But you knew that.
Climateer Investing, Friday, May 27, 2022:
WaPo: "Ukrainian volunteer fighters in the east feel abandoned"This was known six weeks ago.
It's the artillery. It either kills the Ukrainian troops or it drives them insane. Very few severely wounded by artillery.
To compensate for the Russian tactics—which are not quite WWII's Operation Bagration where the Katyusha rockets ("Stalin's Organ.") were out in front of the artillery which were lined up wheel-to-wheel to destroy anything between 2 and 20 miles—but still overwhelming, the Ukrainian soldiers are literally back to trench warfare, where all you can do is duck your head and pray that today is not your last day on earth.
It's WWI all over again. And the doctors, one of whom supplied the lack-of-severe-wounds factoid, are seeing shell shock cases like this poor bastard, just as the doctors at the Battle of the Somme did 106 years ago:
This was true six weeks ago, I wonder why the Post is publishing the story now?....
And from Der Spiegel, February 29, 2024:
Ukrainian Soldiers at the Front The Horrors of Trench Warfare
Kyiv's soldiers have been fighting under the most difficult of conditions for two years. They are running out of ammunition and replacement troops are few. Many are no longer capable of imagining normal life. A visit to the front.
A Hillside near Toretsk
It was impossible to get any closer. "One step over the crest of the hill and the Russians would consider it an attack," Edward, the laconic commander, had said earlier: "But everything is mined anyway." In the rising morning light, we walk from his command bunker toward the noise of distant impacts, past the mangled remains of cars, riddled with bullet holes. We trudge and crawl through narrow trenches up the earthen slope for a brief look at the Russian side, 150 or 200 meters away. Nobody can be seen."Bart," his call sign, thinks he has spotted movement in a destroyed house. The booming, dry roar of his heavy machine gun rattles your bones. But then the metal belt for the 12.7-millimeter ammunition jams. The Russians now know he's standing there, but he can't shoot.Cursing, rattling – an endless four minutes pass before he is able to fire of several more salvos. Even in the trench behind him, the air is barely breathable from the acrid smoke from the gunpowder. "Now it's burning over there," says Bart with grim satisfaction as he ducks back into the relative safety of the mud walls....
