War is always hell and will always be.

The average Russian soldier fought like heroes. Not so much for Stalin but for country. Fighting was brutal on both sides and nothing unexpected.

M ost Russians Soldiers, when the tide turned against Germany were honorable combatants. I even know a first hand story from an elderly lady trapped in the battle for Berlin mentioned she did not expect to be treated well and the Russian troops were kind and helped her.

BUT, back then, they told her to escape to the western front. She refused. The soldier's last remarks to her was. The next wave of troops behind are not going to be kind.

After that, she survived and wished she took the soldier's warning.

Will “War Witness” be honest enough to give an eye-witness account of how Soviet Moscow abused the 1939 Bases Treaty it Estonia, overthrew the legitimate Estonian government by force in 1940 and thereafter proceeded to kill and deport to Siberian slavery thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians? Will it have the courage to give an eyewitness report of how, immediately after the War in 1946 and again into the1950s, Soviet Russians arbitrarily arrested and deported into Soviet slavery over 20,000 more Estoniancivilians, from babes in arms to people in their 90’s, but predominantly women and children? That’s not as bad score, considering the total population of the land was only just over 1 million. But come to think of it, these atrocities did not happen during the “Great Patriotic War”. They happened before the war, when Estonia was at peace with the Soviet Union, and after the War, when Nazi Germany no longer existed and Soviet writ already applied in the Baltics. Yet it was the Red Army whose occupation of the Baltics made these outrages not only possible, but inevitable. If “War Witness” does not also include these shameful yet sadly all too true events in its reminiscences, its articles are one-sided and misleading. Russians like to glory in heroics and sentimentality. Its neighbours would also appreciate a little realism.