2024-01-24T12:59:33+00:00
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/ Cats have become the newest battle front in Ukraine. While armies fight their wars using bullets, missiles, and missiles, in addition to using propaganda ideas, the Ukrainian army has come to rely on cats to confront Russian expansion in its lands.
The Politico news website reported that cats usually arrive at Ukrainian army sites from nearby war-ravaged villages and towns, searching for human protection from constant bombing, drone strikes, and minefields, after their owners have abandoned them.
The site stated that social media in Ukraine is full of cats that help soldiers as emotional support animals, attract donations to the army with their gentle cuteness, and also fight invaders, “in this case rats,” as he put it.
He stressed that “Russia is resisting by humanizing its invading soldiers, who are accused of committing atrocities against civilians, by showing them with their cats.”
The site quoted the combat doctor in the Ukrainian army, Oleksandr Yapchanka, as saying: “We are strong, so we protect weaker beings, who faced the same terrible conditions as us, just because the Russians appeared on our land.”
In turn, Ukrainian Army spokesman Oleksandr Shtubun 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” are also waging their own battles against rats that infest trenches, chew Starlink satellite communications cables and car wires, destroy food supplies and military equipment, and even bite off the fingers of sleeping soldiers, according to Politico.
In this regard, Yapshanka says: “If cats lived in our trenches, mice would almost always stay away.”
Oleksandr Lyashuk, from the Odessa region in southwestern Ukraine, gave a purr to Shaybek, one of four stray cats living with his unit on the Southern Front in 2022. Shaybek had the most charisma. It was cold, so I took him with me one night in a bag. My sleep,” says 26-year-old Lyashuk.
Lyashuk describes his cat as the ideal hunter, and said: “One time we were at a site in the forest, and he caught 11 mice in one day… Sometimes he would bring the mice into my sleeping bag.”
In June, Shaybek disappeared for 18 days, until Ukrainian soldiers found him at a site several kilometers away, enjoying himself with local cats.
Shaybak and Lyashuk are also collecting donations for the Ukrainian army, as Shaybak received a special award last September for helping him raise money to buy seven cars and other supplies, according to the website.
Heresh the aristocrat
Unlike the feral cats on the front lines, the Herald, known as Herish, is an aristocratic cat. Once Russia is invaded, Herish joins forces with Kirilo Lyukov, the military coordinator for the Serhii Pritula Charitable Foundation, which delivers supplies to front-line units.
Hiresh, who lives with Lyukov in Kramatorsk, 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 bombing. “At most,” Lyukov says, “he turns his head toward the sound, and that’s it.”
Herish uses his popularity on the Internet to help the Ukrainian army, in the face of a campaign that raised several million hryvnia (one million hryvnia is about 25 thousand euros) to buy cars for the army.
Enemy cats
Russian propaganda dealt with the story of the “mobilization of cats” in Ukraine, as a sign of its desperation, according to the website.
However, regional media published dozens of similar stories about cats on the Russian side of the front line, in order to humanize the army, in the wake of continuing independent reports about Russian war crimes in Bucha and other places in Ukraine, according to Poltekyo.
The website noted that late last year, the regional administration of the Ministry of Emergency Situations in Oryol, western Russia, about 300 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, reported that a cat named Marusya had been sent to the front to help combat rats.
“It will help raise soldiers’ morale, protect their sleep and defend food supplies,” the ministry was quoted as saying in a statement, stressing, “We are confident that Marusya will achieve good results and will return home soon!”
However, Russian stories tend to feature cats captured by Russian soldiers after they were abandoned by their Ukrainian owners.
Tactical cat pic.twitter.com/NrAd0C9ObZ
— In Ukraine (@InUKRofficial) January 18, 2024