Over the past months insurgents had been able to take over police stations, city halls and other government buildings. They had been robbing, murdering, creating chaos with little to no resistance.
Whenever the Ukrainian army tried to fight back, they surrendered, were destroyed or miserably failed to do their mission.
And fresh after the elections the airport of Donetsk was going to be taken over. To have an air-bridge with Russia of course...
And what happened? The Ukrainian army fought back!!
They retook the airport.
Russian rebels were running for their lives! See the movies here.
And had these criminals been able to drive around freely in their open trucks, creating havoc... now their trucks are being destroyed!
The BIG QUESTION is... why is this possible now all of a sudden?
Why is the army finally biting back?
Tweet me your answers
@djp3tros Stepping over a very thick red-line by attacking International Airport of #Donetsk = a severe threat to security of #Ukraine
— Peter Grönlund (@PeterGrnlund1) 27 mei 2014
@djp3tros @EuromaidanPR Maybe because the election is over.
— clochette (@clochette31000) 27 mei 2014
@djp3tros @clochette31000 One word: 'Elections'...no one wanted to compromise...
— André Simplício (@alsimplicio) 27 mei 2014
@djp3tros @PeterGrnlund1 @LarsGyllenhaal Donetsk the separatists stepped over Ukr Army aerport that's all. It was not a planned op. by Kiev.
— Edward Kloczko (@EKloczko) 27 mei 2014
@djp3tros For me it looks like a trap. 1st: sudden pressure, 2nd: sudden win, 3rd: sudden "crossing UkrBorders" with vehicles @EuromaidanPR
— Harris Brakmic (@brakmic) 27 mei 2014
@djp3tros @MiddleEast_BRK they had no orders to strike big not to mess election. Not anymore
— Wagner Rastelli (@w_rastelli) 27 mei 2014
Maybe one consideration could also be this: it becomes more and more clear that Putin will not go for a full scale open invasion with his own army. The threat of this possibility made many police officers and soldiers defect. And the army had to restrain their actions and operate very carefully as not to get caught in a mousetrap.
Now that open invasion seems highly unlikely, a more aggressive counter strike can be made against the foreign mercenaries.
And another thing might be: many civilians manned the barricades in the beginning, which meant the army needed to be careful too. Now that the boys went home and the professionals came in, the army is going to talk business? As Taavi points out here:
@djp3tros airport was easy target for using conventional heavy weaponry like air-to-surface missiles. No travellers at closed airport.
— Taavi Tuisk (@taavituisk) 27 mei 2014
@djp3tros same result will be everywhere where separatists try something without the protecting backs of civilians.
— Taavi Tuisk (@taavituisk) 27 mei 2014
Another viewpoint comes from Jack about the Right Sector:
- @djp3tros The angle you're missing is that Kiev oligarchs may not want Right Sector fighters to survive this war. Think about it carefully
— Jack Crowley (@MensNews) 27 mei 2014
- @djp3tros They are the spine of the National Guard and the spine of Kolomoisky's private battalions (Dnepr, Azov, Donbass, Odessa)
— Jack Crowley (@MensNews) 27 mei 2014
- @djp3tros Right Sector is most significant factor in this conflict as they are the 2,000 men most willing to kill for a centalized Ukraine
— Jack Crowley (@MensNews) 27 mei 2014
My opinion about this:This too much of conspiracy theory to me, for several reasons:
- I have not seen Ukrainian Right Sector people die in this conflict. I have seen unwilling, defecting, hungry and inexperienced soldiers getting harassed by hordes of civilians, not knowing how to deal with this very well and meanwhile getting shot at by gunmen hiding in the crowd or getting sniped at... or their group was caught off guard, getting ambushed and slaughtered by professionals. See this report for instance.
- The only place where I have seen some dark evil force operational was in the Union Trade house in Odessa. But there are still many unanswered questions about what really happened and who is responsible.
- War is chaos. It can hardly be controlled who dies and who lives.
- Donbas battalion was supposed to be hardcore Right Sector, but it turned out they are just civilians who stand up against the terror. See report here (GRAPHIC)
- Russian propaganda has tried to picture EVERYBODY in Ukraine as Right Sector Nazis. Many in East Ukraine really believe this!!!! We need to convince them that they are misinformed and the true threat comes from Russia itself.
Don't get me wrong: I don't like Right Sector, Nazis, neo-Nazis or any extremist violent group. But the real threat comes from OUTSIDE Ukraine right now. Not from inside...
a) I guess there was also a bit cleaning up within the ukrainian army maybe? Some changes in positions? Some pressure from the population especially obvious now in the election results? (how did donbass vote where voting was possible? for poroshenko or pro-putin?) Also national guard seems to go on growing, and it would have raised questions in the chain of command if ther would have solved the "problem" in the east alon over time. Also it might be that some payment from russia to people in the army might have stopped, or other payments from Oligarchs (Achmetov etc) or other sources has started.
ReplyDeleteSuch a suspicious boost in efficiency of our army can have another answer. Anti-terrorist operation was ARTIFICIALLY slowed down to not allow Donbas to vote, because Donbas is still mostly controlled by Yanukovich people. For the moment only 50 percents of votes processed there, of approximately 3000000 voters in both Donbas only 150000 voted. And support of Poroshenko there is significantly less then in all Ukraine - 30% and 54%.
ReplyDeleteOne more version:
Commanders of ATO forces (Avakov, Kovaliov, Turchinov) have told that inefficiency was caused: 1) by lots of Russian agents in the structures of police, security service and army; 2) by systematical under financing - lack of modern equipment; 3) lack of training - lack of sync between units. During the last two month army was training very intensively - i can't remember such a massive exercises since broke up of Soviet Union! Maybe this problems was solved, at least partially, and that caused increase of efficiency. I hope so.