Dear Readers:
For today’s theme we go back to Zaporozhie, land of the famous Zaporozhian Cossacks!
In this piece, reporter Alexei Degtyarev writes that residents of the Zaporozhie Oblast had all their debts forgiven to Ukrainian banks and other lenders. This according to Evgeny Balitsky, who heads the Military-Civilian Administration of the region for the Russians.
We had written previously about the Jubilee in Zaporozhie. Would be great to be an ordinary worker there and suddenly learn that you no longer owe the bank for that credit card or mortgage! The debt-forgiveness also relates to any fines and fees. [I am assuming financial fees, but it’s not specified.] This decree goes into effect retroactively, starting with February 24, 2022.
But, as Donald Rumsfeld once said, “Freedom isn’t free.” Hence, Balitsky also reports that Zaporozhian residents have started enlising in “Territorial Defense” battalions. Balitsky: “An unbelievable opportunity has befallen this territory, which has been liberated, to break out of this [subordination to Kiev]… Now a large number of people have appeared, who wish to defend their homeland, not against some mythological Turk or Finn, but actually from the Ukrainian, from the Ukrainian Armed Forces. People are coming and signing up, we have some numbers already, so far more than 200 people have signed up.”
Meanwhile the province has also seen over 100,000 residents apply for Russian citizenship.
Before popping the champagne cork, one needs to keep in mind that Russian forces have not yet taken the entire province; a chunk of it, including the capital city of Zaporozhie itself, is still in Ukrainian hands. And yet the vector is clear, and it is also clear that the Russians intend to keep this land. While the Ukrainians gnash their teeth and call Balitsky a traitor.
Awful Avalanche 
Now there’s interesting (as we say in Kairdiff): Zaporoshian Territorial Defence Battalions, apparently being self-organised! That bodes very well once this Oblast has come back to Russia because ukrie ‘stay behind’ terrorists, a.k.a. ‘partisans’, will be easily eradicated by the locals who know who is who. That’s really good news!
Speaking of ‘news’, for those who are interested in how the mighty BBC ‘works’, I’ve documented this in my latest ‘Daily Rant’. It’s the BBC interview with Sergey Lavrov – and thanks to the Russian FO publishing the unvarnished transcript, it gave me great joy to assuage my anger at the British media by showing chapter and verse of how they and especially the BBC do it:
https://independencedaily.co.uk/your-ongoing-betrayal-friday-17th-june-2022/
LikeLiked by 1 person
I love it! Thanks colliemum (or should I say, Vivian, heh heh!)
LikeLike
Nay – my ‘online presence’ when not being “a professional” is colliemum, has been for a dozen years and I’m sticking with it!
LikeLike
So say we all!
LikeLike
Jubilee for the win! Collimeum, you seem to have taken a double dose of snark pills, there.
Anyway, Now that military victory in the Donbass is all but certain for the allies, what happens next? Clearly, the collective west would like to get out of the trap they’ve put themselves in, but it’s hard to believe they’ll be able to, and I just can’t see a way out that doesn’t result in a colossal humiliation.
Based on recent history, it seems to me that the collective west cannot accept a loss, so the response has to be an escalation or change of theater, yeah? So, it seems to me there’s 3 possible responses:
1) Escalate in Ukraine – this involves the Anglo-Polish-Baltic crowd stepping in. Poland maybe gets Galicia, Boris gets to cosplay Churchill, and the balts get to imagine they’re sticking a thumb in Russia’s eye. Likely an appalling defeat, but not for the US, so maybe looks good to them..
2) Israel and the US attack inside Iran. The problem here is that neither Israel nor the US can tolerate casualties, which are highly likely, with bloody failure a real possibility.
3) Escalate Taiwan. I think, by now, the Taiwanese may be getting wise to the US “why don’t you and him fight?” strategy. Very scary if it goes to shooting war.
Looking at those, if I’m the US, #1 looks a lot more attractive, except that it it doesn’t allow for any exit from the sanctions trap.
LikeLike
Thanks!
Mind you, I don’t need no snark pills no more: snarking comes automatically whenever I have to wade into the morass that are the British and EU MSM.
LikeLike
I would caution any who thinks the “danger is past” to curb their enthusiasm.
While it’s not clear they’ll go through with it [1], “Biden’s team” of “foreign policy experts” have been publicly humiliated and as such it might end like a bad western movie. You know the plot, there’s a drunk gambler, he’s been losing all night at the card table, down to his last dollar, his bluff has just been called and he draws his six-shooter. Likewise Biden’s team might bet it all.
The actors in the movie Dr. Strangelove, appear coldly rational compared to Biden’s foreign policy team. Never has my country been so poorly led and yet, never has DC so thoroughly controlled every aspect of national life.
[1] Biden’s team of foreign policy numb-nuts is trying to talk up a NATO “no-fly-zone” in western Ukraine to aid in resupply. And that my friends, is an effort to prolong the war, not for the purpose of victory but, for the purpose of not being further humiliated at the “negotiating table”. Yes, the “negotiating table” is purely the Biden-foreign-policy-teams fantasy but, as I have pointed out before, DC lives in a fantasy world of smoke and mirrors. If NATO goes along with this plan emanating from the smoldering bunker that passes for the White House, the drunk-gambler might play one last bluff and take every one in the saloon down with him.
LikeLike
“The actors in the movie Dr. Strangelove, appear coldly rational compared to Biden’s foreign policy team.”
Similarly, the actors in the movie “Sponge Bob and The Adventure Of Neptune’s Stolen Crown” appear coldly intellectual and brainy compared to Biden’s foreign policy team…
LikeLike
Concur…
LikeLike
Yalensis, watching the Russian news, I found out that “destroyed” or “unrecoverable losses” is not the same as “dead” or “killed”. This is referring to Ukronazi casualties ( well actually the graphic was about foreign mercenary casualties)
Do you know if this is some sort or standard Soviet-era classification of war casualties? Is “destroyed” meaning as good as dead or just a euphemism for “injured”?
The Russian telegram channels are giving killed and injured stats with this “destroyed” interchangeable with “killed” it seems. Losing both arms and legs as serious injury as it is, should only classify as an injury and not this “destroyed” classification that has been confusing me.
Clearly Ukraine are sustaining huge casualties and deaths, but I don’t know the scale of deaths with this confusing terminology!
LikeLike
I believe that Soviet military science (and now Russian) define deaths as deaths, and severe/irrecoverable injury as “sanitary losses”. If the Russians are calling them “destroyed”, I would imagine that this means that those troops can no longer fight in any useful amount of time, or ever again (think brain damage or losing limbs). “Normal injuries”, I believe, refers to ones that can be recovered from, and said troops can be put back on the front in a few weeks or months. I could be wrong though!
LikeLike
That’s what I am trying to figure out as well. I just saw some stats that Ukrainian “losses” are around 1,000 per day, but that doesn’t mean everybody dies. There is KIA (“Killed in action”) which is estimated to be around 200, and then everything else is “injured” or “captured” or “deserted” or just plain missing. I don’t even want to think about guys with missing limbs, I can’t personally handle those kinds of thoughts.
It’s a rather cold and sad science, no?
I have seen some reports that there is a quiet, “underground” trade going on, of Ukrainian POW’s for Russian POWs’. In this regard, I read some anecdotes about a couple of Ukrainian “frequent flyers” who fell into Russian captivity more than once. Like, they would be captured, quietly traded, back to their units, back to the front, then captured again. I can only imagine the Russian MP reaction to seeing them: “What?! You again?!”
I also saw some anecdotes about Ukrainian moms contacting the Russian military, who had taken their sons POW, and asking them to hold onto them until the the end of the war. They don’t want to hear about their boys back at the front again. These moms feel better knowing their boys are alive and at least getting 3 meals a day, and can just hang out and chill until the war is over.
LikeLike
Thanks gentleman for the very useful answers.
As far as I can see the 200 KIA only refers to the Donbass operations, or even if it includes Kharkov and South Ukraine battlefields, it does not include losses from Russian missile-strikes (launched from air , or from Russian territory or from the Black Sea) that generate each day anywhere from 250-500 “irrecoverable losses” from all over Ukrainian territory.
Returning to the mercenary casualties – just 89 American fighters now remain in Ukraine out of 600 who have arrived there ( 230 dead, 280, “destroyed”), whereas Poland still has 1100 mercenary soldiers out of 1800 with only about 400 destroyed and 250 dead.
This makes sense, the Americans and Brits are always going to want to go straight into the action having travelled that far, no matter how reckless the task set for them is. The Poles, who BTW have a very poor military history, you would guess are mostly stationed in the West of Ukraine, holding back, waiting for the war to truly kick-off in the lands that are their “real estate”. Probably a decent amount of them were in Kiev during the active phase over there 2 months ago, but most of them are in and around the western part of ukraine.
LikeLike
Thanks for this very interesting info, Eric. Sounds plausible that the Poles are holding back and waiting for the action to reach “their” territory. Americans and Brits, poor buggers, I don’t think they had a clue what it means to be pounded by big-boy artillery.
LikeLike
To the best of my knowledge,
“Sanitary” = wounded, can patch up and return to service
“Irretrievable” = KIA or so severely wounded that return to service is implausible
Of course, I’ve been wrong before – there was that time back in the 80s 😉
LikeLike