Читать книгу Confessions of a fighter. Revelations of a Volunteer - Bondo Dorovskikh - Страница 4

Back in February 2014, watching Russian television, I could not take my eyes off the screen. All the media, with the exception of the “Culture” channel, were constantly showing the events in Ukraine. The evening news was extended from thirty minutes to an hour or more. If it had not been for my job, which I had started not long before this, I too would have been there in April, when Russian citizens were in Slavyansk. On waking the next morning after the first reports, I looked and myself in the mirror and told myself: “Don’t think about going there. It’s none of your business”. For the last few years I had been living in Moscow, and I must admit that they were not the best years in my life. A few months previously, I had been offered the post of Director of Development in a construction company which built housing, as well as industrial and commercial property. After having sold petroleum products worth millions of dollars every month, it was not an enviable prospect to work for my uncle, even if it was as a director. So work took second place, particularly as even from the beginning, it had not interested me. “We have to finish off the Banderites4 because our grandfathers didn’t” was the thought inspired in me by what I heard on some channel or other.

“Good morning”, I say to the guard who opens the door.

“G’day”, he replies.

“Have you seen what the nationalists are up to in Ukraine?”

“Can you believe it? Maybe we are too trusting?”

“What are you talking about? The Ukrainians have sold themselves to the Americans, a long time ago.”

“Maybe…” I reply, but thinking my own thoughts.

I enter the office, switch on the computer and immerse myself in the internet, seeking the latest news on events in the newly-hatched New Russia, where Strelkov is in charge.

At the beginning of April, an armed group of his people seized administrative buildings in Slavyansk, Donetsk Province. On 13^th April 2014, Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council took the decision to commence anti-terrorist operations, involving the Ukrainian armed forces. On the same day, a group of Ukrainian security troops was ambushed and fired on. Some of them were killed and wounded. That was how the war began in the south west of Ukraine, where those behind it were Russian citizens. This anecdote appeared after this:

A grandmother goes up to her grandson and asks:

“Hey, what’s going on in the streets of Slavyansk? What are these barricades?”

“It’s a revolution, granny.”

“Who against who?”

“Our people against the criminal authorities.”

“Really, darling? I don’t see any of our people there, no-one but incomers…”

I arrived home that evening and watched the TV again. People dying… Russian people being killed…

I’ll soon be with you. Hang on!

Next morning I washed, looked in the mirror and said: “Don’t think about going there. No, of course not. I’m not that much of an idiot. Of course I won’t go. There’s nothing for me to do there…” Every day I felt more and more involved. All I was thinking about was the Donbass and all things connected with it. I began to admit to myself that perhaps I would go there after all. But this thought frightened me, and I insistently pushed it away. I couldn’t find any information on how to get to Slavyansk without falling into the hands of the Ukrainian authorities. I was not ready to go there on my own. I was deaf to the arguments of my common sense, which was shouting at me: “Where are you taking me?” But there was a voice in my heart: “Do it! It’s your duty!” And so strong was this voice that the concepts of common sense became irrelevant…

It was the end of May by the time I had found the email of the Slavyansk campaign office. I immediately sent an email saying I wanted to go there. In reply I was told: “You have to get to Slavyansk and come to our office.” I realized it would not be easy to do this, because the Ukrainian authorities were turning all Russian men between 18 and 60 years of age off the trains, to reduce the flow of volunteers pouring into Ukraine.

“What the devil can I do?” I thought. “How can I get there?”

I remembered a friend who lived right on the Ukrainian frontier at Donetsk, in Rostov Province. After the Chechen war, he had been demobilized from the Army and was now smuggling various goods from Russia into Ukraine. I had to find him urgently and ask his help, so that his colleagues from Ukraine would take me to Slavyansk. But – wouldn’t you know it? – my friend seemed to have disappeared off the face of the Earth. After spending several fruitless days looking for him, I returned to my internet searches for information to help me.

I could of course take the risk of going into Ukraine on my own, but there was one thing against this: the debts I had incurred were an obstacle to me moving beyond the bounds of the Russian Federation. I could only see one possibility: crossing the frontier illegally, for which I needed a “window”.

On one of my days off, I went to Ivanovo, where the 98^th Division of the Airborne Forces was stationed on the other side of a friend’s fence.

“Max, I’m trying to get to Ukraine”, I told him.

“Why do you need to do that?”

“I don’t want to make a speech about it. I don’t know… I feel drawn there…”

More days off passed by. Everyday, it was all still the same. Morning, the mirror… Don’t think of going… the office… reports about the war… “No, I’m not going anywhere…” I bought a bulletproof vest, a camouflage cloak, combat boots, an assault vest, radios, a knife, medicine, a combat suit and a balaclava. I tried all this gear on in the office, and looking at myself in the mirror, said: “You’re beginning to look like a fighter”.

I thought it over, wondering where all this would take me, and my soul still resisted, I told myself I wouldn’t go. It was hard to imagine that you might simply not exist after this trip. All this has to be pictured in the imagination, and it had to be agreed that it was possible, and you are ready for any situation.

The working day came to an end, and I was still in my bulletproof vest, viewing my new image.

“Hey, where are you off to?” the guard asked when he saw me.

To Ukraine, to fight», I replied.

“What? Seriously?”

“Yes”.

“Good for you! I’d go too, but my son is ill and there’s no-one else to look after him.”

He began talking about his service in the Army, and of course was excited by the idea of fighting. Sitting through each 24-hour shift and looking at the screen, nipping out for a smoke occasionally – who would find that interesting?

He wished me luck and to hit the enemy hard.

“Luck? Thanks, a bit of that will come in handy.”

When I was buying the armor and equipment, I got the impression that everyone was going to Ukraine: anything to do with the military was flying of the shelves at a rapid rate.

On another day off, I go into Ivanovo. The 98^th Division is on the march, with all its kit and equipment, towards the Northern airfield. I jump out of the bus. I try to get through to a captain of the Airborne, shouting:

“Where are you going? To Ukraine?”

But my pal Max won’t let me through.

“Yes, that’s where they’re going, but you don’t have to”, he says.

I am burning inside. They’re off to fight, and here I am, stuck in the rear…

I call into a little store a hundred meters or so from the military base. Here it is usually full of 98^th Division troops, but now it is empty. I ask the storekeeper:

“Where are they all?”

“The guys have gone to defend us. And have you paid your debt to the homeland?”

“I did that, in Chechnya”, says Max.

“Good for you, I envy you”, I reply. “And what’s it like there, in a war? Will I be muddy and freezing in the trenches?”

“Of course. What do you expect?”

“Fine, I’m ready for everything”, I reply.

“But what if I’m killed?” I think to myself. “And incidentally, how does the body get brought back if you die?”

I look it up on Google. They take it to Rostov-on-Don and the relatives pick it up from there. I don’t want to cause problems for anybody: funeral, tears… No, I won’t give my relatives’ details when I join up. If it comes to it, they can bury me there…

At the beginning of June, reports start appearing on the net on how to reach the recruiting point in an organized manner. “Russian National Unity”, the “Interbrigades”, the draft office of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Cossacks and other organizations are doing an excellent job of sending off the volunteers. All I had to do was send an email to these organizations and wait for replies. They came telling me to state my full name, my city of residence, my citizenship, military specialty (if an ex-serviceman), combat experience, when I would be ready to travel, and a contact telephone number. All the applications were approved without exception, including mine. And I wrote to all of them I could.

I decided to call in at the church to request a blessing for this trip.

“How can you help them?” asked the priest. “You’d do better to try to overcome your passions. I won’t give you a blessing.”

I thought about his words. Really, how could I help those engaged in this conflict?? But I was already burning with the desire to fight.

When I was getting ready to go to Rostov, someone from the FSB rang me and asked me to call in at their Ivanovo Province office.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“You wrote to us that to want to join the Ukrainian National Guard?”

Now I remembered. Yes, a few weeks ago I had written to them and asked if any punitive measures would be taken against me if I took part in the war on the side of the National Guard.

“So that’s it! I’m on my way to join up now. I was just going out the door.”

“Where exactly are you going? To the Donbass? Could you come to our office now?” he asked, in a quite different tone.

“I’ll come right away. I am right here in Ivanovo.”

“Come in, we’ll be expecting you”, was the reply.

I called a cab and went there. The cab driver was thinking his own thoughts, but I was talking non-stop.

“‘No, look,’ they told me, ‘You mustn’t go to the National Guard.’ And when I said I was joining the militia, that really put the cat among the pigeons”, I said.

“Are you out of your mind?? Two guys have already been brought back from there in caskets”, he said in amazement.

Indeed, two volunteers from Ivanovo had died in May in the storming of Donetsk Airport.

“That’s war, what do you expect?” I replied. “You can get killed.”

The FSB asked me to sign a declaration that I refused to answer the question.

“I understand”, I thought. “It’s a tricky business for you.”

But that was not all. They asked me under official interrogation where exactly I was going and how I intended to get there. I refused to testify anything. To which the officer objected:

“It’s simply better to testify here than later in Rostov, where our people will deal with you. They know about you anyway”, he said.

“You won’t betray me to the Ukrainian side? You aren’t passing information to them?”

“Why do you think we would share information like that with them?”

“Anything’s possible. One lot in power today, another lot tomorrow, and you would drop us right in it. Today we’re freedom fighters, tomorrow we’re terrorists.”

But they assured me that this information would not be given out, and only then did they ask:

“But why did you write us such a query about taking part in the Ukrainian National Guard?”

I replied:

“It’s hard to understand clearly just what our state’s policy is. Maybe I didn’t get something.”

“Do you get it now?”

“Oh yes. I get it all now.”

“What impels you to make this journey?”

“I want to defend our fellow countrymen. This amounts to a war against Russia, and the forefront of it is there. Ukraine is just a platform for the West to wage war on us.”

“It’s good that you understand that. There are very few people like you just now, unfortunately. Good health! And good luck!”