Humans vs. cyborgs: Donetsk doctors 'repair' wounded Ukrainian troops

© Aleksandr Kots, Dmitriy Steshin

They have been captured but not killed; moreover, the doctors try to bring them back to life. Our special correspondents Alexander Kots and Dmitry Steshin report from the Donbass:

At Donetsk Airport the Militia captured sixteen ATO participants. Half of these "cyborgs" (as Kiev calls the Ukrainian soldiers who fought in the terminals and dungeons of Donetsk Airport) "entered captivity" by themselves - they drove in armoured vehicles into the hottest point of the battle for the Donbass - the airport, allegedly without even knowing that it had already long since passed under the control of DPR fighters. The 'fatherly' Ukrainian commanders somehow forgot to tell their subordinates about the true combat situation at the airport.

One of the captives said that they had been given the task not of attacking the Militia, but of evacuating the wounded in an armoured tractor. Thanks to the fog, they had quietly approached the remains of the airport, but had then been quickly disarmed and sent to Donetsk. The second contingent of "cyborgs," eight people, was pulled from the rubble of the new terminal by the Militiamen themselves. In the wreckage of metal and concrete they had lain for four days. They were immediately taken from the airport to the city's emergency department.

We talked directly with the prisoners in the emergency room, where the wounded captives were being treated. They look, to put it mildly, below par. Shell-shocked, faces covered in gunpowder rash. One prisoner, an aged man, is mumbling illogically:

"I didn't surrender! I just called for help!"

The second, a large man, Anatoliy, says that he was born in Kiev and was mobilized into the army. Generally, all the captives say this - we have not met among them anyone who has honestly confessed that they volunteered to go to war against the "separatists." One can understand this since people in the Donbass have become embittered against the Ukrainian Army beyond all limits.

Tonight in Donetsk the shelling has continued. In the opinion of a local, it was "feeble." Despite that, over the course of the night and the morning, the Ukrainian artillery smashed five apartments by direct hits and completely destroyed two private houses - the rescuers managed to pull a shell-shocked woman out of a basement. In the morning the artillery hit a water pipeline feeding Donetsk and cut the water supply in the whole city. Of course, wherever it was being supplied at all.

Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

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