Author Archives: RomanInUkraine

Military Instincts

Maybe it’s the smell of revolution in the air. This evening, I was walking to the gym for BJJ training. There’s one pretty desolate street I walk down. I heard an explosion and didn’t know what it was. It made me alert.

Then fireworks erupted so suddenly, and with such intensity that I flopped belly down in the snow. It was a good spot. Beside a sort of low wall. I thought they were explosions, but it was such a good spot that I was safe. No one knew I was there either. I could have exfiltrated quickly and quietly. Only when I looked up did I see the glittering lights in the sky.

I dusted myself off and continued, more proud of myself than embarassed. It’s a good instinct.

Berkut Discipline

I’ve posted evidence of their excesses, now I’m going to anger some of my Ukrainian friends and post two examples of Berkut discipline.

I know how hard it is to control young men who feel threatened. My platoon in the 82nd Airborne Division would not have shown this level of restraint. We would have killed everybody. Of course, we had a different mission, different training and different weapons.

I want to protests to succeed. I want them to lead to a country with more local autonomy because local autonomy and competition between jurisdictions is one of the few ways to actually limit corruption.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcHx3T-fzEs

EDIT:

Thank you, Andrii. So only some of the guys in the first video are Berkut, and none the guys second video are. Yeah, about that second video. Maybe that’s not discipline they’re showing. Maybe it’s cowardice.

A Less-than-lethal Conflict

This video seems to exemplify the type of back-and-forth conflict underway in Ukraine:

[youtube]BBDWM43fN-w[/youtube]

It’s not the all-out war people think it is. It is measure. Frankly, I’m proud of the restraint shown by both sides. If this was Mexico or Syria there’d already be hundreds dead.

Please watch this video. It’s downright civilized. I’m so proud of my people.

(Yes, there have been excesses. I’ve posted them before. But I think this more restrained conflict exemplifies what is actually underway.)

Armenian Diaspora in Ukraine Seeking Revenge

Armenian Diaspora in Ukraine offering $100,000 for head of sniper who killed ‪#‎Euromaidan‬ protester Serhiy Nihoyan. Nihoyan’s family reportedly moved to Ukraine in 1992 to escape the violence of Nagorno-Karabakh (another episode of Kremlin-engineered bloodshed). A year later, Serhiy was born in Ukraine, killed at age 21.

My Account & Analysis of Ukraine’s Civil Unrest

On January 22 three Ukrainian protesters were killed by riot police, two by gunshot. It happened, strangely enough, on Unity Day. The holiday marks a proclamation of unity made in 1919 between the short-lived Western Ukrainian government, who was then battling Polish forces for control of Eastern Galicia, and the similarly short-lived government in Kyiv, which was soon overrun by Bolshevik forces. Tragedy has been the hallmark of Ukrainian history since the Mongols sacked Kyiv in 1240.

So we now have the blood of good people, but what exactly has it baptized? This remains up for grabs.

More: http://dailyanarchist.com/2014/01/23/civil-unrest-in-ukraine/