Putin’s War: A Swedish Sniper in Ukraine

phyzzique

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KIEV, Ukraine—This was supposed to be a routine reconnaissance mission, but suddenly it became complicated.


They had been crawling in the woods to stay concealed when the jeep with four separatists inside pulled up and parked along the road a few hundred meters away. They had two options: Start running, or the other thing.

Mikael Skillt laid a reassuring hand on his Smith & Wesson knife. They would wait until dark.

Skillt was unusually anxious. Normally before combat he went into what he called “work mode,” shutting off all unnecessary thoughts and emotions. He felt that way now too, behind separatist lines in Ilovaisk in eastern Ukraine. But he also could feel his heart pumping, which was unfamiliar.

Skillt, a Swede, had killed many men in combat, yet this time would be different. Typically he saw the enemy through a riflescope. His enemy’s death was registered by the faster-than-gravity way that dead men fall to the earth.

And, in Skillt’s experience, a balaclava normally concealed the enemy’s face. Not that he looked at the faces. That’s what they teach you in sniper school: Never look at the faces.

When night fell, it was time. The separatists remained parked at the same spot. They had rolled down the windows of the jeep and had been smoking and drinking vodka for a while. They were probably drunk, Skillt thought.

Creeping up to the vehicle, Skillt took the driver’s side. His friend, another Swede who had joined the Azov Battalion to fight for Ukraine, took the passenger’s side. The man in the driver’s seat was asleep and hanging halfway out the window. Skillt put the knife in and pulled it out.

The doomed man made a few gurgling sounds and looked at Skillt in terror. He flailed his arms a little bit, but didn’t put up much of a fight. He was gone in 15 or 20 seconds.

On the passenger side of the jeep, Skillt’s friend did his job. The back door on the driver’s side opened and a man spilt out. He tried to run, but slipped. Skillt lunged. He was a little nervous and slipped too, but he found his mark. He stabbed the man in the eye, breaking off the knife’s blade in the act. Skillt noticed the copper smell of blood.

He and his friend dragged the bodies into the woods and took up positions to hide. The next morning, another car pulled up. The men inside got out, looked at the tableau of the jeep, which was swimming in blood, then fled.

“There are times when I can hear that nasty sound,” Skillt, 38, says in his Swedish accent, almost a year later. “The blood going down the windpipe. It’s a very nasty sound. Sometimes when I go to sleep, I can hear the sound and smell the blood. If there’s one thing I wish I could be without, it would be that.”

http://www.newsweek.com/putins-war-swedish-sniper-ukraine-362883
 
lol, Demon your government is up to such nasty crap, not to mention it's one of the most corrupt in the world, Putin's an aggressive, expansionist, dictator. Russia's sucks at football, your ice hockey team has become an embarrassment. And your taking it's side open your eyes pal.
 
I'm not sure I go all the way with popgoesthehead but once the old Soviet Union imploded and Ukraine was allowed to become an independent state it ill becomes Putin through his intermediaries to try and retake control. Crimea may be a different issue since it had always been part of Russia but this does not apply to eastern Ukraine. The corrupt pro Russian administration fell when it's leader, jankovitch ran away rather than justify his kleptomania and a new democratically elected government replaced him. That it was pro western is irrelevant and Putin should accept the will of the people.
I suspect that if Scotland had voted for independence it would have been allowed to secede peacefully as was Slovakia.
Bring back Gorbachev .
 
I know about problems of my country and dont justify Putin and his actions. But dont lie here that this peace of shit, foreign thug, killing for money, is a good guy. Do you know how many people in Luhansk and Donetsk regions died or became homeless due to punishment operation, beginning by Kiev regime? How many kids were killed by airstrikes and artillery missles of ukranian army? It's nor hockey or foofbal, dude. This war is going nearby my borders and russians like me die in this massacre organized by your shitable western government. So, you may continue accept garbage that TV news give you and be frightened by mythic russian threat.
 
Okay. I accept that there are always two sides to every story. I also accept that my perception will be coloured by what I read in my newspaper, which incidentally is The Independent, not a paper which slavishly follows the government line, and hear on the BBC which with all its faults is not controlled by government and is totally free in its coverage.
However is not in dispute I think is that there was a country called Ukraine. This country had clearly defined boundaries despite the fact that the East and western parts didn't get on particularly well. A leader, jankovitch, who clearly was corrupt, lost the confidence of his country and there were demonstrations against him. Rather than try and argue his way out of his problems he fled the country. There was then an election which resulted in a pro western leader. Jankovitch had been pro Russian and Putin did not like this. He therefore sent arms and troops to support the seperatists destabilise the government who responded. This response led to the killing of innocent civilians but was justified by the government as collateral damage in their attempt to keep their country
as one.
Now I don't know whether Ukraine can continue to exist as a single country but that is a decision for the Ukrainians, not for Putin or Obama. hat I do know is that very few countries would be happy being split up. In the u.k. We had a referendum over Scotland and had they voted for independence it would have been peacefully granted. Similarly in Canada with Quebec.mthe Catalans want a similar ballot butSpain will not grant it but they have not unilaterally seceded from Spain. Similarly the Walloons in Belgium.
My view is that the whole of Ukraine should hold a free ballot, ideally under the supervision of the European Union which is a democratic organisation with no axe to grind, to determine its future either as two separate countries, a unified country or a federal structure. Dependent on the results of that ballot there should then be negotiations to try and sort the issues out.
No one can ever justify the murder of innocent civilians. Those who tried to break away from Ukraine must have realised there would be repercussions but they didn't seem to are so long as they got their way. And the shooting down of the Malay plane should be fully investigated and those responsible should be imprisoned for life , ther is no way that that was not a deliberate act, and the available evidence seems to,point to the seperatists even if Putin himself was probably horrified by what happened.
So that is my personal opinion. I guess I am lucky to live in a democracy where governments come and go dependent on free elections and not in a country where the only accepted electoral result is that the current leaders want.
Thanks for responding to me. I hope you see where I am coming from on this.
 
And, for what it is worth , I don't see a Russian threat to our democracy any more than I see a threat to Russia from Western Europe. I suspect Putin has never been happy with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the independence of the Baltic States and the return to Europe of Hungary, Poland,thenczech Republic and Slovakia. But just as Britain has had to accept the loss of its empire so should Putin. Maybe this is why Gorbachev was such a hero over here, he seemed to want to move forward whereas we see Putin as more akin to an expansionist Russian tsar.
 
I doubt that Russia could invade to Eastern Europe. It's absolutely worthless. It will put an end to our economy, which now is already in full crisis. Also nobody in Russia would be glad to go die in war.
 
Demon, you're victim of a pederussian propaganda. Ukraine wins in this war, and Russia takes prescribed by history place near by North Korea when 30$ for barrel kills russian economics. Gas station country, outlay country...
 
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Demon, I am glad that you do not defend all of Putin's actions and do not swallow all of your government's line. And of course as a Russian you love your country see things very differently from most of us in the West - that is only natural, and the rights and wrongs of the Ukraine situatuon are not all one-sided, many of us in the West understand that though we disagree with you where the balance lies.
Generally I very much agree with Lindier. I would add one thing - as well as The Independent, The Guardian ( http://www.theguardian.com/uk ) is also a totally independent newspaper, broadly left/liberal and hostile to our present Conservative government.
I'd disagree with Lindier on two points though.
- A free ballot in the whole Ukraine (including Crimea but with an option for Crimea to take a different decision to the rest of the country) under international supervision is definitely a good thing, but I don't think the EU should supervise it. The present crisis started when Yanukovych tore up a draft agreement with the EU in favour of one with Russia, so rightly or wrongly the EU cannot be seen by pro-Russian Ukrainians as having no axe to grind. It would have to be by the UN.
- And I don't think the shooting down of the airliner was a deliberate act, not as the shooting down of a civilian plane full of passengers. Although I haven't much doubt that it was done by the separatists (with or without any direct Russian involvement), I also haven't much doubt that they thought they were shooting down a Ukrainian military transport, so in terms of the civilian casualties it was a tragic mistake not a deliberate act.
 
Better worry about your ukranian economics, which almost does not already exist.
 
deaddirty, about MH17 of course condemned ones must face the justice no matter from what side of conflict they are. But also part of responsibility is on ukranian government, which allowed civilian aircrafts to fly over the battle area, where already had been used anti-aircraft missiles.
 
Hi guys. It's great to see how much we agree about given our different perspectives.
I agree
That it was probably negligent of Malay airlines to fly over eastern Ukraine but, to be fair, I doubt anyone thought they would be shot out of the sky with the resultant loss of innocent lives. However I would have had more respect for the seperatists if they had admitted a mistake had been made and apologised rather than denied their involvement. Hindsight is a great teacher. However there seems little doubt that to blame the Ukrainian government is conspiracy theory gone mad.
I also take the point about U.N. Involvement rather than the European community. The only problem with that is that if Russia doesn't like the results it has an absolute veto, as also have Britain and France. And also I have doubts about the impartiality of the U.N. Their view on the Middle East where Israel is always the villain despite many other nations having a far worse record on human rights does not install confidence.
I guess this debate may run a little longer. It's great to chat to you guys. Maybe if the combatants also tried it the problems in Ukraine might resolve themselves
And deaddirty it's great to see a guardian reader even though I prefer the independent. However anyone who reads one of those two rather than the torygraph or, heaven forbid, the mail, must have the makings of a decent human being
 
Thanks Lindier. And Demon - although we don't agree on most things at least we are listening to each other with some respect , and as lindier says if the respective governments did the same things would at least start to get resolved.
The question of whose fault it was that civilian aircraft were flying over the contested area is interesting. The Ukrainian government since it was officially Ukrainian airspace? Or the separatists since they had declared independence so presumably considered it their airspace? The UN? Or IATA (the Internatioanl Air Transport Association) who I think have a role in advising airlines on areas to avoid (and, from memory, I think had advised airlines not to overfly eastern Ukraine beow 30,000 ft believing that neither side had missiles capable of hitting anything above that level - the MH17 flight was just above that level so within open airspace)? But many airlines had already quietly rerouted their flights to steer well clear of the contested areas, so perhaps as Lindier says just a bit of responsibility with the airline for not doing that? But surely the main responsibility has to lie with whoever fired that missile without being absolutely sure that the target was a military plane not a civilian airliner.
 
Good, and CIVILIZED discussion men.
We have all become what our 'leaders' have molded us into over generations - our problems all stem from the fact that we fail to sometimes
look at issues from both sides of the coin. You bet, the Russians are tired of fighting crap after what happened to them in WW2!
My problem is what a serious back-to-the-middle-ages turn Russia took by bashing gays! That will turn out to be bad news in the long run - gays are
smarter on the whole - like the English guy who solved the German code in WW2...
 
Not that Britain showed him much gratitude. He was convicted of homosexual,acts at a time when this was still illegal and offered chemical castration as an alternative to prison. He died of cyanide poisoning and although it may have been accidental the coroners verdict was suicide. Fortunately that was then and we have moved on from there. A few years ago he received a posthumous apology from Gordon Brown and the Queen pardoned him. Not that it did him much good.
 
Это все хуйня, зря ругаетесь и спорите из-за правительств, все правительства мира без исключений, диктаторы, хапуги, коорупционеры, гандоны и конченные мудаки, так что забейте болт на них.
 
Это все хуйня, зря ругаетесь и спорите из-за правительств, все правительства мира без исключений, диктаторы, хапуги, коорупционеры, гандоны и конченные мудаки, так что забейте болт на них.

Any chance of a translation for those of us who cannot read or speak Russian
 
Any chance of a translation for those of us who cannot read or speak Russian

He said: "It's all bullshit, you're quarelling for nothing, every government in the world are corruptioners, assholes and dictators. So don't give a fuck about them."
 
Demon. Thanks for the translation. I disagree with what he says. As Churchill once said democracy is a pretty bad system of government, at least until you've considered the alternatives. I certainly don't support Cameron and the conservatives but I accept that he had a majority for his views in that more people voted for him than the alternative as set out by Miliband. And whilst a truly democratic proportional representative system might have given more power to the liberals (8% of the vote, 1% of the M.P.s ) the Greens (4% of the vote, 1 M.P. Or even the unpleasantly xenophobic UKIP 12% of the vote 1 M.P. at least there is the compensation that the Conservatives can be turned out in 5 years.bof course if the dreaded Corbyn is the alternative it will be a choice between the devil and the deep blue see.
But seriously there is no problem that cannot be solved by talking and discussion. And whilst I guess that none of us can really make any major difference I also think that trying to understand the other's point of view whilst arguing for our own is what makes us human.
Long may we continue
 
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