“They pass on information to the Russians” – Corriere.it

from our reporter
Kramatorsk (Donbass) – for the Russians Ukrainians willing to cooperate are important alliesEspecially after discovering this at their own expense, even in the occupied areas A large part of the population is still hostile. They are the ones who indicate the sensitive targets that will be bombarded with artillery They take soldiers to the homes of politicians, policemen, and soldiers to arrest them to nip any internal resistance in the bud.

But For the Ukrainians, they remain spies, informants, and in short, dangerous collaborators It needs to be taken out of business ASAP: the logic is to “beat one to teach a hundred,” and typical punishments act as a deterrent, especially in these uncertain days when protracted combat fuels collective fears and fragility. President Zelensky continues to insist on the need for the help of the West to ensure “a clear military victory on the ground”. Even when there is no fighting at the moment, the reports of the horrors do not stop. “According to our information – said the permanent representative of the Ukrainian presidency in Crimea Tamila Tacheva – About 600 people are held in cellars in the Kherson region“Where they are kept” in inhumane conditions They are victims of torture“.

The fifth inner pillar must be exterminated. It is not surprising that yesterday morning the Kramatorsk police were happy to publish photos of their agents on social networks who had just captured a collaborator in nearby Sloviansk, on the road used by the troops participating in the decisive battle for Severodonetsk. “It seems that he was a spy, a retiree who handed over our artillery positions to the Russians,” say soldiers shopping in the supermarket on the main square in Kramatorsk.

The The constant roar of battle, here a few kilometers from the eastern outskirts, increases urgency. “There is no doubt that enemy spies lurk among the pro-Russian families, who are more present in Donbas than anywhere else. This has been a situation known since the 2014 warAlexey Iakovlenko, a physician and spokesperson for the local military hospital, explains when we learned that there are some areas both rural and urban where supporters of Moscow can exceed 60 percent of the population. However, he is quick to explain: “Since then things have changed rapidly, We estimate that supporters of Putin have now fallen below 10 percent in even the most marginal areasUndoubtedly, the brutality of the war that broke out on February 24 made a turning point. The issue is sensitive and at the same time embarrassing to the Kyiv government. According to the state prosecutor, Irina Venediktova, Judicial authorities have opened more than 700 cases of “high treason”., to which figures similar to “Cooperation” have been added. In total, about 1,500 people face long prison sentences.

One of the first cases was Oleksandr Kharchenko, the 39-year-old mayor of the Demir municipality north of Kyiv, who in the first days of the invasion called on residents to cooperate with Russian troops and not listen to the “hostile”. “Copied from the national media. This was followed by the decision of Gennady Matsegora, the mayor of Kobyansk, in the southern region of Kherson, who offered not only cooperation with the occupiers, but also food and fuel for them, facilitating the advance towards Odessa, which was subsequently prevented by the Ukrainian resistance. from Mykolaiv.

But the phenomenon of cooperation is more insidious and disruptive. We had a clear visualization of it by listening to the story of a thirty-year-old man in a village captured by the Russians north of Mariupol in early May in the Zaporizhzhya displaced persons center, who risked She was shot on the spot when a local spy revealed to the intelligence that she was the wife of a senior Ukrainian officer (from whom he divorced two years ago) was wounded during the battle of Kharkiv. “Whistleblowers are unscrupulous criminals, scum of the earth. Many do it for money, to seize the property of their victims, or to get privileges from Moscow. They must be ruthlessly eliminated.” As if this were not enough, Mariupol fears an epidemic Cholera due to contaminated water and not buried bodies.