A WEEK OF WAR - UPDATE FROM OPERATION Z FRONT LINES
by Russell Bentley, Donetsk
The liberation and de-nazification of Ukraine continues apace. The resistance is strong, and the Russian and Republican Liberators face a desperate and ruthless enemy. The ukrop nazis' most effective tactic is the use of civilians as human shields in built up urban areas. Russia's extreme precautions and deliberate pace to avoid the kind of bloody "collateral damage" that is the trademark of every US and NATO invasion, has cost the Russians quite a lot in time, treasure and blood. But the advance continues, and will continue until all Russian strategic objectives are achieved.
As of 3 March official military reports for the entire Russia/Ukraine operation are as follows -
Ukrainian soldiers killed and missing - 8395
Russian & Republican soldiers - 498 dead, 1,600 wounded
Civilian casualties throughout the area of military operations exceed 300
1,612 targets were hit by Russian artillery and precision missiles including 62 command and control centers and communication centers,
39 S-300, Buk M-1 and Osa anti-aircraft missile systems as well as 52 radar stations.
49 military aircraft were destroyed on the ground and 13 in flight,
606 tanks and other armored fighting vehicles were destroyed,
67 Multiple Rocket Launchers destroyed,
227 howitzers and mortars,
53 drones.
The fake news report about Russians shelling a Ukrainian nuclear site is completely false.
On Thursday night, a fire broke out at a building near the six-reactor Zaporozhskaya nuclear power plant, with Ukrainian authorities accusing Russian troops of “shelling” the nuclear site. Moscow had informed the international nuclear authorities on Tuesday that Russian forces had secured the territory around the plant and it was operating normally.
The Russians had already taken the plant under their control, when a Ukrainian sabotage unit fired on a Russian perimeter patrol with small arms. During the attack, a fire started in an office/storage building on the plant grounds but not connected to the actual reactor. The fire was extinguished and the Ukrainian sabotage unit was eliminated. There is currently no danger of radiation leakage or explosion at the plant.
The fake news report about Russian forces shelling the Jewish Holocaust Memorial at Babi Yar near Kiev are also completely false. A Russian missile strike was carried out on a main Kiev TV broadcast antenna located about 500 meters from the memorial. The TV antenna was destroyed, the memorial was not hit.
The strategic city of Khersan has been liberated by Russian forces. Though sporadic fighting continues in the city, it has been liberated and will remain so. The three main areas of active combat operations are currently Kiev, Kharkov and Mariupol.
Kiev is blocked by Russian troops on the north and west, and Russian troops are actually operating inside the north and west parts of the city. Russian troops continue their advance on Kiev from the east, and will soon begin encircling the city in a southern direction, in conjunction with Russian troops to the west. Strategic missile strikes continue to target Ukrainian command centers, troop and equipment concentrations. The Human Shield tactic is being used in Kiev, but to a lesser extent than elsewhere.
The completely unregulated handing out over 18,000 AK assault rifles and ammunition on the street to anyone who walked up and wanted one has resulted in scores, if not hundreds, of murders, accidental and indiscriminate shootings in Kiev in the last few days. This criminally insane act on the part of the Kiev regime was done intentionally to cause chaos and anarchy among the civilians and to make the job of Russian liberators more dangerous and difficult.
Kharkov, Ukraine's second largest city, has a significant percentage of Russian speakers in the population, but also a strong concentration of regular and nationalist troops who will use ethnic Russians as human shields. Russian troops are advancing on Kharkov from the north, northeast and northwest. They are operating in northern suburbs of the city, but the urban operations have met heavy resistance and difficult terrain. Russian casualties there have been significant.
On the east and west outskirts of Kharkov, Russian units continue to move south to complete the encirclement, which should be complete in the next 48 hours or so. Once the city is surrounded, some Russian troops will be freed to advance towards Poltava to the southwest and Kramatorsk to the southeast. Once Kramatorsk and Zaparozhia are liberated, Russian troops will link up and the bulk of the Ukrainian military on the Donbass Front will be surrounded.
Mariupol remains a heavily contested area. It has been surrounded by Russian and Republican troops, including my comrades in the VOSTOK Battalion. Mariupol, an industrial city on the coast of the AZOV Sea, has been the headquarters and main base of the nazi AZOV Battalion for many years. Other neo-nazi units as well as ISIS units are stationed there as well. These war criminals will fight to the death, because they know the justice that awaits them if they are captured will be harsh and last for the rest of their lives. These are terrorists and murderers who enjoy killing, and will make the most of innocent civilians as last minute victims and human shields. There are multiple videos of cars full of civilians, men, women and children, being murdered by nazis and other terrorists as they try to leave the city. However, as of today, March 4th, some civilians have successfully evacuated via humanitarian corridors.
It has now been officially confirmed by the spokesman of the Donetsk People's Republic's Army, Eduard Basurin, that last night the Ukrainian Armed Forces launched a Tochka-U attack on the AZOV headquarters in southwestern Mariupol. According to his information, the reason for the strike was between Azov's complete refusal to obey AFU command orders to coordinate their actions with the command of the Ukrainian forces. As a result of the strike, more than 20 fighters and 10 units of equipment were destroyed. There are some unconfirmed reports of AZOV terrorists murdering a Ukrainian Army General shortly prior to the missile strike.
I spent Feb 28th and March 1st on the Front lines deep into territory formerly controlled by ukrop army. Traveling with Russian war correspondent Alexander Sladkov, we made it as far as the village of Andon, almost 50 Km beyond the former front lines. Fighting is heavy, we saw many blown up ukrop block posts, and armored vehicles from both sides, but mostly ukrop. It was like something out of a World War 2 newsreel, with shell shocked civilians gathered in town squares, wary of us as we approached, then breaking into tears of joy when they understood who we were. Ukrops are randomly bombing the areas they retreat from as they retreat, apparently equally as willing to hit newly liberated civilians as they are to hit the Russian liberators.
The Russian liberation forces are huge - multi-hundreds of tanks and armored infantry vehicles, very tough and ready soldiers, led by highly competent officers. The DPR Republican forces are still holding the line along the central Donetsk Front - Donetsk, Makeevka, Yasynuvata, Gorlovka. There are still extremely large and dangerous concentrations of ukrop soldiers on the Front, and while they have been mostly quiet and have not advanced, they are still shelling civilian areas of all our cities daily. One of the major ukrop strongpoints is the Mari'inka area, barely 5 miles from my house in Petrovsky District of Donetsk. There is also a high concentration of nazis and war criminals there, and it will not be taken without a hard fight. Nothing in this war will come easy.
CONCLUSION - In the first week of February, I wrote an article predicting with 90% certainty that before the beginning of March, the Ukraine Army would attack Donbass, and Russia would be forced to react immediately to prevent genocide against the civilians and defenders of the Donbass Republics. With the single exception of Scott Ritter, virtually every other self-styled "expert" and "geopolitical analyst" on the subject of the Donbass War, in both the mainstream and "alt" media not only disagreed, but scoffed at my predictions and even at me personally. And just as in the lead up to the Iraq invasion, these "experts" simply ignored Scott Ritter.
Well, nobody's right all the time, and I do understand that I have a huge advantage over all the pundits "covering" the war from thousands of miles away, since I am in Donetsk, on the ground, and have been here for the last 8 years. My sources include personal friends who are officers in the DPR Army, including in Spetsnaz units, and people, including myself, who have lived, and live (and die) under ukrop shelling on a daily basis.
It is no surprise that I got it right. What is surprising is how so many so-called "experts" got it so wrong, and did so in such a pompous and condescending manner. And I mean, in particular, Andre Raevsky, Ray McGovern, and above all, the poseur, plagiarist and outright liar, Dean O'Brien. Here is one of his Tweets (from London, where he "covers" the Donbass War from 2,000 miles away) posted less than 2 weeks before the actual invasion, and more than a month after my specific predictions of it.
"Those of us that know" didn't know shit, but were happy to insult me, the one who got it right.
Funny Boy O'Brien, ridiculing the "imminent invasion" less than a month before the imminent invasion.
I was also the only one to correctly predict the exact plan for the ukrop attack, which I said would involve a massive assault directly into the major cities of the Republics. As confirmed by Russian GRU Military Intelligence and Russian State Duma. The Ukrainian Army, under US/NATO orders, were to attack the Republics on February 23rd (which is a BIG Russian national holiday, The Day of the Defenders of the Fatherland, commemorating the Heroes of the Red Army who smashed the nazi armies in WW2). The attack was planned to include a massive artillery and rocket bombardment of military and civilian targets in the major Donbass cities, followed by a no-holds-barred combined arms assault directly into the densely populated city centers, where the human shields tactic now being used in all other Ukrainian cities would have been used on a massive scale, not as just a tactic, but as one of the strategic elements of the overall attack, while simultaneously carrying out world war 2 style genocidal "cleansing" of the Russian population by the very nazi battalions that Western media now denies even exist.
As more of Ukraine is liberated and de-nazified, just as in the aftermath of WW2, the genuine scope and depths of the nazi depravities and atrocities will become more obvious and undeniable, as will US and NATO complicity in these abominable crimes. It must never be forgotten that it was determined at Nuremberg that those who give the orders for war crimes are even more guilty than those who commit those crimes themselves.
The criminal overthrow of the legitimate government of Ukraine and the installation of a genuine nazi regime in Kiev will soon reach its denouement, thanks to God and Russia, and to the long suffering Russian people in Donbass and Ukraine. Thus the latest of a seemingly interminable list of US and NATO criminal wars of aggression (the supreme war crime) will again end in defeat and shame for the criminals themselves. God grant, along with the help of the Russian military, that justice will be done, and this will be their last.