The Lost Battalion
A mystery magnified by social media
In a classic decision game, a player does two things. First, he makes sense of the situation at hand. Second, he devises, describes, and (when challenged) defends a particular course of action. The following exercise invites readers to take the first of these steps, to use the information provided to come up with a “theory of the case.”
As is our custom with respect to decision games, please feel free to use the comments section to explain what you think is really going on with this unit. In doing so, please avoid spoilers and, in particular, any information that came to light after 1 July 2022.
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On, or about, 23 March 2022, in the city of Kharkiv, the 225th and 226th Battalions of the Territorial Defense Forces converted themselves into the Kraken Special Unit. In the course of doing this, they discarded the numbers they had borne ten days or so.
Within a week, one of these numbers had found a new home. On 30 March 2022, the 226th Territorial Defense Battalion made its debut on Facebook. In the days that followed, the notices posted on this page gave ample evidence of the creation of an entirely new battalion. The second number, however, has proved harder to track.
The first mention of a new “225th Battalion” to appear on the internet was an appeal for funds for the purchase a hundred individual first aid kits for the “225th Kharkiv Territorial Defense Battalion.”1 Posted on the website of Bysol, a charity founded to support political dissidents in Belarus, this plea met with success. Within a few days of making the initial plea, the organizers of the drive reported that they had received a total of 6,996 Euros, an amount that exceeded, if only by a little, the stated (and highly specific) goal of 6,902.42 Euros.
The text of the appeal had described the purchase of a hundred first-aid kits as the first step in a project to provide one of these items to each of the five-hundred men of the 225th Battalion. Nonetheless, despite meeting the goal that they had set, the organizers of the fundraising drive declined to post any further solicitations.
The next mention of the 225th Battalion on the Bysol website took the form of a request, made by an individual living in Poland, for 8,420 Euros. This sum, the post explained, would permit the purchase of a particular passenger car for the “225th TRO Battalion Kharkov.”2 This appeal, which was also described as the first part of a larger program, did not fare as well as the first fundraising effort. Indeed, it raised but 150 Euros, and thus less than two percent of its stated goal.
On 28 April 2022, someone created a Facebook page for a “225th Battalion/127th Brigade/Territorial Defense.” On 3 May 2022, a channel for the same unit appeared on Telegram. Both of these social media accounts sported a poster that featured neither a badge for the 225th Battalion nor the emblem of the 127th Brigade, but the patches of the Territorial Defense of the Kharkiv Oblast and the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The e-mail addresses associated with these two accounts belonged to Evgeniy Demchenko and Ilya Saltovets, neither of whom bore signs of any other connection to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Rather, posts on other social media sites suggest that the chief interests of these bons vivants were fast cars, clubbing, and film-making. (In this period, Mr. Demchenko used a short-lived Patreon account to solicit support for a documentary he planned to make about the defense of Mariupol.)
In the six weeks that followed, few posts appeared on the social media accounts that claimed to represent the 225th Battalion. On 5 May 2022, a video requesting funds for a pair of civilian vehicles for the battalion appeared on both channels. On 12 May 2022, a post to the Telegram channel announced the start of a drive to collect six thousand dollars for the purchase of a pickup truck. This post, which was written in Russian, identified two people, the E.V. Demchenko and Max Antonenko, as “responsible for the collection.”
The Instagram account of Mr. Antonenko, which remains active, identified him as a photographer, showcased the high-fashion pictures he has taken, and documented the uses to which he put money that he collected for charitable purposes. These included the purchase of groceries to senior citizens, the donation of medical supplies to clinics, and the provision of goggles, batteries, and bullet-proof vests to military units. (Antonenko often superimposed copies of retail receipts, all of which date to the month of March 2022, onto the photos depicting items donated and the recipients thereof.)
The 12 May 2022 request for money to buy a pickup truck was the last to appear on the Telegram channel for nearly a month. Posted on 9 June 2022, this message consisted of a video in which a young man, wearing civilian clothes and speaking in Russian,
apologized for his long silence (which he attributed to a hospital stay)
celebrated the delivery of two pick-up trucks (as well as many other items)
solicited fresh funds for the purchase of additional equipment and supplies.
Similarly, several weeks of silence passed between the Facebook notice of 5 May 2022 and the next message to appear on that page. The latter, which was posted by attorney Roman Likhachev on 28 June 2022, consisted of a long discussion of Ukrainian laws that dealt with disobedience of military orders.
The social media sites of the other four battalions of the 127th Territorial Defense Brigade were far more active than those of the 225th Battalion, with lots of photos of members posing with weapons, engaged in training, unboxing donations, receiving awards, getting married, and keeping company with cats. The same was true for the social media sites affiliated with the Kraken Special Unit. Similarly, the Telegram and Facebook accounts of the 225th Battalion had far fewer followers than those of either the other battalions of the 127th Brigade or the Kraken organization.
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The fundraising notice bore no date. However, mention of the month that had passed since the Russian invasion of 24 February 2022 suggests that it was posted at the end of March of 2022.
“TRO” stands for “ Territorial Defense” [територіальна оборона].
Brilliant.
Bravo.