Sack of Baturyn was a seizure of Baturyn fortress during the Great Northern War (1700–1721), by Russian troops under the command of Alexander Menshikov. They captured and destroyed Baturyn on November 2, 1708. The fortress of Baturyn was the capital of the Cossack Hetmanate (Hetman Mazepa) at the time; according to various estimates, close to 15,000 civilians and defenders of Baturyn were killed.
The author of the article ‘Tradition of mass killings of civilians by Russian troops through history‘ in the Swiss magazine says that the Batyrin Massacre shocked Europe: “Terrible Massacre! Whole Ukraine in Blood! Women and Children on Saber Blades!” –
These were the headlines of the French newspapers Lettre Historique, Mercure Historique et Politique, Gazette de France, and Paris Gazette in 1708. The French were writing about the massacre in Baturyn. Russian Tsar Peter the 1st ordered the town to be razed to the ground. At the time it was the capital of renowned Ukrainian ruler Hetman Ivan Mazepa. The Russians killed between 11,000 and 15,000 civilians, children, women and the elderly.
One hundred years passed and the French had confirmation of the brutality of Russian troops, based on their own experience. In 1814, Russian troops joined allied forces invading France. Historian Henry Houssaye collected evidence of atrocities. Hundreds of eyewitnesses mentioned them :
“… Men were beaten with swords and stabbed with bayonets. Naked, bedridden, they had to be present during the violence against their wives and daughters. Others were tortured, beaten, and roasted until they opened their hiding places. Priests of Montlond and Rolampon were beaten to death on the spot… “
The invasion experienced by the shocked French was already a hallmark of Russian troops. Twenty years earlier, they had slaughtered civilians on the outskirts of the Polish capital, Warsaw.
“… Our soldiers broke into houses, killed everyone they came across… Cruelty and thirst for revenge reached their peak… officers were unable to stop the bloodshed… our soldiers shot at crowds indiscriminately…”
This is what Russian officer von Klugen later mentioned (taken from memoirs of Thaddeus Bulgarin).
A trail of murder, looting and rape has always accompanied the Russian and later the Red Army. In addition to battlefield victories over the Nazis, the latter became infamous for the killings of civilians – one of the largest in history – in East Prussia in 1945, (the Red Army replicating the ferocity of the Nazi invasion, in spades).
This was repeated later – in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Syria. The barbaric “military traditions” of the Russians continued in the twenty-first century. And that is how the horror of thousands of deaths in Bucha, Irpin, Borodyanka and dozens of other Ukrainian towns and villages became possible…”
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