Thread by @TrentTelenko

Something you should look for is the faces of the Ukrainian troops.

Mariupol is surrounded and besieged.

The appearance of these marines- glee and joy - this is like watching a Viking berserkergang live & in the 21st Century.

I expected to see this. Long🧵
1/

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1502709410904387588

Because I saw it in 2015 and wrote about just this in relation to the Ukrainian VDV "Cyborgs" fight for the Donetsk Airport Terminal building from July 2014 until 22 January 2015.

Ukraine’s Viking Revival
January 29, 2015
chicagoboyz.net/archives/47214…
2/

This Ukrainian propaganda video gives you a visual/cultural/musical feel for what is going on in the hearts and minds of Ukrainians.

3/

If the tune sounds familiar, it is because the Ukrainians took SSgt Barry Sadler’s “The Ballad of the Green Berets” and put their lyrics to them.

See for background on Sadler:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Sad…
4/

The link I posted has the lyrics and they are Ukrainian cultural dynamite.

I'll clip some here and you can go to the link for the rest.
5/

Flowing / like blood from a blade
across the steppe / in a fine line:
left-handed battle / and the right fight,
death awaits / in the distant blue
6/

We go – one family
one hundred warriors and I.
And day by day, over again,
One hundred warriors and one order.

7/

Day by day, who knows where
orders take us – and the hundred go.

Through the fire / and bullets flying
through coal / and through granite
8/

And back to the refrain:

We go – one family
one hundred warriors and I.
And every day, over and over again,
One hundred warriors and one order.
9/

The video is filled with martial Late Varangian / Kievan Rus / Viking imagery. The very name — 100 Warriors — recalls the significance of the “100” is that the traditional Cossack fighting unit size, a “Sotnia” or “Hundred”, in Western terms a “Company”.
10/

There are the fighting dogs with the troops in repeated images of the militia patrols in the “100 Biytsiv” music clip.

Even the commander of the Ukrainian VDV unit, Valeriy Loginov, Battalion CO, 95th VDV Airborne Bde, Zhytomyr, call sign “Askold”,

11/

...that held the Donetsk Airport Terminal building from July 2014 until 22 January 2015 — When the Russians finally collapsed the building with point blank tank fire that turned it into no-mans land — has a classic Viking style cat picture on his Facebook page (see Tweet #2)

12/

My Donbass colleague, an experienced scholar of Soviet/Russian strategy, summed up what he has seen of both the Donbass fighting and the Ukrainian Viking Revival this way:

“Putin let a real genie out of the bottle here. I never understood Ukrainian nationalism until I

13/

...watched mid 2014 footage of LtCol Andriy Biletsky’s Azov “Putin let a real genie out of the bottle here. I never understood Ukrainian nationalism until I watched mid 2014 footage of LtCol Andriy Biletsky’s Azov Battalion MVD militia swearing in ceremony,

14/

where the priest blessed them, and they all to a man pledged their lives to Ukraine – I am now dead, but my spirit will live on, in Ukraine….. I have seen this before – once in a very old monochrome

15/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Batt…

Polish historical movie about the wars with the Mongols circa 1400 AD, and once in some footage of a Japanese kamikaze squadron, swearing their lives to the Emperor."

This is, as they say, no accident. The commander of the Azov Militia battalion of the Ukrainian MVD

16/

(Interior Ministry) Andy Bieletskiy is a military historian by training, his M.A. thesis was on the UPA and its guerilla war against the Russians in WW2. Check out the Azov Viking-style haircuts in this Youtube video of the swearing in ceremony.


17/

Azov's successes on the battlefield and in reshaping Ukrainian identity has resulted in it being the target of an 8-year long Putin Regime information warfare attack that has labeled them "neo-Nazis."

People who repeat this slander are fools or tools for Putin. Many are
18/

still on Twitter.

This isn't saying Azov are "Good Guys."

They are hard corps Ukrainian Nationalists who are intent on cleansing Ukraine of any trace of Russian cultural identity.

Israel is on their S--t list because of their Prime minister's advice to Zelensky to
19/

surrender to Putin.

So is the Biden Administration for its public suggestion to Putin he could nibble off the rest of Donbass.

It is Ukraine's Viking Cultural Revival, spawned by Putin's aggression, that will be the determining factor in this war.
20/

This Ukrainian Viking cultural identity is as wild & free as the wind on the Steppe.

And it's berserkergang bloodlust for Putin's minions will not be slacked until the Russian Army is cleansed from Ukrainian lands, including all of Donbas & Crimea.

21/End