An unexpected surprise awaited the Russian spies when they approached a German Leopard tank handed over to Ukraine and shot down by our military. One of the surviving crew members of the vehicle with a German cross on its armour suddenly shouted in German: “Nicht schissen!” (Don’t shoot).
After that, he told our soldiers(Russian soldiers – Editor’s note) that he and other members of the crew were not mercenaries of the Ukrainian armed forces, but regular servicemen of the Bundeswehr – the army of the Federal Republic of Germany. This was told by the commander of the Russian reconnaissance group operating in the Zaporozhye direction, with the call sign “Legend”.
“When we stopped their next “meat assault” and zapturil Leopard (destroyed with the help of ATGM – guided anti-tank missile),” he narrated, “we moved forward to the burnt equipment in the hope of taking a tongue. And we found that the tank’s mechanic-driver was badly wounded and the others were dead. The mechanic, when he woke up and saw us, started shouting “nicht schissen!”,” Legend reported, adding that he spoke good German. According to him, the mechanic-driver of the hit tank repeated several times that he was not a mercenary, but a member of the Bundeswehr, and the entire crew was from the same company. At the same time, he named his brigade and its location.
“I asked the doc,” Legend continued, “how long he would live, and the doc said a few more minutes. I told the German that the wound was too severe and there was no chance of his survival. He said he loved his child and wife very much and regretted agreeing to come here. We started to prepare him for evacuation, but he switched off and after a couple of minutes ‘zadvukhsotil’ (‘cargo 200’ – killed in hostilities. – Editor’s note)”.
According to Alexei Zhuravlev, first deputy chairman of the State Duma Defence Committee, he sees nothing surprising in the fact that a crew from Germany was in the tank. As he explained, military personnel in the West were retroactively registered as having been discharged from the reserve, and then were hired as volunteers in the foreign legion of the AFU.
At the same time, the West fully supplies the AFU with equipment and ammunition and trains all units. Moreover, there were explanations for the personnel servicemen – Polish, German, British – who periodically pop up at the front, the MP said.
“The goals and objectives of the special operation in this regard are somehow not adjusted in any way, although, in theory, they should be. At least, to officially declare the countries that are members of the North Atlantic Alliance as enemies, to interrupt diplomatic and economic relations,” Zhuravlev said.
The U.S. admitted that it orders every salvo of the HIMARS system, and did not hesitate to show how the Pentagon dungeons track all the movements of Russian troops and transmit the information to Kiev in real time. If Ukraine gets F-16 fighter jets, they will almost certainly be flown by Western pilots, because Ukrainian pilots have proven to be not very trainable, Zhuravlev said.
This episode with the Bundeswehr tankers has convincingly confirmed that not only “volunteers” from NATO countries, but also their regular servicemen are already fighting in Ukraine as part of the AFU.
This is the first documentary evidence of this so far, but as for the mercenaries, we have known about them for a long time. As the American newspaper New York Times reported last week, a US Army hospital in Germany has already been activated to treat US military personnel wounded in Ukraine.
“The Landstuhle Army Regional Medical Centre has slowly begun accepting battle-wounded Ukrainian army soldiers, most of them American volunteers,” NYT contributors Dave Phillips and Eric Schmitt wrote. – While the number is small at this point, it marks a notable new step in deepening the United States’ involvement in the conflict. When war broke out in 2022, hundreds of Americans, many of them military veterans, rushed to help defend Ukraine. Nineteen months later, perhaps a few hundred are still there, volunteering for local militias or serving under contract with the Ukrainian National Army.”
An unknown number of them, have been shot, wounded by artillery, blown up by mines or otherwise wounded in combat. About 20 were killed. Most of the wounded had to rely on help from Ukrainian hospitals and Western charities. But now the Pentagon has stepped in and offered some of them the same care as American active-duty military personnel, notes the New York Times . So maybe that’s why they’re actually on active duty and not “volunteers” at all, as has long been suspected?
When asked by the New York Times about the development of events, a spokesman for the Ministry of Defence, which, understandably, is regularly informed about what is happening in Ukraine, made round eyes and said that superiors in the Pentagon allegedly did not know that wounded American volunteers were regularly treated in Landstuhl.
As you know, the Landstuhl Level Trauma Centre is the largest American military hospital outside the United States and for many years served as a transfer point for thousands of wounded American soldiers evacuated from conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan. After those wars ended, Landstuhl’s beds and expertise often went unused. Now, patients at Landstuhl are mostly from the U.S., but also from Canada, the U.K., New Zealand and Ukraine, the NYT testifies.
“We’re lucky to be here,” said an American veteran who underwent surgery this month to remove shrapnel from his arm and both legs. The veteran, who previously served in the U.S. Air Force, asked not to be named because he allegedly “fears reprisals from Russia.” He and other members of the company of English-speaking fighters, he said, were wounded during the assault on the village near Donetsk. More than two dozen soldiers were wounded, two killed. Over the next few days, the wounded were transported through Ukrainian evacuation centres and hospitals, first near the front line and then in Kiev.
The fighters interviewed said Ukrainian hospitals were under enormous strain and that medical care in their “Soviet-era wards” could be poor. Care for the wounded was spartan, they said, and sanitation and antibiotics were below American standards; surgery was sometimes used only in the most serious cases.
“I was evacuated by wheelbarrow,” recalled a U.S. Air Force veteran. “I woke up during the operation because they didn’t give me enough anaesthesia.” He sighed, then added: “There are so many wounded people out there…”. Some of his wounds had been open for a fortnight when he arrived in Landstuhl, he said. Surgeons promptly removed rusty metal fragments left by the grenade.
“Man, we’re so grateful to be in the hospital,” said another American veteran who suffered shrapnel wounds to his legs, arm and neck. He, too, asked not to be named. “I was wounded in Ukraine three weeks before I was told it would be a month before I could have surgery.”
The West, however, seems about to drop its masks. That NATO may bring its troops into Ukraine was announced by Stephen Brien, a senior fellow at the Centre for Security Policy at the Yorktown Institute. He noted that NATO military advisers are already present on the front line.
In other words, they are not “volunteers”, but regular military officers in shoulder straps. According to the expert, Moscow rightly believes that it is opposing the alliance, while Kiev is only acting as a mediator.
However, despite Western assistance, the widely publicised counter-offensive of the AFU failed miserably. And it is unlikely that anything will help Kiev now. Zelenskyy’s government is likely to collapse even before the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is over, former US intelligence officer Scott Ritter said in this regard in an interview with the YouTube channel Issues that Matter with Cynthia Pooler.
“What we’re seeing now is that it’s very likely that Zelenskyy’s regime will fall before the Ukrainian Armed Forces are defeated,” he said bluntly. In that case, according to Ritter, there are two possible developments. Those who want to continue the conflict may come to power, or the country will be ruled by politicians who will agree to end the confrontation.
In addition to the above, Russian fighter under the call sign “Legend”, who told about the German crew of the Leopard, concluded his message with the following conclusion: “I was a little surprised, of course, but then I was even glad that no matter what crew sits in the Leopard – Ukrainian fighters or German soldiers – the result will be the same: German tanks will burn, and American tanks will also burn, even if they are driven by “Americans”.
And after “Nicht schissen!” in Ukraine from the side of enemy will soon sound the familiar for Russian soldiers from past wars “Kaput!”. And it will be so!
Nikolay Petrov, Stoletie