Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦@IAPonomarenko
You know, once upon a time, there was a city called Volnovakha. It's in Ukraine's Donbas, just halfway between Donetsk and Mariupol.
A quiet place by the railroad of some 25,000.
My hometown.
And in late February 2022, the Russian military came from the north and the east. It semi-surrounded the city and began wiping it out street by street.
They needed the city captured at any price as soon as possible for the sake of getting Mariupol isolated and besieged.
For days, the people of Volnovakha were starving and thirsting in basement shelters. They couldn't leave them due to never-ending, relentless shelling 24/7.
Some of them decided to test their luck and leave their shelters to possibly find a way out of hell. The ruined streets of Volnovakha were littered with the bodies of those who never made it.
By March 1, the city was almost completely leveled.
Also, there was this Ukraine's 53rd Mechanized Brigade. And you know what the 53rd Mechanized was particularly doing those days?
Ukrainian soldiers and officers were fighting and dying to ensure an escape corridor out of (what used to be) my hometown so that civilians could flee into Ukrainian-controlled villages to the northwest with the help of volunteers and emergency response groups.
And now god knows how many Ukrainian soldiers and officers died with honor for that, in a war they never started and never wanted.
And once upon a time, there was the Azovstal, a city-size steel factory in Mariupol. The last fortress of the last defenders of the desolated city eviscerated by Russia's 80-day siege.
The bunkers and tunnels of Azovstal, battered by Russian bombers 24/7, also harbored hundreds of civilians.
And for many days, the Ukrainian garrison of Azovstal, exhausted and bleeding, was sharing highly deficit food and water with civilians and stayed away from the factory premises that civilians occupied to hopefully keep them safe from Russian bombardment, in a war it never started and never wanted.
That continued up until there was a deal that all civilians could get safely evacuated under the Red Cross.
And you know, there was also a big battle of Kyiv. The city's northwestern outskirts -- Bucha, Irpin, Hostomel -- were being steamrolled by insane amounts of Russian armor and manpower.
Tens of thousands were fleeing in terror by cars, bicycles, or on feet. The roar of artillery barrage shaking the air over Irpin was deafening. A giant plum of gray smoke was towering over the battlefields.
And you know what Ukrainian soldiers, policemen, and local volunteers were doing?
No, there weren't urging civilians to stay and die under Russian tank tracks. They were helping terrified moms carry their babies over a blown-up bridge on a highway between Kyiv and Irpin so that they could get a safe shelter in Kyiv.
They were literally carrying disabled, elderly people on wheelchairs over the fragile river crossing made of heaps of wood planks and concrete rumble.
And they were helping crowds of terrified civilians take cover underneath the broken bridge as Russians were shelling the location with mortars -- in a war they never started and never wanted.
So, my dear bored HAMAS apologists -- go rot in hell with your imbecilic takes trying to draw delusional comparisons between your beloved death cult terror group and Ukraine.
Keep the even word "Ukraine" out of your filthy months.
