By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
Scores of Russian Soldiers are facing trial for desertion after reportedly failing to “volunteer” for military action in The Ukraine.
Gazeta.ru states in a Saturday article that the defendant troops claim to have been pressured to volunteer after first receiving bribes and other benefits from soldiers in uniform, but lacking identifying insignia, to join the action on Ukrainian territory.
When the military push into Crimea occurred, similarly equipped soldiers occupied the cities and refused to identify themselves when pressed by reporters and others.
Dozens later abandoned their posts when it became known that they would be deploying to Ukraine, a country of which Russia was not officially at war. Some were arrested
Lawyer Tatiana Chernetskaya, defending five of the soldiers, confirmed that “dozens” of soldiers faced tribunals for allegedly abandoning their duties.
The Russian Defense Ministry denied the number of soldiers facing prosecution for desertion, claiming that only four were actually accused of disciplinary violations.
Moscow also denies accusations by western governments of financing, equipping and providing personnel to shore up rebel groups in The Ukraine and for the initial occupation of Crimea.
Junior Sergeant Alexander Enenko, stationed at a base fifty miles from the Ukrainian border, told Gazeta.ru that he saw ununiformed personnel canvassing the base with offers trying to persuade soldiers to join the military action in Ukraine. The unknown recruiters offered the equivalent of $127.00 per day and other benefits for joining the action.
Enenko declined the offer stating to Gazeta.ru “I know for a fact, from my fellow soldiers, that they would bail out on the money, nobody would get anything.”
Gazeta.ru published a handwritten note from another soldier, Pavel Tynchenko, who has been charged with going absent without leave. He issued a statement to a judge: “I did not want break the oath I swore, and did not want to take part in military actions in Ukraine.”
The online news source stated that research of official records from the garrison in the city of Maikop indicates that between 2010 and 2014 only thirty five convictions were handed down for AWOL but during the first half of 2015 sixty two solders faced the same conviction.
According to Chernetskaya, the soldiers did not want to find themselves in battle in Ukraine and instead wrote letters of resignation which were not accepted. In doing so it they faced prosecution for AWOL or desertion.
Sentences range up to five years for AWOL and ten for the latter.
By Darren Smith
Source: Deutsche Welle
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Another good book on the Indo-China war(s) is “Brother Enemy” by Nayan Chanda…who covers facets seldom acknowledged by the west.
BTW…for those here who like to read books, I do recommend you read those of Bernard Fall and Jules Roy (fairly different politically) on the time period of the dissolution of Indo-China. It can be illuminating as we face future similar situations. Hindsight is always 20-20, but both Fall and Roy had a clue and published them before we stepped in directly. Problem was maybe not enough of us read them before hand. Roy’s comment [paraphrased here] about when *one needs to barricade against children, they are doing something wrong* still is represented by a beautiful photo, haging 16×20 on our living room wall, of two small Vietnamese children encircled by barbed wire….taken by USMC friend circa 1965. Reminds me of who ultimately pays for war…and forces me to wonder if they survived it.
Issac said…
… they would not have been killed if the US had not continued the ‘great game’ upon the French quitting.
True that there’d have been no US & ROK caused deaths in the direct sense. However I suspect you are not up to speed on how Ho Chi Minh, not to mention the Khemer Rouge & Pathet Lao, consolidated his/their power, between different political groups in Vietnam & adjacent “new” nations, before, during, and after the Vietnam War that allegedly ended in 1975. The body count would still be near 2 million plus by their own hands.
If you get right down to it, the bunch of white guys in Geneva who laid out Vietnam’s geography in 1954 did the most damage (following the idiocy of the Allies letting the French back in after WWII)…drawing lines across ethnic & language lines, not considering them, that did not exist in the orignal Indo-China. That act increased the violence even if we’d never set foot there. I’ve a friend who served in Eisenhower’s (then Kennedy’s) Special Forces in Laos 1959-61 and his opinion was that the Laos did not want to fight anyone….but the Tonkinese Ho demanded hegemony by violence…throughout Indo-China if he could gain it. The war for Cochin China (Saigon area) began between the Tonkinese and the Khemers in 1066 (the Tonkinese had already subjugated the Annamese, related to the Meo/Laos, in between them) and soon reached in to the Meo territories as well (aka Laos)…we hardly introduced warfare and wanton polical bloodshed of both soldiers and civilians to the area. The Geneva map just made it worse. IIRC by hook or crook most of the US supported the Vietnam War intially, at least in Congress. It might have been a better time to say “no thanks” but we didn’t do it…e.g., let the Indo-Chinese settle their own squabbles by bloodshed without us….they were very good at killing each other long ago. One thing you are correct about, the Vietnamese, and Indo-China generally were not friends of the Chinese.
PS: I was one of the few US soldiers who had read Bernard Fall’s works and Jules Roy (his posts from Hanoi) before I enlisted. I was 26 and finishing college at night and just wanted to know what I was going to face next…”Street Without Joy” (Fall) was dead on the money and portrayed the whole mess, both current (in his day) and historic accurately. Beyond that, the old RVN soldiers and sailors I still stay in touch with consider us in the mid 70’s as betrayors, expeically Henry Kissinger.
For some poor souls, the Cold War is still a warm blanket.
Very sad this solipsistic, Rocky IV mentality is still so easily resurrected, even in people supposedly smart enough to know better.
Esperanza Gomez is so HOT, she is INCENDIARY!…Colombian babe and than some!
Nick
Yes, one who thinks can see the truth. It is not about hating but identifying the truth while it is happening, not after millions are dead. It is a lesson as old as mankind.
Viet Nam protesters of the 60’s/70’s now rant about Iraq, Afghanistan, global warming, etc.
Squeek, Haters carry the hate on all their lives. The reality in Viet Nam is simple math. Most people in Viet Nam were not even alive when the US pulled out over 40 years ago. The country has moved on, a good lesson for those still battling demons, and carrying resentment. But, I have come to see some actually love to hate. I can’t understand it, but I can identify it.
@Isaac
That is your OPINION. Who knows, but maybe you are right. But maybe you aren’t, and the Vietnamese don’t see the war the same way that you do. Notice the “red” part of the line, the “very unfavorable” percentage. That is only 5% in Vietnam. less than in France, Britain–far far less than Mexico, China, Greece, Turkey—even less than the 6% of Americans who view the United States unfavorably.
I don’t think the war figures into it the same way you think. But that is just my OPINION.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
randyjet
If you read my original post, you will see that I illustrate that the area is a salad of various ethnicities each divided into groups that might have been a minority at one time and then a majority at another. If you look at a map of the demographics you will see various regions that are predominantly Russian yet wish to remain in Ukraine as well as areas that are predominantly Russian that wish to join with Russia.
Eastern Europe has been chopped up and traded between empires for centuries. The natural movement of peoples has historically been an ellipse with one end in the Mediterranean and the other in Gaul and Germania. The Romans moved North and East and those that were there moved East and South. Before that people from the East moved West and that pushed the cycle in the opposite direction. The Dorians which are said to have infused the Greeks with much of their vigor came down from the North East. Then the infused and invigorated Greeks went East, South, and West. At one time in the early stages of the Byzantine Empire the peoples in the area that is now Western Russia were so fed up with the back and forth squabbling between the very people that are doing it again today, requested a Viking king to rule over them. He married a Byzantine princess and began the consolidation of the peoples into what is now Russia-more or less, I am pulling this from memory.
If you follow what happened to the Balkans into Yugoslavia into the Balkans or Czechoslovakia into Czechoslovakia and then the Czech Republic and Slovakia, you get a more recent and less violent example. The Holy Roman Empire unified through force. The Austrian Hungarian Empire continued the grouping. During and after WW2 tens of millions of peoples were jumbled and grouped into countries they had nothing to do with originally.
This stuff of political leaders designing countries and places conflicting with the people who live there is nothing new.
Issac:
“This stuff of political leaders designing countries and places conflicting with the people who live there is nothing new.”
Double Congressional Medal of Honor winner MGen. Smedley Butler said war is a racket.
We’ve apparently decided we’re Starship Enterprise seeking to force our brand of capitalism to the corners of the Earth at the expense of brainwashed 17 to 20 year olds and the innocents living in the war zone, Unfortunately, We, the People, haven’t learned that lesson well enough to tell our owners we’re not getting involved in their wars anymore.
Rich Paul, In case you have not been keeping up, Russia is now run by a KGB thug and his cronies. Getting information is like pulling teeth. Speaking of pulling teeth, that is one of their ways of gaining information. General Dunford, Marine Corps Commandant, testified in front of the US Senate this week that Russia is our “greatest threat.” That comports w/ other military and non military threat assessments,. Some of the Hate America crowd here think the KKK and the Confederate flag are our biggest threats. And, they know more than Dunford and all others. Just ask them.
Squeaky
That says more about the Vietnamese than America. The very people who fought for decades to take back their country, suffered millions of deaths, continue to suffer exploding mines dismembering children and farmers, ended up booting the invader out, were illustrated as ‘monkeys’ by the good ole boys of the good ole USA, and they still understand that it is better to do business and be at peace, even with the likes of the US.
Americans have to realize that there are other peoples who fought for their independence, suffered untold losses, besides only those who spent that winter at Valley Forge.
Like I said, Vietnam and most of the countries in that area were not a threat to the West, were in fact pro Western, had always been independent minded, had always been trading nations-being on the sea and in-between so many other countries/peoples. The question to ask is why the US caused so much slaughter and strife for so long. And then we did it again in Iraq.
Nothing like a post whose headline contains both ‘Reportedly” AND ‘Allegedly” in the headline.
@I.Annie
Or maybe they just remember the war differently than our Main Stream Media does?
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Ah yes, I see it now. I guess they like us because we use them to manufacture cheap goods.
@I.annie
9th on the list.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I didn’t see Vietnam on your graph Squeeky.
Aridog, Right on cue. A hate America polemic.
@Isaac
I wonder how come the U.S. is sooo high on the favorability list with Vietnam???
http://i.imgur.com/NnTTlEG.png
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter