• CascadeOfLight [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Not to mention the Snake Island debacle.

    If you don’t recall, right at the start of the war, a small Ukrainian National Guard unit was stationed on “Snake Island”, a tiny island in the Black Sea. A Russian warship approached the island and told them by radio to surrender. The commander replied “Russian warship, go fuck yourself!”. The Russian warship opened fire and blew them all away. For their brave sacrifice, Zelensky posthumously awarded the “thirteen brave soldiers of Snake Island” various medals and honors, and "Russian warship, go fuck yourself! became a shining symbol of Ukrainian resistance against Russian aggression, plastered over the west’s print and social media for days, until whatever the next thing was replaced it.

    How it actually went:

    About two weeks later, it turned out they actually had just surrendered and been captured. And there weren’t thirteen, there were EIGHTY ONE of them. One of the soldiers told a reporter their commander was “an idiot trying to get us killed” and that Zelensky “didn’t even care to know our names”.