Dear Readers:
A few days ago, this video circulated around the pro-Russian internet, raising many different issues:
The description attached to the video: Two Russian Spetsnaz, one of whom is named Sergei, creep forward in the forest patch. At some point they discover the figure of a person dressed in camouflage, in a uniform clearly belonging to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. This person is sitting under a tree, all crouched and scrunched up into a ball. This soldier does not offer any resistance. The Spetsnaz shout out: “Throw down your weapons!”, they creep closer. When one of them [coming up from behind] attempts to get a better view of the soldier in the Ukrainian uniform, out from under the lowered head issues a heart-rending female scream: “Just please don’t beat me, I’m pregnant!” It becomes clear that this is indeed a woman, even showing signs of a distended, pregnant belly. It is impossible to tell, of course, exactly which month of her pregnancy she is in. The astounded Spetsnaz bursts out with: “What the hell are you doing here, did you forget that you’re pregnant?” The female replies with a feeble squeak: “They left me here…”
As one of the commenters to the video notes, this woman is lucky to have been discovered by someone like Sergei. “A Russian soldier will never harm a baby, as our old Ensign used to tell us.”
Not all the commenters are buying this, however. One believes that she might have been a sniper. Either way, she will now be transported to a Russian POW camp.
Hopefully the woman will be able to give birth in a Russian hospital where she can be fed and cared for, and deliver her baby in better conditions than out in the trenches.
Awful Avalanche 
I’ve just seen a video on Telegram channel, Rybar I think, with a bunch of Russian soldiers inspecting Ukrainian trenches that they have just captured. There are many dead lying in there. At least one of dead was a woman with blonde hair.
LikeLike
I am just beginning a story arc on that.
LikeLike
LikeLike
Russia seems to have no problem with drafting pregnant women either.
https://www.newsweek.com/pregnant-russian-soldier-jailed-draft-dodging-1827831
And “this woman is lucky to have been discovered by someone like Sergei.” is propaganda. It’s no surprise that the soldier didn’t want to hurt a pregnant woman. That’s true for the majority of all regular soldiers in all of history, including the regular German army during WW2 or the IDF or whereever.
LikeLike
Effing nazis, they are now fighting to the last Ukrainian foetus.
LikeLike
It’s horrific, what kind of people do that to their women? Well, Zelensky-type people, I reckon.
LikeLike
I heard Lyndsay Graham ie the American govt. as clearly as anybody else, “to the last Ukrainian”. The millions who fled Ukraine understood this, it’s about time the people in Europe started comprehending, it’ll be their turn next.
LikeLike
Yup! Graham not only literally said that, he also said that paying for this war was “the best investment” that Murica ever made. Since it was the Ukrainians doing the dying. One wonders if Ukrainians are aware of these cynical but true statements coming out of their cargo-cult Deus ex Machina.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I recall reading that Ukrainian nationalists used to brag that ‘America’s got their back’ when they went on their rampages after the Maidan coup. That’s what they thought,,
LikeLike
America DID have their back. Up until the part where Zaluzhny screwed up the summer counteroffensive. Now they’re toast, as far as America is concerned. America moving on to other suckers.
LikeLike
Of course Americans have their back – it’s called leading from behind.
LikeLike
It’s also called something more vulgar than that, but I won’t say out loud!
LikeLike
(Moscow Caledonian Society)
‘Perhaps no other nation in Western Europe is so like us…both nations dwell in a Northern environment with a difficult climate, both are Christian, sharing a common patron saint (St. Andrew), both are poly-ethnic and culturally diverse, both had to wage fierce and protracted struggles for self-determination, both exerted an enormous influence over large areas of the globe, and both societies have a strong sense of kinship. What one writer describes as ‘the fiery imagination. incisive intellect, tough stoicism and gentle affection that are aspects of the Scottish character’ can be applied to the Russian nature too. Then there is the famous fighting spirit; experts would doubtless agree that few nations make better warriors than the Scots and the Russians. On the gastronomic plane both prefer simple peasant fare, good (and neat!) grain spirits and plenty of sweets. This closeness, which certainly requires a fuller examination, can account for the tremendous popularity of Ossian, Burns, Scott and Stevenson in Russia. It is also the part answer why Scots settled there in great numbers and, by and large, felt very much at home.’
(How difficult is it to learn the Russian language?)
LikeLike
That’s a nice comparison of Scots and Russians. There are a lot of similarities, for sure.
How difficult is it to learn Russian? I don’t know, I learned it when I was little! But I heard that the verbs are hard for people who are used to Western European languages, especially the so-called “verbs of motion”, and also this thing called “aspect”, which also involves prefixes as well.
But don’t worry about that, just learn a few lessons and speak in the present tense all the time. Don’t worry about the alphabet, there are only 36 letters, and they all sound pretty much the way they are spelled. So, learning to read is fairly easy, even if you don’t understand the words that you are reading. Like me, reading Polish! I can read it fluently, I just don’t understand what the words mean.
LikeLike
I don’t know if the vid is true or not but, either way, the sociopathic boys & girls running this show in DC/London and now, Jerusalem will be having this evening’s cocktails at swanky digs, surely some of the gathered will swill champagne while noshing on caviar, all the while making pleasant chatter on today’s…bloody events. Yes…it’ll be a lovely evening for the boys & girls who have visited so much misery upon this world.
Or…as one writer put it so well…a century ago:
“They were careless people – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that keeps them together, and let other people clean up the mess they’ve made.”
https://cdn.i24news.tv/uploads/c2/5c/56/6b/94/1e/a9/c6/60/43/b8/6e/2f/b4/9e/80/c25c566b941ea9c66043b86e2fb49e80.jpg?width=1000
LikeLiked by 1 person
My gut thinks this is staged if not faked, the camera work seems preternatural.
LikeLike
That might be true. On the other hand, we live in an era where everybody has a head-cam and films their entire life as they live it (while uploading the whole time).
If it is staged, I gotta say, that girl is a heck of an actress.
LikeLike
A surrendering Ukie would face the Ruskie, she has her back to the camera (no face to recognize) the Russian camera is not shaky and is oddly smooth knowing where to point. Her uniform is not dirty enough..where is the weapon….. It goes on and on….. the gaslights flicker……
There was a preggo Ukie on a stretcher early in the war, and she was outted as a TikTok influencer with a nazi boyfriend, quite a hoot actually.
Nothing is as it appears, all shadows on the wall of the cave.
That said, it is always nice to see propaganda taking its rightful place intercepting logical and rational thought. Feelings are the key.
The reality is that after the rasputitsa there is snow. And where I live that means groomed slopes and front side carvers. No skidding, two well defined tracks. I am getting excited.
Hate less, Cook more, Ski often!
LikeLike
There IS a kind of Hollywood cheesiness to the setup, it’s like in those movies where somebody is fighting a masked Ninja warrior, and you think it’s a guy, and then – surprise! – it turns out to be a girl when she rips her mask off and shakes out her long hair…
As for skiing, yeh! I’m with you there, bro! Just waiting for the mountains to open up in these here parts. Any day now…
LikeLike
P.S. – and this is comment is for Raghead too! Count Rumford’s critique gave me a sudden epiphany. A grotesque but funny epiphany. I don’t know if it’s too late to change the arc of your new comic storyboard, but…
In this version, the Ukrainian soldier, seen only from behind (with her blonde braids) is squeaking: “Don’t beat me, I’m pregnant!”
The Russian soldier immediately stops beating her up, gently turns her around, and it’s … [wait for it]
Sarah Ashton-Cirillo!
Aaaghhhggghhhh!
LikeLike
With respect to the pregnant woman on the stretcher. That took place in Mariupol after the alleged bombing of the hospital. While it is true she was accused of being a Uki sympathiser at the time, she was later found to be still living in Mariupol after the liberation, and in an interview she stated that she had been taken to the (non functioning) hospital and was then carried out in front of the cameras. She said she had no idea what was happening.
Given that she chose to remain in Mariupol rather than take one of the buses provided for civilians to evacuate to Uki controlled territory at the time, I am inclined to believe her.
There is film of her interview somewhere on the internet. It may have been one of Graham Phillips’ in which case it may not have survived his expulsion from YouTube.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, I remember that story. In the follow-up the Mariupol woman gave birth to a healthy baby girl, both mom and baby remain in Russia and had no intention of being Ukrainians.
LikeLike
I had the impression at the time of the stretcher incident that the whole thing was fabricated and I now recall that the impression was driven directly by reposts of her social media showing strong affiliation with Azov and the putative dad who as I recall had the usual tattoos. But in hindsight I could have been fully manipulated. As I recall it was about the time of the Bucha debunking and I could have been suffering cognitive spill over.
The propaganda programs seem to force us to focus on a small irrelevant part of a bigger picture. The enormity of the loss to Ukraine is truly frightening. How could a conflict of this scale happen. It is unsettleing. Cui bono?
LikeLike
Hm… The pregnancy itself was not fabricated. (Although initially some pro-Russian “anti-fake” types tried to imply she had a pillow under her shirt when the Westie media staged those fake movies from the Mariupol maternity hospital.)
I definitely recall the later stories of her giving birth in a Russian hospital and professing that the whole thing had been a manipulation of herself.
As to whether she might have been telling an untruth regarding her pro-Azov affiliations and those of her baby-dad, to be honest, I think that is possible, but I am not sure.
The woman in question is named Marianna Podgurskaya. Prior to this incident, she was a well-known Ukrainian blogger on Instagram who gave beauty tips to her followers. She participated (either voluntarily or involuntarily) in the Ukrainian/BBC “White Helmet” type fakes of March 2022.
A couple of months later, after giving birth Marianna recanted the whole thing, only now her last name is Vyshemirskaya. Now she says there were no Russian bombs and the whole thing was staged, as people had already figured out.
By this time, she was living in a place under Russian jurisdiction and had given birth to her baby, so people can deduce from that her true political leanings, if any.
LikeLike
It is interesting that we all seem to remember the event. It was so fleeting. We are all interested in revisiting it based on current events. That in itself is interesting.
LikeLike
Certain things and images haunt us forever, and we try to make sense of them. I am trying to avoid the Gaze story as much as possible, but even so these events are going to haunt me. And similar events too, hospitals being bombed and innocent children dying. In this case, for real though, not fakes.
LikeLike
A joke occurs to me. Question: What is the difference between foreign policy and a dumpster fire? Answer: A dumpster has trash in it.
LikeLike
That wanted-by-the-ICC war criminal* Putin better hope this video is bogus. Because if it isn’t, the capture of a pregnant soldierette would just add to the tally of war crimes that he will be put on trial for when his plane is forced down and he’s slapped into chains if he ever dares to venture into Ruleoflaw™ air space. Coz it proves that Putin is kidnapping Ukrainian children even before they’re born!
* (“alleged” war criminal, I must add in deference to fairness and avoiding prosecution under the laws of libel, even though all goodthinkers who read the Daily Kos know that Putin guilty as sin. But I must cover my arse with a figleaf of allegedaciousness.)
LikeLike
You’re right! that foetus is the property of the Ukrainian state. Never too young to slap a uniform on ’em and send them off to the meatgrinder.
LikeLike