Ukrainian war crimes and Russia.

Posted by Pointman on April 9, 2022 · 7 Comments 

Back in 1985 at the height of the Lebanese Civil War, four low-level diplomatic staff from the Russian’s embassy in Beirut were kidnapped. Such abductions of foreigners had become common but none of the numerous groups knocking about at the time had ever taken a Russian, never mind a diplomat, but terrorists had been emboldened by the Iranians taking the whole of the US embassy hostage in ’79 and getting away with it.

Moscow dispatched a special operations hostage rescue team from what western intelligence had arbitrarily dubbed the alpha group. As always when it comes to the Russians and anything covert, details are sketchy about them but they are probably a specialist unit of the Spetznaz. Just as the British have their SAS, they also have the SBS specialist offshoot. The Russians have always had similar specialist units in their special forces.

Unfortunately, by the time the Spetznaz touched down in Beirut, one of the hostages had already been murdered and the body dropped off to be found. Someone was sending the Russians a message – they meant business. The then KGB, like its current incarnation the FSB, had excellent sources of information everywhere in the world. Within a short time, they’d determined who’d actually done the kidnapping and who were the supposedly hidden figures behind them.

Within a few days the Russians abducted several family members of those who taken their people and cut the testicles off one of them and sent them to the kidnappers. The Russians had replied with a similar message to the kidnapper’s message and remaining three hostages were released unharmed within days.

After that, nobody kidnapped a Russian citizen or came near a member of their diplomatic staff because the Russians made it their business to spread far and wide what would happen. No kidnappers went near any Russian citizen for the two decades after it.

Two weeks ago video emerged on social media of Russian POWs being tortured, mutilated and murdered by a Ukranian army element known as the Azov battalion. It’s become a customary insult to call anybody you don’t like a Nazi, but the Azovs are actually Nazis, espousing the whole sick belief system and acting accordingly.

They got away with putting the sickening videos up online because big tech social media had already announced they were relaxing the rules on “hate speech” when it came to Russsians. Thank you social media, Russia won’t be forgettng how you facilitated the atrocity any year soon.

The reaction amongst the Russian public and military was pure outrage and seething anger. To add insult to injury, the war criminals started phone calling the victims’s families to taunt them about what they’d done to their loved ones. They beat the prisoners, knee capped and shot them in the gentals and filmed them bleeding out in agony.

The whole of Russia rose en masse thirsting for bloody revenge and they’re going to get it too. Within a few days, the Spetznaz had already got their hands on some of the war criminals directly responsible who were already “begging for mercy” according to a Russian minister who also referred to them as “bastards”. You should know that the Spetznaz operate totally outside any rules of war or conventions whether from Generva or anywhere else.

I’m in absolutely no doubt that by the merciless use of the barbaric torture methods they’re infamous for, they’ve already extracted the names and units of anyone remotely involved in the atrocity and they will all be hunted down in the coming days and years without any mercy. Some very very gruesome examples are going to be made of what happens to those who murder or mutilate Russian POWs.

As pure damage limitation and to counter the huge backlash caused in the East Block, as if by magic video suddenly energed last week of Russian soldiers doing the same to Ukranian POWs. It was obviously quickly lashed together black propaganda and might have worked in the West, but not in the East. The damage caused by the original atrocity was irreparable there.

The worst news for the Azov batallion is that they were all deployed around the city of Mariupol which is now surrounded and under total control by the Russians except for a sparawling steel works complex in a part of the city. All the Azov battalion have been squeezed into there like cornered rats and the Russians will make it their business to ensure there’s no escape for them.

The Red Army is justifiably famous for their devestating usage of massed artillery, just ask the Wehrmacht. That simple overwhelming capacity could be used to flatten the steel complex and capture any surviving Ukrainian soldiers surendering between massed salvoes of Stalin’s organs. With the sheer amount of firepower available to them, they could do that in half a day.

The usually pragmatic Russian military have decided otherwise. This is personal. They will eliminate the pocket by a slow grinding infantary invasion and liquidate any opposition. My sense of that decision and their terming it a liquidation is that there won’t be many Azov POWs at the end of that operation.

Remember the russian motto – we’ll never forgive, we’ll never forget.

©Pointman

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Filed under Article · Tagged with Azov, Mariupol, Ukraine