2024-01-24T12:59:33+00:00
A-
A
A+
/ Cats have become the latest front in Ukraine. While armies fight their wars using bullets, shells, and missiles, in addition to using propaganda ideas, the Ukrainian army has begun to rely on cats to confront the Russian expansion in its lands.
The Politico news website reported that cats usually arrive at Ukrainian army positions from neighboring villages and towns that have been devastated by the war, seeking human protection from the constant shelling, drone strikes, and minefields, after being abandoned by their owners.
The site indicated that social media in Ukraine is filled with cats that help soldiers as emotional support animals, attract donations to the army with their cute appeal, and fight invaders, “in this case, rats,” as it put it.
“Russia is resisting by humanizing its invading soldiers, accused of committing atrocities against civilians, by showing them with their cats,” he said.
The website quoted the Ukrainian army combat doctor, Oleksandr Yapshanka, as saying: “We are strong, so we protect the weaker beings, who faced the same terrible conditions that we faced, just because the Russians appeared on our land.”
In turn, Ukrainian military spokesman Oleksandr Shtupon said: “Some adopt them and take them home, others prefer to keep them in the trenches, and even transfer them to other units during rotation,” according to the website.
The “adopted cats” also fight their own battles against rats that invade trenches, chew on Starlink satellite communications cables and car wiring, destroy food supplies and military equipment, and even nibble on the fingers of sleeping soldiers, according to Politico.
“If cats lived in our ditches, rats would almost always stay away,” Yapshanka says.
Oleksandr Lyashok, from the Odessa region in southwestern Ukraine, purred to Shaybek, one of four stray cats living with his unit on the southern front in 2022. “Shaybek had the most charisma,” said Lyashok, 26. “It was cold, so I took him with me one night in my sleeping bag.”
Lyashok describes his cat as the perfect hunter, saying: “Once we were at a site in the forest, and he caught 11 mice in one day… Sometimes he brought the mice into my sleeping bag.”
In June, Shaybek disappeared for 18 days, until Ukrainian soldiers found him several kilometers away, enjoying himself with local cats.
Shaybak and Lyashok also raise funds for the Ukrainian military, with Shaybak receiving a special award in September for helping raise money to buy seven vehicles and other supplies, according to the site.
Herrich the aristocrat
Unlike the stray cats on the front lines, Herald, known as Herish, is an aristocratic cat, and once Russia is invaded, Herish joins forces with Kirillo Lyukov, the military coordinator of the Serhiy Pritula Charitable Foundation, which delivers supplies to front-line units.
Herish, who lives with Lyukov in Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region, has traveled to the front more than 20 times. “Every time he was the star of the show, with many fighters running up to us to pet him and take a picture with him,” Lyukov said.
Unlike other animals on the front lines, Herrich remains calm during Russian shelling. “At most, he turns his head toward the sound, and that’s it,” Lyukov says.
Hersh uses his online popularity to help the Ukrainian military, countering a campaign that raised several million hryvnias (one million hryvnias is about 25 thousand euros) to buy vehicles for the army.
Enemy Cats
Russian propaganda has taken up the story of the “cat mobilization” in Ukraine as a sign of its desperation, the site said.
However, regional media outlets have published dozens of similar stories about cats on the Russian side of the front line, in an effort to humanize the military, following continued independent reporting about Russian war crimes in Bucha and elsewhere in Ukraine, Politico reported.
The site noted that late last year, the regional department of the Ministry of Emergency Situations in Oryol, western Russia, about 300 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, reported sending a cat named Marusya to the front to help fight rats.
“It will help raise the morale of the soldiers, protect their sleep and defend food supplies,” the ministry was quoted as saying in a statement, adding: “We are sure that Marusya will do well and will return home soon!”
However, Russian stories tend to show cats captured by Russian soldiers after being abandoned by their Ukrainian owners.
Tactical cat pic.twitter.com/NrAd0C9ObZ
— In Ukraine (@InUKRofficial) January 18, 2024