The smallish industrial city Bakhmut in Ukraine is under heavy shelling since May 2022 now. The surrounding fields are so littered with lead that agricultural activities will be impossible for decades, even centuries, due to the land being poisoned. In France, the huge Red Zone area is still uninhabitable for humans, a 100 years after WW1 for the same reason.
Actually, the fights there started in 2014 already during the Maidan drama, when rebels from the Donetsk 'Republic' claimed the city as their own. The Ukrainian government said, give it back. The rebels, sipping some of the fine sparkling wine from the 236-feet below the ground winery the city is known for, said 'njet' in a voice translating as "fuck-off, it's ours now." The Ukrainian government felt an unbearable sense of loss, because vodka is important but wine is importanter. So they took the city back by force some months and many carcasses later, because they love salt too.
Ah, salt. Bakhmut at one stage, while under Soviet control, produced a whopping 12% of all the salt used in Mother Russia. Given that Russians didn't know how to operate a fridge, and that their country is by size the biggest on the planet, they salted everything as a preservative. So, a lot of salt was used, the four salt mines around Bakhmut ran around the clock. That's why so many Russian women get really old, while looking like dried fish. They were salted instead of manicured and plastered with Western mascara.
Many centuries ago - when the Church ruled all of Europe and got idiots to believe that the sun is dragged through the sky by a man on an oxcart, not kidding - salt was as valuable as gold. Only the rich and famous and royalty got to pinch a bit of it over their meals.
Bakhmut arrived a bit late on the white gold digging scene, with vast salt deposits only discovered in the 20th century. But then they dug away anyway. So much so, that Bakhmut today has the biggest underground 'room' in the world, underneath the suburb Soledar, owned by the Artemsil salt mine company. Remember, this happened under the USSR flag. 200 kilometers of tunnels underneath the city, a 100 meters below the surface, and most big enough to house troops and pick them up in pure Uber-style right there with tanks. That, kids, is why Ukraine is working so hard to keep the Russians out. Because once in there, it will be Azov in Mariupol all over again, just the other team playing mole.
We know that Russian men are by nature primitive cavemen, and one can see it in the way they treat their bitches, and how they rape innocent women and children during their war sprees. (Maybe we should read up on the Syrian war as well.) Such a big man-made cave system is therefore not a surprise.
How big, you ask? Well, a whole inflated pumped up hot air balloon was fit into there, for the Soviet regime to brag about it. "Look, 'Murica!'" The Americans still didn't grasp its size because it was not given in feet and miles, and it didn't have 'spy balloon Made in China' printed on a solar panel, so the Communists played two professional football matches in there, at the same time.
Then the fat Americans felt ashamed and raised the taxes on Texas to punish them for lying when bragging everything is always bigger in Texas. As revenge, the Texans put up a space base and sent someone to the moon, balance of order restored. As said, this happened many a moon ago when the communists were in charge in Russia.
The city of Bakhmut has a history of violence and instability, due to its important location on the map. During WW2, the Nazi's came around, and liked the absence of scenery so much that they occupied it from 1941 to 1943. They also showed their genocidal moves that would make them the envy of a Herr Putin many decades later.
For example: In 1942, German Einsatzgruppe C took some 3,000 Jews from Artemivsk - as the town was known at the time - to a mine shaft two kilometers outside of town. They fired some shots into the crowd of terrified Jews - I assume their god-thingy was busy elsewhere looking for some car keys - and then someone's cellphone ring. It was Hitler. "Hey, stop wasting my ammo." The gruppe guy crapped his pants and fell over the wire of his cellphone. That gave the Jews the chance to run away. Right into a mine shaft tunnel. So Mr Gruppe said: "Let there be no air." His subordinates thus bricked up the tunnel, and all 3000 or so Jews and some Covid-19 bats in there suffocated to death. Brutal.
In the 2017 census, only 0.2% of the 75000 people in the city were Jewish. Geez, why so few, huh. Where did the others go.
In 1999, some justice was served at last. Or remembrance, anyway, since Lady Justice was too busy getting gang raped many times by the Russians in history. A memorial was built into a rock in the mine, and like with all mines, there's some water flowing there. Dragging their godsnot into the mine, the Jews that paid for the memorial - and we know paying isn't a favorite pastime of theirs - they named it a 'wailing wall' for those murdered there 7 decades ago. Like walls could cry, FFS.
Over the centuries since the town came into being, its name was changed many times. But not many names. Look at this, and see if you can guess when the Soviets ruled:
1571–1924: Bakhmut
1924–1941: Artyomovsk (Russian) / Artemivsk (Ukrainian language)
1942–1943: Bakhmut
1943–1992: Artyomovsk/Artemivsk
1992–2016: Artemivsk (Zelensky's predecessors slipped up here)
2016–present day: Bakhmut
The question we should ask ourselves: Is Bakhmut really Ukrainian? While Ukrainians make up 69.4% of its population (2017 census), and Russians 27.5%, the most spoken first language is Russian, coming in at 62%, and Ukrainian at just 35%, and with some other languages there too.
To win a war, one needs to understand the enemy. I pointed out the above to give some historical context, and why Putin feels he is justified in his assault of a sovereign country. Borders are man-made, but what happens when an ethnic group feels they rather belong to the country next-door? It's common in war-torn Africa with its colonial-drawn borders, by the way.
Right now just 4000 inhabitants of Bakhmut remains... oh wait, ten just died over there, so only 3990 residents are left to cower under a barrage of missiles trying to kill them. And, many of those people stayed behind in the hopes of becoming Russian just like in the good wonderful prosperous years of Soviet rule, when nobody waited longer than 14 hours a day for a loaf of bread. Who wants to be part of the decadent European Union with their bread toasters and freedom of speech and washing machines anyway.
Putin feels a fuck. Bakhmut is like poor dear Mariupol being blasted into oblivion every second as you're reading this. Super hot Ukrainian women of 20 years old that frolicked around on TikTok in January 2022 were blown to pieces just a month or three later, which should remind you that life can change fast, so carpe diem the crap out of today, okay.
While you have the privilege of reading my wise words here, someone in the hammered city Bakhmut just now felt a piece of burning hot metal ripping through his or her intestines. It will take till the end of this article for that innocent child to bleed to death.
Basically, Bakhmut is done. To rebuild that city will be almost pointless due to the costs involved. Yet, Ukraine clings to the waterless, powerless, cold city like glue, and for good reason.
The city has one thing counting in its favor: Its place on the map. And the city below the city with possible biolabs, huge Ukrainian military stockpiles, or for the financial benefits of the Wagner group owner, don't forget that. Do not believe the wannabe Western 'military experts' - that are always without names - cited by biased Western media, that claim that taking Bakhmut will be a symbolic victory only, and that it doesn't have military value for Russia. That's blatantly untrue, thanks to the destroyed city's geographical importance.
For Russia to advance, to accomplish its goal of claiming and controlling all the Donbas region, they need to take Bakhmut. Taking the city would rapture Ukraine's supply lines and open a route for Russian forces to press on toward Kramatorsk and Slovyansk, key Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk province.
It's of no use controlling a large area of land, but with the enemy controlling a city of geographical importance right on the main routes inside that region. Putin won't waste his resources on a symbolic victory only, and we all know it. Thus, the anonymous 'military experts' that some Western media houses quote should show their faces, so we can throw some rotten tomatoes at them and string it up onto their Pinocchio noses.
For the past few months, in just Bakhmut's immediate vicinity, between 100 and 700 Russian soldiers died, every day. That's what the Ukrainians claim. For obvious reasons they don't mention their own losses, that are extremely high too. Every single one of them, whether Ukrainian or Russian, leaves behind a crying family, a terrified girlfriend, shocked friends, that believed the killed soldier was a great guy that really knew how to do the Grease Lightning on Saturday evenings at the local disco. Yeah, they died like pawns in immoral, imperial political games, and they shouldn't have to.
Imagine losing 'just' 100/day x 30 days soldiers each month, for maybe two or three years, plus countless civilians too. Not to mention those that survive but without limbs or eyesight for the rest of their lives. The taxpayer will have to care for them for 70 years. Meanwhile we have climate change and overpopulation creeping up on us, our resources should be going there instead.
Russia can pump in, at the very least, six times more war criminals into the conflict than Ukraine can drum up soldiers. While Ukraine won't have any shortages of ammunition soon if its allies keep their word, the country may run out of humans fit to play soldier-soldier.
Russia on the other hand has no shortage of cannon fodder, and doesn't value the lives of its caveman inbreeds, and the country upped equipment production for the war effort months ago. Plus, Iran and North Korea are already supplying Moscow with weapons, and China will soon too. The wonderful NK leader that also invented the McDonald's hamburger and how to outrun a nuclear explosion even offered a 100 000 of his nest's 1 million soldiers to go fight in Ukraine on Russia's side.
The peace deal drawn up by China a week or three ago, which hugely favors only Russia, was just a pretext to say the West doesn't want peace. That will justify it for Beijing supplying Russia with arms in the nearby future.
In short, 2022 was bad, but 2023 will be far worse for Ukraine, while a war-fatigued world starts looking away. Russia is gearing up for even more war, and its magnificent propaganda department is hard at work getting every Russian to believe that defensive NATO started the war. One first needs to get the peasants on board into believing something, before dragging them into war. Vietnam lesson 101, thanks, 'Murica.
The solution? I say: Give Bakhmut to Russia. Even wrap a gigantic red bow around a building, like the ones you get when you buy a new car, and some graffiti on there saying 'Come one come all. The City of Nasty Surprises Awaits You.'
But do it in such a way that they won't dare to take possession of their gift.
Yes, I'm saying, mine the crap out of Bakhmut. Booby it. Call in the Guinness Book of Records, set up a record for most mines ever in one town. Booby-trap every nook and cranny, hook up a grenade to every washing machine the orcs will want to carry away, poison that delicious jar of strawberry jam in the pantry, marry a hidden shotgun shell with that gate.
Booby traps – that's what mines essentially are – are disgusting things that blow up or mime or kill innocent people by the thousands each year. That's because nobody remembers where it was buried, and so people get killed by those treasures for decades after a war ended. Look at Angola, Mozambique, Cambodia, and others.
For some reason mines are still legal to use, and Russia itself buries those treacherous bombs everywhere. Many Ukrainian farmers we don't hear about gotten blown up tractor and all after hitting such a nasty surprise, after the Ukrainian army liberated their towns.
But here's the thing: If the Ukrainians keep track of each booby trap and where each mine gets planted by them all over Bakhmut, it will be easy to remove those bombs after the war again. As long as the maps with the coordinates don't end up in Russian hands, of course.
And then, all Ukrainian troops withdraw, 50 kilometers or further away, and blast off their missiles onto the parts of the city currently under Russian control. It's easier to blast just a part of a city, than a whole city. And the Russians will thus get concentrated fire aimed at their little spot of the city from afar, while they won't dare going further into town.
Planting 10 000 – no, let's make it a hundred thousand – mines all over the city can be done in a day or three by the tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers in town. And they should feel free to post photos of those mines on Telegram and wherever the Russians gloat. The psychological impact is what counts here.
Then the Ukrainians only need long-distance artillery systems, to make it more difficult for the Russians to hit them 50, or even 150 kilometers away. The Ukrainians can therefore still keep the pressure on the Russians and prohibit them from progressing past Bakhmut. The Russians won't have any buildings as cover, because they won't know which buildings are trapped with mines. Learn from the Vietcong, people.
Such a booby-trapped city will give the Ukrainians the time they need to get the promised Leopard 2 tanks from their Western allies, to then launch a counter offensive at a Russian army still outside the city months later. The latter will be morally weakened and scared like hell of any bump in the road by that time. If the Russians want a war of attrition, man, give them the mother of attrition.
Effectively, my mining strategy will:
- save Ukrainian soldiers' lives by the thousands
- still pin down the enemy and prevent them from using Bakhmut as a base from where they can progress further
- and rob the Russians of even a symbolic victory. It will be an empty victory at best, that will become the burial yard of Russian soldiers.
What does Ukraine need to do this?
- 10 000 mines, nothing less. Every street, every building, every trench, every light switch must get at least one mine or booby-trap.
- training their soldiers in Bakhmut on how to bury and conceal the mines (it can be done in one day), and – important – to record each mine's exact location for later safe removal
- long distance rocket systems (they already have many), enough to blast Russian-controlled Bakhmut from afar
- a whole small army of cheap commercial drones for surveillance and to drop hand grenades (remember, good attrition warfare requires keeping the enemy psychologically in tears as they never know what to expect)
- and to remove all citizens remaining in Ukrainian-controlled Bakhmut (3936 now, some more died while you were reading here, even though many of them were pro-Russian) to a safer city, or to close a deal with the Russians to send those citizens to them. If the Russians refuse, one can always tell those treasonous Ukrainians that Russia doesn't want them, it will be a diplomatic win for Ukraine.
All of such a mining operation can be completed in 5 days flat. Thereafter, no more 100 to 600 Ukrainian soldiers dying there every day, only that many Russian soldiers dying there.
This same boobytrap strategy can be applied to any town in danger of falling into Russian hands in the future.
It will actually save those towns, because nobody will be there, making it too expensive for Russia to bomb an empty city that is properly mined and booby-trapped. Then the Ukrainians need only enough long distance missile systems to blast the Russians in the fields around those towns, and Western missile systems are vastly superior to those the orcs have.
We know that booby traps and mines worked hugely in the Vietcong's favor in Vietnam, and getting them to win against the mighty USA. The Russians are already planting mines everywhere that will need to be cleared up in the future. So why not give them their own medicine? Whether you remove one or ten in the same field is pretty much the same. Planting yours first prevent the enemy from entering an area to plant theirs. Properly documenting the location of each is the only prerequisite, and can be done easily.
Now, if you like my idea, please share this article, till the Ukrainian army has no choice but to take note of and consider this strategy, while they still have time. It will literally save Ukrainian lives while stopping the Russians from advancing.
Also, I'm available as military strategist with a black belt in trolling war criminals.
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