A Ukrainian military drone unit near Stepove, a village just north of Avdiivka, where some of the most intense battles have taken place, shot the video this month.
It’s an apocalyptic scene: In two separate clips, the bodies of about 150 soldiers — most wearing Russian uniforms — lie scattered along tree lines where they sought cover. The village itself has been reduced to rubble. Rows of trees that used to separate farm fields are burned and disfigured. The fields are pocked by artillery shells and grenades dropped from drones. The drone unit said it’s possible that some of the dead were Ukrainians.
The footage was provided to the AP by Ukraine’s BUAR unit of the 110th Mechanized Brigade, involved in the fighting in the area. The unit said that the footage was shot on Dec. 6 over two separate treelines between Stepove and nearby railroad tracks and that many of the bodies had been left there for weeks.
At this point it’s more about the symbolic victory for propoganda’s sake with a recent tide about other emerging or fully authoritarian states eyeing up their neighbors based on historical grievance culture
Iran over Mesopotamia and the Levant, Azerbaijan and Armenia/Northern Iran, Israel and everything between the Nile and Euphrates, Argentina and the Falklands, Ethiopia and everyone with coast access in their vicinity, Venezuela and Esequibo, Turkey and Northern Syria, and most importantly of all for Russia now, China and their own irredentist territorial claims.
China backs Russia because a successful forced recognition of the annexation of Ukraine in whole or in part sets precedent that Beijing should be allowed to do it to Taiwan if they win an invasion and establish an occupation. What Beijing is actually betting will happen though, is that Russia is going to blow itself to pieces against Ukraine, allowing them to establish a much harsher grip in future negotiations they want to settle, like access to Lake Baikal, or Siberian natural resource wealth, or cheaper fossil fuels, or probably what Beijing sees as their own grand prize, quelling the Taiwan fervor among their population by instead extorting a return of the former lands of Manchuria which Russia took in its own unequal treaties with China.