August 13, 2022
By Olena Skomoroshchenko
Head of SDPU Secretariat,
International Secretary
One hundred and fiftieth day of the War
Finally there was a turning point in the War. The second phase of the War, which had the goal of occupying the entire Luhansk and Donetsk regions and which began on April 4, 2022, ended. This second phase ended with a kind of Buch-2, which Olenivka became this time - the brutal destruction of our heroes, the defenders of Mariupol in the Olenivka concentration camp for Ukrainians prisoners of war, doctors and volunteers. Moreover, as is appropriate, the Muscovites put the responsibility for the martyrdom of the Heroes of Mariupol on our Armed Forces, which seemingly took revenge on them for surrendering, despite the fact that it was the Order of the President of Ukraine to lay down their arms in Azovstal. Because Moscow very often destroys its people and not only the military. Because life in Muscovy, that is, the Russian Federation, is not worth anything, and since the Second World War, a person has been referred to there as "camp dust". By the way, the last illustration of this is the fact that the military command of the Russian Federation purposefully destroyed the entire personnel of the 64th motorized rifle division, which committed atrocities in March near Kyiv in Buch, Irpen, Gostomel and Borodyanka. Yesterday, the leading military expert of Ukraine, the former head of the operational department of the General Staff of Ukraine, Oleg Zhdanov, announced the final death of ALL personnel of this division. For two reasons. First, so that there would be no one to testify about these atrocities in the status of the accused. Secondly, so that they do not bring the same atrocities to the territory of the Russian Federation. Everything is logical and preventive, you won't say anything. But I will tell you a little more about Bucha. The problem is that all international experts have concluded that these were not explosions, because there is no blast funnel. In their opinion, it is either a thermobolic bomb or a flamethrower, which was used to destroy children and their mothers in Bezlan. Because nothing inside was destroyed in any way, even the two-story beds were intact and in place, but everything was burned to the ground, including the bodies of the defenders of Mariupol, and many of them were already dead at the time of the incident. Some experts assume that this execution was mainly aimed at the mass torture and killing of prisoners of war from Mariupol, for whom the President of Ukraine and international guarantors gave guarantees.
But the point is not only that the second phase has already taken place and ended. Moreover, if the first phase ended with a score of 1-0 in our favor, because they were running away from Kyiv, their heels were shining, and they planned to destroy half of them, 15 thousand, with artillery. But they put our children on their tanks and therefore let them escape. The second phase ended with a score of 1-1, although here, as well as near Kyiv, they did not achieve ANY of their goals, because they did not completely occupy either Donetsk or even Luhansk region - two settlements of Luhansk region - the legendary Bilogorivka and Verkhnyokamyanka remained under our control. therefore, maybe here the score is 1-0. But that's not the point.
The point is that there have been systemic and qualitative, one might say, radical changes. First of all, the enemy's troops have finally exhausted themselves and are no longer able to advance. We can see the latest attempts to do this east of Bakhmut, where they advance a couple of hundred meters a day and which Russian propaganda presents as a decisive battle, although we are talking about the eastern wall of the cowshed near Bakhmut. To the south of this operational zone - Pisky, Maryinka, Avdiyivka, they laid down bones and, I think, put a couple of thousand there, because for more than a week they were shelling with all types of artillery 24/7 so that our troops would withdraw. But no one left, and here their truly apocalyptic attempts failed. They announced the capture of Piski 8 times. Near Kherson, in particular, and from near Bakhmut, they drew overwhelming forces, which now number 19 battalion-tactical groups, that is, 25-30 thousand personnel for the grand offensive on Kryvyi Rih and Mykolaiv, which they announced for August 5-6. Well, August 10. Today is August 13, God gave, they rushed to Mykolaiv yesterday, but, as our General Staff puts it, "they did not succeed and retreated to their previously occupied positions." That is, they received an appropriate repulse and hid behind their blind defense fortifications.
Secondly, not just an initiative, but a strategic initiative in the War passed to the Disruptive Forces of Ukraine, and today we decide where and when decisive events will take place. We force their troops to flow from end to end, as in this case from east to south, exhausting them in this operation for 700-800 kilometers.
Thirdly, the war is already taking place not only in our theater of operations and in our rear, but also in theirs. In other words, they felt that they were delivering everywhere. And the explosions of military bases and warehouses in Donetsk, Luhansk and especially near Sakami in Novofedorivka are a vivid testimony to that. And, by the way, multi-kilometer traffic jams on the Crimean bridge of civilian cars in the direction of the Russian Federation, too. Our authorities publicly call on Crimeans who live near military facilities, and especially citizens of the Russian Federation who are illegally staying in the temporarily occupied Crimea, to evacuate while the Crimean Bridge is still functional and not yet similar to the Antonivskyi Bridge near Kherson, which is solid sieve, so it is probably still possible to walk through it, but it is impossible to drive. And, fortunately, this call was heard, given the aforementioned traffic jams, when 10-12 people were traveling in a 5-passenger car.
But everything in turn. And I will begin, as it was at the beginning of the War, with Buchi. Another mass burial of 117 bodies was found there this week. All with traces of torture and violent death. And Bucha, let me remind you, was released on March 30. That is, 5 months ago. And we will not learn anything more about these burials, because ALL those who carried them out were destroyed during the storming of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, when they, that is, the soldiers of the 64th motorized rifle division, were thrown into the storm without the support of armored vehicles, and therefore they all naturally remained there. So all that was left of them were toilets and washing machines, which they sent home, looted near Kiev, because, they say, the Kremlin has already stopped issuing Lada-Kalina cars for those who were killed, simply because Ladas ran out due to the collapse of the Moscow automobile industry.
In Kyiv, an air alert is often announced, but, thank God, there have been no real arrivals for a long time. The worst thing they cause is an air alarm siren sounding from everywhere, and it's a sound like a drill in a dentist's office - it's hard to endure for a long time because of the specific sounds piercing to the liver. Well, nothing, it's not worse than what we've been through here.
The border areas of Chernihiv and Sumy regions continue to be mercilessly shelled from everything except combat aircraft with significant destruction of residential buildings and civilian infrastructure, wounded and dead. And these attacks are carried out EVERY DAY, like brushing your teeth.
In the Kharkiv direction, they are on the defensive. Just like before, Kharkiv is massively bombarded DAILY so that there was SIGNIFICANT DESTRUCTION, DEAD AND WOUNDED. In reality, at least a quarter of the city's residential buildings, critical infrastructure, businesses, cultural institutions, and educational institutions have been destroyed today. In the region, here they are also standing in a blind defense with the sole purpose of not allowing us to advance to the north, squeezing them to their state border. But in the east of the region, we are gradually pushing them towards Izyum with the obvious intention of throwing them out of there and putting an end to their main military hub here, thanks to which they are carrying out an offensive on Sloviansk-Kramatorsk. And then go east and take Kupyansk. That is, we are developing, albeit a small, but successful offensive, or rather, counteroffensive actions.
I already wrote about Bakhmut and Avdiyevka-Miryanka-Pisky at the beginning. Everything is stable here, despite the hell that they have arranged here. Our troops remain in the same positions, and they no longer have anything to storm, because everything has been shifted to the south near Kherson.
MARIUPOL. Here, as they have been for three months in a row in Donetsk and Luhansk, they began to grab men on the streets and in transport and throw them to the front against our Armed Forces. But the most important thing, apart from what is happening here after the occupation of the long-suffering city, is the preparation for the trial of some of the defenders of Mariupol, for whom iron cages are already being welded on the stage of the city's Philharmonic Hall - a rare building that they did not hack down during the storming of the city. This should be an exemplary demonstration show with the passing of a death sentence to the Heroes of Mariupol, who fulfilled the Order of the President of Ukraine and laid down their arms, according to the laws of the so-called fake DNR.
Nothing is happening at the front in the Zaporizhzhia region, because from here the enemy has transferred the main forces to the south. A lot of roadblocks were canceled in the occupied territories, because there is no one to simply stand at them. But they also continue to harm our people under occupation, loot everything they like and burn our fields with crops and do not allow them to be harvested, because they understand that they will soon have to flee and in the end they try to remind us more. A separate story about the mining of the Zaporizhzhya NPP and the hellish shelling of Nikopol, with which they want to provoke us to shelling the ZNP in response, and even for this they began shelling the city of Marganets, which is not far from Nikopol, through the waters of the Kakhovsky Reservoir, just as mercilessly. And all this in order to force us into peace negotiations and force us to abandon the counteroffensive and deoccupation of Ukraine. NO ONE in Ukraine, where 92 percent are ready to do anything for the sake of victory, will do so under any threat. We don't care how they destroy us - with a nuclear explosion or gradual occupation. We are fighting against our total annihilation, which is the enemy's ultimate goal. As they say, "Either Ukraine will be Russian, or a desert." We are left with no other options, as our Kyivan Golda Meyer once said, "We want to live, our enemies want to see us dead. That leaves little room for compromise." These words describe our situation very aptly. Therefore, no one in Ukraine will do it, even if they start shelling a hundred cities. It should not be indifferent to the IAEA, the UN, etc. but they only express concern and call for negotiations between the victim and the aggressor. Lovely people...
By the way, it is here that the occupier is afraid of our counteroffensive - conditionally on Melitopol-Nova Kakhovka-Armyansk. And he is rightly afraid, according to the leader of our party Yuriy Buzdugan. That is why they concentrated two tank armies right here in the south - one in the area of the ZNPP under the cover of the nuclear plant and the other further east - in the area of Tokmak-Berdyansk, in order to destroy our counteroffensive from the flanks. But we really believe in the genius of our Commander-in-Chief Zaluzhny, who has solve not only a such a tasks.
Mykolaiv continues to be massively and mercilessly shelled DAILY. With rampant destruction, numerous dead at the level of at least 10 and even more numerous missing, when dead and wounded people lie on the streets and under the rubble of houses. Civilian people.
Kherson - Mykolaiv - Kryvyi Rih, i.e. the south, on which a grand offensive has been announced. Back in mid-July, the Armed Forces of Ukraine fired for the first time on one of the two bridges across the Dnipro - the Antoniv bridge. It was a kind of invitation to make a choice - to leave the right bank of the Dnieper and flee from the only regional center occupied by them - Kherson voluntarily and save your people. Instead, they chose the opposite - to go to the right bank, that is, to bring an even greater number of their troops there for the offensive on Kryvyi Rih and Mykolaiv. They transferred almost the entire group that was in the Zaporozhye direction and a larger number of troops from the Luhansk and Donetsk directions, as well as from the Crimea, here. Almost the entire Crimean group has been transferred to the right bank of the Dnieper in order to prevent our counteroffensive on Kherson and its liberation from occupation. By the way, today the Armed Forces of Ukraine finally disabled the second bridge over the Kakhov Dam. All. The mousetrap clicked - we are not to blame for those who did not hide. They were given a choice. By the way, it should not be forgotten that while preparing to attack here, the enemy has concentrated its best air defense forces and its latest models here. Accordingly, our troops took all of them out with Hymers after destroying the ammunition depots and command posts of the higher echelons. For example, yesterday, the higher command posts on the right bank of Kherson were destroyed. After that, today the surviving command posts moved to the left bank of the Dnieper. Apparently, right before the destruction of the last Novokakhov bridge, they either swam across. So the main troops of the Russian Federation are on the right bank, some 30,000 personnel, and its entire command is on the left. And another news of the day - you will laugh. An international terrorist, a citizen of the Russian Federation, who commanded the downing of flight MH 17 and started the war of 2014 by seizing the police office in the city of Sloviansk by citizens of the Russian Federation, was detained today with a shaved mustache in the Kherson region by the Russian military, because he came to fight in the Kherson region. As if he was released to fight. Let's see. I am convinced that the Kherson partisans, who are destroying collaborators here and today blew up the power transmission line leading from the ZANP to Crimea, will definitely start hunting him. To deliver him to The Hague after all.
Well, you already know about Novofedorivka - the MAIN air base of the Russian Federation in the Crimea near Sakami. It was the most protected military base of the Russian Federation in Crimea. And here they got it. Well, if in 1620 during the Battle of Khotyn, our Cossacks came to the sultan's harem and left a candle there with the note "We entered your harem at night, we will also enter your bedroom at night." Compared to this, the air base is just a trifle. In one day, all the planes were disabled, and 12 of them were reduced to ashes. 60 pilots were killed, 100 were wounded, and it costs 1 million dollars to train 1 pilot. As well as the equipment and all the service personnel, who have also been preparing for years. The entire aviation regiment in a few seconds. But civilians were not injured, only windows were broken in a radius of 1.5 km, and in some places also window frames - such detonations were the explosions at this air base from ammunition and rockets and fires from the burning of aviation fuel.
As Putin said, "we haven't started anything yet." The war continues. And thanks to the anti-Hitler coalition, our forces are growing. And today, the American Institute for the Study of War stated that for the first time since April, the Armed Forces of Ukraine began to return to the initial indicators of the destruction of enemy personnel, when the occupying army lost 1,000 of its soldiers every day. Today, the figures reached the figure of 500 dead occupants per day. So really, we are just getting started.
Everything will be Ukraine!