From Yahoo:
“Ukraine looks to civilian
volunteers to help counter possible Russian invasion”
Billboards along the highways in
Ukraine — some showing a furious, bare-chested man with a baseball bat chasing
a bear — have gone up across the country as Russian troops continue massing
along its borders. They serve as recruiting tools, encouraging civilians to
receive military training and join the volunteer Territorial Defense Forces to
guard their hometowns from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s army — and
thousands of Ukrainians, including women, are signing up. In fact, a survey
released this week by the Ukraine Future Institute found that 56 percent of
those polled were “likely” or would “definitely” join the Territorial Defense
Forces if Russia invades. That’s no surprise: civilian resistance has been part
of Ukraine’s heritage. In November 2004, after international monitors warned
that the presidential election appeared rigged, Ukrainians protested en masse
during what was dubbed the Orange Revolution, demanding — and getting — a
revote.
(Members of the Kyiv Territorial
Defense Unit take part in a training, Jan. 15, 2022.)
Eight years ago, when
then-President Viktor Yanukovych tried to pull his pro-Western countrymen out
of negotiations to join the European Union and push them back into the arms of
Russia, Ukrainians rose up in the so-called Euromaidan revolution, ultimately
sending him packing. Now that same resolve is officially part of the
government’s defense strategy, one that hopes to draw at least 11,000
volunteers, to bolster the 250,000 active Ukrainian troops in the country’s
standing army. This summer, in response to the appearance of tens of thousands
of Russian troops on his borders that started in April, Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelensky signed a new law called “On the Fundamentals of National
Resistance.” It calls upon all Ukrainians, whether in the armed forces or not,
to protect their country, their territory and their families. It also made the
volunteer Territorial Defense Forces a separate branch of the military, one designed
to back up the Ukrainian military, to guard critical infrastructure and to
maintain order in cities and towns during times of war. The bulk of the forces
are training in Ukraine’s largest cities — Kyiv, Lyiv, Odessa, Dnipro and
Kharkiv — but they are being organized countrywide and are viewed as a crucial
piece of the national defense strategy. “Given the escalating hybrid aggression
of the Russian Federation [and the] aggravation of the situation around our
borders,” Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine
Oleksiy Danilov told reporters in capital Kyiv last month, “this law is one of
the major safeguards, a mechanism for implementing the concept of comprehensive
defense of our state.”
(Mariana, 52, a marketing
researcher who for the past two years has been a volunteer in a Kyiv
Territorial Defense Unit)
That call to protect the homeland
struck a chord with Yehor Soboliev, one of the organizers of the 2014
Euromaidan uprising, who went on to serve as a parliamentarian known for
pushing through anticorruption legislation. Now a software engineer, he has
been meeting every Saturday for the past seven months on the outskirts of Kyiv
with 200 other unpaid volunteers, some in their 20s but the majority of middle
age. “We all have jobs, most of us have families,” he told Yahoo News. “We are
peaceful regular citizens,” who, because of their geography, he said, are
compelled to spend eight hours each weekend preparing to halt another Russian
invasion. He hopes that the civilian defense force and the Ukrainian proclivity
to rise up, will help deter Russia from rolling in, but “if they decide to
attack” he wants to be more prepared than just “simply a software engineer with
four kids, a cat and a beautiful wife.” Every three months, the civilian units
train in special military zones using army machine guns and rifles, but for the
typical weekend sessions, during which the volunteers partake in maneuvers such
as ambushes and counterattacks, the army does not provide weaponry. Some
reservists use wood cutouts of guns, while more and more volunteers, said
Soboliev, are buying their own firearms, a process that requires the permission
of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Impressed by the weapons his fellow
volunteers were bringing to training, he purchased his own semi-automatic
rifle. Brig. Gen. Yuriy Halushkin, commander of the Territorial Defense Forces,
told Ukraine’s national news agency Ukrinform last week that Ukraine’s military
has weapons for its volunteers, which will be stored near their neighborhoods
and released when needed. “There are such plans,” said Soboliev, “but right now
they are only plans.” Supplying arms to volunteers, he said, “will be
absolutely necessary.”
(Marta Yuzkiv trains with the
Kyiv Territorial Defense Unit)
Marta Yuzkiv, a clinical
researcher and mother of three, serves in the same unit as Soboliev, one of 10
in Kyiv. History and Russia’s oppression of her country have everything to do
with why she is training, she told Yahoo News. “During our entire history in
the Ukraine-Russian relationships, we’ve been forced into the position of
having to protect our right as an independent nation to follow our unique way.
For some reason this is not accepted by Russia, which is even trying to deny
the existence of Ukrainians as a nation,” she said, referring to Putin’s recent
push to paint Russians and Ukrainians as one Slavic people united by history
and language. “Over the past century, Ukrainians have fought for independence
and freedom from Russia,” Yuzkiv said, ticking off wars and uprisings that go
back to 1918, when Ukraine tried to fight off the Russian forces that
ultimately roped them into the USSR in 1922. Ukraine’s struggle, she said, is
about “trying to preserve our culture, language, faith and history. This is not
even about land, this is more about an ideology to remain democratic.” Soboliev
concurs. “The story of Ukraine is a story of rebellions, revolutions and
resistance” and a continuous fight for democracy, he said.
Other Ukrainians are taking a
different route and signing up for weekend medical seminars on how to treat the
wounded on the battlefield or to administer emergency procedures. Yuzkiv also
partakes in those. “I would prefer to spend weekends differently,” she said,
“but we do not have any other choice than to be prepared. I do not want my
family to live under [Russian] occupation, and I do not want to move from
Ukraine. I want to protect my life, home, country. I also want my kids to be
free for their future.” Even though she has little spare time these days, she
said it makes her feel better than simply fretting about a possible war. “When
you are doing something, you decrease the pressure,” she said. But as many
Ukrainians rapidly prepare for the worst, they may have a little breathing
room. On Wednesday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told reporters in
Kyiv that he didn’t think the invasion was as imminent as the U.S. has been
warning over the past week. “The number of Russian troops amassed along the
border of Ukraine and in occupied territories is large, it poses a threat — a
direct threat to Ukraine,” said Kuleba. “However,” he added, currently “this
number is insufficient for a full-scale offensive along the entire Ukrainian
border. They also lack some important military indicators and systems to
conduct such a large full-scale offensive.” But if and when Putin gives the
order to roll in, Yuzkiv has a message for him. “We do not [welcome] your
soldiers here on our land, and we will be ready to protect our families and our
land, and our right to build a democratic country — not a police state, like
Russia.”
^ It's sad to think that ordinary
Men, Women and Children throughout Ukraine (including Russian-occupied Crimea
and Donbas) are preparing bomb shelters, learning first aid, figuring out a possible evacuation route and learning how
to defend themselves just because Putin is trying to distract ordinary Russians
from the failings of his 22 year Dictatorship.
Ukrainians had to do the same
thing during World War 2 (1941-1945) fighting the Germans as Partisans in the
cities - street by street - and in the countryside. During that War 3,700,000
Ukrainian Civilians were killed.
Since 2014, 3,393 Ukrainian
Civilians have been killed by the Russians in Crimea and Donbas. 1,414,798
Ukrainians have fled to other parts of Ukraine and 925,500 have fled abroad.
If Russia invades the rest of the
country as expected the ordinary Ukrainian Civilian won’t have any place to
flee to and so there will be fighting in the countryside as well as
street-by-street city fighting.
Hopefully, Putin wakes up from
his madness and doesn’t follow Hitler’s mistakes. ^
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