4 items with this tag.
The ten-month opening phase of Russia's war in Ukraine installed every archetypal grammar that would dominate the subsequent seven years. Little Green Men, Reenactor-Warlord, Fake Election, Ilovaisk Ambush, Debaltseve Cauldron — the founding-act density that wrote the Donbas script.
17 July 2014: a Buk-M1 surface-to-air missile from Russia's 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17. 298 killed, 196 Dutch. The Unfixed Stain archetype: a war crime so thoroughly documented that the perpetrator's Disinfolklore apparatus can only try to dilute, not refute.
From 26 May 2014 to 22 January 2015 — eight full months — Ukrainian troops held the new terminal of Donetsk International Airport against continuous Russian-backed assault. 'The Cyborgs' — a name originally given to them, in grudging respect, by their attackers. A Thermopylae archetype Russia could not digest.
Late August 2014: Russian regular forces — the 31st Guards Air Assault Brigade from Ulyanovsk — ambushed Ukrainian troops retreating along a supposed 'humanitarian corridor.' 366 Ukrainian dead. The event where the Little Green Men mask slipped completely — and which Russian state media memory-holed.