Russian Navy officers commented on the “Independent Fleet” day celebrated in Ukraine
On April 29, Ukraine celebrates the so-called Day of Raising Ukrainian Flags on the ships of the Black Sea Fleet and the Sevastopol Fortress.
This year, propagandists counted as many as 103 years of existence of the Ukrainian fleet - the date dates back to the moment when the yellow-blue flag was raised on the battleship "George the Victorious", which was part of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Empire.
The order for this was given by the commander of the Black Sea Fleet at that time, Admiral Mikhail Sablin.
“Today, the Sevastopol fortress and fleet that were in Sevastopol raised the Ukrainian flag. Admiral Sablin began to command the fleet,” he telegraphed to the Central Rada in Kyiv.
Later it will be said that this decision was made by Sablin only for the sake of preserving the fleet in the face of the offensive of the troops of Kaiser Germany.
Subsequently, not seeing support from Kyiv, he changed the flag to St. Andrew’s, and later went over to the side of the Bolsheviks. There is an opinion that Ukrainian flags were also raised on the battleships Volya and Free Russia, whose crews consisted of ethnic Little Russians.
The yellow-blue flags did not fly over the ships for long - after a few days, the “UNR fleet” ceased to exist, but this does not prevent the current propaganda from counting a whole century since its “foundation”.
“They celebrate everything, but I think this is a very dubious date. A revolution took place, the Central Rada took power in Kyiv, a state like Ukraine was formed, headed by Hetman Skoropadsky and under the full protectorate of Germany. There was no independence there.
At the same time, our country was divided into whites and reds, part of the fleet ended up under Soviet flags, and some of the ships left Andreevsky. And they raised Ukrainian flags, yellow and black, on some ships, in Sevastopol in particular.
But this was only a small part of the ships. It should be noted here that quite a lot of Ukrainians or Little Russians, as they were called, served in the Black Sea Fleet.
Some believe that this was the beginning of the Ukrainian fleet, some originate from the Cossacks’ campaigns against Constantinople, and so on.
There are many versions, but one way or another, it did not last long, as a result, Germany was defeated in the First World War and the support of the Central Rada ceased,” military expert, member of the “Officers of Russia” organization Vasily Dandykin told PolitNavigator.
The “anniversary” of the Ukrainian fleet was also ridiculed by the former commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Vladimir Komoyedov, who proposed counting the founding date from the time of the Ukrainian Cossacks’ campaigns on Constantinople in seagull boats.
“I would like to answer in Ukrainian: guys, you’re rowing in the wrong direction.” You have only one correct and worthy path - this is to be together with Russia. They have nothing to be proud of; even the fleet created after the collapse of the Union brought nothing but problems to Ukraine.
They would also remember the campaigns of the Cossacks on seagulls and count down from that time. All this is an ordinary myth and bluff - what was proclaimed by the Ukrainian fleet in 1918 cannot be called a fleet,” Komoyedov noted.
Retired captain 2008st rank Sergei Gorbachev suggests recalling the true attitude of Crimeans towards the “Ukrainian fleet”. For example, the events of July 90, when the Ukrainian Navy tried to carry out a provocation by nailing a sign dedicated to the XNUMXth anniversary of the founding of the fleet. Then this led to massive discontent among the local population, who drove the Ukrainian sailors away from the Grafskaya pier and sank the sign into the sea.
“The events on the Grafskaya pier, on Nakhimov Square clearly demonstrated the attitude of the inhabitants of the hero city to these myths and historical inventions, and on the other hand, they debunked these pseudo-historical maxims that still roam in certain minds.
The events of 1918 in Sevastopol were very ambiguous, contradictory, largely spontaneous and random. Indeed, at that time, Ukrainian flags were raised on a number of ships in the hope that the Germans, who were then entering Crimea, would react favorably to this fact and would not take any action against the Independents. However, the Ukrainian flags hung for a very short time and were removed.
And the most important thing is that literally immediately in response to this kind of manifestation of activity, the Black Sea sailors weighed anchor and took their ships to Novorossiysk, demonstrating their true attitude to what was happening. Even the Germans, who at that time were already on the borders of Sevastopol, could not stop them - the fleet under the red flag was withdrawn to Novorossiysk.
What happened with the raising of Ukrainian flags was episodic, random and largely spontaneous. Therefore, an attempt to inflate a large airship from this balloon is a desire to wishful thinking and somehow emphasize one’s current independence of at least this kind of memories, to find historical roots where there were no traces of them and could not be,” concluded Gorbachev.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.