On November 5, the most massive Russian missile attack on Ukraine. This is not the first time in history that Russia has shown its cruelty, not wanting to let Ukraine out of its sphere of influence.
Another tragedy provoked by Moscow’s aggression occurred when, after accepting the Swedish protectorate over Ukraine, Peter I ordered the seizure of the Hetman’s capital, Baturyn.
Mazepa appointed colonel Dmytro Chechel, osaul Friedrich Koenigsek and centurion Dmytro Nesterenko to guard the city. A 10,000-strong army led by Menshikov and Golitsyn approached the city, but the defenders carried out Mazepa’s order to the end.
As Menshikov wrote to the tsar: “what do they want to the last man of the state.” On the night of November 2 (November 13 according to the new style) of 1708, Moscow troops went on the offensive and took the city.
And after that, the tragedy began, as the historian Oleksandr Ogloblin wrote: the capital became “a victim of fire and Moscow barbarism.”
Sources testify to the total destruction of the city and its population. As the chronicler writes: “Many people there perished from the sword, because the whole village was destroyed”; and those who tried to escape from the fire were hacked by Moscow soldiers, “because, although the bloodshed was to stop, the army that came out of hiding, rather ordinary soldiers, drunkenly stabbed people and hacked them.”
The others were afraid to go out, burned, and as the chronicler writes: “few people escaped the fire, and only one hut, standing under the very wall, was left standing, an old woman survived.”
So already on November 8 (19 according to the new style) of 1708, when Mazepa together with the Swedes entered what used to be a city and saw the ruins and burnings of Baturin, “there were still puddles of human blood in the city and in the suburbs “.
