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DispatchFactbookHistory

by Eastern slavia. . 6 reads.

East Slavyanka Independence conflict 2015 pt.1 "Limansk" - Ef. I.A. Petrov, KDShV

"August 23rd, if I remember correctly. That's when it started brewing." He looked out the window of his apartment towards the park across the street. It was a unit paid for by the state, due to disabilities he had sustained in the opening hours of the conflict. I.A. Petrov served with the Royal Air Assault Regiment and had been deployed to the mountains of East Slavyanka as part of a joint task force that had been formed to combat remnants of an insurgency stemming from United Slavia's civil war in the mid-2000ths. Burns covered his arms and partial face, though treatment in a foreign hospital was able to minimize damage - he had a prosthetic leg due to mine.
"We had been with them for a few weeks at that point. Our routine patrols rarely had any incidents. It was when the Royal Army moved in. At the time we didn't know what was going on - we thought it was just a rotation. There was an old Soviet era base along the railway that they had set up as a major operations post at, temporarily. We didn't have any direct line of communication for a while."

Viewing a video taken by a helmet mounted camera - he had documented many of the missions they'd been on. They passed lots of heavy trucks on the highway, some transporting armored vehicles under tarps but he recognized the markings - regular Royal Armed Forces.
"It was on that day we noticed something with the East Slav units - particularly the Army who were stationed at our post. When we got back all the senior officers were discussing something that I didn't know at the time. On TV there were talks of splitting from Slavia. Back home it was spun that the conflict was needing more reinforcements so they were sending them on rail and on road, most of them didn't know where they were going. The next morning the East Slav forces cut down their numbers at the post - basically it was just our Air Assault counterparts and an artillery battery left. They moved out in a hurry - most of the supplies were just left behind."

The official statement obtained was the need to rapidly redeploy to a new area of operations - bases were calling up soldiers on leave, calling back reservists. Militias were called in when the armories were opened.

"Yeah, I remember the militias. Officially not part of the Armed Forces, but almost exclusively staffed by former soldiers and SPUs. They did lots of the fighting against the insurgents. Typically they had limited support in terms of heavy weapons and were intended to act as a barrier while SOBR and the like did sweeps in villages. Sometimes they'd participate in larger assaults under supervision."
He had a tape of one such operation, dated September. Cloudy day with a little bit of rain, they arrived by helicopter in a field near the highway.

"This day we lost a few of ours. Militia were hitting the village hard - police found a hideout belonging to insurgents, it got bad. They showed up in trucks first but took heavy fire on the road, we saw the burning vehicles on the way in. A few tanks were present not too far from where we landed along with some accompanying East Slav troops who rode on the things like it was the 40s. Anyway, we flanked around the village under direction of our Lt, who wanted to minimize civilian losses. We could tell from where we were that the streets were a free fire zone. It was getting dark, lots of cars heading down the road. There was a.. minibus, I think. So the insurgents got routed out of the village, they were in some truck heading up the road behind the bus. We got orders to fire on both vehicles from the East Slav paratroopers who were positioned across from us and were observing, we could not get a positive ID on which vehicles. They said just to "light up the big ones". Lt refused, he had been watching the whole time and wanted to be sure what we were about to shoot at. We heard the radio cut and saw a rocket fired at the road - it hit in front of the minibus, driver was probably hit because the bus then flipped onto its side and started burning. They fired one at the truck when it slowed - direct hit on the cab. Some East Slav unit was further down the road then us and started shooting into the bus and truck. One of our guys snapped a few shots in their direction. Why he did this - I never understood. It was a bad idea - we were out in the open with no cover. As far as they knew it was some stragglers that escaped from the truck ambush. Their BMP swept its autocannon across our position and fired its big gun - I just remember a bright flash and our left flank was gone. We hit the dirt and could hear the East Slav paratroopers shouting that the armor was engaging friendlies."

"If I'm not mistaken there was supposed to be an embedded reporter team?"

"They were not with our squad that day - orders were so sudden that we didn't really have time to organize anything until we were already in the air. They did provide the helmet camera though."

"So what happened after?"

"We had lots of dead - even more wounded. Some of which I never found out if they made it or not - they got flown off by East Slav helicopters to one of their hospitals. We were disarmed by the East Slavs who were not aware that we had even showed up - their Captain had to contact them on radio to have them let us go. The official report was just a friendly fire incident caused by poor visibility. And the village? It burned to the ground."

"Was this the start of the conflict?"

"No, it was a few weeks later... Mid October. We started running short on supplies. Captain struck a deal with the Army to get a few trucks worth - mainly fuel and food. We loaded up the trucks, headed back. She had a grim expression on her face the entire ride back, wasn't talking about anything. She'd received orders to pull all her men, even support personnel and move to Limansk - we called it 'dead city'. Turned out that back west the war went hot - we had made an assault on several fronts without major resistance. Veblensk was under attack, but it was a big city and was proving difficult to take as the East Slavs had no qualms about fighting in their own cities."

"What was the purpose of going to the city? Was it not abandoned?"

"At the time we understood that the East Slavs wanted to secure the railway junction on the edge of town before the Royal Army could seize it. We were to be used as a bargaining chip - sent towards our lines to cause a delay. Our high command cut us off - either intentionally or not."

"It was understood that you were to be turned over to your own forces once the town was taken, correct? Lt Grishkin was reported to have refused orders concerning sabotaging vehicles."

"From what I had been informed of, he was personally contacted about disabling transports, which would have caused sufficient delay in departure of the outpost. It would have allowed forward elements of their main assault force to seize a number of key locations surrounding the city, along with the railway station. Some other locations were of interest - city hospital, the school near the city center."

He'd show some footage he had recovered from someone elses helmet. It was a convoy containing about 200 individuals departing the base short notice. While the vehicles the Royals were in were unmodified, the East Slav vehicles had hastily painted stripes on them, and large flags painted on the sides - the flag that later showed up on a map as an unrecognized state.

"We reached the city in the middle of the night. Our translators were not attached to our squads anymore - they returned to their own units and set off in different directions. Captain Oktyabrskaya basically told us to take the school building and hold the square across at all costs. There was about 90 of us - mostly on foot. We were given one truck that had been packed with munitions and some support weapons. The problem is we didn't know which direction they were to come from, nor what exactly we were supposed to do - we didn't want to shoot our guys, or the ones we'd arrived with. We had the reporters too."

"Did you have any contact with the forward units?"

"Just prior to the opening assault we were able to get in contact with them. We tried to warn them about what was going on by they dismissed it as psy-ops. We heard the fighting near the hospital start - they had knocked out a tank - old T-64 type. Was fairly common in both armies but they were never upgraded like others had. They're loud and not so quick so they had moved around and set an ambush - destroyed one on its approach to the hospital and another that was on overwatch from the highway with missiles. Contact with the Royal infantry started shortly after at close range - tanks were supposed to support but had got turned around in the dark. If I recall correctly they initially took the East Slavs by surprise and were able to occupy the east wing of the hospital for a few hours. We did as we were told - just held position. Eventually some recon types showed up, confirmed we were in fact not East Slavs and got us in contact with our HQ. They had suffered some set backs - air war was still undecided - a column heading to reinforce the front got hit. They were slowly taking the city but at a high cost. Rail station was still in their hands and there were still pockets in and around the hospital. Long range rocket artillery was hitting the city by this point. It wasn't at anything in particular - just a grid reference that needed to be saturated. When their command post got overrun, it was around the time where the East Slav main force had gotten in range."

"What had changed? It seemed like they felt the city could have been taken shortly."

"Initially we were to be sent back to help the column that came under attack - turned out the rear portion of it came under fire and was getting chewed up. In addition to our trucks we had a few stragglers from the initial assault regroup with us - BMP-2s. They led the trucks out of the square but after one threw a track trying to get through some debris we had a single one. Evidently we went the wrong direction while navigating around this and ended up near the rail station which is when we got hit from multiple directions.. All command broke down. They must of had the road zeroed in and rigged with something that alerted them because the amount of fire that we drew - we couldn't even shoot back. Some of our guys didn't even get out of the trucks. The sides of the road were mined - I found out the hard way. I passed out, but from what my helmet camera showed we got dragged back to a nearby housing block. Recon team in the area was informing command about the road as we came around the corner. At some point we got evacuated to a field hospital, then to a real one once I had been stabilized. The whole deal was a waste - we lost the city the following day."

"You mentioned reporters - what happened to them? I've found records of this group but nothing following the last operation."

"They were in a marked vehicle tailing behind ours. I know they didn't collect the dead until a few days later. They weren't on the list of dead or missing, but the vehicle was still present. Equipment was gone, perhaps they followed with the remnants of my unit. I haven't heard anything since."

Eastern slavia

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