Saturday, April 12, 2014

Excellent footage of the "Polite Armed Men in Green" during their operation in Crimea

What had to happen did happen.  One, or more, of the "Polite Armed Men in Green" (PAMG) did use his cellphone or GoPro to shoot footage of his unit's operations in Crimea.  According to the intro, this unit is called "detachment 0900" which could be nonsense or true, it does not matter.  What is sure is that this denomination does not conform to the Russian official/public military unit classification which normally has four or five digits (as in m/u xxxxx).  I have personally never heard of a detachment 0900 nor have I found anything about it on the Russian Internet.  This proves nothing, of course, and chances are that this number was an operational once, used just for this one time.

Everything I see in this video personally points me to the Spetsnaz GRU (the "original" or "genuine" military Spetsnaz forces), primarily because I see reasons to exclude other candidates (Airborne, AirAssault, Naval Infantry, FSB, ODON, etc.).

In purely technical terms, I have to say that this operation is another masterpiece maybe not as flashy as the storming of the Tajbeg Palace in Afghanistan during "Operation Storm-333", but in a way at least as remarkable.  There were at least 30'000 fully armed Ukrainian troops in Crimea (a lot them from the western Ukraine) and an overall population of over 2'000'000 people, and yet not a single person was killed (a few shots were fired during the operation).  I don't think that there is anything like it in modern history (Turkish occupation of Cyprus, Grenada, Panama, French operations in Rwanda or Mali, etc.)  From the footage you can also see two things:  a) even the local "civilians" were armed to the teeth and b) there were Right Sector activists in Crimea.  At the end of the video you see them being taken prisoner by the PAMG who then take a shoot at their computer with a screensaver which shows a Ukrainian flag and the caption "The Crimea will be Ukrainian or desolated/uninhabited".  Charming young men for sure...

Anyway, thanks to "anonymous" for calling my attention to this unique footage taken by the Spetsnaz themselves.  Clearly they are happy to share a glimpse of their usually top secret work with the world.  I even suspect that this "leak" was allowed, off the record of course, by the equally happy higher-ups.

Here is that footage, enjoy!

The Saker