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The State of Ruthenia
Poltava - May 9th 2025
"That fiasco was in general quite embarrassing." General Matthias Laberenz spoke from where he stood on a small bluff overlooking the collected force of the Ruthenian 5th Army. At the moment a vast sea of tents and pre-fabricated buildings built up on the plains outside of Poltava, the eighth largest city in Ruthenia over the course of the last eight months. The fiasco to which he referred was the now relentlessly mocked 'Belkan War', proof that yet again the Imperials were neigh unstoppable when someone bothered to get the Old Empire moving. Eleven million men from the Empire alone had marched on the Commonwealth of Birkaine and her allies and before even a month had passed some diplomat from Mu had through some true miracle of God negotiated a peace to the conflict before it could even start, thus becoming the next in the long list of the wars that had failed to become the Second Great War.
Now of course, Laberenz ruminated on darkly, Birkaine was in a state of civil war that had seen Ruthenia move the 8th, 6th and 2nd armies to the Rusyn-Birkanian border to secure it from spill over fighting while the occasional horde of refugees were granted asylum, as was proper for the Rusyns to extend as the Birkanians had lifted them from perdition a mere eight years before. There were rumors among the soldiery and the people about invasion, to create a buffer zone in the Far East Oblast of Birkaine to prevent fighting directly on Ruthenia's borders, it was incredibly ironic how the mighty had fallen, really. He chuckled darkly as he went over some maps for the upcoming operations while he reminisced. The general consensus had once been that the most dreaded alliance in the world would have been the world superpowers of the Federated States of California, the Birkanian Commonwealth and the Mu Empire, that alliance had come to pass, and it had died with a whimper.
Of course, that was not the concern of him in the now as he once more looked out over his troops in a distant review, the bulbous bodies of T-80U main battle tanks sat guns angled upward in an awkward mechanical salute as they sat idle, waiting on the inevitable orders from the Generalissimo in Kiev. Not far from their staging area he could barely make out some of the outer perimeter of General Klavdiya Stanislava's 4th infantry army, his primary support element for the upcoming Operation Silverfish, the first of a series of operations involving the Eslovakian-backed Republic of Pripyat to the north, in theory a democratic republic, in reality a puppet-state with some glorified devolution of power for domestic affairs. Eslovakia had seized the region in the late stages of the Ruthenian Civil War to assist the Rusyn people or so they claimed and to their credit had gotten the northeast of the Ukraine running again. All they had to do to maintain that prosperity was the Nordgeld, perhaps not a physical tribute any longer in the form of gold or jewels but a payment of protection none the less and the moment they stopped, Eslovakia would let the Evil Fascists in southern Ruthenia overrun them. Having heard the propaganda himself endlessly since his posting here eight months prior over hijacked television signals, radio waves and simple loudspeakers when close enough to the border he had no doubt the Pripyati Rusyns had been thoroughly turned against their brethren here in the south, filled with visions of monsters and demons likes of which the Sunese had instilled into their peoples regarding the Californians many years before in the Adrianic War.
At the insistence of the Ministry of Communications, countermeasures had been set up along the border and it was a constant battle of wills for the hearts and minds of the Rusyn people, one side proclaiming the fascists to the south to be daemonic entities straight from the darkest pits of hell and the other side proclaiming the same to be their saviors from the Norse invaders. Laberenz looked skyward as the distant shadow of a sonic boom filled the air, a grim smile graced his Belkan features as aged but capable Su-25 strike fighters from the Ruthenian Air Force made their first trip of the coming war northward, a fast journey lasting mere minutes where entire flights would rake down the border annihilating forward border defense posts and open up the way for the army units. He wordlessly for a reasonable paranoia of spies had his orders to his section commanders handed out via simple paper which was deployed by runners, from here on though radio transmissions would make up the majority of communications for the army's units.
Some time passed before a satellite telephone rang, distantly hearing it the general after taking the proper encryption procedures answered the device. "It's time." The two words came from General Mark Valshannar, Head of State and Government for the State of Ruthenia, supreme commander of the armed forces etc. Laberenz nodded, mostly to himself. "Understood, sir." While the two officers were fire-forged friends from the civil war, a rigid chain of command demanded professionalism and the former mercenary had never deviated from that professionalism. The phone was disconnected a second later before Laberenz took up a radio. He neglected to give any speech, instead calling for immediate mobilization which he could see was being undertaken from his position above the assorted units, though he did give a small piece. "Soldiers of Ruthenia, beyond the distant hills so well known lays the so called Republic of Pripyat, where your brother Rusyns are cruelly denied their right to self-rule and determination by distant overlords in the North. You ride forward now to deliver them into true liberty, and all the Ukraine rides with you."
State of Ruthenia
Senior Airman Taras Sewick - Ruthenian Air Force
May 9th, 2025
Contrary to the mainstay policies of the Californian Air Force, or the Belkan Luftwaffe, not everyone in a plane was an officer in the Ruthenian Air Force. Such was evidenced with twenty-four year old Taras Sewick, a young man from Donetsk in the south near the Zhongren Border he had been serving in the air force since his initial conscription at 16, not quite ten years back he had proven himself to be supremely skilled at essentially whatever he did along with his other duties and was due for officers candidacy owing to his ability and competency, not to mention it would skip him up entire pay grades (of course to temper that his responsibilities would effectively quadruple).
SA Sewick was currently musing over the fact he was about to start a war, not personally but his hand would be the direct ones that started the long list of casualties that would from that point forward mount until one side or the other yielded, and he very much doubted that the central government in Kiev would yield. Pripyat, the Eslovakian puppet-state to the north had too few forces to effectively resist them, and the Democratic League was far enough away, excluding Eslovakia, that the Ruthenians could overrun their oppressed brothers and force a peace before their masters could arrive to bring them back into the fold. "Three minutes to battlespace, final preparations." The somewhat garbled voice of Lieutenant Colonel Olexiy Pasternak came over the radio, on muscle memory and instinct SA Sewick ran down a final memorized list before, like the rest of his flight and in similar motion to other Ruthenian flights headed to the Pripyatan border, switched their weapons systems on. "Hey, that feeling of unease?" He muttered to his weapons operator, Anatoli Gavrilyuk who was busy running last second motions like he had done. "Yeah, I know the feeling." Gavrilyuk finally responded as they reached the very cusp of the battlespace.
"Commence targeting, begin combat operations." Lt. Col Pasternak's voice came over the radio again.
"It's gone now." Sewick said as the Su-25 began its combat run.
"Home is where the war is." Gavrilyuk responded simply as far below them the first bomblets released by the other members of the flights made impact with their targets on the ground. Their own Su shuddered as they released their own payload over the first targets... Operation Silverfish had begun with no fanfare and little warning save that the Pripyatan absolutely had to see the large formations of strike fighters and medium bombers coming at them, and this turned out to be true as they were answered seconds later in the form of missile chimes from SAM batteries ground side.
The latest in a long list of wars on the planet of Rostil had begun.
