Ukrainian Soldiers Not Surrendering the Way Germans Did in World War II, a Sign that End of War is Still Far Away, Panov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 22 – In the final months of Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, entire German units surrendered to the Red Army, a sign that the war was near its end. But now, while some Ukrainian soldiers who have surrendered to the Russian military in Ukraine, there have been almost no instances of units doing so, Valery Panov says.

            That means, the Russian commentator says in a post on the Russian nationalist Stoletiye portal that the war in Ukraine is far from over and that Moscow must at last recognize that it isn’t fighting a branch of the Russian nation but rather NATO “mercenaries” who will continue to fight (stoletie.ru/vzglyad/russkije_protiv_russkih_675.htm).

            Panov insists that Ukrainians are not deserting in unit-sized batches out of fear of being hunted down by Kyiv or being killed by the Russians if they go over the line but rather because they still have enough confidence that they can defeat Putin’s invasion force and a strong enough sense that they are Ukrainians and not a triune branch of the Russians as the Kremlin says. 

            For a Russian nationalist portal to deliver these two messages is to challenge two of Putin’s most cherished and widely ballyhooed notions by suggesting that the war is far from over whatever advances Moscow has made and that Ukrainians aren’t just Russians who have been misled but a completely separate people.

            Acknowledging that there haven’t been the unit-sized surrenders is perhaps the more important concession as far as a Russian audience is concerned given that government media in the Russian Federation can’t stop running stories about this or that Ukrainian deserter. But as Panov makes clear, individual desertions are one thing but mass desertions are quite another.

            That and his comments about the nature of Ukrainians as a national community throw cold water on much that residents of the Russian Federation have been encouraged to believe. That such a dose of reality should come from a Russian nationalist instead of someone else is telling.