Captured Ukrainian Soldiers Who Said ‘Go Fu*k Yourself’ Get Rescued

0
1266

After a revelation from Ukraine’s navy that Ukrainian border guards who were initially thought to have died after famously standing up to Russian invaders on Ukraine’s Snake Island — otherwise known as Zmiinyi Island — were alive and in Russian captivity, the Ukrainian personnel have been rescued by Ukrainian authorities. As explained in a Thursday post from Ukraine’s Parliament, “Additionally, today, #Ukraine exchanged 11 Russian sailors we rescued from a sunken ship near #Odesa to 19 Ukrainian sailors (authors of the legendary phrase “Russian warship go f*** yourself”).” The Ukrainian Parliament’s post added that the sailors ‘will return home from the rescue ship “Sapphire,” which was captured by the Russian occupiers while trying to withdraw Ukrainian troops from the #Zmiiny island. Under the exchange terms, the lifeboat will also be returned to #Ukraine and sent to a Turkish port.’

As previously reported on this site, a message relayed by one of the captured Ukrainian personnel to approaching Russians quickly garnered substantial attention both inside and outside of Ukraine. According to one translation, after receiving a message demanding that they “lay down your weapons and surrender to avoid bloodshed and needless casualties,” the guard team sent back a message of: “Russian warship, go fuck yourself.” Ukrainian defenders have apparently captured hundreds of Russian soldiers throughout the course of the war, and a small number of those captured by the Ukrainian side have appeared at official press conferences. At one such press conference, a Russian recon officer named Vladimir commented: “Our government told us we need to liberate the civilian population. I want to tell Russian servicemen: lay down your arms and leave your stations, don’t come here. Everyone wants peace here… I want to tell our commander-in-chief to stop terror acts in Ukraine because when we come back we’ll rise against him.”

Russia is believed to have already lost thousands upon thousands of troops amid fighting in Ukraine — recently, the U.S. Defense Department estimated that, for the first time, Russia’s invading force sunk beneath 90 percent of its original “combat power.” The war in Ukraine has been unfolding for over a month, but Putin’s forces have failed to secure key strategic aims such as seizing the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. The Kyiv Independent recently shared the news that, according to Ukrainian officials, Russian leaders were apparently transferring new forces to Belarus to make up for Russia’s losses. Vladimir Putin’s regime — not known for its truthfulness — has now acknowledged the deaths of over 1,300 Russian soldiers in fighting in Ukraine, although conservative estimates from U.S. intelligence already placed Russian losses far above that level, at over 7,000 troop deaths. Russia is also understood to have sustained major hits to its equipment capacity, including hundreds of tanks and a warship called the Orsk that Ukrainian defenders recently wiped out near the temporarily Russian-occupied city of Berdyansk.