Bitter Survivors and Caravans of Coffins from Ukraine’s “Eastern Boiler” - The Daily Beast
▻http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/14/bitter-survivors-and-caravans-of-coffins-from-ukraine-s-eastern-boile
Last week, wounded servicemen being treated at the Main Military Clinical Hospital in Kiev blamed the country’s commanders for a major betrayal in Ilovaisk. They claim the officers used “ideological” young men – the volunteers in the militia batalliions – as nothing more than cannon fodder. Indeed, some say the commanders wanted to get rid of them. And if the members of the militias were captured, they had little hope of rescue or ransom. "Militants of volunteer battalions suffer much worse treatment on the other side of the line than regular army soldiers,” says Mustafa Nayeem of Hromadske Television. “They have almost no chance to get free.”
(…)
In many engagements volunteers asked regular army commanders for support, transport and ammunition, but often in vain. During the recent battles outside Ilovaisk, rebel forces killed more than 200 out of about 600 encircled soldiers from the Donbass, Krivbas, Mirotvorets and Azov battalions, defense ministry adviser Vasily Budik told The Daily Beast earlier this week.
“At the time, by law, we could not provide these partially trained troops with heavier weapons,” said Budik. “I was one of the critics of the volunteer battalions, lobbying to eliminate them, but at the moment they represent a majority of our army.”
With a record like this, that may not be the case for long.
Il est clair que, politiquement, la gestion des anciens combattants des milices, dont un bon nombre proches (au moins…) de la droite extrême va être plus que délicate à gérer et promet de continuer à fournir de l’animation dans la vie politique ukrainienne.
Comme pour tous les #combattants_politiques, les chefs de leurs partis jouent de leurs sacrifices pour se faire une place au soleil.
Par ailleurs, le journaliste Mustapha Nayeem, mentionné plus haut, est candidat sur la liste du Bloc Poroshenko (cf. ►http://seenthis.net/messages/293493 )
