Can you imagine experiencing this?Ukrainian forces fought their way out of the embattled town of Debaltseve in the early hours of Wednesday, choosing a risky overnight breakout rather than surrender as they abandoned the town to Russian-backed militants.
President Petro O. Poroshenko said in a televised statement that he had ordered the retreat from Debaltseve, a strategic transportation hub where intense fighting raged in recent days despite a cease-fire agreement signed last week in Minsk, Belarus.
Mr. Poroshenko sought to cast the retreat in a positive light, but the loss of the town was clearly a devastating setback for the army at the hands of the separatists. Still, by avoiding capture, the soldiers who made it out also avoided handing the rebels a powerful bargaining chip.
Separatist leaders have insisted that the cease-fire agreement did not apply to Debaltseve, but no exceptions were mentioned when the deal was announced in Minsk.
“They were shooting with tanks, rocket propelled grenades and sniper rifles,” and firing at the disintegrating column with rockets, he said. Dead and wounded soldiers were left on the snowy fields because there were too many of them to carry once the trucks were hit.“We stabilized them, applied tourniquets, gave them pain killers and tried to put them in a place with better cover,” Mr. Sardaryen said of the wounded. Later, a Ukrainian unit from outside the encirclement drove in to try to retrieve the wounded, he said.
Mr. Sardaryen said he ran on foot for the final four miles or so. Many of the soldiers who made it out also did so on foot, though some trucks made it all the way through, he said.
The trucks lined up on the edge of town, Mr. Sardaryen said, while tanks and tracked vehicles formed lines on either side of the truck convoy to try to shield the soldiers. The column drove through farm fields rather than use a main road that had been mined, and the trucks kept their headlights off to make them harder to spot.
The column came under attack almost immediately, he said, and trucks started breaking down and colliding in the dark. By dawn, the column was strung out on the plain and taking fire from all sides.
Europe's not in such good shape these days. You have this erosion of international order on the eastern flank, Greece's newly ratcheted brattiness and its effect on the continent's overall economic and financial health, the IS in Libya pointing out how close it is to Italy, and jihad and Jew-hatred in France and Scandanavia.
How much more resilient, and impervious to this level of peril, is post-America? A lot? Not much? It's high time to figure out what we must do and what we must avoid doing.
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