Chilling scene as pro-Moscow rebels brand Ukrainian PoWs 'fascists' and parade them through streets of Donetsk
Around 80 detained Kiev troops were marched through Donetsk
followed by
road-cleaning trucks spraying water to 'wash the streets of
traces of the captives', said a separatist source.
copy http://www.dailymail.co.uk
Chilling scene as pro-Moscow rebels brand Ukrainian PoWs 'fascists' and parade them through streets of Donetsk
- Around 80 soldiers were tied, slapped and doused in water in eastern city
- Donetsk remains in rebels' grip despite pressure from Kiev-controlled forces
- Ukraine's President has pledged another £1.8billion to fight the separatists
Pro-Moscow
rebels in Ukraine paraded dozens of prisoners of war through the
streets today with shouts of 'Fascists! Fascists!' as the conflict
plunged new depths.
Around
80 detained Kiev troops were marched through Donetsk followed by
road-cleaning trucks spraying water to 'wash the streets of traces of
the captives', said a separatist source.
The
chilling scene along Artem Street to Lenin Square, a main thoroughfare,
was a deliberate rerun of Stalin's display of 57,000 captured Nazi PoW
officers and men in Moscow 70 years ago on 17 July 1944 during the
Second World War.
Dozens of prisoners of war were paraded through the streets of Donetsk to shouts of 'Fascists! Fascists!'
Around 80 detained Kiev troops were marched through Donetsk in a PoW parade
The
'anti-fascist rally' organised by the self-declared pro-Moscow People's
Republic of Donetsk was intended as a spoiler to Ukraine's Independence
Day celebrations in Kiev when the pro-Western government put on a show
of military might ahead of a new campaign to destroy 'terrorists' in the
east of the country.
Ukrainian
President Petro Poroshenko ordered the firepower and troops to be
'dispatched straight to the area of combat operations' in east Ukraine,
where Kiev claims the Russian military is fighting inside his country's
borders.
The
pro-Moscow insurgents routinely label as 'fascists' the pro-Western
forces now in control in Kiev since the toppling of Russian-leaning
President Viktor Yanukovych.
Weapons
captured from Ukriaine in the six month conflict were also displayed,
some daubed with swastikas, including multiple launch rocket systems,
howitzers, infantry and airborne combat vehicles.
They were followed by road-cleaning trucks spraying water to 'wash the streets of traces of the captives'
A pro-Russian supporter (left) reacts as a group of Ukrainian prisoners of war walks past across central Donetsk
A pro-Ukrainian Donbass battalion fighter firing at pro-Russian rebels with an anti-aircraft gun in Ilovaysk
One man emerged from the crowd to slap a 'fascist prisoner' across the face.
Some of the captives had their hands tied behind their backs.
Ahead
of the parade, Colonel Sergei Petrovskyi, deputy defence minister of
the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), said:'We will also take fascist
prisoners there and make them walk through the city, just as their
inspirers - the Nazis - were paraded in Moscow.'
Locals stands with self-proclaimed
Donetsk People's Republic flag on the military equipment of the
Ukrainian army destroyed by military personnel of the self-proclaimed
Donetsk People's Republic
A woman cries during a memorial service for victims of fighting in eastern Ukraine, in Donetsk
Pro-Ukrainian Donbass battalion
fighters inspect their burnt vehicle after after the pro-Russian rebels
night shelling in Ilovaysk
HOW PRO-RUSSIAN ARE FOLLOWING IN THE SOVIET UNION'S FOOTSTEPS
Today's PoW march through Donetsk has chilling echoes of the July 1944 parade of German captives through Moscow.
The Second World War PoWs from the Russian front numbered around 57,000 officers and men.
They
were marched at gun-point through the streets of Moscow on the way to
prison camps somewhere in the east after being captured during Operation
Bagration, the Red Army's spring blitzkrieg, in 1944.
Not since the time of Napoleon had Moscow witnessed such a parade.
Just like today's march, the streets were scrubbed after them.
Some 80 prisoners from pro-Western Ukrainian forces were paraded through the city, with the crowd shouting 'on your knees'.
'A
water truck followed them that 'washes off all the dirt they left:,'
said journalist Ekaterina Sergatskova, of Ukrainian Pravda, who dubbed
the scene one of 'boundless evil'.
In Kiev, Poroshenko revealed a £1.8 billion boost in military spending to tackle the civil war underway with separatists.
'It
is clear that in the foreseeable future there will always,
unfortunately, be the threat of war,' Poroshenko told 20,000 people
during the military parade.
'And we not only have to learn to live with that. We must always be prepared to defend our independence.'
He
warned that Vladimir Putin was seeking to further expand his empire -
having already swallowed Crimea - in an alarming echo of the build-up to
the Second World War.
'War has come to us from over the horizon where it was never expected,' he said.
'In
the 21st century, in the centre of Europe, there is a flagrant attempt
to breach the border of a sovereign state without declaring war.
'It is as if the world has returned to the 1930s, the eve of World War II.'
Ukraine has lost 722 soldiers in a death toll of 2,300 in the bloodshed.
copy http://www.dailymail.co.uk
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário