On Friday, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, for alleged war crimes.
“The dialectics of history were such that the theoretical victory of Marxism compelled its enemies to disguise themselves as Marxists.” -V.I. Lenin, “The Historical Destiny of the Doctrine of Karl Marx.”
Loud in the press this week has been the major development in the NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine, what is described as a massive “Russian defeat” in the Kharkov region of east Ukraine. Russia’s manpower-lite and artillery-heavy military formation was forced to organize a withdrawal from Kharkov, facing multi-axis and casualty-heavy attacks from the Kiev forces, which unlike the now-destroyed Ukrainian military of some months ago, are fully equipped and operated as a NATO army manned by Ukrainians. Despite evacuation efforts, this leaves behind Eastern Ukrainians who will pay brutally with their lives as the Kiev bureaucracy implements what it has already announced as cleansing for anyone deemed a Russia-collaborator. There is now a massive movement of both NATO-Ukrainian and pro-Russian military building up in the south and south-east, preparing for a storm in the next weeks.
To assess this situation, “On the Barricades” has the pleasure of bringing repeat-guest Mark Sleboda onto the show for a two-part series this weekend. Mark is a former US Navy specialist, military expert, and academic who attended the London School of Economics before becoming a senior lecturer at Moscow State University.
In this first episode, hosts Maria Cernat and Boyan Stanislavski enlist Mark’s military analytical expertise to help piece together interpretations of the events in Kharkov, and to dissect the big questions that follow. He tells us about what’s happening on the ground, what military entities are engaged, what the events represent in terms of the Moscow and Kiev-NATO strategy, and what changes to the dynamic could come out of this now unstable balance of forces. We also hear updates about the role of Belarus in the war, the relevance of the renewed Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict, as well as the general mood of the Russian population toward the Putin regime and their attitude toward escalating the conflict to a full-out mobilization for war with NATO.
While the authorities have ordered lawsuits and detention of collaborators but private channels are simply spurring the murder of civilians, Ukraine pretends on September 15, 2022, to have found out a mass grave of 440 bodies near Izyum
In the AP video several soldiers and investigators are moving around. One Ukrainian soldier says he saw a video that the Russians made when the soldiers were buried in that one mass grave. From it, he says, he estimates that more than 17, maybe 25 or 30, he says, were buried in that grave.
The video he refers to is likely this one (h/t Elena Evdokimova) which was published on May 8. It seems to show the same graveyard with that one mass grave. One sees civilians with red cross armlets collecting and burying bodies of dead soldiers. I count a total of 17 dead bodies but there may be one or two more. One Russia soldier is around and explains what is happening. The title in Russian translates to:
Ukraine refuses to take away the bodies of dead soldiers. Russian military bury them in mass graves
Scenes of thousands of Afghans flooding the Kabul international airport to flee the country as Taliban fighters were quickly consolidating their control over the capital, raised many questions, leading amongst them: who are these people and why are they running away?
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
You must be logged in to post a comment.