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Today, the number of losses suffered by Russia during the aggression against Ukraine is tens of times higher than the losses during the Soviet-Afghan war.
Hundreds of soldiers' bodies remain abandoned and unburied.
No one has learned the lessons of Afghanistan in Russia.
The death of one person is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.
And not only millions, but even thousands and hundreds.
On New Year's Eve in Makeyevka, Ukraine, in the building of a former school, "Hymars" covered several hundred mobilized Russian soldiers at once.
The Ukrainian authorities claim that there were about 600 victims. Six hundred people.
— that's about as many words as there are in this text you're reading.
One word - one person, one biography.
Born, finished school, died...
SEE ALSO: Western intelligence: ammunition was detonated near the destroyed place of deployment of the Russians in Makeyevka, they increased losses
There were dozens of such make-believe women in this war.
This is the first war that can be followed live on YouTube and Telegram, and it has made it terribly indifferent to see and read about death.
St. Petersburg singer Alexander Rosenbaum once, in late Soviet times, wrote a very powerful song about the war in Afghanistan and the "black tulip" - a plane that takes the bodies of dead Soviet soldiers home to the USSR for burial.
None of my close relatives fought in Afghanistan, but even I have a lump in my throat from this song.
I feel sorry for the people.
I feel sorry for them even now.
After all, post-Soviet and primarily Russian society did not understand anything after Afghanistan.
Inscriptions on numerous memorials of Soviet soldiers who died in Afghanistan shyly and pitifully refer to them as Soviet propaganda: "internationalist soldiers" who "performed" some "duty".
In Minsk, there are no monuments to the Slutsk rebels, Kalinovskogo and Kosciushko.
But in one of the most prestigious places in the historical center of the city stands the "Island of Tears" memorial, the creators of which carefully avoided reflection on why, why and, of course, whose fault these almost 800 deceased Belarusians, whose names are listed there, ended up in Afghanistan to meet death there.
The "Island of Tears" memorial on the Svislach River in Minsk.
Archive photo
And even in the same song mentioned above, the singer Rosenbaum (who, it seems, also did not understand anything and since 2014 has been persona non grata in Ukraine) calls those who died in Afghanistan "heroes".
Although they are heroes: for every 15,000 dead Soviet soldiers, there were one or two million (no one can count) Afghans who died at their hands, primarily, of course, civilians.
Twenty-year-old Soviet boys died senselessly in Helmand and Kandahar.
Their death could not defeat some evil or even bring victory to their country, it did not even become a lesson for their compatriots.
SEE ALSO: "Afghan syndrome".
War, life and death of the legless veteran Leon Kazimirov
Several decades have passed, and the children and grandchildren of their generation are now repeating this lesson in a much more frightening form.
As a result of the Russian attack on Ukraine, ten times more citizens of the countries of the former USSR died than in Afghanistan.
And worst of all, the death of those 600 Russian soldiers in Makeyevka on New Year's Eve 2023 is good news for Ukraine and the whole world that supports it.
After all, those soldiers never went to kill Ukrainians and never managed to help Putin reverse the course of his criminal war of conquest.
Neither the Kremlin nor the rest of the world needed them in their human capacity.
And even the time of real mourning for them will come only after the war, when the criminal army, for which they had to fight, will cease to be a threat to the world.
But many of their loved ones, in their sincere grief, may again never think of blaming Ukrainians for their deaths, not the low qualification of the command, which did not create conditions for the effective and safe killing of Ukrainians, and not even Putin, but their collective predatory " homeland" with its five-hundred-year-old Ordinian reflexes, with its hatred for freedom (including the freedom of the neighboring Ukrainian people) and contempt for "cannon fodder": what is behind Ivan the Terrible, what is in the Russo-Japanese war ("babies are giving birth to new ones" - from there) , that near Rzhev in 1942, that in Chechnya in the 90s.
And something suggests that no one will write such a touching song about these unfortunates as Rosenbaum did then.
The opinions expressed in the blogs represent the views of the authors themselves and do not necessarily reflect the position of the editors.
SEE ALSO: An eyewitness told about the death of 200 Russian soldiers in Makeyevka
Russia's war against Ukraine
At 5 o'clock in the morning on February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the start of a military operation against Ukraine in the Donbass at the request of the "DPR" and "LPR" groups.
On February 21, during a televised address to Russians, Putin called the so-called "DPR" and "LPR" independent states within the regions.
On February 22, the Federation Council ratified this decision.
All days of the war, Ukrainian cities were bombarded with rockets, aircraft flew over them.
Russian troops are attacking, including from the territory of Belarus, using airfields, bases and roads.
Representatives of Lukashenka's regime justify the war, his opponents consider the territory of Belarus to be occupied, many call for resistance to the Russian invaders.
On February 27, the International Legion of Territorial Defense was created in Ukraine, and foreign volunteers were invited to join it.
Belarusians also entered there.
In 2022, 17 Belarusians were killed in Ukraine fighting for its independence.
These are ten soldiers of the Kalinovsky Regiment and seven from other units fighting in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
It is known about two Belarusian soldiers who were captured by the Russians.
On March 30, the UN approved the composition of an independent commission that will investigate Russian war crimes in Ukraine.
It included people who worked in the analysis of the genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Contrary to Putin's statements about attacks only on military facilities, the Russians are bombing schools, kindergartens and residential areas of Ukrainian cities.
The Russians are using banned weapons, including cluster bombs, against civilians.
On April 1, Lithuania became the first country in the European Union to completely abandon Russian gas.
Latvia and Estonia followed her example.
Germany has promised to completely stop using Russian oil by the end of 2022.
On April 2, after the liberation of the town of Bucha near Kyiv, photojournalists published dozens of photographs showing hundreds of dead people, victims of mass murders committed by Russian troops.
Many are buried in spontaneous mass graves.
The Russian occupation also brought great destruction to the people of Barodyan.
It is also known about a number of rapes, including babies.
On May 9, the US President signed the Land Leasing Law.
This law restores the program from the Second World War, which will speed up the supply of weapons to Ukraine and increase the amount of such assistance.
On July 29, as a result of an attack on the colony in Alenivka, at least 53 Ukrainian prisoners who defended the "Azovstal" plant in Mariupol and surrendered after completing their mission were killed.
The Russians accused Ukraine of the attack, the Ukrainian side declared the deliberate killing of prisoners by the Russian side.
The Russian occupation authorities prevented the UN and Red Cross missions from entering Alenavka.
Officials of Ukraine claim the death of 10,000 to 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers.
Russia claims that more than 110,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and wounded.
The military staffs of the USA and Europe assessed the losses of Russia and Ukraine as parity - about 100,000 soldiers on each side.
During the six months of the war, Russia was able to occupy about 20% of the Ukrainian territory.
In March, the area of occupied land reached 30%.
However, at the end of the month, Russian troops retreated from the north of Ukraine, as well as from most of the Kharkiv region.
At the end of August, Crimea, Luhansk and Kherson regions were completely occupied.
And also 50% of the territory of the Donetsk region, about 70% of the Zaporizhia region, approximately 30% of the Kharkiv region.
Since February 24, Russia has captured only one regional center - Kherson.
Russian troops retreated from it and from the right-bank part of the Kherson region in November 2022.
The city was occupied by Russian troops in the first days of the war without actually fighting.
Kyiv suspects part of the former leadership of Kherson and the region of treason.
The former head of the SBU of the Kharkiv region was also detained on such suspicion.
Now the front line in the Kherson region runs along the Dnieper.
The Russian military regularly bombards Kherson and other territories on the right bank of the Dnieper.
In September, Ukrainian troops launched a large-scale counteroffensive, as a result of which Russian forces began to rapidly flee from their positions in the Kharkiv region.
Only on the day of September 11, Ukrainians liberated more than 20 settlements in Slobazhanshchyna.
In September, Ukraine withdrew its mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo under the AAN to send an aviation unit to defend against Russian aggression.
On September 21, Putin announced the mobilization in Russia.
After this statement, thousands of Russians went to the border crossings and began to leave for Georgia, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Mongolia, Finland and other countries.
In Russia itself, opponents of the war set fire to several military offices.
Even people without military experience began to be conscripted into the army, despite promises that only experienced people would go to war.
The mobilization of men into the Russian army also takes place in the occupied territories of Ukraine.
On October 2, Putin submitted a bill to the Russian parliament, which is an attempt to annex parts of four regions of Ukraine.
Two new republics - "LPR" and "DNR" - and two regions - Zaporizhia and Kherson will be part of Russia.
But thanks to the counteroffensive of the Ukrainians, the borders drawn in Moscow are not fully controlled by the occupying forces.
In October, Ukrainian troops successfully continued their counteroffensive, at the beginning of October they liberated Liman and Yampal, and also came significantly closer to Svatov in the Luhansk region, and from there the way to Severodanetsk and Lysichansk opens.
On the morning of October 10, the Russians began intensive shelling of Ukrainian territory, including the center of Kyiv.
Rockets also reached Lviv, depriving the city of electricity.
Since then, Russia has launched about 10 missile attacks on infrastructure facilities and other civilian targets on the territory of Ukraine.
On October 10, Lukashenka held a meeting with the Security Council and announced the deployment of a joint grouping of troops with Putin.
On the evening of November 15, Russia fired 100 missiles across the territory of Ukraine, primarily at energy facilities, and in Poland, two missiles fell in the village of Przewodau, 6 km from the border with Ukraine, killing two people.
The Polish authorities summoned the Russian ambassador for explanations.
Then it turned out that it was probably the result of the work of the Ukrainian Air Defense Forces, which shot down a Russian missile.
In November, with the onset of cold weather, Russia intensified its missile attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure.
As a result, many Ukrainian cities and part of Moldova were left without electricity and water.
Ukraine called an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council.
On January 1, 2023, the Department of Strategic Communications of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported the death of almost 400 Russians during the attack on the building of the Polytechnic School No. 19 in Makeyevka.
Russian soldiers were there and mobilized.
The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation recognized 89 killed.
Independent verification of information about military actions provided by officials of various parties is still impossible.
Ales Chaychyts
Born in 1984 in Moscow.
Since the beginning of the 2000s, he has been an activist of the Belarusian diaspora in Russia, later in Great Britain.
Since 2013, a member of the Council of the Belarusian People's Republic.
In 2017–2021
a member of the Great Council of the World Belarusians "Batskaushchyna".
Published in "Nasha Niva", "Belarusian Partisan" and others.
Lives in Germany.
Awarded the medal for the centenary of the BNR.
ales@cajcyc.org
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