All I smell is mud and piss.
This goddamn trench is my home, the trench is my grave, and yet I still see the panoramic view of the sky. There is no tomorrow and no yesterday, everything exists in the now. The trench is the now. I am the now. I exist by pure will of action, the trench will cradle me, the trench will not fail. You can execute me, but you cannot execute the ground itself.
Beyond the bend are my brothers. I cannot see them, but I know they're there. We communicate through morse code on the radios, the lowest grade of technologies, which have existed for a century. Men in trenches. Guns and tanks. Dots and dashes, little has progressed since many of my great uncles died protecting the Motherland from the German Nazis in World War II.
Except for the drones. Annoying gnats that buzz by from time to time, seemingly attracted by death and shit. We shoot at them when they come from the East, we assume they are ours if they come from the West. I do not have an army of drones at my disposal, they come from behind the lines. Usually our drones zip by, their drones tend to linger.
Holding the trench line in my section is Yvgeny and I. Technically, me and Yvgeny's corpse. Yvgeny passed a few weeks back by his own hand. But I propped him up and any drones that fly over believe that Yvgeny is holding his position. Part of me feels bad for using dead Yvgeny, part of me is angry that Yvgeny left me. He is now part of the ground.
The only thing any of us can do is sit in the sludge and hold their territory.
Even when things are dry, the dirt of the earth permeates until you, too, are the earth.
I envy the ants and the bees, they come and go as they please. I look at the rocks and feel blessed that they know not what war is. Has there ever been a rock war? Maybe on a children's cartoon, but not in real life.
And here there is no escape from real life. There is only nastiness and filth. No drink or smoke to calm your nerves, no TV or movie to let your brain escape. Being in the trench is already living death. The clothes I wear are the clothes I've been wearing. There is no "clean," only dirty and less dirty. The only thing that is pure is water that falls from the sky and into my mouth. I fear Putin seeks ways to poison the clouds. I have noticed that even the rats have fled.
I keep getting this message:
. .- - / - .... . / .-. .- - ...
I should be getting drunk at a bar. I would have blown my own brain out by now if I didn't think some Russian Faggot would skull-fuck me and put my severed head on a pike. Part of my life is to save Yvgeny from that fate.
Yet I have no choice but to be in the trench. If Putin wins, you are executed. If you desert your post, you cannot live your life in shame. My family taught me to hate no man, but I hate Vladimir Putin. I am not a Russian, I am Ukrainian. Putin has stripped my life to its most basic instincts. To live or to die, to kill or to be killed.
I am not an uneducated man. My family knew the horrors of the Holodomor. Putin is no different than Stalin. But you see this gun in my hand? I will die on my feet and not on my knees, even if dying on my feet means dying ankle deep in mud and feces. Stalin tried to starve us to death. Stalin sent us to camps. Now Putin uses the way of the sledgehammer to bludgeon his enemies. He sends his enemies to camps. He is not a leader, he is no better than a crime lord. Putin seeks to rape Ukraine of its resources in the same way he has skimmed the wealth from Russia.
And even if we started to win, Putin would use his illegal weapons. Would Putin use chemical weapons? Yes. Would Putin use gas? Yes. Would Putin, dare I say, use his nuclear arsenal? Yes. Putin yearns to kill the Ukrainian in new ways to send messages. We can only hope that someone puts a bullet in Putin's brain soon in order to end this invasion. And I don't love America either. I am grateful for their weapons, but the American Way is not our way. I do not want rainbow flags on every building and McDonald's on every corner. I am not a human pawn. You cannot trust a German, I will not get in bed with their ilk.
I almost feel bad for the Russians that I kill. They fight for a lie. I fight for no flag but the Ukrainian Flag. I fight for no man but the Ukrainian Man.
Every day I become more animal than man. Since Yvgeny is gone, I have enough rations, but I continue to feel the hate growing in my heart. I want to kill every fucking Russian that stands between me and Vladimir Putin. One day I dream of a free Ukraine and a free Russia that stand side by side against a morally bankrupt West. I support an autonomous Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
But all I really want to do is to go home and speak my own language. I am so tired. I do not sleep in a bed. I close my eyes and open them back up when I hear noise. Some quiet nights, I cannot discern being asleep from being awake. I am not a Ukrainian Rambo, I do not have the strength to get to Putin. If a Russian Nationalist was to kill Putin, well, God bless him, as long as the result is the invasion ending.
--The Ukrainian Soldier
Ukrainian soldiers are nothing more than modern-day Nazis planning on world domination. They crave the expansion of NATO. They are nothing but puppets of America. They plot and scheme for the spread of Western Culture. They will stop at nothing in order to destabilize the Russian Sphere of Influence.
--Putin's Government
On October 24, 1991, Ukraine declared independence from the Soviet Union. The Ukrainian Citizens desire a homeland free from the tethers of Moscow.
Not unlike when we went to war with England, we didn't desire to conquer England, we coveted creating our own destiny.
It is now Ukraine's time to fulfill their independent destiny, and we should support our comrades in any way possible. (Except for troops.)
--American Democrats
Every action has a cost, and it has come time to analyze if the amount of money that we are sending to Ukraine is worth the benefit that America gets for supporting Ukraine.
--American Republicans
Screw Ukraine. Besides, everything east of Romania is Russia.
--Stupid American Libertarians (Like Spike Cohen)
If Putin takes Ukraine, then he will try to take Poland, then Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia, then Moldova. His endgame is the German border.
--Western European Governments
We don't care. This continent has its own problems.
--Namibian Government
That is what Ukraine is fighting for, its own future. Americans used to embrace the concept of fighting for Freedom. Do you remember those ungrateful bastards in Kuwait? In 1990, in the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq surprisingly, and quickly, stormed across Kuwait in under 3 days. Kuwait was then annexed and became the 19th province of Iraq. Did the Kuwaiti populace rise up and fight off the invaders?
No.....
That is why Ukraine, specifically, deserves our support. Not our troops, our red line has to be Poland, but our support. In 1991, as the Soviet Union was dissolving, Ukraine voted overwhelmingly for independence. In return for guarantees of a peaceful transition, Ukraine went from the world's third largest nuclear power to destroying and/or relinquishing their nuclear arsenal. That's not me speculating, that's from the Budapest Memorandum. Also from the Memorandum: The Memorandum "prohibits the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States from threatening or using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, 'except in self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.'"
That's why Vladimir Putin bent over backwards trying to explain his invasion of Ukraine, absurdly claiming he was defending his country from the 'Nazis'...
Ukraine defending itself from a Russian Invasion should have been an easy bipartisan topic to rally behind. What country has asked the United States for support, and not troops, after giving up their nuclear weapons in their fight for existence.
It has never happened before in the history of the world.
-- Fred Hunt, from Beacon of Speech
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