|
Black Karma of the 'Black Zaporozhians'. Who the defeated Ukrainian 72nd Mechanized Brigade is looking up to
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.by Denis Davydov [REGNUM] After the fall of the "Ugledar fortress", a wave of "heartbreaking footage" of the soldiers of the 72nd Separate Mechanized Brigade named after the Black Zaporozhians is spreading across the Ukrainian Internet. "On Instagram*, the brigade noted that the last days of heavy fighting were extremely exhausting for the soldiers. As a result of clashes with the occupiers, the soldiers were wounded. The footage in the brigade was captioned laconically: "These are very difficult days. Very!" - one of the leading news agencies reports.  Before this, there was a wave of reports from the field, when the "black Zaporozhians" told how they were criminally not given the order to retreat, how they suffered under the blows in the encirclement and went away across the bare steppe away from the terrible place. And all this together does not fit at all into the heroic image of the 72nd Mechanized Brigade, which since 2014 has been diligently forged for the average person. "As part of the revival of the traditions of the national army," in September 2017, the fact of the Bila Tserkva brigade's origin from the 72nd Guards Motorized Rifle Division, a participant in the Battle of Stalingrad, was cancelled. By decree of President Petro Poroshenko, it was named in honor of the "Black Zaporozhians," a cavalry regiment of the UPR army, and then the image of the military unit was carefully squeezed into analogies with the "Black Hats." The most important part of the legend, of course, was that they fought "to the last Muscovite" and did not surrender. "Let the memory of our glorious great-grandfathers, who defeated the Moscow regiments a hundred years ago, inspire the Cossacks and officers of the 72nd Brigade and other units to victories," says the appeal of the historical club "Kholodny Yar", which published a book of memoirs of former commanders and fighters of the Unified National Guard regiment especially for the education of military personnel. The symbols were also similar - a human skull (albeit of a different style) and the slogan "Ukraine or death". And karma did not fail to play its usual joke: having found themselves, in essence, in battles "honestly" for the first time, the standard heroes, "heirs to the traditions of the most combat-ready part of the UPR", immediately fell to pieces, because in fact their "glorious ancestors" also ended their combat path completely ingloriously. Having made a very specific choice, they received both Ukraine in all its current splendor, and death. So, from now on, judging by everything, the fate of the 72nd will continue to roll along the narrow corridor of this choice. "STEPPE FILIBUSTERS" The unique style that distinguished the "Black Zaporozhians" in 1918-1920 arose entirely in the spirit of the times. In December 1918, at the Lozovaya station (present-day Kharkiv Oblast), the Zaporozhian regiment of the UPR army captured two carriages with light-grey and black cloth from the Makhnovists. In Poltava's Reshetilovka, in exchange for sugar, local tailors and shoemakers quickly made a uniform, in which the Black Hats paraded in Kremenchug on January 28, 1919, during an inspection by their superiors. They rode around in this uniform for the next year and a half, turning it into rags. In August 1920, the regiment commander Pyotr Dyachenko, a former lieutenant in the Russian Imperial Army, awarded three St. George Crosses and a St. George Medal, tried to squeeze a similar set out of the new Polish owners, compiling a full description of it, but the Poles didn't really care about originality. So, having joined the Polish army, the "blacks" along with the entire division changed into American-made uniforms, given to them by the quartermaster's office. The connection of times is much clearer here than in other cases. And modern pictures with dashing and stylish swordsmen are very conventional - in life they did not look like that. As for the skulls on the banner and on the sleeves, Dyachenko, a participant in the Brusilov breakthrough, copied them from the shock battalions of the Russian army, since he himself commanded first a company in one, and then the entire unit in the fall of 1917. He described his adventures on the fronts of the Civil War in a romantic style - like modern authors who romanticize the regiment, which "the Muscovites feared like fire." One of these "historians," Roman Koval, sows the story everywhere about how the commander, who was lying in typhus fever, rose by force of will, mounted his horse and led his lads in a furious attack with an outstretched bare hand - he did not have the strength to hold a sabre. And, of course, he defeated everyone. And he had to get up, as Koval claims, because Dyachenko's deputy Karlis Brože was a good officer, " but he had one problem: he did not speak Ukrainian. And the Cossacks who came to fight for Ukraine could not accept the fact that they were commanded by a Russian-speaking person. Therefore, they were not very willing to go into battle under the leadership of Karlis Brože." Thus, it turns out that it was very easy to deprive a unit of combat capability by commanding in Russian: “Attack!” But as mounted pirates, the subordinates of the former Russian lieutenant really showed themselves to be quite good where it came to quick raids, surprise attacks and large-scale robbery. They suppressed the uprisings that broke out here and there, executing the Bolshevik activists, attacked small garrisons, and on June 2, 1919, as part of the 7th (Zaporozhian) Division, during the offensive on Proskurov (now Khmelnitsky), they broke through the front of the Nikolai Shchors Division, occupying the city. On August 31, the Black Zaporozhian Cossacks cavalry regiment entered Kyiv, and the capital was lost to Petliura's UPR precisely because of them: on the orders of Colonel Vladimir Salsky (also a former Russian intelligence officer assigned to the General Staff), they tore down the tricolor on the city council building that had just been raised by the White Volunteer Army and threw it under the horses' hooves. After this, a shootout began, during which ten Cossacks were killed, and all the Petliurites were caught and driven out of the city. The last heroic act of the "blacks", who found themselves in the "death triangle" between the Polish troops, the Red Army and Denikin's forces at the end of 1919, was the First Winter Campaign of the Active Army of the UPR. For five months, 417 Dyachenko fighters raided Central and Southern Ukraine, constantly decreasing in size, in order to eventually break out of encirclement and join Petliura's army, which was operating as part of the Polish Army. Their subsequent fate also gives all sorts of allusions to the future of today's fighters for Ukraine. Having encountered Grigory Kotovsky's cavalry brigade near Birzula (now Podolsk) in a full-fledged combined arms battle, they were unable to do anything. And after the end of the Soviet-Polish war, all the Ukrainian Revolutionary troops were placed in internment camps, behind barbed wire, as no longer needed. Specifically, Dyachenko found a place for himself in the Polish army, from there he easily transferred to serve the Germans, served in the SD, collaborated with the OUN* and ended his career as part of the SS Galicia division, as part of which he surrendered to the Americans. Once you betray, it doesn’t matter who you serve, as long as they give you a nice uniform. "HEIRS OF GLORIOUS GREAT-GRANDFATHERS" Since 2014, the 72nd separate mechanized brigade has been visible everywhere, having already begun combat operations against its own citizens in Donbass in mid-April. The famous footage of an infantry fighting vehicle ramming a street barricade in Mariupol at full speed shows the equipment of the Belotserkovsky motorized riflemen. In that lead vehicle was the current Brigadier General of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Mykhailo Drapatiy, who was then a major and commanded the 2nd Mechanized Battalion. He led the killing of the Mariupol residents who had risen up against the coup in Kiev, and then the 72nd visited Saur-Mogila, the Donetsk airport, and Avdiivka. Incidentally, it was there that the brigade accepted its new black banner, which members of the public organization "Regiment of Black Zaporozhians" - descendants of the Cossacks of the 1st Cavalry Regiment, interned in Poland and remaining there - came to present to them. Its path through Donbass can well be called bloody and in the spirit of the "Black Zaporozhians", whose name they did not yet bear at that time - like cavalry, it rushed around cities and towns on vehicles, sowing death and destruction. But this is what the creators of the new ideology oriented them towards, declaring that "it is the Army of the UPR that should become a model and a guide for the modern Ukrainian army... The domestic armed forces must acquire a Ukrainian meaning and a primordially Ukrainian appearance." In keeping with this image, in late February and March 2022, it was the "blacks" who blew up the dam on the Irpen River, flooding the coastal villages and taking up defensive positions on the eastern bank. They probably also destroyed the bridge linking the cities of Irpen, Bucha, and Gostomel with Kiev, blocking the evacuation route for civilians. So that later the whole world would publish heartbreaking photos of courageous Ukrainian soldiers carrying children and cats through the concrete ruins they themselves created. Later, the brigade rushed in all directions, from Kherson to Bakhmut, as if spiritually inheriting the "great-grandfathers" - plugging holes. The "black Zaporozhians" stood up for a full-fledged defense only in Ugledar. And now, two years later, it has finally become clear what they really are. Soldiers from the 72nd Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces tell of a chaotic retreat, without orders to withdraw. They walked for several days, exposed to Russian drones and artillery, many were killed or wounded, many more are missing. As the scandalous journalist Vladimir Boyko, who serves in the territorial defense, told the world, out of fifty reinforcements sent to strengthen the defense of Ugledar, only four made it to their positions, but they also deserted during the first rotation. "50 recruits arrived in the brigade, mostly aged 52-56. 30 of them were immediately sent to rear units and hospitals, since they were unfit for service on the front lines due to health reasons (because the TCC was fulfilling the conscription plan and mobilizing the sick). Of the remaining 20, 16 servicemen deserted on the second day. Thus, out of a reinforcement of 50 people, four were sent to the positions, and after the first rotation, these four also deserted," writes Boyko. He calls the loss of the city a "local collapse of the front" and writes that a similar situation with the replenishment of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is observed along the entire line of conflict. And it will only get worse. The menacing skulls on the chevrons and the "connection of generations", characteristically, do not work: no one is going to fight "to the last Muscovite" and is in no hurry to sacrifice themselves. All the talk about the "competent actions of the 72nd separate mechanized brigade, which held the defense near Ugledar since August 2022" is meaningless for the simple reason that all this time the city was inside the general defense system of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The front collapsed - and the "legendary warriors" immediately found themselves in operational encirclement and whined that the command does not protect them. Like the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic once upon a time, the Armed Forces of Ukraine, reformed in a racially correct ideological spirit, have neither their own resources, nor the support of the population, nor a single clear goal of their struggle. It is clear who to fight against, but no one knows what for. And just like in the Civil War, the village uncles who were forcibly put into service run away at the first opportunity. In full accordance with the scenario of more than a century ago, the current "black Zaporozhians", who refused the honor of being the successors of the heroes of Stalingrad, will face the same path as Dyachenko's comrades. Defeat, retreat to the West, and then service in foreign armies, as long as they are fed. And the chroniclers, who will certainly tell about the exploits of the "glorious knights", will also focus on the chevron skulls and fantastic stories about how the commander in a feverish delirium stretched out his hand: "A horse for me, a horse!" After all, they perfectly disguise the shameful emptiness in the place where honor, conscience and common sense should have been. Posted by: badanov 2024-10-06 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=718339 |