Ukrainian servicemen fire mortars on a front line in Kharkiv Region, Ukraine, in a handout picture released August 1, 2022. Press service of the 93rd Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces/Handout via Reuters
Moon Of Alabama: Ukraine - A Frontline Report - Vanishing Foreign Weapons
Some people ask why I read the New York Times and other such outlets of mostly 'western' propaganda. One obvious reason is to "know your enemy", to find out what the propaganda wants us to think. Another one is to find the gems that give a real picture of a situation which often sneak themselves into the coverage, though usually way below the headline.
Today there is a piece about Ukrainian military units which are trading weapons with each other.
A Frontline Shadow Economy: Ukrainian Units Trade Tanks and Artillery
Within the 93rd Mechanized Brigade, Zmei was not just a lowly sergeant. He was the brigade’s point man for a wartime bartering system among Ukrainian forces. Prevalent along the front line, the exchange operates like a kind of shadow economy, soldiers say, in which units acquire weapons or equipment and trade them for supplies they need urgently.
Most of the bartering involves items captured from Russian troops. Ukrainian soldiers refer to them as “trophies.”
Yes, sure, the Ukrainian units catch so many weapons from the Russians that there is a lively trade of those. However, read beyond the first 25 paragraphs of such heroic trade propaganda to get a picture of the real situation and mood at the front lines:
Alex is waiting for his own kind of repairs. He was shot in the right leg during a patrol in May. The bullet shattered his femur.
He and several other Ukrainian soldiers had been on a reconnaissance patrol in the gray zone — the area between Russian and Ukrainian front lines — when he was hit. The mission had carried two objectives, he said: to find Russian positions and to find abandoned equipment.
“We are losing tanks,” Alex said. “If this war goes the distance, sooner or later we’ll be out of Soviet equipment and other Soviet tanks, so we will have to switch to something else.”
Read more ....
WNU Editor: All of my contacts on the Ukraine side are telling me the same thing. The West needs to significantly increase their transfer of weapons and ammo to Ukraine or this is going to be a lost cause.
