Der Guardian veröffentlicht gestern diese Geschichte:
Russian soldier: 'You're better clueless because the truth is horrible'
Despite Moscow denials, Ukrainian troops give accounts of fighting Russian army in Ilovaysk outside Donetsk
Bloodied, dirty and stinking, the Ukrainian soldiers who passed through the town of Komsomolske on Saturday morning made for a sorry sight. But they were the lucky ones, who had managed to escape alive from an assault they say involved regular units of the Russian army.
Having fled from encirclement in the town of Ilovaysk, their column of 70 armoured vehicles and hundreds of soldiers was ambushed and shelled, according to one soldier. "Our vehicles were colliding with one another and our tracks were running over our own fighters," said Taras Samchuk, 28, whose 51st brigade was one of the units surrounded.
Many died, some were captured, and about 100 soldiers survived, often "with legs broken or smashed, with shrapnel in our hands, legs, bodies, with smashed teeth and broken noses", he said.
Two weeks ago, Ukraine looked as if it was winning its battle against Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, but the tide has turned in recent days, with the encirclement at Ilovaysk a key moment. Samchuk, like many Ukrainian fighters, said there is only one reason for this. Instead of fighting a ragtag group of rebels, the Ukrainians have suddenly found themselves fighting the regular Russian army.
Samchuk, who worked as a barman in the western Ukrainian city of Lutsk before being recruited to the army, said he and his comrades rescued a Russian in an armoured vehicle they destroyed near the town. "He told us he served in 8th Chechen brigade [possibly the 8th mountain motor-rifle brigade, based in Chechnya] and he claimed he thought they were sent here for exercises," Samchuk said, adding that the soldier was now being treated in a Kiev hospital.
Nobody knows how many Ukrainians died in Ilovaysk, but the battle for the small town outside Donetsk is likely to go down as one of the defining moments of the conflict. Some were killed in the intense exchanges of shelling in a battle for the town that lasted a week, while others were picked off as they fled, and many more were taken prisoner – more than 500, according to the Ukrainian official in charge of prisoner swaps. In one video released by rebels, a group of captive Ukrainians from volunteer battalions are forced to jump up and down at gunpoint by rebel commanders, reciting derogatory rhymes.
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