Ukraine’s military can’t match Russia’s for heavy hardware like ships, aircraft, tanks, and artillery (not to mention tactical nukes).
But how do they use that military power against angry Ukrainian civilians with guns, who could make life a bleeding hell for Russian occupiers?
And with that in mind, the Ukraine government is recruiting and training civilians for local defense where they live. “Billboards along the highways in Ukraine — some showing a furious, bare-chested man with a baseball bat chasing a bear — have gone up across the country,” AOL News says, “and thousands of Ukrainians, including women, are signing up” (read story here).
Volunteers get military training every weekend, training with machineguns and rifles in “special military zones” every three months, and the government has stashed weapons “near their neighborhoods” to be “released when needed,” while some volunteers are also buying their own arms.
Military formations and installations can be targeted with heavy weapons, but individuals with rifles have to be rooted out house-by-house, and that’s a bloody business. A lot of body bags would be going back to Russia.
Related articles: Why the U.S. has ruled out direct military intervention (here); Russia agreed in 1994 to always respect Ukrainian sovereignty in return for Ukraine handing over the Soviet nuclear weapons there (here); an American analyst predicts the Russian military would be walking into a “quagmire” (here).
Below: Ukrainian civilian trainees; if you’re a Russian infantry patrol, how would you like walking toward that hill in the background?
