Ukrainian woman challenges aftermath of war

Nolan Peterson

KIYEV, Ukraine -- Ivona Kostyna couldn’t leave the war even if she wanted to.

It was December 2014 and, at age 18, the civilian volunteer was delivering supplies to Ukrainian troops stationed in the front-line town of Debaltseve.

Her car broke down, and in the six days it took to make repairs she lived among the soldiers. They were hunkered down in foxholes and in trenches in anticipation of an offensive by combined Russian-separatist forces.

The attack ultimately would take place less than two months later in February 2015—days after the signing of the Ukraine war’s second cease-fire.

Kostyna was supposed to spend only a few hours on the front lines. That’s how it usually was when she delivered supplies. She would arrive in her old, beat-up car, often under artillery and sniper fire, drop off a load of items such as uniforms, boots and food, and then hightail it back out of the war zone.

She understood the terror of war, voluntarily risking her life time and again to visit the troops. And over time she became good friends with many of the soldiers she encountered.

http://dailysignal.com/2016/02/12/how-one-ukrainian-teenager-declared-war-on-post-traumatic-stress/

Russian soldiers far outnumber foreign volunteers in Ukraine

"Extensive research, based on analyzing open sources, media reports as well as based on information from Ukraine found that both ‘NATO’s foreign legion’ and ‘Donbass International Brigades’ are a myth. The Russians overwhelmingly exceed all foreign volunteers. However, since most of them are soldiers, they cannot be counted as genuine ‘foreign volunteers’. The numbers for all the other volunteer participants do not even come close to that of the Russian military involved on the ground in eastern Ukraine."

http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28194

(Russian propaganda is the same as Soviet during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39, but less in volume.)