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Mutiny in Donetsk
[ColonelCassad] The Ukrainian 54th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade has been one of the main combat elements involved in repeated attacks on Russian backed rebel positions near the Svetodarsk Arc near the border between eastern Donetsk and western Lugansk. I haven't been following the fighting closely, on a daily basis that is, but I do monitor both sides' reports from the front. The Svetodarsk arc is the area that the rebels tried to break through during the Debaltsevo operation in February, 2015, and the area behind which the Ukrainians reinforced to prevent such a breakthrough. It is an area of lakes which would make an attack by the rebels very difficult to break through, and once through, very hard to defend and supply. At the moment, the Ukrainian military has two combat brigades in the area, both of which have participated in attacks on the areas south of the Arc since the summer of 2016, both attacks of which failed in the face of dug in rebel troops. Also, in the north attacks the military leadership in both Lugansk and Donetsk have commented how the Right Sector members of the 54th MRB have been driving the attacks. Since 2015, however, all Right Sector units and other volunteer units have been folded into the Ukrainian military structure, to give the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense more control over what were previously independent -- and unruly -- military units. Independent units have been charged by the rebels with raping and looting, so presumably the move was intended to rein in unruly groups of volunteers. The volunteer units have a strong political face to them. Some used German SS symbols in their own symbols, and in informal photographs have been seen decked out in swastikas. Some groups' inspiration came from a WWII Ukrainian nationalist partisan named Stepan Bandera, who was known to have collaborated with the Germans in attacks on Soviet forces in the closing days of the war. Not just the political area, but some groups were composed of criminals released from prison who continued their crimes, this time with government issued weapons. One group in northern Donetsk was so bad, the Ukrainians were forced to launch a military assault on the group to either arrest or kill the elements. Which researching a story last year I watched a number of videos from the Azov regiment based then in southern Donetsk, around the Mariupol region, in which its commanders were speaking in front of a camera about what their plans were and what was happening at the front I remember thinking about how young the men were in the video, men who were in their mid 20s planning and carrying out combat operations against the Russian backed rebels. According to the story by Boris Rozhin, members of a volunteer company within the 54th Motorized brigade refused orders from the brigade commander when their group was broken up and dispersed among other smaller units within the brigade. In nearly all military units, when they have taken heavy losses, this process of regrouping folds experienced troops -- but reduced in strength from combat -- with new units and with fillers to form a new units reduced in size but with maintained or even increased in combat power. In stories about the attacks in the Svetodarsk Arc, volunteer units have been the main element leading the attack. In at least two of the attacks, I recall reading about how one of the top battalion commanders was drunk when the orders to attack went out, leading me to suspect that volunteer units got the commander drunk, so they could attack. The amateur characteristics of the fighting has the unmistakable trait of zealots eager to go into a heavy defended area, guns blazing. It is worth noting that, according to Rozhin, a past commander from the 54th MRB was accused by elements of the volunteer Donbass Regiment of smuggling, which in this part of the world means the commander was delivering goods to the rebels while receiving payment in return. Commanders on both sides, be they large or small formation commanders have been implicated in allowing smuggling through their own lines for goods intended for the political leadership of Donetsk and Lugansk, a charge both rebel governments have vehemently denied. This forms the backdrop of a long history of enmity between volunteer units and Ukrainian army commanders. Posted by: badanov 2017-07-15 |
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