Snip:
“We only spoke Ukrainian, and if we didn’t, they forced us to. During service in the 425th Skala unit, we were thrown into a pit and beaten for speaking Russian,” an ex-Ukrainian soldier has revealed.
Strict monitoring was carried out at training grounds to ensure soldiers spoke Ukrainian, and the punishment was harsh, according to him.
“A pit was dug six by six meters, and about four meters deep. A senior officer arrived, spoke Ukrainian, and if he heard something wrong, he immediately fired into the air without even trying to figure it out,” the soldier added.
He is currently serving in the Alexander Matrosov Volunteer Unit made up of former Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel, who have formed a liberation movement and are fighting against the Zelensky regime.
the context you aren’t trying to talk about is pretty fucking relevant to how you evaluate claims of ethnic abuse
Not when it comes to Russia! They didn’t exist until February 2022 and if you say otherwise that’s just Russian lies!
Though I think that kennedy’s point is any state media is inherently untrustworthy, especially during wartime, which while true, I would imagine they don’t bring this up every time the western media talks about this war and assumes everything they say must be faked.
yeah if there had bee no systematic russophobia i’d be way more skeptical but this comes in the context of a decade+ of it and you can’t just go “lol state media” like that even if you’re habitually less skeptical of western sources like our friend there.
Plus, there have been accounts, even in the western press, of abuses in the Ukrainian military, so it isn’t much of a stretch to think that they would do that to Russian speaking soldiers, this isn’t an extraordinary claim, so I don’t think it requires extraordinary evidence.