagers, radios… all this is true. But more than this, our army needs an adequate command – commanders, whose level of training, experience and responsibility corresponds to the current tragic moment in our history. The country needs a leader, the army – a commander. Otherwise it is impossible to win.

Source: Yury Kasyanov FB

Russian troops operating the newly-supplied 2A65 Msta-B in Donetsk, 11.13.2014. Howitzer Battery at work near Debaltseve: