THREAD: I’ve arrived in Dnipro to begin covering the battle for eastern #Ukraine. Dima has been fighting since early March.
“It’s like WWII but with modern technology. 2014 was a playground compared to this.”
* I have permission to tweet his photo & all comments.
“Our greatest ally in this war is #Russia corruption & the nature of its army. The soldier in the field briefs his officer: ‘it’s not good but we’re holding’; next guy reports up: ‘we’re holding’; the next guy: ‘it’s going well! This is why Putin doesn’t know how bad things are.”
“I didn’t believe the war would happen bc an invasion needs at least 2-1 numerical superiority. I looked on the borders at the army there & it was clear they didn’t have it. This is crazy.
Sometimes you play poker with a bad hand. #Russia is playing without any cards at all.”
“What has shocked me is the callousness of #Russia soldiers to their own men.”
He shows me a photo taken from a drone of soldiers eating lunch in a ruined house near several bodies lying in the dirt.
“They’re eating 20 meters from the decomposing bodies of their comrades.”
"They just drop the bodies of their friends into trenches. Sometimes they don’t even bother to cover them
We found a grave of 15 bodies a while back. They’d thrown bit of dirt on them but that it was it. They don't even respect to the lives of their own comrades. Incredible."
Their tactics are insane. Chernobaivka has a small military airport. 17 times they've tried to take it. 17 times we've smashed them. Still they come.
Our soldiers ask: "Are they dumb?" No, just incapable of independent thought. They just follow orders – no matter how crazy."
"Chechen soldiers? Ha We call them TikTok soldiers. They're always filming. We found one who was wounded and trying not to fight but take a selfie."
"Their job is not to fight but to shoot Russian boy conscripts who don't want to fight. It's Soviet tactics.
*3-1
"I want to say one thing: @elonmusk's Starlink is what changed the war in #Ukraine's favour. #Russia went out of its way to blow up all our comms. Now they can't. Starlink works under Katyusha fire, under artillery fire. It even works in Mariupol."
“They use Soviet military tactics, which were out of date 30 years ago. But we study Afghanistan, & Israel. Things have changed!
#Russia tries to press with Mass. Our strategy is simple: to destroy as many targets as possible. But we lack resources so must do it creatively.”
“Look, you can always tell the difference between a partisan strike against a #Russia target & a Russian false flag. The former targets important infrastructure. They just bomb a civilian building or something. Would they ever target something valuable? Not in a million years.”
"I know you British have a complicated relationship with your prime minister but here @BorisJohnson has become something of a national hero.
We knew from the beginning that Britain was a very ancient and important nation – and it is a country that stands by its word."
"The NLAWs are the best: easy to use, lock, load and move; without them we wouldn’t be taking out so many Russian tanks.
On the subject of tanks: We’ve captured more than 100 enemy tanks. We have a joke in the #ukraine army: our biggest weapons supplier is Russia."
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