Павел Филатьев, ZOV

ZOV.md

ZOV

It's been a month and a half since I returned from the war in Ukraine, yes, I know that you can not say this word "war", it was banned, but still I will say "war", understand correctly, I am 33 years old and all my life I only tell the truth, even if to my detriment, here is such a "wrong" and can not do anything about it. So this is war, our Russian army shoots at the Ukrainian army, and the latter shoots back, shells and missiles explode there, have you ever heard the sound of a shell coming towards you? If not, that's a pity, it's an unforgettable feeling of vibration and whistling of air when all your insides turn over, just takes your breath away, then if you're lucky you hear an explosion and think it's definitely your day, of course if you realize you did not get hurt in the blast wave and your body did not take some shrapnel, but if not, then you had a bad day and this time you were not lucky, in short it's a hell of a job...

At the same military killed on both sides, as well as civilians who are lucky enough to live where they decided to start a war, calling it a special operation.

Oh yes, you must not forget the accompanying war hunger, disease, sleepless nights, unsanitary conditions and life with constant adrenaline which consumes resources of your body giving you strength, speed and reaction, but then when you come back from the war zone you feel like a lemon and understand that your health is not good at all.

Then there is also the moral pressure of your conscience on your heart and soul, if you have any, because you are not free to ask yourself what you are doing it for and for what good. Why do you risk your life and leave your health, why do you pollute your karma, and perhaps not the cloudless karma. Now I'll tell you how I saw this war and how I got into it in the first place. I am aware of the responsibility to disseminate information about my service, but to conceal it, for me, means to continue to increase my losses.

I was evacuated from the front line near Nikolayevskiy because my eyes got keratoconjunctivitis. After another artillery bombardment, the earth got into my eyes, which was not very pleasant, but I was lucky, my eyes began to inflame and one of them closed, a few days later a paramedic said that I should be evacuated as I could stay without treatment. I was taken to med detachment in occupied Kherson, where I was evacuated to Sevastopol.

The feeling you get when you leave a war zone is indescribable...

Two months of dirt, hunger, cold, sweat and the feeling of being near death. It is a pity that they do not allow reporters to come to our front line. Because of this the whole country cannot admire paratroopers overgrown, unwashed, dirty, thin and embittered, it is not clear what they are more afraid of: the stubborn Ukrainians who do not want to be denationalized or their mediocre command, who cannot be equipped even during combat operations. Half of my guys changed clothes and wore Ukrainian uniforms because they were of higher quality and more comfortable, or their own uniforms were worn out and our great country was unable to clothe, equip and feed its own army. For example, I had no Ratnik kit from the beginning and crossed the border even without a sleeping bag. A week later, the guys gave me an old one, not the commanders gave it to me, with a broken lock, to say that I was happy with it is not to say anything. Sleeping on the ground in a shabby sleeping bag in winter at the front line, and in Ukraine and in March were freezing, it is another trip. In short, somewhere in mid-March my legs and back began to hurt, I thought for a long time that this muscle or ligament and stupidly tolerated a limp and writing off everything to the fact that the armor and helmet, we almost never removed, but then I learned that from sleeping on frozen ground, the shortage of water and food, combined with stress, I earned osteochondrosis in all parts of the spine, protrusion, hernia in the neck, a sequestered hernia in the lower back and strange pain in the joints of the legs.

I was thinking about the evacuation, but then, bam, they took you away from there and you felt both joy at leaving this hellhole and a feeling of shame that your comrades were staying there and nobody knew what would happen to them, a feeling of happiness for yourself mixed with a feeling of guilt before your comrades-in-arms who were there and you were leaving them behind.

We were in a van and the driver was in the van, there were 20 injured, dirty, exhausted, uniforms were covered with blood. Pain and sadness could be seen on the faces of those who had been seriously injured, while those who had been light were glad they were finally leaving, because I was not injured. I was not wounded, at the evacuation they treated me like a patient, so I was sitting on the step in front of the exit door (there were not enough places for everybody) and many were less lucky than me. At that moment, and still to this day, an inner dialogue of a cocktail of conscience, patriotism, and common sense continues unabated inside me. If you turn to templates the answer is that I am a military man, a paratrooper, I am obliged to follow orders and have no right to chicken out and not go to war when it started, I must serve for the good of my country and protect the people of Russia, but then common sense begins to cross and ask questions.

"What did Ukraine threaten Russia with?"

Everyone around here is talking about how Ukraine wanted to join NATO. But are we attacking all the countries that want to join NATO? Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland are already in NATO. Finland is now joining NATO. Turkey shot down our plane not too long ago, but we quickly forgot, Japan is claiming our islands. Heck, the U.S. borders us in the East, but for some reason all of this is not a reason to start a war.

We're not attacking them, or is that just for now? It turns out that's not the reason.

"If we didn't attack Ukraine it would attack us?" Many people echo on TV that we preemptively attacked, but how can you believe that Ukraine would have attacked Russia, Crimea, if the AFU could not even hold their borders, they are fighting a war in defense suffering huge losses, anyone knows that war in defense is easier than waging attacking actions. How could this country that is struggling to defend itself, slowly but losing its territory, attack? Wouldn't it be easier for our army to strengthen the borders and defense around Ukraine and in case of their attack to meet the enemy in defense, break their offensive potential and go into counterattack, because then our losses would be much less and the world community would not be able to blame Russia as an aggressor and glorify our country as an occupier and invader. So it's not true that Ukraine was going to attack Russia either?

"Ukraine has been enslaved by Nazism and they are infringing on the Russian population?"

But strangely enough, talking to people who were in Ukraine before the war, I could not remember a specific case of someone infringing on him or hurting him for having a Russian name or not being able to speak Ukrainian, while some isolated cases of domestic conflicts on ethnic grounds, can be found in any country in the world.

"We attacked to save the DPR and LPR".

What is the DPR and LPR? After all, in fact and legally, these are two regions that were part of Ukraine, that rebelled and decided to become independent. Isn't it the same if Karelia wanted to become part of Finland, Smolensk region to Lithuania, Rostov region to Ukraine, Yakutia to the USA or Khabarovsk to China, isn't it the same? Why are we defending the LDNR? Did it make the ordinary people in the Donbass better? After all, in the Russian Federation we would not have tolerated this, just as we did not give Chechnya its independence, paying for it with thousands of lives. Why did we do the same to our neighbors? But at the same time, the leaders of LNR and DNR, despite the support of the Russian government, couldn't provide their people with social security and give them security, so people fled en masse to Russia, the Crimea and Ukraine. Talking to people who fled the war in Donetsk and Luhansk, I did not hear any cases of Nazism cited by our media. But all told me that they were fleeing from the war and that they just wanted to live and work peacefully. If we tried in every way to help the people of Donetsk and Lugansk, then why didn't we limit ourselves to giving everyone who wants Russian passports, we have plenty of empty land which has not been touched by a human hand, please let them come, live and work with us, why do we need territories of a de facto foreign country? Why? Do we not have enough land? Haven't all those who wanted to live in Russia received Russian passports and moved to us?

At first, they decided to motivate us with money, and on February 23 our commander announced that we would be getting $69 a day, which at that rate was about 7,000₽, (although we were cheated here too and ended up getting 3,500₽ a day) from the first day we realized that this was not the Crimean operation "Polite People" and not an exercise, And crossing the Ukrainian border to the volleys of MLRS rockets escorted by attack helicopters and airplanes, we were already told that such work was not worth the money. But we are defenders of the Fatherland, paratroopers, the pride of the Fatherland, and money is not important and if you have to receive the order "Forward!" at War, then something serious must have happened, maybe the AFU is already capturing Rostov or the Americans have landed on Kamchatka! Without laughing, I seriously thought for a while that something like this had happened, since we went to break through the Ukrainian border and received an order to capture Kherson, I saw no other logical explanation.

Oh, sorry, I did not introduce myself... Gv.ml.spt. Filatiev 6 DShR, 2 DShB, 56 DShP, 7 VPD.

Yes, yes, the 56th DShB that our Defense Ministry Shoigu decided to disband on the eve of this war. Probably to level the chances of Ukraine against Russia, last year the brigade, staffed, coordinated and equipped brigade of 3000 paratroopers, consisting of three assault battalions, parachute landing battalion, reconnaissance battalion, tank battalion, which had its own artillery and air defense, was disbanded, the brigade that had been created for 20 years in the town of Kamyshin was almost empty of places! The brigade is being disbanded, destroying families and being scattered all over Russia.

From the brigade they create a regiment, well, as a regiment, from a regiment the name only, leaving full-time only one parachute battalion and transfer it to the Crimea in Feodosiya uniting it with already located there separate 171st assault battalion and here from these two battalions form a "regiment", the regiment consisting of a parachute airborne battalion, airborne assault and reconnaissance company (which number is equal to a platoon) Not only that it is not a regiment! So also the airborne assault battalion was not fully staffed in terms of numbers. Not only that, our great reformers decided to create as we were told the Night Experimental Airborne Assault Battalion, putting the entire battalion on conventional UAZs, not armored! My company went to war with about 45 people, and the other two companies had 60 people each, so the airborne assault battalion consisted of 165 assault riflemen - genius, well, basically what am I saying, everything looks better on the reports, because the battalion is about 500 people, the same on the reports was the number of troops around Ukraine about 200x thousand.

In my opinion, taking into account the corruption and the system of photo-reports, which are now so bred in the army, when the command hides the problems, on the first day about 100 thousand Russian troops crossed the border of Ukraine and that against 200 thousand AFU troops. Thanks to the endless absurd experiments and lack of common sense, the army has definitively stopped being an attractive and promising place for "the best young people", a situation where there is a shortage of military higher education institutions and contract service (which we have been moving toward since 2003) has definitively become a place where people from lower social circles (which unfortunately I belong to) gather, because the less educated and law-abiding you are, the easier you are to manipulate. Besides all this they have destroyed institute of military service, having transformed it in mix of a kindergarten with a settlement settlement colony, when conscripts having served their term go on a civic absolutely without having learned anything, telling then about it to the friends and any who had an opportunity prefers simply to avoid such useless waste of the life. And it used to be that conscript soldiers fought successfully in Afghanistan and Chechnya, successfully in the sense that they performed the tasks assigned to them and did not suffer such losses as the current "professional army of Russia" has already suffered in Ukraine.

Yes, I forgot to tell you that I have been in the 56th DShB since 1993 and have been observing its breakdown for 30 years.

I remember 1999, the beginning of the war in Chechnya, then as a teenager I accompanied my father to the war. At about 3 a.m. the 1st DShB was lined up at the parade-ground near the headquarters, and the regiment commander was giving the battalion combat orders about the marching orders, about the necessity to engage in combat with bandit formations of the self-proclaimed Ichkeria (does this ring any bell? Didn't Ukraine react to the LNRD the same way? ), that it was dangerous and if some of the soldiers for some reasons do not want or cannot do it, it is necessary to leave the ranks, that the reasons can be different one in the family, religious or sick mother, but then nobody left the ranks, not one, although except officers, the battalion (about 500 people), consisted of conscript soldiers mainly aged 18 to 20 years old. It was qualitatively and fundamentally different army. It was the army we had in 1999. Yes, it wasn't ideal, it was in need of order and reforms, but the army of that time was a head above the one which was "reformed" during the last 23 years.

As for the current one, a huge number of contract servicemen refused to go to the war with Ukraine.

This also played a role in the failure of the "special operation".

I remember that during the two months I was at the front line, every day we hoped that we would be replaced and allowed to go to the second line to rest, wash and bathe, but this never happened, because as it turned out, there was no one to replace us...

First I was taken to the city of Sevastopol, to the hospital "Orion", our pazik, of which I spoke above arrived there at 1 am... Before that we made a stop somewhere in Krasnoe Perekop, where a medical tent camp had been erected on the grounds of a civilian hospital, where we were met by a medical unit from Buynaksk, consisting mainly of Dagestani women who greeted us with warmth.

We got off the bus like wild animals, we were immediately surrounded by military doctors from Buynaksk, we felt a little crazy because of the absence of any shooting, the silence and the people were different, there was a sense of calm and safety, it was an indescribable feeling. Doctors began to quickly find out who needed bandages, painkillers and other treatments and accompanied us to a comfortable tent with a canteen, very bright and comfortable, it seemed to me at the time like a corner of heaven...

There we were fed very tasty soup of stew and barley, it was impossible to taste it at that moment. The care and compassion felt from these women, it was a very strange and already forgotten feeling. Very strange feeling because up to that moment it seemed to us that something happened everywhere, everywhere it was like "all for the front, all for victory", but then it became finally clear that everywhere was the usual life, people worked, had a rest, hung out in clubs, and the Internet had not been blocked. Do not be surprised, the first two months we had almost no connection with the outside world and we lived in our own world, in a war, where, in addition to non-human conditions of not enough food, water, sleep, warm clothing and a normal human life, we experienced information starvation, when you feed on rumors, From a driver who went to the rear for dried foods and heard that the Internet was blocked, planes weren't flying over Crimea, the price of sugar had risen tenfold, and the dollar was over 120, being in the isolation of hostilities you can't assess the situation objectively and start to imagine things for yourself. That's why I started asking these women about what was going on in the world and what was in the news.

I remember that they seemed upset, but tried not to show it, perhaps because a few buses a day pass through them because of a ribbon like ours, and they understand that a special operation is not going according to plan, (or maybe someone had a plan?) Maybe because they themselves do not understand what it's all about. I remember one of them was upset by the high prices and at the same time happy that "the celebrities and traitors are leaving the country". At the same time she was saying happily for some reason that Sobchak was arrested, which I was surprised (after all a former presidential candidate), but then it turned out expectedly that this is not true, as well as many other rumors.

After a half-hour stop there we were fed, bandaged and anesthetized. We were taken to Sevastopol, as I said above, to the hospital "Orion". On arriving there at 1 am, we spent another half hour wandering and shouting in the courtyard, because no one stupidly met us. The guys who were already lying there, mostly our colleagues from the Airborne Forces, from the 11 DShBr, as we called them, the "Combat Buryats," who had been at the front line with us since the early days, warmly received us, helped us unload and pounced with questions about our progress at the front line, We were still standing on the line of contact between Kherson and Mykolaiv Oblast, the AFU artillery was shelling our positions and ours was pounding on them, and between them we were waiting for reinforcements for a further offensive. After half an hour a woman dressed in a mixture of military and medical clothes came out, took us to the reception room and we began to be processed and changed into pajamas and bathrobes, all the wounded were immediately sent for surgery. I was exhausted and all I could think about was that I wanted to quickly lie down and sleep, I felt like a train had hit me, everything hurt a lot, I could not explain exactly, my back and legs hurt, in addition to problems with my eyes.

When I was finally admitted, they took me to the room where the nurse gave me some mixtures and pills and said "to sleep better. I was very surprised that the hospital was very modern and new, the rooms were twin, there was a shower, toilet, air conditioning and there was a second exit to the street right from the room. It was fresh, quiet and comfortable, after the trenches it felt better than a hotel like Radisson or Hilton. I had dreamed of a shower in the war, but at that moment, even though my hands were black with encrusted dirt, I had no strength for a shower, so I just lay down on the bed and slept the whole time in the same position, such bliss of sleeping on a bed with clean sheets, in safety and quietness would not be understood by a man who had not slept on bare ground in the cold and shoes with a sense of constant danger. While I was sleeping, my comrade-in-arms was put in my room, we had travelled together in that PAZ, his eardrum was ruptured in one ear and he could hear with only one ear. That's how they put us together, blind and deaf. I do not remember how long I slept, in the morning a nurse came and took some blood from the vein, but I could only open my eyes and I remember that I could not wake up, my eyes would close by themselves and I fell asleep again, but about lunch time they woke me up and took me to the other old building to the oculist. The oculist was somewhere on the sixth floor and it was very difficult to go up there, the pain in my body was every time I took a step and my adrenaline was no longer released, so the plump elderly nurse who accompanied me up there, went up faster than me. The oculist examined me, the equipment there was not bad as it seemed to me, the doctor said "such a normal terry keratitis in both eyes with astigmatism", also said that my vision in both eyes was -5,5 and began to write a long conclusion, while calling and making arrangements with the ophthalmology department to transfer me there. As I learned later in this model hospital they do not keep people long, dispersing them to other cities, hospitals and sanatoriums. After that, I was taken back to my room, where I finally took a shower, soaking in the hot water for at least 30 minutes, rubbing off the ingrained dirt. Then there was lunch, very well cooked there, literally at home. After that I lay down again and passed out. By evening the doctor began to wake me up and told me to change clothes, they were taking me to another hospital, I do not know why but it was very hard to wake up, I could not easily change into my uniform, while discussing future treatment with a comrade in the room, just five minutes later she came running in again and became irritated and said "what are you digging", and I noticed that she had the rank of major, my irritation at this point went off the scale. Only in our modern army it is possible.Military doctors have their own structure and are engaged in treatment in hospitals, but in fact they have military ranks often quite high and according to military regulations they are senior in rank, so in relation to simple contract soldiers often behave very arrogantly.

One often hears from such military "doctors" a tone that our commanders in the Airborne Troops do not allow themselves.

Any adult man with any self-respect will be humiliated when they talk to you like that. And reading in her eyes that she thinks that she has some kind of superiority over me because she is a major, I finally became enraged at her tone. I.e. you are taking part in military actions, risking your life and leaving your health while this madam is here continuing to build up fatty folds, and she is yelling at you and trying to "build" you up, because she is a major, and you are just a simple contract man, and besides you look so bad now - thin, overgrown, dressed in useless hospital pajamas, and from bed you get up coughing like an old man because your whole body hurts. This behavior in the medical military services is everywhere, and I've seen and heard from others, some therapist or surgeon in the medical service, who has the rank of captain or major, but never a day in the real army, is trying not to treat you (his direct duty), and to build. And in the case of this madam-major, when you feel bad enough, and all day none of the doctors approached you and did not ask how you are feeling, and yet at night she shows up and irritably yells that you are slow to get ready. I think my eyes were a little frantic at the time, but all I could squeeze out was "don't yell at me!" and continued tying my shoe laces at the same speed as before, but not to annoy her on purpose, but because I couldn't do it any faster. The madam major was outraged, I could see she was used to bossing and shaping those who came to her for "treatment" and she screamed, "how are you talking to me! I'll call the military police.

I stood up, moved away from her, and answered her in the same way, raising my voice, "Get away from me, call the military police, but don't yell at me. Outraged because she did not get a portion of self-satisfaction from dominating over someone, madam-major left the room frightening me the military police, though she had no legal grounds for that. After a couple of minutes tying my shoelaces and saying goodbye to my deaf ward mate I came out with a big garbage bag on my shoulder (I had no backpack) with my camouflage coat and sneakers (a gift from a Stavropol special forces soldier), when I went out into the yard I saw that the car waiting for me was gone, i.e. there was no noise that I was there. I saw that the car that was waiting for me was not there, i.e. the noise that somebody was tired to wait for me there was made up, it was raining outside and I stood there for about ten minutes, because I too was irritated by this hysterical doctor with the rank of major, having decided that I'd better stand here than go back and cross paths with her again. The UAZ Bukhanka drove into the yard, got into the car, Madame Major came out, gave the driver some of my documents and told him not to let me hold them, and we drove off. By the way, she was the one who had slept soundly last night and came out half an hour later to greet us, while the evacuees had stood outside for half an hour in the cold in the courtyard, the hell with me, but almost everyone had shrapnel and bullet wounds, some had blood soaked bandages, and some were grunting because the painkillers had stopped working, All right when we have to endure in a war zone, but when we are "at home", when all the social services provided by the state for that very purpose are supposed to work, and they are so shoddy, is it not a threat to the security of the country, when someone may not survive or be crippled because of it, is it not criminal medical negligence? .. But as you know, the military is forbidden to disclose problems in the military.

I do not want to be biased, because maybe this woman is not a bad person and treats her job responsibly, and the fact that she overslept the arrival of the bus with the wounded is a consequence of the acute shortage of staff in the hospital and the huge overtime, which probably is not paid, I have heard a lot of complaints from nurses and doctors, but again I wonder, are they not to blame for it? After all, they are just like all of us, they do not complain to the labor committees, the prosecutor's office, the courts (which is a big problem), the fact that they have to do the work of several people, that they are not paid for overtime, that they do not have the necessary medications and equipment, they endure, which ultimately affects the quality of their work and as a result they take their anger out on others. For example, the paramedic who sent me for evacuation from the front line asked me to tell the medical unit he did not have syringes and painkillers, and there are none of those on the front line. If they just wanted to get rid of us all, no questions, but if not, who will answer for the thousands of lives of Russian soldiers who were following orders and were not receiving quality medical care guaranteed by law!

Why maintain the medical service as a branch of the armed forces at all, I am not talking about field and emergency medicine? I am not talking about field and emergency medicine. What is the problem of having independent modern hospitals for the military where doctors can treat me and not try to build them? How can you put a person who serves in the army and a person who has nothing to do with the army in general, and at the same time they are not treated well in military hospitals, but they enjoy all the high military ranks and will not rot in the trenches like you ...

One of my comrades who died in Nikolaevsk airport, in the summer he was diagnosed with an inguinal hernia in our Feodosiya hospital, he told me how lying on the operating table under local anesthesia and realizing that he had already been cut open, he heard doctors whispering that he had no hernia! There are thousands of such stories, and it is impossible to get the truth and punish the guilty, that is how the system of cooperation between services and justice is arranged. Ordinary contract servicemen are often not legally competent enough and the military prosecutor's office is not able to help, if they think something interesting has not happened for them at the moment.

Only in our army women, in the overwhelming majority, serve as a decoration, who are often placed there by husbands and lovers, not counting single cases of paramedics, sometimes really trying to help someone somehow, despite their small powers. I will not even speak about civilian ranks of general officers, who are higher in rank and position than regimental commanders - you really should have thought of that, you really do not understand and do not appreciate your own army.

If you continue the theme of military medicine in the Russian army, it is sufficient to simply compare the first aid kit of the Russian soldier and the American one, which is now commonly found in the AFU. Our army has a tourniquet, bandage, and promidol, and as practice shows not everyone on the front line has this, and looking at the American one, without experience you will not understand what it is, the best parallel is comparing a Lada and a Mercedes. But we were forbidden to spread the word about our service, or suddenly everyone will know about these problems, it's easier to hide it than to fix it.

While the driver drove me to the other end of the city, to the ophthalmology department, I smoked and tried to stop being angry. I learnt from the driver that no one is kept in this new hospital for long and everyone is scattered to other hospitals and sanatoriums in different cities.When I noticed the file given to the driver I asked him to let me see what it was. Having opened it I saw a form of certificate with a list of my health problems, many indicators which were not actually carried out, there were many pages all about my health, by the way most of the parameters were drawn up on the spot, it was written that during special operations in Ukraine I got soil in my eyes...

Perhaps because of the endless paperwork and heavy workload, doctors do not have time to be more attentive to the treatment, what other explanation is there?

Complains of back and leg pains...

There's a handwritten note in bright lettuce underneath.

"Behaving aggressively, violating military discipline!"

That's all you need to know about the army, if you don't mess around enough in front of the senior officers and don't look like a jerk and agree to everything, you get branded, and getting them to enforce military discipline on you in a legal way is practically impossible. Because of this, some people lose patience with injustice to themselves and simply enter into frank conflicts with the command, which immediately means an end to their career, because in today's army you only need "Gerasim to agree to everything. The trip through Sevastopol at night is over, we enter the territory of military hospital, here is a huge area, but the buildings are not the first freshness, the heritage of ancestors from the Soviet Union, as almost everything that surrounds us from another great country of the past. I was again dragged through the registries and sent to the ophthalmology department. The time was already about 9 p.m. The body of this department is no longer the same, and I sinful thought that the returning from the front will be treated well, it turns out this hospital is like an armada tank and many other things, ostentatious.

At the entrance, I was met by an elderly nurse, given old slippers of various sizes and placed in a room with a young conscript, taken to an ophthalmologist, who re-examined me and prescribed treatment...

For the entire week of treatment I slept, ate, watched the news from Ukraine on TV in the hall so I could gather all the available information and chatted with the guys in the smoking room; almost the entire ward was full of wounded, with shrapnel, burns and eye contusions.

Watching the news on TV I could not understand why there is no truth, the war is almost not covered and I do not see any objectivity. Here are two cases worth hearing.

On the first day I greedily sat in front of the TV screen waiting to hear real news from the front, but except for solid water and unclearly filmed reports, nothing, I feel dissonance from what I saw and show on the News, Standing at the positions under shelling there I had an impression "Not one step back, Stalingrad is behind us", we must hold on with all our might, our hunger, illnesses, lack of sleep and losses are not important, while the News tells us that losses are minimal and we are endlessly supplied with everything the whole country can wish for. The presenter begins to tell the short news that there was a fire on the cruiser Moscow, which was successfully extinguished and the cruiser was towed away somewhere. But then a guy sitting next to me said, "That's my ship, no more Moscow", the guy also had something with his eyes after the explosion and from him I learned that Moscow is the pride and flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, that they were in 40 km from Odessa where they made missile launches and that three missiles came at them, two of which hit the hull, the ship began to burn, the crew was evacuated, but not all ... Another week the loss of the ship was hidden, but now everyone knows about this loss, shame and sorrow, I do not think that Peter I and FF Ushakov proud of the state of the current fleet.

After his story, everything went back to normal and I remembered that you should never trust TV...

The second important point about the conscript.

A young, thin and stooped young man was lying there and I found out from the conversation that he had also been in the war. He was told he had to go, you would not have to do anything, you were a signaller. Their unit was an artillery unit, on the first day of the war they went to Kherson, on the bridge in front of the Dnieper they encountered the AFU, and somewhere there we were, a part of our regiment together with the 11th Artillery Division broke through the bridge and fought there, The artillerymen realized that they had come to the front line and saw Ukrainian Grads, turned around and drove back along the road to deploy the howitzers for combat, it was already dark, they had no communication like all the workers, and the cars had poorly legible Z's on them. As far as I know (I saw this column in the morning) and as a conscript also says, the column was shot by their own people.

It seems that the corruption and mess in the army is too expensive. To die like this, on the first day of fighting from Friendlyfeet, who will be responsible for these lives and the wounded?

After all, it was not the professionalism of the Ukrainian army that was the fault of their deaths, but the mess in ours.

After a week of treatment, my eyes were white again and opened, the doctor allowed me to wear lenses and I could see well again, including the shabby state of the ward in which I lay, where there was one toilet for 40 people.

Patients were not kept there because there was no shortage of new ones, new ones arrived every day.

Before I was discharged I was taken to the trauma department because I complained of back and leg pains, it hurt to get up from the bed, to climb the stairs and to walk. In the trauma department a cheerful and flushed fatty (probably also a major) listened to my complaints and sent me for x-rays. It was unpleasant to hear such a spiteful attitude from a doctor who was paid by the state for my health, but I did not realize what was wrong with me, and the prospect of freedom beckoned me over the checkpoint gates, I wanted desperately to have a normal human life after all that, to enjoy a home environment, to drink and eat something good, and even just walk around the city and see people...

From Sevastopol military hospital all arriving from Ukraine direct to the military unit of marines being on the other end of a city, carried on UAZ Bukhanka, (the cool car why deputies do not go on it? We were from different cities, Cherkesk, Volgograd, Rostov, Nalchik, Ulan-Ude and everyone wanted to get home as fast as possible. I remember one guy from Volgograd, his uniform still had the markings "friend-or-foe" on it (left arm and right leg with a white armband), he was a mechanic-driver of a BMP3 (lucky it was not old), a Javelin flew into the BMP, The car burned down, the crew was killed, he was the only survivor, the little guy stuttered terrible, one word he spoke for 5 to 10 seconds, he said that they wanted to send him to a mental hospital, but he fought back, wrote a refusal of medical and is on his way home...

When we got to the Marine unit, we were taken to one of the barracks, which was designated for those who were discharged from the hospital and sent there to await shipment to the unit.I do not envy this unit.

There were a hundred people who came back from the war, who were going crazy after what they had gone through and felt so happy to be alive and back in civilization, someone had a severe stutter, two of them had memory loss, (they remembered where they were from, then forgot where they were from), Many drank heavily there, drank what they earned, went out at night to prostitutes and cashed up to 100,000 a day (some didn't go home for up to 10 days), many of them got 3 million for injuries, some for a broken rib, some for a bullet. I can understand them, because it really blows your mind and you want to get everything you couldn't have there, especially after what you went through, and coming back from the war you feel that you were born again, but I preferred to leave on the same day, because I understood that spending so much time with comrades in arms, with people who went through the same things as you did, with those who understand you better than your closest ones, can be very hard (from 2007 to 2010 I served in Chechnya and fell into a similar rush), and the 3 million rubles I got wasted. I did not get 3 million, like many others, on my card I had 215 thousand rubles for 2 months during "special operations". At that moment I thought about our useless deputies who are not even known to the public and get 500 thousand rubles a month without spending their health and lives for the benefit of Russia, while a normal programmer can earn the money in a month. This is the current reality.

By the way about the 3 million. We call them "Putin's", according to the decree on injuries, contusions, maimings, wounds to the participants of the special operation in Ukraine, and they stopped paying them, choosing victims in a strange way, when a person was very serious, someone's shrapnel did not go deep enough into the body and they did not pay anything, and someone was paid for a broken finger in the first days of the war. There are also rumors that someone is making good money on this, making sure a soldier is wounded, does not know about it, gives the right details and voila, business is done. For example, I've been in Russia for two months, but somehow I still receive 120 rubles per month, and someone has not received a penny at all because he was listed in the garrison and no complaints to the Defense Ministry have solved this problem. This decree has only increased corruption and discontent in the military. I do not even want to talk about those who intentionally shot himself in the leg, because if his salary. 30 rubles (like mine), then for 3 million to work for 100 months!!! (temptation).

Well, how can people at the top know and understand the problems of ordinary soldiers who have to do all the dirty work? All is probably well in the reports.

In general, from this place, I preferred to leave as soon as possible, without drawing up travel documents, arriving in their part, I was almost immediately given a 2-week leave, (for last year I did not take veteran's leave, and they went to meet me), with the condition that after leave back, "to save the Nazi-occupied Ukraine.

At this time it is time to clarify my attitude to the war. Like almost any reasonable military man, I have a negative attitude to it. Of course I love everything to do with military affairs like most men, I grew up in this end, but as they say "those who will not take part in it will be the loudest ones shouting about the war". In general, I do not understand why we need a war with Ukraine, I do not see any at least one significant reason for it and even more, I was against the annexation of Crimea (where I am writing these lines) and "making a mess" in the LNR and DNR, especially since Ukrainians are the closest people to Russians, for me it is no different than the Civil War. My great-grandfather, after whom I was named Pavel, was a kulak from Ukraine, went through World War I (which, by the way, in fact brought nothing but death and suffering to our country) where he was poisoned by Germans with gas and never smelled again, and on returning home, was dispossessed and exiled to Siberia, since then, for a hundred years, power changed hands and now his great-grandson Paul is sent to his great grandfather's homeland to leave his health also for nothing. Tsar, then Chieftain, then Secretary, now President...

As they say "the boyars argue and the smerds fly", in my opinion it would be right if Putin and Zelensky came out once for all and sorted out "who owns what", and tens of thousands of Ukrainian, Russian military and civilians would continue to live, hundreds of thousands have not lost their health, and millions of homes and possessions. But I am forbidden to say such things, I have no right to do so, so I will not suggest it, so no one will ever see such a picture.

After all, who am I to think about it, an ordinary contract paratrooper, they gave the order, the airborne troops said "Yes!"

Because the army is really built on one command. And in my opinion this is right, because if somebody attacks our country and the army starts thinking about right or wrong, good or bad, true or false, it could cost Russia a lot, our cities could be bombed, our families and friends will suffer until every soldier understands that the command was right.

We were following the order, for me personally it would be shameful and disgraceful to refuse to cross the border of Ukraine on February 24, because I had no information at that time and did not know the strategic and military-political situation. All this information should be owned by the big uncles at the top, that is why the people of our country were given almost unlimited power, trusting, in order to increase or at least preserve the welfare, power and greatness of our country. The power of the Russian army is in their hands. If they forget about this on the top, they gave this power to their people not to destroy people, but to protect our country and its people, so that the horror of the Mongol invasion, Moscow burned down by Napoleon or Stalingrad destroyed by Hitler was not repeated. But if we forget or ignore this, Russia turns into the Fourth Reich for the world. Whose fault is it? Me? At the same time, I watch the endless decline of Russia into the world's bottom. I am a person who was brought up in a military family, my father served in the same 56th motorized rifle division that I am serving in now, and I have been observing the breakdown of the airborne forces all my life.

My father took part in the UN on behalf of Russia, as a peacekeeper in Yugoslavia, in the first and second Chechen campaigns, he put all his health and life as a patriot of Russia, he sincerely believed in good intentions, during the second campaign in Chechnya he was with one kidney, it was a shame for him to refuse, both Chechen campaigns he went through...

In 2017 he died of cancer, the last conversation I had with him was about whether he regretted it, I was taking him from the Volgograd cancer hospital home to Kamyshin, he was 52 at the time. The distance between Volgograd and Kamyshyn was 200 kilometers, it was at the beginning of August, they removed his bladder a month ago, and as I mentioned above, since 1999 he had one kidney, continued to serve in the airborne forces, took part in the military actions, for instance pulling up 30 times. He was diagnosed with cancer two months ago, he got sharply ill and needed an operation, but he could not get help from the army in Burdenko, for example, and the operation was done in Nizhniy Novgorod, where he had to pay for it, in Volgograd, he only had to change the catheter tube in the container of the last kidney.

I remember that the whole day was in a queue, in the stuffiness from which even I, a healthy man, my head began to spin, and as a result of some committee, which allegedly decided something about what to put it to this procedure or not, I remember my father, (a few months before that was a strong athletic man) he was sitting emaciated, thin without a kidney and bladder before a medical committee of about seven people, at the head of this commission is a woman of about 35, who rudely and irritably asks some questions, I look at my father and I understand that he is very sick, he does not understand what she asks, and the woman doctor continues to ask questions, raising his voice more and more, I just burst out, yelling at them all! I do not understand how you can talk to sick people like that! I do not understand why our country is so unfair, where people give their health and lives for the sake of it, and respect for them is reduced to propaganda on federal channels, I do not understand how rotten our society is if doctors allow such behavior with patients.

After shouting at them, I went out and went to the head doctor, I remember I flew into her office and told her that he was a military pensioner and a veteran, and that if they did not carry out the procedure he needed, I would leave him here to die and go after journalists, the FSB, the prosecutor's office, the police, anyone, but he would stay here. Strangely enough, the doctor ordered that everything be done, and free of charge. Either she really felt pity for us, or she was scared, or there are still people with a soul in the system. So taking my father back after a few days in that hospital, I talked to him 200 km of road, in my mind reigned the thoughts of the song, the Blue Berets "Tell your father, tell me", before you read any further, listen to it...

I was very upset for him, the indifferent attitude of our rotten system towards military pensioner, of course he was paid a military pension, but it was small, about 15 thousand rubles. He was not registered as disabled, because he had to go through several circles in his life to prove that he was disabled. This man was a true patriot, a paratrooper of the old Soviet guard, which, unfortunately, no longer exists. Until the end, even in the situation described above, he believed in the good intentions of the government for the country and that they can make our country and its army better. He refused once to emigrate to Germany (my great-grandmother was German and was also exiled to Siberia), believing in Russia and its government and considering himself only Russian. Even though he was a 52-year-old military pensioner, he was denied military medical care and had to be treated for a fee in civilian hospitals, and he was literally now an invalid and no one but his family and a few old friends, was needed. I felt sorry for him, for having received all these illnesses while serving in the wars in Russia, he had nothing but a miserable pension, and when he needed treatment the state simply forgot him, as did many others who left their health and lives not for yachts, palaces and luxury, but for the happy future of the Great Country and its long-suffering people, who had been bequeathed by their ancestors, who had won the Nazis, that there should be no war! At that time I felt and understood that he had very little time left to live, but because of my resentment for him, for leaving his family so early, at the age of 52, I talked to him about politics, about Chechen campaigns, corruption and collapse of the army, I asked whether he regretted that he gave his health to the army, and the latter in response did not even treat him, despite the fact that from every source I heard them yelling about the rise of Russian arms and invincibility (even then I could not believe it, seeing the kitchen from the inside).

In response he protested that everything was not so bad, that things were getting better and would only get better, our army was moving in the right direction, and the president was doing everything right...

Because of this we quarreled and kept silent for the last half an hour.After taking him home and leaving him with his sister and mother, I got in the car and left (at that time I worked in Volgograd), three weeks later I came back to bury him.The state gave him a free headstone, a place in the cemetery and a salute from the funeral team... I regret very much that I had that last conversation then, but it still sits inside me to this day, that nothing changes for the better in the army, why aren't these problems solved?

I have to tell a little about myself to complete the picture of myself. From 2007 to 2010, after a sergeant training in the army, I went to a contract in Chechnya in the 46th Defense Forces, I was very interested to see a real service, my father, despite the fact that he once offered me to go to a military institute, began to dissuade me from going to Chechnya, I decided to do everything myself. My ingenious (as it seemed to me at the time) plan was to serve in the army and enter a military institute without competition. Although not everything was perfect, now 12 years later I realize that service there was much more serious.

Deciding that I would cheat the system, I quit my military service half a year before the end of my contract. I already had my veteran's certificate, which gave me the right to enter a military university, and my military service was over. A year later, I am preparing for admission, passing the commission and preparing documents. I graduated from school in 2005, there was no USE then, but now it is mandatory for everyone. As a veteran I have to pass the passing score, without preparation I take the USE, I gain the required number of points. I went to a military institute in Saratov, but as it turned out, my USE there did not come and they refused to let me in. After searching for justice, going to prosecutor's office and not finding any ways out, I vow never to have anything in common with this system and unfair state. I enrolled as a part-time history teacher, because it is kind of necessary to have a higher education for it is not clear why, everyone says so, so it is necessary. Soon I connect my life with horses. First I was a groom, then a horse farrier, having trained in different places and as experience arose, I became a birder, riding instructor, stud farm manager and eventually came close to the government again becoming a leading zootechnician on horses in the now well-known Miratorg. Initially I was very pleased with this, my work I developed, the company has developed steeply thanks to the state budget, there were about 300 American and Australian cowboys who shared their invaluable experience. The whole company is purchased equipment, cattle, horses and technology from the West, for money I can't imagine. Everything seemed cool, but in 2017, our government decides to fight with everyone again, breaking contracts with all the Americans from Miratorg, in response to sanctions. It got ridiculous, they were photographed in a bar drinking beer and based on that, they were breaking contracts with them, everyone was ashamed of this approach to the people who shared their invaluable experience with us. The whole point, the whole technology of growing Black Angus marbled beef, is tied to American horses and cows. The board of directors, having broken off relations in such a worthless way, sets the task of import substitution, absolutely ignoring the fact that Western ammunition is not produced in Russia and Quoter Horse breed horses are not bred. Russia had a lot of beautiful horses we inherited from the USSR (which started to disappear over the last 30 years), but we have no horse breeds with qualities suited for the job. But no, the task was set as an army "birth." Trying to find saddlery shops which are able to make such ammunition, I was horrified to find out that in Russia there is no production even of such simple thing as a tripod, it is an ordinary piece of iron inserted into a horse's mouth to control it. Trying to conjure and value my position, I collected horses in the Caucasus, for which the company allocated such a budget as 75 thousand rubles (the lowest price per horse in the market). At that low price, it was necessary to cull, find and bargain to bring in young and healthy horses. On the farms, workers were massively dissatisfied with the lack of horses and ammunition, making them unable to do their jobs. When I visited the newly opened farms, I saw horses and cows in terrible condition, the workers expressed dissatisfaction with the state of affairs, farms were opened one after another at the request and plan of the board of directors, but no one cared how things were going, the plan and accountability were the main thing. I was required to control and reassure people by any means, promising them what would not be. The plan must be carried out, no matter how, you do not want to, there will be another, the people there, this is a tool and no more. Everyone in the company knew that in fact it was all Medvedev's, his wife on the board of directors, not the brothers running the company. The company became a de facto monopolist occupying the Bryansk, Orel, Kaluga, Smolensk and Kaliningrad regions. Talking to people in high positions in the company (among whom there was also a large turnover), I heard more than once that so much money was poured into the company that it has no payback period, it lives at the expense of the budget, at the expense of subsidies. In 2018 there is a new surprise, due to the board of directors falling under sanctions, the company begins new restrictions, all leading specialists are deprived of compensation money for rented housing, sneezing on the employment contracts. Some are trying to assert their rights, some are trying to sue, and I decide to leave the company, realizing that all this is more expensive. There I was not paid as much as promised at the device, and in the end and deprived of the means to rent housing. That is, minus 15 thousand rubles. Regretting that I got involved with the state again, I decided that I probably do not belong here. I begin to look for attempts to go abroad.Generally, to see what it is?

After a month, I get the opportunity to go to Germany, Bavaria, to exchange experiences on horses. I remember my excitement about it, going abroad for the first time. I had heard so much about it, but the information was very contradictory, someone raved about it, and somewhere said that everyone there are faggots, everything is terrible and there is nothing to do there. But, you have to see for yourself and make conclusions. In the end, I was infinitely surprised by the order, beauty, cheerful people, the fact that it is full of retirees enjoying life, the fact that there in Bavaria, horses are almost at every step, they are not a luxury item, and many Germans know how to treat them, the fact that feeling like a professional in Russia, I have a feeling of an amateur in Germany ...

Honestly, I wanted to stay there, but I found no legal way to do it, and of course I had no money for that. After a while, I also could not find myself in Russia, I decided to leave, because I had a feeling that I was not needed at home. To emigrate by profession, suited Australia and Canada, I learned the language and prepared for it. But then, came Covid in 2019, the whole world began to close in on each other, and I had to accept this reality. Unsuccessfully mooching and moonlighting with horses in different places, and the pay in this narrow field was falling, in early 2021, I decided to return to the army, my years are going on, and to 33 years I still do not have his own home, I decide that it must be Airborne troops and the very regiment in which I grew up, 56 SAS in Kamyshin, despite the fact that the Defense Ministry Shoigu, decided to disband it and move to Feodosia, Crimea. I decided that it means fate, if I return to the army, then only to the place where I grew up. After the difficulty of contracting, I received an order to come to the unit.

On August 18, 2021 I signed a contract again. Initially I wanted to sign a contract in Kamyshin, 56 SAS (where I grew up, where my father served). But as I said above big uncles at the top decided to disband it as a one battalion unit and transfer it to Feodosia, Crimea. A few years earlier in Feodosia I had already had 181 BCTF, on the base of which I planned to serve in 56 BCTF of 2 battalions. I wanted as a principle to serve in 56, so I went to Feodosia, 181 BCTF, to serve in 56 BCTF from 1.12.2021.

Having arrived in Feodosiya on 18.08.2021 quite happy, quickly began to lose optimism of what he saw.

Crossing the checkpoint, where I showed the documents with the order about the contract, before me opened the wonderful sights of my new home.Right behind the checkpoint a small parade ground with pits and ramshackle concrete, in front of it are two old ramshackle two-story barracks, an old dining room and a small pad for the paratrooper training. While I was going to the personnel department, which is located in one of the barracks, crossing the parade ground I came across two dogs mating (kind aunts in the dining room feed them regularly, so there is a perfectly naturalized pack of stray dogs).Coming to the personnel department and handing over documents, I was told that the command is not here, and so serve go, having learned that my company is located here on the second floor, I go there. Having risen and having got acquainted with several contract workers, I found out that officers are not here now, it is impossible for contract workers to live in barracks because half of conscripts in my company, and there are no free beds there as though, in a hostel there are no places (and a hostel as I was warned right away in what later I was convinced, it is Block), have advised to go to the next barracks in other company, I go there and explain the problem to the commander of other company, I went there and explained the problem to the commander of the other company. He said that there was a mortar battery room on the floor, they were on the training ground, but the scouts from the 56th brought the equipment there (the reorganization began, the 56th brought some equipment here), I went to them, got acquainted, the guys were good and countrymen, they had one bed available, I thought it was great, the main thing for now to get along, soon everything will improve, because new barracks have been built behind the fence since the beginning of the year. ... But even after a year, they still have not finished, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

In the course of communication with the scouts, they ask me without understanding why I signed the contract, I tell them about the stability and the mortgage, and they wag their finger at my temple, I think, to each his own ...

For about ten days I hung around the unit trying to get a uniform...

I had fifteen thousand rubles left in my pocket, the canteen was poorly fed: not enough food for everybody, then the potatoes in the soup was raw, then the bread was all out...

I make friends with fellow sufferers who came here after signing a contract, just like me, and are now left to their own devices... There is a problem with washing and shower rooms.

It was a problem to wash there, the showers were broken, the water supply was interrupted so the toilets were often locked...

After 10 days they were giving out uniforms, but only summer sandpants and green, but they didn't have the necessary size of boots, so to finally "serve" instead of just walking around civilian clothes, I went and bought myself some boots...

Attending the morning formation in uniform at last, thinking that now everything will be more interesting, I began to come to the horror of what the hell it all looks like, on the parade ground developing two tattered flags of Russia and the Airborne Troops, from a speaker played moodily anthem, and half of the soldiers did not sing it. From 2007 to 2010 I served under contract in the 46th Defense Forces in Chechnya, until I was 15 I lived in the 56th DShB, I constantly went with my father to the firing range, but what I saw now was like just a crowd of people in uniform... After the separation ceremony, where my company commander finally showed up, he took us newly arrived people with him to sort out some trash in a container under lock and key, it was some spare parts and rags, which he did not have enough, and soon he had to check and count it all and he took us 10 people with him, without even getting to know the new arrivals, there were five of us. As a result we were 10 of us shifting some trash from one place to another for a few hours, I remember it was disgusting to even hold it in our hands. I thought, well, it will probably be different later. After all, back in 2007 during the compulsory military service, we had daily classes from morning till afternoon, theory, tactics, physical training. So many years and reforms have passed, for sure now everything is better. A few days later, with nothing to remember, the company commander after the divorce at 18:00, decided all the same demonstrably to get acquainted. The thing is that on this day I expressed my dissatisfaction with the commander's indifference and one of the sergeants told him that the new contract soldiers were dissatisfied with the commander. When it came to me and I said that I was from Kamyshin, he looked at me and asked, "Why the fuck did you come here?

I stood there thinking, "I don't have to fight with my boss, so I tried to make a joke of it.

I looked him over, he and I are the same age of 33, but he looks a lot older than me, with sly eyes coupled with being overweight.

Nothing happens for another week, only once I have to go to the motor pool where our company's UAZ Goats are parked, tearing up the grass...I go tearing up, thinking I won't show off.

At last, our young Deputy Political Company on the personal initiative conducts to us training on tactics, despite the fact that the command tried to send all on the next useless work, on a principle only to make a kind of puzzlement.

The next day we went to the firing range, we got up at five in the morning, we had three hours to lined up and waited for the truck, we finally went, we arrived at 12:00, lined up, stood there, the commanders on the range did not like the way some paper was filled out, the major tore up the sheet and threw it at our young deputy. The entire formation is standing and looking contemptuously at the hysterical major with sympathy to the young master, who is being repulsed by any common sense initiative and a desire to link his life with the army. In the result after one hour more firing begins, time 13:00, heat of 50+, no water, we went originally till dinner, now it turns out that we are here all day, plus night firing, at 1 am we go back, dehydrated and eating one drip on 3-4 men.Only do not need me to fill up about that it strengthens and does us. All this only takes away the health, the health of people whose statute says that they are obliged to watch their health, on the health of which depends the defense capability of the country.It's not hardening the body, it's nothing like sabotage of their own army.

The conscripts often simply ignore orders to do some kind of cleaning, so the conscripts are forced to mow the grass or carry something somewhere useless. That is why the conscripts look even more dirty, and considering the fact that they are issued uniforms that are already shabby and even shabby... It is not at all like the 56 serial units of the 1993-2003 model.

In mid-September, I found a room in a hotel for 12 thousand rubles, the holiday season was over, I could rent something until the next season, in May-September the prices tripled.

I started airborne training for a jumping course, I did three weeks, then I got a permission and waited for the jumps.

The whole October they promise jumps, but there are still no jumps.

We are all forced to take two-component vaccinations against Kovid, as massively diagnosed in the battalion Kovid, I decide to do not to get on the horn with the command.

I did the vaccination, I had Kovid asymptomatically, after the vaccination I lay with a fever for three days, I decided that I would not agree to do the second one.

By the way, a month later, Covid in all the tests somehow miraculously disappeared, despite the fact that many have not done these vaccinations, miracles. In mid-October they start issuing demi-season and winter uniforms, but only shabby and no sizes, I refuse to get a shabby out-of-size uniform,

I refuse to get the shabby uniforms that are not the right size, and that is why relations with the command begin to escalate, and they do not like rebels. After a scolding with the company, I go and buy a jacket.Rota begins to take revenge shoving in the guards after a day. Beginning in November, all sent to compulsory leave, as the president announced the "off-days," despite the fact that I still have a probationary period and the main vacation to me is not due.I go on vacation for 15 days, but did not go anywhere because every few days promise jumps, and the program I need to do. The salary is 27 t.r. It's almost impossible to get a raise, nobody has done physical training for the newly arrived contract employees, and if I don't manage to make four jumps, then the next year's salary will be 27 t.r. In Crimea, at the same time, without housing, this is poverty, I have to pass my physical exams and make jumps.

A week later, they say that the jumps will be exactly, I wrote a report on the withdrawal from leave, a few days go by in vain, parachute packing, it turns out that the parachutes are not able to parachute half, we put down from morning to 21:00.

At 2:00 departure to jump.

We arrived at the jump site at 4 am, it was freezing at night, we were driving in open pitcars, everyone washed out from the cold, we kept jumping until 9 am to warm up somehow, helicopters came, jumps started at last, at 11 am we jumped away, my aircraft was put in a graveyard by mistake, good thing the weather was fine, everyone made it, nobody landed on a cross or someone's grave.

When I went back, I broke the button on my jacket. Because of that I quarreled with the officer, who demanded me to button my jacket, as we had a special relationship after I had refused to get a shabby uniform.

The next day on Saturday I wake up, I have a fever, I understand that I caught a cold, I go to buy a regulation demi-season and winter uniform, as a matter of principle I will not go in shabby and not in size as a scarecrow. Sunday heat.

On Monday I go to work and argue with the company officer, he does not want to let me go to the hospital.

I went to the hospital, the chest X-ray showed two-sided pneumonia.

They "treated" me in the hospital.

When I got out of the hospital, I learned that while I was lying there, I finally passed my physical exam, on which I received a "D", because the company commander did not put me on the sick list and concealed the fact that I was in the hospital. Because of this "two", I will not see additional payment for physics next year. I go to the command of the unit, to get the truth is not real, I understand that this whole mess is annoying, I write a complaint to the Ministry of Defense:

I, a serviceman under the contract

Service ml.spt. Pavel Filatiev

I am a serviceman in the contract service, Pavel Filaghev, born in August 9th 1988.

I am compelled to file a complaint about the fact that my direct command in the military unit 81505 does not respect my rights as a serviceman and a veteran of combat operations and commits the following violations:

I was re-contracted for three years from August 19, 2021.

The last straw for me to apply to the Ministry of Defense was the fact that after making my first parachute jump on 12.11.2021, I got pneumonia because at two in the morning we left for a jump in Dzhankoy, it was minus 6 degrees outside, we drove in open Kamazah, arriving at 5:00, we unloaded, waiting until 8:00 start jumps and all this time there was no way to get warm except to jump on the spot, many military personnel were without warm clothes someone not received, who - then refused to get a shabby uniform (as I was), or the form is not the size. After a jump the next day I began to feel sick, because so long I was freezing, I hoped to get away for the weekend, but on Monday morning, waking up at 5 am for exercise, I felt a fever, with difficulty bringing myself to a state with the help of tablets, I came to the partition at 8:00 am, with shortness of breath. After the separation, I told the platoon commander and company commander that I felt bad, had a fever and that I needed to go to the sanitary unit. In response, the company commander said that I had to go and get registered in the register of the sick and go to the sanitary unit the next day. He did not let me go and ordered me to unload the parachutes together with everyone else, and around 10:00, when the parachutes were unloaded, he still said that now I could go to the sanitary unit. Arriving at the sanitary unit. They took my temperature, which turned out to be 37.5 (considering that before I took three pills of paracetamol) and sent me to the hospital for an X-ray diagnosis, diagnosed me with bilateral pneumonia, tested me for coronavirus and said that I needed hospitalization. I tried to get outpatient treatment, but the doctors said that if I was diagnosed with covid - pneumonia, then I could be prosecuted, and that I could go home for my personal belongings at most.

I informed my platoon commander about this on the phone and he told me to come to my unit, write a report and give him the certificate. The hospital doctors, in response to my requests for a certificate, said I was hospitalized for an urgent reason and that my hospitalization would be reported in a different order, and I was not allowed to go to the unit. I went back to the unit anyway, obeying the commander's order, even though I considered this order illegal. When I came to the medical unit and explained the situation the doctor on duty told me I was not needed a report and certificate, and I had to go to the hospital to get help. Arriving in the evening at the hospital again, the doctors berated me verbally for not following their demands and took me by ambulance with respiration to the infectious disease department. After a week in the infectious disease unit about thirty soldiers of my unit (all of them were present at the jumps) were diagnosed with acute respiratory viral infections, bronchitis and tonsillitis. I spent a week in an infectious disease ward and after three negative tests for coronavirus I asked to be sent for out-patient treatment, because staying there I could not go outside, there was no place to wash normally, I could not use a phone, I could not receive packages, i.e. I was in complete isolation and the quality of hospital food left much to be desired. During this time in the department an unknown man in civilian clothes demanded from the soldiers at various times of the formation, I refused the formation, referring to the temperature and the unclear status of this man to me, as it turned out later he was a major in the medical service. I again refused to be built up referring to the temperature Sunday at 8:00 and the ambiguity of the meaning and legality of these requirements, as a result he demanded explanations from the nurses that I refuse the daily constructions at 14:00, although it was at 8:00.

In response to my requests to send me to outpatient treatment I was refused and was advised to spend another week in the infectious disease unit. At the time I was passing physical exercises in the military unit, I had previously applied for passing physical exercises at the highest level, because in my 33 years I was in good physical shape. Now I assess my condition as unsatisfactory.And due to the fact that I was denied the opportunity to return my medical records and extracts from the hospitalization with pneumonia, I am forced to serve without the possibility of recovery.

After I was finally upset I made a mistake and smoked in the toilet of the hospital, and my doctor came to me and said that I would be discharged for smoking, but they refused to discharge me, and after packing my things I went to the major in "civilian clothes" and asked him to discharge me.

I insisted I had to be discharged, and he said with a kind of contempt, "There's a whole junior sergeant standing here dissatisfied with my treatment.

And I said "You're a major, you're making fun of a junior sergeant".

In response he ordered the nurse to call the military police, he answered and said I was violent and should be put in jail. I was waiting for the military police, as this call was false and defamatory, I wanted to wait for them to defend my honor and dignity and to explain the situation. As a result, an hour later I got a call from the company commander and was told that the squad leader would come for me now and I had to leave with him to his unit, I obeyed again and went with him, Major of medical service, the squad leader refused to give me documents and appointments for treatment. When I arrived at the unit, the company commander sent me and my platoon commander to the Chief of Medicine, who told me in a rude manner to continue serving, that from that day on I was in line, because I had behaved inappropriately. I behaved in a bad way and was discharged for violating the hospital regime. Being aware that I was not able to perform my duties due to poor health, I went to the commander of the unit to ask him to release me from duties so that I could finish my course of antibiotics, and in response he told me to go to hospital as an outpatient, A few days later I was released from my duties without medical excuse, even though I felt unwell and was told that my absence from work was illegal and that I received a grade of "2", which means I will lose my monthly bonus -24%, and annual bonus 10/10, and will not be able to get a raise in salary. п. +70% At the moment my salary. At the time of delivery FIZO I was in the hospital with pneumonia in fact, which is documented everywhere except for the formation of the unit, the proceedings were not carried out. When I learned this and asked the command to justify the legality of this fact in the person of the company commander, deputy unit commander, deputy unit commander for political work, head of the medical service and the unit commander, all these people began to convince me in a raised tone that it was my fault and I had to prove that I was really in the hospital in those days. I conclude that the command is trying to conceal my illness received during service. In addition, in front of all of the above-mentioned people, the deputy political battalion began to say that I can be dismissed as a person who has not passed his probationary period

(The probationary period ended two weeks ago), to declare me NSS for smoking in the toilet, and also began to express his suspicion that I bought the rank of junior sergeant and he will check it! He insulted me as a soldier and discredited my honor and dignity. In addition, the company commander "lost my report on veteran's leave" referring to the fact that I did not give it to him personally, in violation of the Federal Law on Veterans.

From my first arrival in the unit with regard to me there were violations, namely, I had to look for a place to live, because the dormitory at that time was taken, and in the barracks company commander did not allow contract servicemen to live, as a result I had to run from one barracks to another looking for a bed for the night, until I found a place to rent at my own expense (3 weeks). Unsupported by uniforms.

I am still not provided with a full uniform on December 1, 2021. Year 2021g I am not provided with a full set of the uniform put to me, in the clothing store issued by the form or not in size, or worn, I refused to get such a form guided by the fact that "a serviceman is obliged to watch his appearance, Because of this began to attract the negative attention of the command represented by the commander of the company, trying to solve the problem on their own, I began to buy the necessary form in stores, to date, I have purchased a uniform VKPO - demi-seasonal form, insulated jacket, pants insulated, winter hat, belt, chevrons. Half of the provision of uniforms fell on me as well, because I refused to get uniforms that were in poor condition and did not fit me in size.

The lack of food provision.

Meals in the canteen were extremely poorly organized, raw potatoes in the soup with water was common, there was not enough cutlets, lettuce, ran out of butter, bread, or salted!!! tea.

As a result, contract servicemen almost never eat in the canteen, and conscripts simply have no choice.

The overtime book is not kept, the official time schedule is not observed.

In the three and a half months of my service I still do not have an entry in my military ID card that I served in this military unit! After two months of service company commander still collected from the newly arrived contract soldiers military tickets, but came into the office a few days later I saw military tickets scattered on the table and decided to take his own worried about its safety, no one else about me, and I again go to remind the company commander it seems useless, he is already in trial after trial.

For three and a half months there was actually no training, unless you count pre-pumping additional training.

An atmosphere of apathy reigns among contract servicemen and 90% of them discuss in the smoking rooms how their contract would be finished as soon as possible. Conscripts do not understand why contract servicemen serve at all. I also heard from a number of officers that they do not want to serve here.

More than once, when I was on duty as an assistant to the duty officer, I had to accept the RF and Airborne troop flags in the morning, as if they had been through a war, (only two weeks ago they were replaced), and the staff was sitting and patching them up because there was already a hole in the hole, and raising flags in the morning to the RF anthem (half of the servicemen don't sing it).

The unit on duty and the anti-terrorist units are on duty only on paper and Ingoda present at the divorce. I understand that I need to go to military court.

That I observe techi three and a half months me plunges into horror, being in such an important strategic area in fact I see complete anarchy, on combat readiness here is only a faint hint, among the local population hear a lot of ridicule about Feodosiya airborne troops, I am a serviceman under contract 46 obron, A combat veteran from 2007-2010, I served in the Caucasus, seeing what is happening now, and being a serviceman under contract I do not know where to seek support other than the Defense Ministry and the media, I appeal to the Defense Ministry with the purpose to defend the honor and dignity of a Russian airborne trooper, a Russian citizen, a veteran of combat operations in Russia.

I ask for an independent verification of my testimony, for the time of verification please provide me with protection, I am ready to bear responsibility for false testimony up to the criminal responsibility.

◦

When I wrote this appeal, I had hope that not everything

Though most of my comrades-in-arms told me it was useless and would bring me nothing but problems. After the Ministry of Defense answered my complaint, they wished me good health and recommended watching my discipline, I didn't want to serve in this madhouse kingdom any longer.

Also my hopes were connected with the fact that on December 1, 2021 we were going to have my "native" 56 and there would definitely be more order.

But alas, nothing much, except some clumsy attempts to tighten the screws has not changed.Legendary 56, dropped away for me

into the ages, the people who shaped it almost all quit long ago.

On December 1, we officially became in / hr 74507 56 DShP from two battalions, somehow manned, for the formation of the regiment arrived Deputy Commander of the Airborne troops with a huge entourage from the Airborne headquarters, because of which we were built from 8:00 to 15: In the park, they were checking UAZ, KAMAZ, BMD2, NONY vehicles. I stood in the ranks and thought that now he would go around us and ask questions, complaints, and suggestions and then I would definitely tell him about the problems directly, but no, the general did not approach any of the contract soldiers, he even passed indifferently by the conscripts who were standing in shabby and worn out uniforms that did not fit properly.

When I grew up in '56, the enlisted men did not look like that, and it was 20 years after the reform.

On Saturday, December 4th, we had parachute packing, many were without a program of jumps, I still hoped that I will execute it and my salary will increase a little... From morning till lunch we only packed one dome, which is ridiculous...

The officers didn't help, except for the two of them, and the company commander, whom I showed it to in front of everyone, said with sneer and laughter, "You are professionals, you should be able to do everything!"

In the afternoon when I was putting the spare part in with my companion he came up to me and said in a stressed voice "Junior sergeant Filatiev, uniform number 5, the regiment commander is calling me and you." It was clear from this expression that he came from above regarding my complaint to the Ministry of Defense, while we were walking with him he tried to tell me off about my complaining and the fact that I should not wear a necklace with a cross on it, he could not think of anything else. I replied that I warned everyone that I was not going to let them off the hook. After the conflict with the hospital, I didn't give a damn about him anymore, if I wanted the truth, I had to go all the way. Actually, I do not want to offend him, but he is a reflection of problems of our army, the commander who does not care about the personal structure, the full man, with breath, accused of theft, but in court it could not prove, the career in 56 in Kamyshin has not set and he has dumped in Feodosiya, but as fate will 56 have moved in Feodosiya after pair years, from what he not shy constantly wailed about it before personal structure.

Having come to the regiment commander in office, he began to try to reproach me for what I complain and it is bad, when I have told to it the essence of the claim and that they are addressed to the last management, he has fallen down on the commander of a company, I will not describe it ...

He let me go from there...

The deputy commander of the division for personnel affairs phoned me and demanded explanations for my complaints to the Ministry of Defense, trying to make me understand that I was now in disgrace.

Before this complaint to the Ministry of Defense, I had no reprimands, but after that three came up at once.

Some officers talked to me face to face and fully supported me, saying that all of this was of course true, but there was no point in complaining... I also got information that my command had prepared documents for a criminal case because I had allegedly slandered them, but as I knew from rumors, the divisional commander did not give that a chance...

As I said, I had no desire to serve at all. Looking at all this, I understood that our fighting ability, to put it mildly, is not very good, we are occupied with a lot of nonsense, useless work, dressing up or pretending to have classes (even the kind of classes we rarely had). After January 15, I definitely decided that I was leaving the army, and I started going through medical examinations, went to the hospital, and the attitude of the command to me was not very good, and I began to give a damn and frankly began to score on much. The army appreciates your ability to stand out, to completely agree, to defend your rights, not to show discontent, and if you are not satisfied that your rights are not respected, the command takes all measures to ruin your life. The most surprising thing is that most of my comrades-in-arms told me that I had done the right thing by writing to the Ministry of Defense, most of them are eager for order and really want to change, to get involved in military training, not to create a kind of stormy activity, but seeing examples like me, that trying to achieve something only leads to problems with the command, they themselves do not want to achieve order at such a cost.

Getting out of the army is even harder than getting into it...

Despite the fact that almost the whole country knows that the Russian army is in chaos and everything is for show, there are still people who, like me, go there thinking that maybe things are not so bad and that things have improved. Unfortunately there are those in the army who are happy with everything, those who have spent all their life in their career, reached the rank of major or higher and now when they're close to retirement they don't want to lose it all (they keep the rotten system alive), who blindly believe that everything should be like this, those who believed that we will capture Ukraine in three days with such a mess in the Ministry of Defense...

Who and how will answer for such a state of affairs in the army? And this is in the Airborne Troops, the elite, the reserve of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief! How things are now in other units, it is scary to imagine.

In mid-February, my company, as well as many other units, was at the firing range in Stary Krym, watching the news, I knew that something was definitely coming up, everyone who had been discharged or was ill was driven to the range. On the one hand I did not want to have anything more to do with the army, where you are nobody and your rights spelled out in the law are written only on paper, where your salary is less than that of a longshoreman at Magnit, I also understood that the army is not combat-ready, about what I wrote to the Ministry of Defense, which in a reply letter, wished me good airborne health and advised to watch your discipline. That's it, you write about what a mess is going on in the army, and in response the Ministry of Defense writes that it wishes you good paratrooper health and recommends that you watch yourself!

So what's the goal of the Department of Defense?! To ruin itself?! As I found out later, the unit command quickly concocted a trial where they exposed me as a regular troublemaker and the worst soldier in the unit. Even in my service record, not finding any pictures of me in uniform, they had just photoshopped my eyes, nose and mouth from a picture on the internet into another man in uniform - not me in that picture!

On the other hand, I thought that now that something was brewing, to refuse would be shameful, equivalent to chickening out.

Rumors and information varied, from that Ukraine and NATO would attack Crimea and we simply had to gather at the borders to prevent it and ending with Ukraine attacking the DNR and LNR, though I am not a supporter of all this, but I was ashamed to refuse to go to the range, fearing the possible conflict, I do not know what led me, patriotism or not wanting to back down, especially now no one would fire me. At that time I did not believe that Ukraine or NATO would really attack, but if they did, it would look like I chickened out. It seemed to me that most likely we would all be transferred to the DNR and LNR, we would stand on their territory, we would announce a referendum under Russian flags, joining the woeful Donbass in this way, I thought about the possibility of fighting, but only in the form that we would lead them in defense, standing on the Ukrainian and Donbass borders, or on the border of Crimea. It seemed logical to me that they would conduct the operation under the guise of peacekeepers...

I arrived at the firing range, around February 15, I went to the battalion deputy commander, who was responsible for sending everyone there, and saying that I needed to go to the range, something was brewing, and he looked at me like I was crazy, asked me several times why I thought that, but eventually sent me there, forgetting that I had a category "G", which means temporarily unfit for service. Upon arriving at the firing range, I continued to be astonished at how everything was organized. Our company lived in one tent, with 40 people in it, (all conscripts remained in the garrison) in a tent with bunk beds, a stove with firewood, by the way even in Chechnya, where we lived only in tents or dugouts, everyday life was better organized. The canteen meals were even worse than in the garrison, although at training ranges back in 2007, the meals were always better in the field kitchen. There was nowhere to wash themselves. Still in our company, it was so that a set of equipment, kit, duffel bag, sleeping bag, you are issued only when the company commander decides, for example on inspection or firing range. I have long heard that the company lacked them, because of what he had lawsuits. When I got to the tent, where my comrades-in-arms were already quite feral from such a wonderful life, and realizing that I had no sleeping bag and no place to sleep (they had been there for two weeks), I took the place of the company commander. As I found out, the company staff began to express their dissatisfaction with his everyday life, food, and the fact that the company had no bathhouse, because of which he hardly ever slept in the tent. Later I heard from many units sent to the Crimea for "exercises" that the conditions were worse, for example someone had nothing to heat the stoves in February, no place to wash, so people went to the sea in winter, as a result the hospitals in February were already full of patients and there was even an order to ban people from going to the hospital. As soon as I saw my commander in the evening, and he was certainly not happy about my presence in addition to other dissatisfied, I asked him where my sleeping bag and kit Ratnik, to which he replied that he was not and in general where to sleep and where to take ammunition is my problem. In general, from the beginning, I noticed an atmosphere in the company that the commander is trying to make young platoon leaders and petty officers in any way not in the best light, they, in turn, are trying to show something to the personnel, the personnel begins to show that they do not have something or some other problems, as a result all the problems hang in the air because the problems of personnel, this is just their problems, so that all comes down to the fact that everyone is for himself. The next few days we went to the firing range, stupidly dropping off ammunition, and there I finally picked up my assault rifle for the first time, which had only been frantically assigned to me by my company commander since December 1, right on the parade ground, during a general inspection, before that I had had no assigned weapon at all for four months! By the way, even during my 2007-2010 tour of duty this was unimaginable.

Well, my submachine gun had a broken belt and was just rusty, during the first night patrols it jammed after a few shots, then I had to clean it in oil for a long time trying to get it in shape. Every night we patrolled the tent camp, one night my comrade and I, went on patrol at about 1:00 am, the officer on duty gave us a radio and told us to stop everyone and report back to him on the arrivals, we went on patrol to the road we had indicated at the entrance to the camp. We stood across the road with the intention of stopping it and reporting to the officer on duty, as he had instructed us to do, but the car was getting closer and closer, we stood with our hands outstretched, it became clear that the car would not stop and at the last moment we stepped off the road, I had the radio in my hand, Stepping aside and being perplexed by the insolence of the unknown driver, I snapped my antenna and then I saw that it was a military UAZ Patriot, it stopped after 20 meters and I heard a frantic shout and swearing, that we were out of our minds, what fuckers and what scum ordered to stop the car, then they told me that my hat was unstylish and the regiment commander drove on. .. The desire to follow the orders of the commanders disappeared at once.

Around February 20, we received an order to immediately get ready and move out in light, we were facing a march-throw to who knows where. At that time most people hoped that this march-throw would mean the end of the exercise, some people joked that now we would attack the Ukraine and take Kyiv in three days, I could not even laugh at that, I said, if something like that happened, we would not take anything in three days, and made a guess that we would be sent to Donbass ...

We had been gathering all day, most of the units had left their cell phones there, all the weapons had been loaded with them, by 5pm our regiment had gathered, consisting of my assault battalion on an UAZ, an 82mm mortar battery, a parachute battalion on a BMD2, a reduced reconnaissance company, an artillery division with 120mm mortars and howitzers d30 and individual platoons.

According to my impressions there were 500-600 men.

Again everyone got food and water as they wanted, our command did not care.

Weapons for the company were plenty, Utyos, AGS, RPG-7, Fagot guns, Pecheneg machine guns and ak 74m ammunition with grenade launchers. But the problem was that no one knew how to shoot with the pturs. Or, for example, I was fixed ak74m "Outfit" with a grenade launcher, and a friend with bad legs, who because of the ban was not sent to the hospital was PKP, so in addition we got a sudden and NSV Utes, and grenade launcher in addition to the RPG7 appeared AGS, well, so it is necessary.

At about 8 p.m., when it got dark, the column began to move out on the track, in addition to us, from different directions other columns moved out, on the track there were cars and traffic police with blinkers, huge columns began to creep, all the way we wondered where we were going, the drivers behind going ahead not knowing the end point.

Eventually we arrived in the fields, somewhere near Krasniy Perekop, by about 3:00 AM.

Many of the UAZs didn't even have working heaters.

In the morning we received dry rations.

Even then, everyone was dirty and exhausted, some had been living on the range for almost a month without any conditions, and our nerves were at their limit, especially as the atmosphere was becoming more and more serious and incomprehensible.

Most had no communication, and everyone was feeding on rumors that the atmosphere was heating up. I assume that at the level of regimental commanders, they already knew what was going to happen. Two days later we moved again, at night in column to a new place, closer to the border, somewhere near Armyansk.

On the night of February 22-23, the command had informed us that sabotage groups with the intent to commit acts of sabotage had crossed the border with us; the night was already hard for everyone, but the whole point was that we still had not received ammunition, and some people, like me, were without a Shotgun. One of my comrades, taking it very seriously, suggested that everyone should wrap their arms to indicate friend-or-foe, and laughingly offered the password for the night - "Kherson is ours" (the phrase turned out to be prophetic).In the dark, each company stood at a distance from each other, that night it was rain and fog.

No one really understood what was going on, everyone was guessing.

On February 23rd the squadron commander arrived at the formation and after congratulating us on the occasion, announced that from tomorrow our pay would be $69 dollars per day, the exchange rate was over a hundred rubles, and according to our calculations this amounted to over two hundred thousand rubles per month, plus the usual pay - this was a clear sign that something serious was coming. After the formation, a fuss began with the issuance of ammunition, grenades and promidol, rumors swirled that we would go to take Kherson by storm, it seemed delusional to me.

No one knew what would happen tomorrow, someone said we would defend the border of Crimea. Some said we would go to Kiev and take it in three days, and I immediately argued with them that we would not take anything in three days and that it would be just bullshit, it seemed to me that no one would even give such an order and I did not like such a frivolous attitude to it from my fellow soldiers. I had the impression that either we would be attacked and all the fuss was to show our readiness, or that somehow we would be loaded onto helicopters and transferred to the LNR, or that we would be left on the border in reinforcement, and troops would enter the LNR from the east for the referendum. On that day I had a fight with my platoon commander and company commander, the situation was escalating, and I did not even have my bulletproof vest.

The lieutenant colonel had a combination of commanding qualities that he could bark like a father and understand the problem like a mother. When I found him near the mortar battery, he said hello by the hand in a fatherly manner, and that I was a good boy for having gone, listened to my problem about the absence of Ratnik and said he had already arranged for those who did not have them to be brought back from the regiment in the evening. He had known for a long time about my conflicts with the company officer and offered to second me to the mortar battery, there was lack of personnel, I had crossed paths with the commander of the mortar battery several times in the gym and he seemed to me a good officer, I agreed, tired of conflicts and resigning that I could not change anything, wishing it would end sooner, so I could leave. After receiving my flak jacket, helmet and backpack by evening, when it began to get dark, I went to the mortar truck, approached its commander, who was already aware that I was assigned. I explained that I had no understanding at all of mortars, but I would do anything the commander told me to go with the control platoon, showed them the KAMAZ, I climbed in, there were five people there, their faces were familiar, after all we served in the same battalion, it immediately became dark and the column began to line up again.

In general that day everything began to change, I noticed how people began to change, some were nervous and tried not to communicate with anyone, some frankly read fear, some, on the contrary, were unusually cheerful and upbeat, I had a strange sense of humility simultaneously with a slight sense of excitement, it was adrenaline.

The convoy began moving, regrouping, the 82mm mortar of five guns, consisted of three KAMAZs and three Ural trucks.

KAMAZ control, the other five had mortars, mines for them and about five men for the gun crew.

Along the way, the guys began to explain to me that the function of the control platoon was reconnaissance and the correction of the guns and that if something happens, we should still be three kilometers behind to support the assault companies, I thought about how strange it would be, my company would be in front, and I would hide behind it, because of my conflicts, but I immediately dismissed the idea, what would happen? Nothing will happen, what war, in the 21st century, we'll just stand somewhere and look menacing, but then I had a thought that everything somehow strange, where are we going, recently everyone slept for five hours, literally living on the street, I fell asleep with the others in the back of the KAMAZ ...

00:00 February 24.

Judging by the distance we were traveling a little, some fields, it was raining and mud at night, I woke up probably at 2 am, the convoy was lined up somewhere in the middle of nowhere along the railroad in a few rows, all turned off the engines, lights out, passed the command to all wrap white armbands friend-or-foe, left hand - right foot, from somewhere began to pass each other suddenly appeared masking tape.

On February 19, as they were leaving the range, horizontal white stripes were put on the cars.

On the evening of February 23 the drivers were told to finish drawing the stripes and they got a tick. Now, standing somewhere near the railroad in complete darkness and wrapping their left arm and right leg, the drivers were ordered to finish drawing one more stripe on the cars and they got a Z.

I took my RP and helmet and went to the neighboring Ural, thinking that maybe I would be involved there, I don't know anything about mortars anyway. I threw my backpack and helmet into the back of the truck and climbed over the closed side in complete darkness. Climbing over the side, got caught in the magazines on the body armor, pants prevented me from lifting my leg higher, somehow in the hanging, leaning armor on the side of the Ural, I fell into the body with my head forward and immediately burst out screaming in pain, from the eye in the dark as if light had flashed ...

I can not understand anything, already in the body, I hold my hand to my eye, I feel something wet and strong pain... It is dark all around, someone in the body is trying to flick a lighter and shine it in my face, I take away my hand and try to understand if I can see with two eyes or with one. Whoever's shining the light in my face exclaims, "Ooh, fuck!"

I ask him right away, is my eye still there? He shines the light and says "Get your hands off, I don't understand!" I see blood on my hand and feel hotter flowing down my face. It turned out that my eye was intact, but I tore the upper and lower eyelid of my right eye. Looking around under the weak light in the body, I understand that I bumped my eye on the handle of the army thermo-box for groceries, in anger I kick the side, looking around I see a young guy mortar man, everything is covered with boxes of mines, mortar, tripod, bossol. I thought, "What the hell do I need all this at 33 years of age, I had not had enough adventures in the Caucasus, I'd rather sit in silence in my company, at least I didn't bat an eye, we had a smoke and fell asleep again...

At about 4: 00 in the morning I open my eyes again, I hear the rumble, the hum, the vibration of the ground, I feel a sharp smell of gunpowder in the air, I look out of the back of the truck, having thrown back the awning I see that the sky became light from volleys, lighting in the dark whether clouds or smoke, to the right and left of our column worked rocket artillery, powerful volleys from long-range guns could be heard somewhere, it seemed behind us, the air was filled with anxiety and vibration, sleep vanished at once, it was not clear what was going on, who was shooting from where and at whom, and the fatigue from the lack of food, water and sleep also vanished. A minute later, I lit a cigarette to wake up and realised the fire was coming from 10 to 20 kilometers in front of our column, everyone began to wake up and light a cigarette, there was a low murmur - "It's begun. We must have some kind of plan...

Smoking a cigarette and digesting what I saw, I felt a rush of adrenaline with a charge of vivacity, unusual clarity and clarity of thought and the alarming realization that the scenario CrimeaNash will not be, there was a clear premonition of "fucked up". I couldn't quite understand what was going on, were we firing on the advancing Ukrainians? Are we firing on NATO? Or are we attacking? Who is this infernal shelling being directed at? Where did the rocket artillery come from? The referendum in the LNR? The seizure of Kherson? Is Ukraine attacking us? Is NATO helping it?

In any case, we have some kind of plan.

The army is so organized that there is no one there to ask questions, and it seems that even the orders to the command come on the fly, step by step, no one will explain anything to me, I can only drop the gun and run back somewhere and become a coward, or follow everyone, the higher the position, the more you know, my level of a contract soldier is that of a stallion led to castration.

I used to be a horse trainer, like I said, I was good at it, but then I must have lost my mind and decided to join the army again.

Some time ago a comrade and I bought a dozen wild, young stallions intended for meat, we decided that since they will die in the meat plant, we'd better buy them for the price of meat, castrate them, train them a little and sell them. It turns out the stallions will continue to live, and we can earn on it. Despite the fact that we both did not like it and sincerely felt compassion for the stallions, we still did this dirty business, like we chose the lesser of two evils, so we justified ourselves.So to castrate the wild stallions, they had to get used to, let them put on a headband and walk in the arms of a man, stallions were already two-year-old and just take them by force, we had to go to all kinds of tricks with great risk to their health. When a stallion was already following you and letting you put a headband on him, we took him to the corral and, instead of the usual dainty at the end, we tied him up, fell down and cut off his balls ...

The stallion had no idea he was going to this procedure, he got used to being told to go there, he got used to the fact that it was better to go, no one would bother you, it was better to agree, and then they would give you a sugar. So it's the same with the army for a contract soldier, go there, go there, well done, go there now and at one point it will bring you to fuck, you were trained. You're not supposed to know anything, just do it. I realize now that I was used, just like I used horses, somewhere by trickery (media and patriotism), somewhere by force (law and punishment), somewhere by sugar (salary), somewhere by praise (awards and titles).Somewhere up there is a certain man who is smarter, stronger and knows more. He uses the same tools as I used with the horses to "raise the right one for me". The only question is, what is his goal, does he choose the lesser of two evils, does he earn money as a hired veterinarian performing the procedure, or is he just a sadist?

The column perked up noticeably and began to move slowly forward , I saw my company pass me forward and had the strange feeling that despite having left it without a second thought yesterday, now in a moment of danger and uncertainty I would rather be with them, like a horse that would rather stick to its herd, aren't we so different ... Probably it all seems nonsense to someone, but I want to retell everything frankly and without concealing the emotions and thoughts I experienced then.

We drove through Armiansk, the town was in turmoil, shells were flying over it towards Ukraine and a huge column was moving through it now, the traffic police and the traffic police were blocking the roads so random civilians wouldn't interfere with it, through a tilt-up in the Ural, I saw houses in which lights were already on, and people were looking out the windows and balconies of five-story buildings, Suddenly we stopped abruptly hitting something, as it turned out the Ural I was driving had no brakes and when the car in front of the driver stopped abruptly, he decided to go right and hit a fence, the war forgets everything, who will pay attention to the fence when rockets flew. Nearby, now overtaking and now lagging behind, were UAZ trucks of the assault battalion and BMD trucks of the parachute battalion; when my company's UAZ trucks were already ahead and close to the border, having passed Armiansk, there was forest on the left and fields on the right, I heard shooting and explosions in the direction where we were going, at that moment I regretted that I had agreed to join the mortar squad, where I didn't have any emotional connection to the people and we didn't know each other much, and this unit had what I thought was a secondary role, from the fucking body, you could only see what was behind, and what if my company was in the "ass" now, what was going on there? Where are we going? I want to go forward, I feel adrenaline and slight nervousness, but at the same time I do not understand anything.Above us, warplanes began to fly ahead, followed by attack helicopters, in front of us were heard explosions, the air smelled of gunpowder. The scene was both mesmerizingly frightening and unsettlingly beautiful. It was already dawn, perhaps six o'clock, the sun was shining brightly in a springtime and was beginning to warm after the night's nasty wetness and rain, I saw simultaneously a dozen helicopters, a dozen planes, on the field to the right flew the BMP and from somewhere appeared tanks, hundreds of vehicles with flags Airborne Forces and Russia and that was just what I could cover with my eyes broken and bloodshot eye, from the back of the freaking Ural without brakes.

The feeling of the pack, of the enormous power of which you are a part, is intoxicating, but it is not clear where we are going with these volleys and what is going on.

My Ural slowly crossed the broken Crimea-Ukraine customs checkpoint, the column began to slow down, then stopped, then picked up speed again, I saw cars mangled, smoking or shot, passing the border I saw a platoon from the assault battalion dispersed, their UAZ trucks were on the edges of the road, they held the checkpoint while we passed it, noticed blood, no corpses were seen, Maybe they had already cleaned it up, on the right in the field tracked vehicles were crossing the border in the field, I noticed one huge stream of vehicles, began to divide into smaller ones, going further and further into the field on the right, after passing the post, signs, Ukrainian inscriptions, Ukrainian flags appeared, I had a new feeling, a feeling that I do not understand shit, a feeling that all this around is more real, but at the same time like in a dream. No video can convey all this, especially where the most interesting thing is, there are no reporters, and eyewitnesses have no time to shoot videotape. Right behind the post there is a gas station on fire, our scouts were ahead, someone died here, and now and then there are cars abandoned or destroyed on the road. The column was constantly stopping and starting up again, the UAZ trucks of my company sometimes overtook us and sometimes lagged behind, cars were moving in two or three rows, windy mills appeared to the right, fields were beautiful, the weather looked like the beginning of April, artillery volleys subsided, I began to see places where shells and fragments of MLRS rockets flew, the feeling that the enemy was shooting at nothing, but maybe they had moved away.

As soon as the column unpredictably starts moving again, I have to jump back on the bed and land on a box with mines, which is jumping around in the bed, the road is getting worse and worse, boxes of mines jumping around the body more and more, I like being a mortar man less and less. The width of the column decreases, then increases again, the roads change from unpaved to paved again.The leadership in front of the column periodically stops, apparently waiting for the next coordinates, now we are moving farther to the west. From time to time we see attack helicopters and airplanes, now and then returning, now and again moving further into Ukraine.

Suddenly we stopped abruptly at a deserted road, the command "Go to Battle!", we all abruptly, but unskillfully get out of the car and scatter along the road side taking up fighting positions, some on his knees, some lying down, and someone stupid stands because in the dumps get dirty, well that command is false, otherwise well prepared enemy would have a good shock us with this training. Here's the first village, we are with great speed sweeping along a good, paved road through it, near some hangars see a group of men, they show that this is the usual farmer workers who are disgruntled by how this morning began, but keep their distance, the soldiers in our column also wondering where and why we go, it can be seen in the tired and somewhat confused faces, but what to do? Jump out of the car dropping the machine gun and exclaiming "I'm not moving until all this is explained to me!"?

Everyone drives in silence "fuckin' hell," surely we have some kind of plan! As we flew through this village, in addition to the bewildered cluster of men, I saw several old men come out and greet us with a banner of the cross, a mixed feeling, either to see us off to the other world, or to bless us...

As we drove through this village, I was surprised that these villages were pleasant to the eye, despite the now hostile, often seen Ukrainian flags or painted yellow-block fences ...

We passed several more similar villages with sullenly clumping clappers and solitary, baptized old men in our column.

All the while I was driving with a cartridge in the chamber of my automatic rifle and was ready to shoot anyone who posed a threat; where, why and why we were going was not clear, it was clear that everything was now very serious, obviously a real war had begun.

We passed some hangars, slowly, at minimum speed crawled along some abandoned looking hangars, something like the Soviet cowsheds, between which I saw a stretched camouflage net and a military KAMAZ type KSHM, there was also an unusual tower, my inner feeling told me the danger and I wanted to open fire in that direction to attract the attention of others, logic said that ahead were reconnaissance Btras and UAZ assault troops and if they had not noticed the strangeness, then everything is OK. But I was wrong again, logic and the modern Russian army are not compatible, as soon as the Ural drove away from this place, indiscriminate shooting began, the column began to stop and prepare for combat, because I became a "mortar man", then along with the others, quickly jumped out of the truck and we began to prepare for battle pulling mortars and mines, right around the corner of the building behind which I saw a strange KAMAZ, after literally a minute came the order to curtail, the shooting continued, we threw mortars and flew further column of trucks and UAZ road 300 meters, immediately again command "to the battle! "We jump out of the trucks again, taking out mortars and mines, begin to prepare them for firing, we hear shooting, I see that everyone is firing small arms and Utyosov in the direction where I saw a KAMAZ not like ours, having prepared mortars for combat, We grab the mortars and mines and run towards his direction, I was running in sweat holding in each hand the parplets with mines "they're fucking heavy, I don't need this mortar for fuck's sake! "While running, I saw an earthen berm in front of us behind which another assault company was sheltering, firing towards a strange KAMAZ, while I was running towards them splashes appeared near us, the grass was tilting and I could hear the whistling of bullets nearby, it was clear that the bullets were lying next to us, the other young guys with mortars, as it seemed to me, did not understand it, until I shouted "get down, they were lying near! "I did not understand where they were shooting from, and then I had to run back again for "variable charges", I could not assemble the mortar and decided that I would have to carry it, at least it was of some use, while I ran from the truck to the crew again, cursing again that I went to the mortar, I did not know shit about it, The weather was beautiful and warm, sweat was pouring off me, while I was running I saw splashes of bullets again, on this beautiful weather day, I remembered that a couple of days ago I was joking that if there was a war, they would rather shoot me than the Khokhlys. I lay down and turned around in his direction and aimed my machine gun towards the hangars behind him. Our assault helicopters began circling above us and fired their missiles, but I could not see what was there, then they circled over us several times, probably to find out what was going on. "While we were waiting for permission to open fire, the tower next to the KAMAZ truck was shelled from Utyos installed on UAZ trucks, it began to burn, and they took prisoners from there, I never realized how many, from one to three, I would meet one of them again in twenty-four hours. After this firefight, jumping into the Ural, I was certain that the bullets that were lying next to me, as well as the explosion of an arming grenade behind the commander, were my own, the column stopped and began shooting from three sides, at us were the arrivals of those firing from three hundred meters on the other side, "the enemy" was in the middle.

There my company I lost sight of, it turned somewhere and took another route, I heard that they were going to storm the bridge over the Dnieper to Kherson, we have to go there too, another route, but did not arrive in time.

By about noon the column was in the sands of the coniferous forest, in the Kherson reserve, it reminded me very much of the Kamyshin nursery, which I knew so well...

In these sands a few more times we were preparing for battle, shooting was heard, the column was stretched and somewhere, someone was shooting at someone, I do not know the details.

Helicopters and airplanes, as we went deeper into the territory of the Kherson region, were encountered less and less frequently.

The equipment began to break down and was simply abandoned on the road, and its crews joined the others.

By about 13 o'clock we had arrived at a huge field, behind were sand coniferous forests, in front of a huge field with green grass or even green grass, the condition probably was all the order podzabona, moving forward on this huge field of our trucks stuck in the mud on it, there was formed a kind of inconspicuous lowland, where the snow has long thawed but the water in the ground had not dried up and was imperceptible immediately swamp.

Some UAZ trucks broke through due to its lightness and went forward, our trucks were stuck, some remained in the column guard, a few battles reconnaissance, some Bmd, seconded from the 7th Division, KSM, shells and Bmd 4, was some kind of incomprehensible to me assemblage hodgepodge. So it seemed to me there were about 300 people from wherever, but most of the 7th Airborne Division, another 300 people were in front, the column was divided. The armored infantry fighting vehicles began to drive up and try to pull the trucks out, but they were stuck in the mud themselves.

It was obvious that it was possible to pass to the left and right sides of the field, but everyone was stuck in the same place like idols...

Looking at all this for 30 minutes, I began to get nervous, a huge column in the middle of an open field, a kilometer to the left hills, a kilometer to the right forest, the column has been standing in the middle of this field for half an hour, it's just a perfect target. If the enemy notices us and is nearby, then we are "fucked", an ideal target for artillery or aviation.Many began to get out of the crews and stand smoking, after walking from one to another, I learned what almost everyone already knows, the order to go to Kherson, to capture the bridge over the Dnieper.

It became clear that we were attacking Ukraine...

As we drove, despite the fact that gunfire was heard and the rare, single, light military equipment of the AFU was destroyed, and the aviation was working somewhere, there was still no serious resistance on the counter.

We were standing in the field and no one could decide to abandon the trucks, some of our guys went forward, it became clear to me that we were using the effect of surprise, the main forces were going the other way, and the airborne troops had the task to make an imperceptible maneuver and through fields and forests, to drive to the bridge and seize it, creating a bridgehead for the main forces. It was obvious that any delay now was a crime, and because of that we were nowhere to be found, we might not be in the right place, where the plan was for us to be, because no one could decide to abandon the stalled trucks.The situation was aggravated by the fact that there was fighting ahead on the right and left, it was audible, who and with whom was unknown, and the huge column stood tightly in the open ground and no defensive position.

It had been two hours.

There was nothing to drink, nothing to eat either, although we didn't feel like eating.

I took binoculars from the commander and tried to see something there, sitting with my knees on the ground, to no avail. I was already dirty and covered with road dust, like almost everyone else, and my wet thermal underwear did not add to my comfort.

Behind the hill where the fighting was going on, white and red flares began to appear...

In general, the atmosphere was strange, everyone was tired, everyone saw and heard the same thing, but whether people had no strength anymore (some slept in cars), or just banal, as usual "fuck". These guys were more interested in what was going on around them, and they looked more cheerful; it is not for nothing that scouts are considered more combat-ready than assault and parachute battalions; most of the people there are ideologues. I smoked with them and found out we already had wounded and killed one guy they brought from the sands, a 7.62 bullet had entered from behind between the shoulder blades and pierced through the armor killing him. Despite the fact that they had just arrived, I started complaining to them about the mess, they shared my opinion, and I was happier that not everyone "gave a fuck". I learned from them who was in charge of the column and went to the Lieutenant Colonel, finding him near other stranded vehicles that were also trying to pull the trucks out and got stuck themselves. The lieutenant colonel was standing with a group of people, it was not clear who the officer was, almost all of them were in Ratnik cloaks, respectively without insignia. Approaching him I said, "Comrade Colonel, there's a battle going on over the hill, two or three kilometers at the most, signal flares and fumes were launched, red and white, what do these signals mean, maybe our people need help there or the Khokhlys!

He was looking at me strangely but expressively, maybe digesting who I was in general, his face was tired, there were drops of blood on his uniform, he was probably helping a wounded man, the blood was definitely not his. after a pause looking now into my eyes and then at the hill he replied "I fucking know what it means, we should get the fuck out of here!"

He went on to have a fucking conversation with the officers, I was fucking with this theater of war and wandered to my car, as I realized no one else had communication, just as we do not know the fate of those who went ahead, those whom we had to catch up with, ahead I heard gunfire and occasional explosions, who and with whom is fighting is not clear, the distance is also unclear, according to rumors we should be near Kherson, and while walking back saw two BTr of our scouts climb the slope on the hill. Reached their Ural, stopping and exchanging rumors with everyone along the way. Someone was sleeping in the cars, someone was wandering from one crew to another, everyone looked tired and somewhat confused.Someone noticed a drone and there was a murmur in the column. Then a fighter flew low over us, whose fighter was ours or not, no one understood, the command had no communication. I went 150 meters away from the cars, sat down on my knees and put my submachine gun on them - if shots were fired at us it would be better to be away from the cars.

300 .I kept sitting on my knees, smoking and looking around, the weather was beautiful, as if it was spring, the time was about 5pm and the sun was already setting, February 24, 2022, the feeling was exciting, I remembered about my mother in Krasnodar, my sister in Moscow, started going over my former girlfriends in my head, I still was not married and had no children, I had a lump in my throat for some reason. I had been working with horses for the last ten years, I guess it was all right, but the money I earned was not enough to save for a house, I wanted to party and dress up, and I still did not have my own apartment. When I was 32 I decided to join the army again, I took a mortgage, the years flies by, I should become more serious and think about the future. I remember what I was told by everybody who knew me closely, that my problem is that I am a truth-teller, proud, stubborn and idealistic, that I want everything to be perfect around me, and it does not happen that way. Maybe they're right, even in the army, I came and stood as a bone in the throat for all the command, constantly shaking my rights, I was told by fellow soldiers that complaints to the Ministry of Defense lead to nothing, that the system can not break, it will grind you up and spit you out. Maybe it is the same now, there is no communication, it happens, they are all tired and they do not understand what is going on, just like I do. Maybe they do not have a guard, maybe they have information that there are other units on the flanks, maybe it's really not so bad and I just overreact. I understood that something global was going on, but I did not know what exactly, I had all kinds of thoughts in my head, we could not just attack Ukraine, maybe NATO really got involved and we interfered, maybe there were battles in Russia too, the Ukrainians attacked together with NATO, maybe something happened in the Far East too, if America got involved in a war with us the scale would be huge, and nuclear weapons, then someone would use them, fuck, this is bullshit... The way out was either to drop the weapons and go back to the Crimea or to do what they say and not to make shit up, I wouldn't know anything now anyway.

The UAZs started flanking the convoy, they did put up some sort of security, some of the vehicles went forward again, mostly BMDs, "this is fucked up, I fucking knew that this whole fucking mess in peacetime would fuck up in the military, why the fuck did I join the army! I wasn't even happy about the annexation of Crimea, I was against the mess in the LNRD, I thought we didn't need Syria, and now I don't know where I am, under this talentless leadership. I'm sure some jackass shot a guy in the back by accident, just like I was almost shot by my own people this morning, I already knew that one of them had his leg broken today by turning the cannon on the BMD, another one had a caterpillar on his leg, this army does not need the enemy, it will destroy itself.

I got up and went about 250 meters away from me, they were starting to fucking assemble, they also had a formation, in the middle of the field, when there was fighting all around, an artillery division was being built, to which I now belonged as a "mortar man". The artillery division commander said hello to me, squinting at my bloodshot eye; we had been on good terms before, but after my unfortunate complaint to the Ministry of Defense, he tried to stay away from me, too. I started thinking to myself how crazy it all was, I remembered my father who had died early, I remembered how I spent my entire childhood up to 15 years in the 56th MP, and now, after 17 years, everything had changed, I saw nothing in common with the Airborne troops of the past and the present, the people were different, the glitz was lost, the light in their eyes was gone, now I served in the 56th MP, but for me it had only the name. He was trying to cheer everyone up, saying there was no communication, I didn't know what the hell was going on, but the main thing was not to "piss off", now we were moving on, we were leaving the vehicles that were stuck (they would have asked me earlier), ready for battle, we were breaking through to our people that had gone ahead, they were waiting for us, but there was no communication with them either, we would be ambushed by infiltration groups from the AFU ahead. He said this with feigned bravery, but I could see in his eyes that he was also "fucked up". But well done that at least he made something clear to people.

It was getting dark, and while we were leaving for the cars, I finally had the puzzle picture that two companies of the assault battalion had gone ahead, along with my commander, my company had turned somewhere along the way and also had to go to the bridge, but on a different road, regiment commander with bmdcs, recently followed them because they did not communicate, we had to catch up and also be on the bridge, initially our regiment reinforced with units from the 7th Airborne Division, had to arrive there in one piece by lunchtime, fortify on the bridge and enter Kherson.

Already in darkness the column began to move again, leaving some of the bogged down equipment behind, while driving, I and a young mortar man sitting in the "Ural without brakes" I was thinking about my company and those ahead of them, I felt bad that I was not with them, there were no friends close to me, but if they were fucked up and I left them because of my scandalous character. Some used to tease me in the company "where's our veteran", I was offended then, but now the veteran goes out in the rear and the company is in the "cunt", here on this powder keg, if we get ambushed, even in the dark against a competent enemy, we're probably "fucked", no one had jokes anymore, everyone suddenly matured and became serious, after driving slowly thirty minutes ahead the column stopped, we stood for about an hour. It was completely dark, the command was passed that we stand here until dawn, shut off the engines, expect an enemy attack, the headlights were not turned on, in the open area the column lined up like a shooting gallery. I had a nasty realization that if an experienced enemy attacked us at night, we had little chance, especially since I was in the Ural with mines. There were thirty cars in the column, trucks, UAZs, 2 BTR82 scouts, several BMD2 and BMD4 and KSM Rakushka. They had enough armor that could not withstand even an RPG, let alone a Javelin, and then fire machine guns at the column, in the darkness from sleep we can not figure out who fired from where.

We decided to sleep, I with a guy in the back, the guys gave me someone's sleeping bag, two who drove in the cab also slept there, together we were four, we are a calculation of mortars, two people from every three cars patrol, that is, the column at night patrolled by 20 people.Crawled into the sleeping bags without shoes, lay on the crates with mines in the embrace of automatic weapons. We ate nothing, fell asleep at about 23 p.m. when it started to rain.

On February, 25th

It seemed we had only fallen asleep and a patrol was already waking us up to be replaced, it was 2:00, we were so cold to the bone while we slept. In the distance we could hear shooting and explosions. We were patrolling in complete darkness and walking intensively to warm ourselves up. Everybody felt as if we were getting closer to each other and the officers were getting lighter.

In an hour we will change shifts, again we wrap up in a sleeping bag and freeze to sleep. At about 5 a.m. they wake us up, we get ready to move out, everyone is ready, no one undressed or lay in bed, everyone "slept" in their stalled cars, I did not see anyone who at least take off their shoes, it is unclear what we are waiting for and again we eat at dawn. The cars were told to be ready for ambushes. APC reconnaissance vehicles ahead, the other cars a little behind. I was surprised that no one attacked us at night, given our vulnerable position, it meant that things were not so bad and in the AFU either really worse than ours, or we are now falling into a trap.

The convoy crawled along shallow country roads and unpaved roads, again one of the trucks got stuck, the overloaded truck sat in the sand on an uphill slope, and we started loading mines from it onto the other trucks. I was dragging the heavy boxes with the others (we were already exhausted) and grumbling that it would be better if we left the truck and hurried to ours, because we were losing time again, and the officer standing nearby (an old friend) smilingly teased me, "So write a complaint to the Ministry of Defense" and stood looking tiredly, waiting for my reaction. I stopped and turned to him and gave a speech that if everyone did as I did, instead of doing photo reports, useless formations and work instead of learning something and doing real combat training, we would not now be in such a mess, without communication and a bunch of equipment not able to get to Kherson.

He looked away from me, pretending that somewhere, there is something more interesting, I did not understand what it means, that he does not want to talk or that he agrees with me. According to military discipline I have no right to speak to him like that, so I silently continued to unload the crates.

An hour later, the unloaded truck was able to drive out of the sand. I cursed, we were in the perfect place for an ambush, with thickets on both sides.

I jumped out of the "Ural without brakes" and began to smoke wandering along the column, next to the "Ural without brakes" there was an APC82 of scouts, glancing at them it seemed to me that I did not know any of them, the regiment was only recently formed not everyone knew each other, And considering that the Reconnaissance Battalion of the 7th Division is now assigned to us, I decided that the APC was from the 7th Division without any familiar faces and passed by in silence, while smoking one of my last cigarettes, someone from the APC cheerfully shouted at me, "Why aren't you saying hello? Despite the fact that he was much younger than me, he was one of the few young officers that I really respected, and sometimes I met him at the stadium, he ran very well, perhaps the best in the regiment. The higher command had not yet managed to discourage him from serving and he transferred to a reconnaissance company, which I had not managed to do, again thanks to my relationship with the company officer and the fucking idea to complain to the Ministry of Defense in order to break the rotten system.

We stood around talking about nothing and everything, smiling at each other. I noticed that from now on everybody called each other "brothers" more and more often, and when we saw our acquaintances, we talked more warmly and happily. Suddenly the regiment's chief medical officer appeared, he was walking around looking for a place to move the wounded man, I met him in patrol at night and despite the past conflicts between us over my incident while I was in the hospital with pneumonia, we had a good talk about what was going on, seeing that there were only two people in the back of our "Ural without brakes" and the back "evenly" stacked with boxes with mines on which the wounded could be put on stretchers, we chose our car.

When we put the delirious guy on the crates, the chief medical officer climbed into the body, gave him an injection, wrapped him in foil and covered him with a sleeping bag and told us to watch and if he started bleeding, to tighten the tourniquet. It looked like he was the guy whose leg was broken by turning the gun on the BMD, he lay there moaning very quietly, periodically checking if he was bleeding, he kept saying he was cold, so we put our sleeping bags over him as well. As one man told me later, the guy died, instead of evacuating him to a hospital to some beautiful and caring nurses, like in "American movies," we drove him farther behind enemy lines on crates of mines in a "Ural without brakes. All the way with the young mortar man we sat at the edge of the body on the crates with mines, were focused preparing for an ambush.As I already understood, in the event of a skirmish, our task was to unload the mortars quickly, set them, aim at the coordinates and fire supporting the infantry. Mortars 82 mm with a maximum range of up to 4 km and no one has ever fired from them, they were only issued to the battery, before they worked with 120 mm. Ingenious, everything as always at the last moment, on the move will be figured out.

We drove through terrible roads, some dachas, greenhouses, settlements. In some villages we were met by rare people who looked at us with a sullen look. Ukrainian flags were waving visibly over some houses, and there was a mixed feeling of respect for the courageous patriotism of these people and a feeling that these colors now belong to the enemy, and these people showed we were not welcome. There was a sense of alarm and a sense of danger from these houses, while respecting their patriotism, I knew that if one of the houses our column passed by seemed dangerous to me, I would shoot without thinking, negligence or delay - death to myself or my comrades, doubts are dangerous. But at the same time I did not want to kill anyone, there was no doubt that I would do it if necessary or threatened me or my comrades, but I wanted everything to go without blood. I still did not understand what awaited us next, what was the situation? What was going on in the world? Who attacked whom? Why Kherson? What about those who left last night ahead?

We drove out to the track at about 8:00, drove a little and slowly through it and started to meet ours, btrs, tigers... Shouting out to unfamiliar tigers that weren't in 56 "Where are you men from!?" in response shouted "11th Brigade! Where are you from?"

Slowly driving on, I saw an APC that had been hit and driven off the road, then more military vehicles hit, shot or burned, abandoned trucks with howitzers, some with bullet holes, some not clear whose, the howitzers were painted in a different way, some vehicles green like ours, some in a strange color, glass, blood and burned traces on the road, The road is covered with glass, blood, shells, there is a smell of blood and combat in the air, there is smoke from some of them, although some of them seem to have Z on the sides, but small z, it is obvious that the equipment moved in the other direction, on the way I got the impression that it was ours who shot up the column of AFU coming from Kherson, but why did AFU draw small letters Z on the sides of their equipment or is it our equipment? Later rumors came out that ours had destroyed their own column at night, even later lying in a room in the ophthalmology department of Sevastopol hospital, with a small stooped conscript who told me that he was an artilleryman, the first days of war they were ambushed at night and their column came under fire of their own, most scattered in the woods along the road, Kherson reserve, not understanding what was happening ...

Immediately next to them UAZ trucks are lined up in a column, I understand that they are UAZ trucks of my company, our column also stops next to them, I jump out of the "Ural without brakes" and go to my guys. When I get up to them I realise they look like they're in a daze, walking from car to car and asking how they're doing, I get these incomprehensible answers: "Fuck, this is fucked up", "We've been fucking around all night". "We've been fucking around all night, got a smoke?", "I'm fucked up, what happened to your eye?", "I was picking up bodies from the road, one of them had brains on the asphalt", "Give me a cigarette, we're out, who fucked you up?", "Hey, where you been, give me a smoke?! "In 2014 he was wounded on the first day of the war and was decorated with the Order of Courage. He liked telling unarmed men what a professional he was, I listened to his stories and was very amused, I listened silently with a smile, But on February 22 I started to boil over, realizing the danger of such "tales by the fire" and began to interfere in the dispute, asking uncomfortable questions. I continued walking from the car to the company car, saying hello and genuinely happy to see the guys, in order to find out if we had losses I was told that the young lieutenant, the one who was for the platoon leader, with whom I had quarrelled and from the unit for which I now on my first day of war in a new unit, this lieutenant disappeared, later it turned out that he got and left with the commander and two companies forward, what happened to them now unknown, it seems they are "fucked..." Everyone looked exhausted, but more and more often everyone started calling each other "Bratishka".

Civilian cars were constantly passing by us, maneuvering between vehicles, cabs, ambulances, some cars looked suspicious, but no one paid attention to the civilians, only occasionally stopping and shooting cigarettes at those passing by.

Why my company wasn't where the assault battalion commander left off with two companies, and my 6th assault company was standing here, I never understood.

A more competent guy from the company shared the news with me like this, "Pasha, it's fucked up, it looks like the company blundered, did not lead us where we should, we got lost, but he saved us all with that, Kombat looks like "fucked up" with two companies, the regiment commander was here this morning, he prescribed the company in front of everyone, and where were you anyway, give me a cigarette!

After wandering along the column, I talked to other guys from the 11th DShB and from the Marine special forces, but these units had Tiger armored vehicles. The only thing I realized was that the company had received a baptism of fire, and it was good that everyone in it was unharmed, although this is strange, according to accounts there was a battle all night long, and the firefight involved three sides, ours, Ukrainians and an unknown third party, but that there had been no casualties after the fight lasted all night was simply unreal, as they say, fear knows no bones. I was commanded to "get to the cars" and trying to digest the information I had gathered, I began to climb into the back of the "Ural without brakes", so as not to break my second eye. The wounded man was taken from the body and taken somewhere. It turns out that things do not seem to be so bad for us. Now we were lined up on the track in several rows.

A comrade-in-arms from the mortar bar came up to us and gave us some water in a container and two packets of dried food. We had not eaten the previous day, we got drunk, opened one canned food and began to chew it cold, it seemed that we did not want to eat much, a slight excitement from the adrenaline interrupted hunger, because it was clear that now we again are going to go to Kherson, for sure there will be fighting.

Civilians were walking by the column on the road with bags, obviously those fleeing the war, mostly all coming and going from Kherson, where we were now preparing to move out. I felt pity for these people and at the same time I was angry and nervous that cars were passing through the column without checking, which prevented the formation of the column. It was clear that this was war and no one was welcoming us with open arms, among these people there were probably military personnel, at any moment they could give our coordinates to the artillery, aircraft or UAV, then the tightly lined column on the highway was "fucked".

A young guy in civilian clothes caught my eye as he walked past us, walking toward Kherson, unlike the others, I stood up and yelled, "Hey, come here?!" The guy fearfully came up, he looked about twenty years old, his clothes were a bit too dirty for him, he was short, swarthy, I could see that he was shaking a little in front of me out of fear, there was something suspicious about him, I began to ask him who he was and why he was going that way, he began to answer in a strong Ukrainian accent, that he had worked somewhere at some vegetable depot, that because of the war his boss had told him that there was no more work, that he lived in the Nikolayev region and was going home now.

It all seemed a kind of nonsense to me, he was not trustworthy and looked like a soldier disguised as a reconnaissance man or a deserter. I told him about this and he started shaking, making excuses, stammering, and showing his plastic passport; he was really 20 years old.

We began to calm him down, "Don't be afraid we won't do anything to you," but don't go to Kherson now, better go there after our column had left, it felt like there would be a mess and civilians better not get in between the military. The guy kept gibbering that he had nothing to eat and therefore had to go... We looked at each other and gave him one of our packs, and I told him to go off the road into the woods, make a fire and get warm, eat his food and keep walking when we left, and he took the packs and went into the woods. I felt the boy was lying, but what if I was right and what should I do with him then, maybe he really was just a deserter who didn't want to fight, I didn't feel angry with him, I didn't care, I felt sorry for him, I felt some guilt that we had invaded and ruined the lives of all these people, and at the same time maybe I was right and he would report back to them, on the other hand hundreds of cars with video recorders already had driven by us, and some were openly filming us on their phones through the windows, what a madhouse.

This fuss with the formation of the column lasted until about noon, then the column began to pick up speed and drove at high speed towards Kherson, we passed broken, burnt out or abandoned Ukrainian equipment, it was old Soviet equipment even worse than our APC, BRDMs, GAZons, Ural trucks, old OSA type air defenses, it looked like they had been hit by helicopters in some places, and most of them were abandoned or fired on by small arms, most likely by our guys who had broken through, I wonder what happened to them now. Several times the column stopped and we were told to fight and land on the edge of the road, taking up positions, there was gunfire in front, the head of the column was an APC reconnaissance vehicle, a crowd of ten men lay down next to me at point-blank range, I began yelling at them to disperse and not cluster, all somewhat confused, yelling at them not to point weapons at each other, one of them with a dull look jokes, "oh, we have a professional! "The driver of the Ural without brakes shot next to me and blushed, apologizing to everyone that it was an accident. We were looking in the forest, someone had fired a few bursts of cannon from the BMD in front of us, several trees were blown to pieces, I got the information that the enemy was there, I was looking in the forest, the adrenaline was going off the scale, the weather was gray and cool, the forest in front of us looked a little gloomy and I couldn't see a damn thing, someone nearby said they thought they had seen someone, about ten minutes later I got the car command again. Farther fork and signs to Kherson and Odessa, in my head I thought that all my life I have dreamed of visiting Odessa, I always thought that I would like it there, whether our troops are now so go to all regional cities, hold a type of referendum and join Russia, I began to laugh because I remember the phrase "dreams come true", holding a gun on the bleak forest on my right, sitting on a box with mines at the edge of the board "no brakes Ural", my partner controlled the forest on the left. The convoy was hurtling along at high speed, I saw several wrecked civilian vehicles, our burnt-out Tiger, also our Lynx, an RPG shot through the front window, the car abandoned, hit but not burned. I have thoughts about how we will storm Kherson, I do not think that the mayor will come out with bread and salt, raise the Russian flag over the administration building, and we will enter the city in marching column, everything I see over the last two days does not look like the Crimean scenario.These two days of war are not understandable.What is happening, what in Russia? What in Donbas? What is going on in the world? I hope our commanders don't think of entering the city in columns. As far as I have heard, Kherson is a big city, if we go there in column we are "fucked", Grozny was much smaller, don't our past mistakes teach us anything, I knew our level of preparation and organization and prepared for the worst, how bad must things be in the Ukrainian army, that our command decided that we would take this city, especially since we had to take it yesterday, yesterday we had the effect of surprise on our side, but everything is as usual, in peacetime it is a mess, in wartime it is even worse. I was sitting in the armor and helmet, worn glasses from the helmet over my eyes protected from the dust from the road, but prevented me to see clearly, uncomfortable ammunition, machine gun with a broken belt lock so that I had to fix the end of the belt on the ramrod, balaclava uncomfortable and cold, prevents breathing, I have not taken it off for two days, the statutory boots are not comfortable, my feet are spread and frozen, these stupid white bandages on the arm and leg have already darkened from the dust and dirt, who invented them, we're playing airsoft, in combat at a distance no one will look at them. There were two cigarettes left in the pack, and almost everyone around had already run out. All right, get it together, we probably have a plan of some kind!

Looks like somewhere near must be a bridge over the Dnieper, suddenly we begin to slow down, the speed is low, then stop, then again barely moving, past us in the opposite direction begins to fly our military vehicles, but in the opposite direction, you can see that the drivers press the gas to the floor, squeezing everything possible from the technique, I began to see acquaintances in the passing vehicles, I got worried, I didn't get a fucking clue, the whole column was going back full speed, we started to turn around and fly back at top speed, all those who could overtake us and eventually our trucks without any protection caught up with the rest. ..

"Fucking hell, what's going on out there?!

It's about 4:00: 00, I don't know shit, I feel like we flew 50 kilometers in the opposite direction, the column is lined up again and begins to turn in the sand forest, breaking trees in the forest, 150 meters from the track begin to put the equipment in places indicated to them, people begin to get out of cars and exchange information, shooting each other for smoke, They are told through the commanders that Ukrainian hailstones have been spotted ahead, everyone is preparing for shelling, urgently bury themselves as deep as possible, the cars are almost out of fuel, communication problems, I do not understand how they set up positions in a kind of circular defense, but where the mortars should stand is not clear yet, it seemed that each commander chose the positions chaotically. Someone is digging trenches, someone is going somewhere, and it is not clear why, someone is opening drip pies and trying to eat faster taking advantage of the moment, it is not clear who and how is directing this ...

It's not clear who is in charge... It's clear who is in charge... My companion and I also decided to warm up the dried food on the burner until we are given positions for our mortar, in 15 minutes we warmed up and filled our hot porridge, when someone from the mortar squad says to the officer in charge of the mortar, Warrant Officer Daghestanian.., I was sitting on the ground eating in silence and watching this scene as it looked like they were getting off on each other and realizing they had to chew quickly while they could.

After eating and realizing that no one around has cigarettes and the positions for the mortars are not yet determined, I walk around the camp trying to find a smoke, while looking for familiar faces, but getting acquainted with all the people around me whom I did not know. He stops, looks at me tiredly and says, "Bro, I'm actually the deputy commander of the division," taking out a cigarette and sipping it for me, I smoke it and say with a fucking "excuse me then, thanks for the cigarette" look. I really don't give a fuck what his rank and position is right now, obviously he doesn't either. Everybody walks around with no insignia. Considering the fact that we are now expected to be hit by enemy's Grads and it's clear that there will be many 200 and 300, we are in a circle defense, our planes and helicopters are out of sight, there is no communication, we are a hundred kilometers in the rear, everyone is tired and wants to sleep, but no one wants to die either, some are digging trenches from the last effort in sweat ...

I was smoking a cigarette and walking around the "camp" in search of information and a desire to shoot some more... We had occupied a square about a kilometer by a kilometer, there were about 500 of us, equipment was in chaotic locations, trenches and trenches were being dug.., I realize that the trenches in the sand will not protect us from the MLRS, but there are big coniferous trees above us, maybe they will help somehow, although if the rockets blow up on them, the shrapnel will still fly down taking 200 and 300. I walk with a lump in my throat, realizing that I may not live till morning and neither will those I see around me, which makes me very happy to see them all, as it seems they are happy to see me.

I approach one of the groups and having another cigarette I am told that there is natsvay, well, I am glad to have natsvay too, I put green pellets on my lip, they make me feel very relaxed and spitting spit I stand and chat with the guys, they tell me that they are from the 11th brigade and that there are 50 guys left, it seems they are the last of their brigade, the rest maybe not alive, their 11th brigade was thrown here by helicopters.

Having listened to them in cold blood, I went on with a feeling of resentment in my heart for our army, which had been doing everything but real training and was now in this position, I was offended by the realization that I would probably die ignominiously with these guys under the blows of MLRS and counterattack by the AFU or who the fuck knows, with whom we were fighting, with NATO? Who could destroy those who broke through ahead? Where are the main forces? Where are armatas, sarmatas, white swans and all the rest of the crap from the propaganda on TV?! At that time I was already inwardly aware that death was near, but I was determined not to give up my life cheaply, despite this and after walking around the entire camp, I realized that about half of my regiment was here, reinforced by the 7th Division, the 11th Brigade and some Marine special forces, it is not clear how they ended up with us, that is, almost all paratroopers...

I continued walking around the camp thinking that we had burned down our positions and the MLRS will hit us 100%, there would be more losses, and if sabotage groups of the AFU come to attack us after shelling it would be just a "meat grinder" for us, we are exhausted, we are not on our ground, we do not know the area, there is no communication, air and artillery support, those who rushed forward seem to have been destroyed. Walking around the camp and looking for my company, I remembered my father, everything I knew about 56 in Yugoslavia, Chechnya, the 1st and 2nd campaigns, Height 776 and the 6th Company, it seemed we would repeat their fate, a mess, corruption, lack of normal training and straight to the cunt, in war one is not a soldier in the field, success would only depend on overall coherence, training and motivation, I understood that with coherence and training we have gaps, but walking and talking to my brothers, I understood that we have motivation, despite the fact that we have bad things, all resigned themselves to the fact that the paratroopers who went forward most likely died, which is about a thousand, I and apparently others converged on the idea that I may have to die here. While I was walking and looking for my company with a lump in my throat and resentment at all the fucking around, at the fact that so many of us can die, but finally the thought took root that even though I am against the war, for the airborne troops and all paratroopers who gave their lives earlier, I will die, even so, it is a shame that our training was only on paper, but we have no right to sully the glory of the airborne troops of the past, to die with music like that. If our Ukrainian brothers beat those who went forward, it means everything is very serious and we must prepare to fight to the end, we will not give up our lives so easily. At the same time some bastard was sitting in the warmth and comfort of my home talking about how ashamed he was to be Russian now (I learned this upon my return), I thought about what was going on now, maybe Moscow was also under attack? I have a sister there. We did not know what was going on in Mir on the evening of February 25...

When I found my company, I saw everyone digging trenches and trenches in a hurry, the deeper you dig now, the better your chances of surviving an artillery strike. The ground was soft and sandy, most likely that in case of an explosion the trenches would fall down at once, it seemed to me that it would be better to distribute people at a greater distance from each other, there were 500 people in an area one kilometer by one kilometer, there were trucks with ammunition, in case of an artillery barrage the enemy would always hit the bullseye. But nobody asked me, the "father commanders" knew better, but

but it's not clear who's in charge of all this madness. I walked around and said hello to the guys, each of them I was very happy to see, I wanted to cheer each of them up and for someone to cheer me up, because we may not see each other again. I remember my first parachute jump, jumped near Dzhankoi in Crimea, on board were all first-timers, when the helicopter rapidly began to rise into the sky and a yellow light turned on the ramp, I also, like everyone else was "wahooe", but seeing that all around became pale and their faces have changed, then began to forcefully smile and show everyone a finger up and looking for eye contact, all I thought about then was the main thing not to screw up, like everything looked like now, only the situation is much worse. I saw a Ukrainian prisoner, I had seen several from afar in UAZs in the morning. He was sitting by a tree with his hands tied, a couple of empty canned foods and an empty plastic bottle from the wagon, the canned foods were Ukrainian, probably his dried food, it was obvious that he had eaten recently. Nearby stood and guarded him my friend, a Daghestani, by the way a man with a capital letter, it seemed that he was guarding him more from his own people. One of my colleagues passing by yelled to the company officer "let's shoot the fuck out of him, how many of our guys they've killed", it was obvious that he would have really shot him down if he had been given the chance. Now that the losses were taking place, cruelty and thirst for revenge was awakening in the men. There was a huge black eye under the captive's eye with a bruise, it was obvious that the blow had been very strong and most likely not by hand. For some reason I felt a strong urge to examine him and talk to him, so I squatted down beside him. He was a fat man of about 45, greedily smoking a joint of tobacco, which had just been carefully passed to him and given to him to light by a Daghestani. He seemed to me to be both my own and a stranger at the same time, the only difference between us was that now our countries were in conflict, while we had been born in the USSR. I looked at him as an alien, but I did not find anything unusual, I had no anger towards him, I felt sorry for him for some reason. I looked him in the eye and for some reason said loudly, "Well, Brother, shall we die together? He sat resigned, looked at me in surprise and asked "why?", I stupidly smiling explained "because now your guys are going to hit us with hails", he smilingly replied "probably together". I asked the Daghestani guard that one of our guys had decided to question him and he didn't like his answer, so he kicked him in the leg. The regiment commander noticed this and made him apologize to the prisoner, threatening him with a court martial. Where is the regiment commander? I never saw him, but I knew he was somewhere nearby. The company commander saw me, passing by, and jokingly asked me: "Well, do you like it in the mortar? Did you finally get away from the commander to blame for all your troubles?" I angrily replied that we were all in the same boat now, and it was not the best time to find out who was to blame for whose misfortunes, he looked away as if agreeing with me and went on, shouting at the top of his voice, giving some orders that sounded more like yelling.

Someone is running somewhere, someone is walking, someone is digging, someone is dragging... I stand up and go back to the mortar truck, I have to hurry, it suddenly begins to get darker, passing by the company's KAMAZ, the company foreman stops me and asks to help load the 200, I say that I have to hurry, he insists that it will not take long. Several people in the KAMAZ are taking the dead on stretchers, all very tired. Others are dropping the stretchers off the ground, I can't see how many are in the KAMAZ, there are three 200 people on stretchers on the ground, I help them load them and they look so heavy or I am so tired. I asked if they were from our company and I was told they were not. After loading the bodies, I hurried to the mortar squad, approached them and found out that they had identified positions for mortars, we unloaded the mortars, five squads of four men each. We dragged the mortars to the edge of the positions, even deeper into the forest, it was hard, my feet got stuck in the sand under the load, we came, threw the mines and mortars...

I stand and grumble that this is a fucked up position, a small clearing, five mortars in a line, pointing guns in different directions. It's a 200-meter walk to the nearest us, so it turns out we have no cover, we only have submachine guns. If they come at us from the forest, we're fucked. The others do not even know that we're here, so as not to cover their own at night in case of something from Utyos and AGS ... I realise I'm missing my gun from behind my back... Fuck, this is fucked up... The belt lock was broken and while carrying the parplets with the mines on my back, I didn't feel it unbuckle and fall down. I went back the same way and kept looking for my submachine gun, it was almost dark, I got almost to the middle of the camp where the mortar trucks were standing, one of our guys yells, "Who the fuck lost my gun!" I run up and with a feeling of relief shout, "It's mine!" I check it was mine, "Thanks", and went back to the outskirts to the mortar trucks. When I reached the edge, I saw the lads were digging trenches for mortars, I dug with them, it was almost dark, we had no strength, but we were digging...

When we finished, it was already long dark, about 21:00. We were wet with sweat, and it was getting very cold in the woods. No volleys were fired at us so far, which is very good, but perhaps the enemy is waiting deliberately for night, to bombard us at night, and then perhaps infantry will come at us, in complete darkness, in the woods. How else to explain that the enemy's hailstones had not yet hit us.

I remember how our positions were positioned, I had the impression they would shoot each other in combat.

We began to discuss what to do and how to sleep, our mortar was the most extreme, there was forest on three sides and none of our guys were there. If the enemy comes at us, our mortars will be easy prey.

What idiot decided that this would be a good position for mortars? A young fellow suggested the theory that the command had placed us in the depths of the forest on purpose, that we would be of little use here with our mortars, we had only automatic rifles, the main forces could see the track from the forest and the enemy would be spotted from the track, but if the attack came from the forest, we standing on a small sandy glade would be an ideal target and bait. I understand that we all seem to be in treason, we need to calm down, the command's plan is not clear. All that the command has given us is to dig into the ground, prepare for Grad fire and enemy attack, no communication, no aviation, fuel in the tanks is almost finished, we are deep in the rear.If they come at us, by the time we are outgunned the main forces will be ready. Maybe he's right? Why aren't there scouts here? It would have been more logical to set up secrets along the perimeter away from the camp, but no one did. This doesn't make any sense. We haven't seen our battery commander since yesterday, rumor has it the battalion commander took him along as a spotter, then maybe he died too. I ask the young comrade about it, he answers that he is not sorry for this creep, great attitude, I regret that I brought it up. Maybe they broke through to Kherson, entrenched there and are fighting in encirclement waiting for us. We still have two lieutenants, platoon commanders, but they are with the commanders somewhere in the middle of the camp. Who will give us the coordinates? In theory, we can fire mortars along the route, but the trees in the forest are very high. There are a lot of vehicles with large-caliber weapons, the route can be shot through like in a shooting gallery, what the hell are our 82 mm mortars here. I remember that my company's positions are directed approximately in our direction, they cannot be seen behind the forest.

In short, if the enemy advances through the woods we have almost no chance, if we go back in case of a fight in the camp, we will be shot down by my own people without anyone knowing who we are. I set myself up that in case of an attack we must fight back in any way we can, there is nowhere to retreat. I was thinking about God in my subconscious again like last night, probably all of us are like that, when we have the time, we think about him. I accepted that most likely I will not survive the night, but I would not give my life for cheap. Last night we were not attacked while we were standing in a shooting gallery, although there were battles nearby. I do not think that this night we will be so lucky again. I think the whole Ukraine already knows where we are and how many of us there are. Sometimes we heard shooting and explosions from somewhere far away. At any rate, the local military knows this forest well.

According to the idea, if a full-scale war had begun, our troops must have struck all military objects with missiles and bombs, destroying all large enemy formations, but something tells me that it is going badly.

It was very dark and quiet in the forest, and only some light from the stars was shining through the clouds on our clearing. We could see only our own field through our night vision goggles, but we could not see anything in the trees - it was too dark and unreasonable to use them, and we had to save the battery.

We were beginning to fall asleep in spite of the cold. I convince the guys that two of them sleep in the trench near the mortar and two lie near the trench and keep an eye on the woods to the sides. I tried to convince them that it was better to change every half an hour, everybody had not slept well for a long time, and I was worried that if we all fell asleep we could sleep through our lives. That's what we do, two of us sleep and two of us watch. As soon as you fall asleep, they wake you up. How beautiful all around in its own way. Very cold...

Very sleepy...

To wash...

Hot food...

I wish I had a cup of hot coffee...

I wish I could open YouTube right now and see what's going on in the world.

There's gunfire somewhere far away...

Why is there no communication, maybe they used nuclear weapons...

Where's all our aviation?

I want to smoke, I'm out of cigarettes...

I don't want to fall asleep at the post, I don't want to be caught unawares...

Somewhere far away something explodes...

It's five o'clock and it seems to be getting lighter... Dawn is the best time to attack...

It's six in the morning and it's light...

Wasn't it lucky that we weren't all killed tonight by MLRS and then let the infantry come in to finish us off.

February 26

It was already light, about 6 o'clock in the morning. It was very exciting to start the new day. With the dawn came hope and the thought that we would not have to die in an encirclement, it was getting warmer.

The body was battered and stiff, the body armor was still on. Suddenly from the distance came the sound of the column, it was heard a lot of tracked equipment, the sound was distorted, but was coming from the track from where exactly is not clear.

From deep in the camp we heard a shout, "Attention, Stand by!"

The hum from the equipment was growing, it was clear that the column is large. Tanks were coming. The question in my head was whose equipment was this?

There was silence in the forest, everybody tensed up and quieted down.

The convoy was very close and had already approached our positions by the road. Shouts of joy could be heard from deep in the camp, "Ours!"

It was the column of the 33rd Motorized Rifle Regiment, with tanks and BMPs, fuel tankers and Pantsir-M air defense and Msta type artillery in the column.

33 Motorized rifle regiment from Kamyshin, it was created last year on the basis of the disbanded 56th motorized infantry regiment, some paratroopers remained in Kamyshin and went to the infantry of the 33 motorized rifle regiment, some quit, someone moved to other cities, some stayed in the 56th motorized rifle regiment moved to Feodosiya. I.e. many of 56 and 33 had served together before, many of 33 were former paratroopers and as they told us they had already buried us all there, they thought we had been destroyed and therefore no one kept in touch. The meeting was joyful and everyone's spirits brightened considerably. Soon, the Panzers who arrived with the convoy began shooting down drones and drones above us. Perhaps this saved us from being hit by MLRS. Their column continued to stand on the track; we continued to stand in the woods. The mood was more optimistic and relaxed, we even built fires to warm our dried foods and boiled water for tea and coffee. Closer to 11 o'clock there was a command to get ready and get ready to move out. Having loaded we began to line up on the roadside. Fuel arrived and our equipment was being fueled, I wandered around the column, getting to know new people and finding out who knew what. One of the guys I had just met handed me a natsvay, I put it over my lip and relaxed and stood talking to him, suddenly I was stunned, we were standing next to a Panzer, it fired a missile and that beautifully leaving a winding white trail in the blue sky, exploded destroying the drone right above us. We shot down about 20 of them that day.

Closer to noon there was a command to take cover for the fight, armored vehicles of the enemy were seen moving towards us from the direction of Kherson. The whole crowd rushed into the woods chaotically taking up positions. The thought occurred to me again that if they got to us and drove past us, half of us would shoot each other... I tried to find a position so I could avoid being shot by my own men, and when I realized that this was almost impossible, I just sat down by a tree and took off my helmet, the sun was shining brightly and it was hot...

Suddenly a young lieutenant gave the command to set up mortars, we grumbled and ran to the trucks to get the guns and mines, carrying them on us and trying to run with them to set them up faster, the sand also parted under our feet, while dragging them about a kilometer away, to the old positions, we heard shooting a few kilometers away on the highway from Kherson.

Here I realized that I had fucked up my helmet, left it in the woods where I was sitting, when the command came to urgently set up the guns, I and the others jumped up and ran forgetting about it...

I did not see it, but as I learned that ahead of our main column, there were scout APCs and tanks, they opened fire,

destroyed a few vehicles and the rest went back, as I understood there was a small enemy column, probably went out for reconnaissance, I do not know the details.

As soon as we set up the mortars, the command to stand down came, we again piled mines and guns on ourselves and dragged them back. As we walked, I felt that fatigue had accumulated and the energy was almost gone. While we were standing, I wandered through the woods and asked everyone around if anyone had taken my helmet, there were five hundred people in the woods, no one saw, the tree I was at the time, I could not find, it seems my brain was already boiling from fatigue.

Just that night we were frozen to the bone, now it was very hot, uniforms soaked with sweat again.

For a few more hours we lined up in a column, our Cars kept fueling the refuelers.

The command for the cars came, everyone settled into their crews and waited for the command to move.

At about 4 p.m. we set off.

Again it was necessary to tune in to the assault. Ahead of the main column, in which I was in, were APC reconnaissance vehicles and tanks, with occasional fire from tank guns and large-caliber machine guns ahead.

The convoy moved at high speed, but periodically stopped, we jumped out of the vehicles preparing for combat and again receiving the command to stand down, jumped into the vehicles and moved on. One guy from another Car didn't have time to jump into his and we literally threw him in with us on the move. He was also a young, Crimean guy who had been to Kherson before and as we approached the bridge, he seemed to be giving us a tour, telling us about the area. He had a rather harsh attitude to Ukraine and spoke with anger about the Nazis. I had no anger inside, but I liked listening to him, it was easier for me to tune in, either we or they, I had no doubt that if necessary, I will pull the trigger, but at the same time, there was no feeling that I was doing something right, all as in a dream.

The sun began to go down sharply, everything became gray, the smell of gunpowder and smoke, we drove by and saw the occasional broken-down cars and old equipment, it seemed to me that the abandoned Ukrainian equipment we saw yesterday was also destroyed, most likely the tanks in front were now destroying it from afar so as not to risk it. Also on the road since yesterday a lot of our equipment appeared, mostly BMD2s and UAZs, the equipment just broke down on the move and was abandoned. In front of the bridge I saw destroyed grads.

After crossing the bridge over the Dnieper (the river was quite wide and reminded me of the Volga), I saw a few dead bodies, I do not know whose, behind the bridge seems to have been a fortified post and a gas station, I do not know when, but it was clear that the fighting was there.

All the way there were broken gas stations and stores.

Ahead of us there were occasional volleys of tank guns. It started to get darker and colder.

The Crimean guy said that soon we would see Kherson, indeed in the twilight on the left, the lights of the big city were visible in the distance, our huge column without headlights, circled it on the highway. Passing one of the burning padded Ukrainian vehicles, in the darkness it was not clear whether it was a tank or BMP, it was about a hundred meters from us in the field, a bright blinding explosion went off and the turret flew up, we all jumped up and pointed our weapons in that direction while our truck drove by, it seemed to just detonate the BC, I had never seen such explosions before. I guess everyone's nerves were on edge as we waited for the fight. The driver suddenly twisted the steering wheel to the left, we flew along the body with the crates, the mortar flew up and blew my leg off. We drove through the darkness and saw a hit tank, apparently Ukrainian, which the driver in the darkness saw at the last moment, in fact, the driver of the "Ural without brakes", just for being able to drive it here, already deserves an award. What a madhouse, the Ural without brakes went to war...

The road was broken, it was dark, the column could barely crawl, the cars began to pile up tightly and stood close to one another for a long time, making an excellent target for aircraft and artillery. How fucked up must the AFU be that they still haven't "fucked up" on us. This huge convoy, slowly crawling along the highway along Kherson, was an ideal target for aviation and artillery.

We had been crawling along the highway for several hours, in the distance I saw several bursts of tracer machine gun fire at our column from the city side, the column moved on...

Slowly crawling along the highway in complete darkness, some began running into broken roadside stores and pulling out cigarettes, chips, soda... No one had any more cigarettes, I also wanted to run in, badly wanted to smoke, adrenaline, fatigue, cold, hunger, thirst, I did not consider it stealing, I did not care, but could not pick the right moment, from the UAZ easier to get out and jump back than in the back of the Ural, and no one would wait and how in the dark would not get under their own wheels. In one of the pausing moments, a guy was running by, jumping back into the Tiger with a bag, I called out to him, "Bro, give me a smoke!", the column was on its way, but he quickly threw three packs of cigarettes into our back, jumping into his Tiger on the move. I finally have a smoke, I smoke a few cigarettes in a row, I am really happy about these cigarettes, Ukrainian cigarettes are not so bad, red West, strong, we don't sell them here. I'm not happy I didn't buy them, I'm not used to taking things from others, but I take solace in the fact that the local marauders have already begun to pillage themselves, I smoke and get angry at the command that we have been here for three days and upstairs it is obvious no one really thought we would smoke, eat and drink, I remember how a week ago at the firing range we were lined up in columns and there was a command to travel light, when most people still believed that this was a drill, I felt that something was brewing, but that it would go further than the DNR and LNR, I did not assume in my worst predictions or maybe I also deceived myself with hope.

Around 1 am, I saw the whole Kherson, the column stood stretched along the highway, I had the impression that we take the city in a ring, I hope our great generals will not take us into the city at night in column, I was sure that then it will be very sad.

We were sitting in the cars, some 120 mm mortars had unloaded and opened fire somewhere, their range was up to 8 km, our 82 mm mortars with a range of up to 4 km were only suitable for covering the attacking infantry. Again I thought that I would have been better off with the assault company now, sitting on the crates with mines, like on a powder keg...

Nevertheless, my company was also standing nearby. A comrade from the cabin came up and gave us a bottle of soda, someone gave him several bottles and we drank it in one gulp, the sweet water gave us some energy.

At about two in the morning, our reconnaissance company left for Kherson airport, our regiment was to take it, then we were followed by the mortar truck and assault battalion (only my company was left, two others were lost with the commander on February 24) in UAZs and a paratrooper battalion on BMD2 (they also seemed to me to be few, either the part had turned somewhere, or so many cars broke on the way)

As I found out later, it was not far to go, but we crawled slowly. I had already seen houses, some buildings, stores, gas stations and warehouses, it was a suburb, the sign of the airport showed.Often there were broken-down cars, periodically somewhere you could hear the shooting, I was already tired from the stress of waiting, hunger, cold, madly put to sleep, but I was afraid to fall asleep and be caught unawares, my comrade also fell asleep, around there were many great places for an ambush ...

It seems that slowly we entered the airport, our "Ural without brakes" stopped near the terminal, I saw the building already quietly going in and out, the command was setting up headquarters in the building. It looked like everything was not so bad and we had accomplished our task, at this point I myself did not realize how I fell asleep...

February 27.

A bright light, some commotion, someone shouting for action, our Ural was going somewhere, but suddenly stopped, we jumped out of the trucks and understood nothing, a strong explosion illuminated everything around and I saw six of our trucks mortars, my company's UAZ trucks nearby, some equipment further away, on the runway a KAMAZ exploded, I don't know how many cars are on fire, two or three, people are running, falling on the ground, someone is taking position, some cars are moving away from the fire and explosions, everything explodes again, I see the terminal building and I hear machine gun fire, I can't fucking understand it, I ask people who look at me "what is going on? "I fall to the ground after each explosion and then jump up again, trying to understand where we're being attacked from, who's shooting from what and where. A KAMAZ is blazing brightly, illuminating the huge area of the airport, it had shells from a howitzer, so the explosions are constantly repeated. The young lieutenant also does not understand what is happening and gives the command "mortars to fight", we set the mortars and take positions. I'm tired of constantly reflexively perform burpees in the explosions, so I moved back 50 meters and lay down covering my head with a gun, immediately regretted the loss of my helmet, before the burning Kamaz 200 meters, fragments of explosions flying further and sometimes sticking in the ground somewhere nearby, burning another Kamaz. I look around, my company is taking up positions lying around the perimeter, I lie down next to them, trying to find out what is going on, no one understands anything. After about 10 minutes, I realize that this is not an ambush and no one is attacking us now. I do not know how, but destroyed several trucks, it is not clear whether there are dead and wounded, after a couple of hours of cars burnt to ashes and their pieces were just smoking, the explosions have ceased, it is dawn. My company had UAZ trucks in a line about a hundred meters apart, each truck had 4-5 people in it, company had 40 people in total and another 10 drivers. For example, one of the drivers from the UAV platoon was assigned as a driver for some reason, even though he had studied to be a UAV operator and had not asked to be a driver. A line of UAZs a hundred meters apart, an airstrip behind them, a terminal next to it with equipment, where the command positioned itself, no one else in my field of vision. I started telling the lieutenant that it was nonsense to dig a trench in front of an assaulting infantry unit and that it was necessary to get acquainted with the positions, he was stupid walking around and was told our positions were here and that there were our trucks with mines, nonsense, if we were attacked now they would turn into fireworks too, and even next to us. Getting the lieutenant, he tells me, go to the terminal and tell it to the command, the other mortar men grumble and start digging mortars. I realized I was beginning to get clever and argue with the commanders here too, so I decided to shut up and go digging too, I had a feeling I no longer had the strength to argue and I had no choice.

The ground is hard and clayey, we dug until 11 o'clock. The order to move our trucks to the clearing near the landing strip came, the drivers sat down in the trucks and the six cars drove off and stood about 250 meters behind them. The clearing was made up of dry little trees, I could see them from any distance, there were no leaves in late February, and the dry sticks, smaller than the trucks, would not hide them, but I was lucky to get them back.

In the distance in the field, 2 kilometers in front of us, a car showed up, went into the wooded area, it was unclear who it was, we let out a mine in its direction, so it would not come closer. UAZ trucks go out for a reconnaissance, to check the surroundings. A passenger car rises a column of dust and drives back at full speed.

At about 12 o'clock came the command to the mortars to move closer to the weather station near the terminal (trenches, as I said, there we dug in vain), we go there, from there call the lieutenants to the command for a meeting. When they come back, they get worried and change our position to the logging strip, to the trucks, we take the guns there, put everything in the trucks, the time is about 14:00, they give us the following information: "Our task is to hold the airport at any cost, according to intelligence there are about 20 tanks and 2,000 infantry (including mercenaries) moving towards us from Nikolaevsk. We also expect shelling with Grads. Our large-caliber artillery will be covering us from afar, we must camouflage the vehicles, burrow into the ground, because if the enemy comes close to us, the artillery will snag us. The 82mm mortars will be of no use, so we have to entrench near the trucks and act as infantry, anyone who is not satisfied, surrender your weapons, Crimea is that way".

Fuck, I know the lieutenants are fucked up too, but they try to keep a straight face. You can see that everyone is discouraged, to put it mildly. Some of them say they don't fucking need it, some try to be brave, some silently start masking the cars, which makes the trucks look like a pioneer bonfire, thin dried sticks on a truck in a tent, I can't keep quiet again and say that it's all bullshit, not a camouflage, and that I should dig in quicker and keep away from the trucks, otherwise if they explode during the fight we'll all be fucked. The lieutenant suggested a place thirty meters away from the cars, everyone starts arguing and everyone chooses a place for a trench, as a result I'm chaotically entrenched in front of the cars 30 meters away from them, I also entrenched beside them though I realise that would be suicide. I again come to the conclusion that the military institutes are well taught not to think, the only thing that makes me glad that at least they are near, all the commanders above the company commanders in the terminal. A few people went there for water. When they came back, they brought as much water as they could carry, we got a little drunk and told them all the commanders were there, there was water and Duty Free had already been trashed at the airport, there was a sense of injustice, we were here without shit, the commanders were probably there with food, alcohol, cigarettes and water, the terminal looks pretty strong, there was a better chance to survive. I think I should go to my company and leave the mortar men behind. On the other side of the trench I have three men, one of whom is also a driver, so I decide to stay with them, if it so happens that I am with them, then perhaps it is not by accident. I get up and decide to walk through all the positions. The mortar positions are the most extreme on the left, my company is slightly to the right in front, on its right I see UAZ trucks 4 and 5 DSR, several cars had not gone with the Combat, further on the right flank should be BMD trucks parachute battalion, but I do not see them, the airport area is large, does not fall into the view. The command, control and medics are in the terminal. Walking through the company positions, I see that everyone is also exhausted, entrenched, installed AGS, Utyos and Pturs (from which previously no one fired because the rocket costs 500 tons. I fuck with this office), put around the trenches grenades, ammo, RPGs, whatnot, but with ammunition was not a problem, if you save, we can last all night, of course, if the tanks will not take us out of the cannons from far away along with the Grads, and the infantry will just go clean us up. Next to us stood funny old UAZ trucks, which could not even save us from shrapnel, demasking our positions. There was something unusual in the eyes of everyone, everyone seemed to be themselves and not themselves at the same time, such eyes are not found in people in peaceful life, probably because everyone understood that it was probably the last day of our lives, although as well as the days before that. I looked with curiosity and regret at those who were going to take Kiev in three days, it was obvious that something was beginning to come to them too. In spite of this, everyone was entrenched and it looked like no one was going to flee. Although we often made fun of each other and laughed at our professionalism during the service, now everyone looked serious and addressed each other as "brother. I had some sense of pride in everyone around me there. I thought again that we had been lucky before and that we would never be so lucky now. We should get ready, our ancestors had also stood their ground to the end, and if our time had come, we should stand with dignity and die with music. I was beginning to feel resentment again at the fact that all our training was only on paper and that our equipment was hopelessly outdated,

Utezs and AGSs, all of which were in service 50 years ago! Of course they were great vehicles and weapons back then, but 50 years have passed! We even have the same tactics as our grandfathers! We are a paratrooper assault battalion, sent to war in UAZs! Many of them do not have a working heater or a gap in the door as thick as a finger! When are you going to get it through your heads that we are praising our equipment and the army and are simply destroying ourselves without seeing any real problems? Half of the men in the country served in the army themselves and know how things are, but once they quit and take it on their chests they start screaming about how we will beat everyone and how they can repeat it. I have met so many idiots in my life who keep telling me that we have the best! What was built 50 years ago cannot be the best, even though the years have not spared anything, a lot of equipment has not even made it to the war! It is only 200-300 kilometers!

With such thoughts, I came upon another UAZ of my company, the guys were trenched a bit, just sat down to warm drypacks, someone somewhere got a bottle of cognac.

Half a bottle was gone and it was obvious that the four of them had already relaxed a little, they gave me the bottle and I sat down next to them, on the hood of the UAZ a blue beret was beautifully laid. After twisting the bottle in my hands it became clear that the cognac was good. The guy who handed me the bottle said, "Here's to the guys", I slammed the bottle into their fists and took a few sips, the heat went up inside, my mouth went down to my stomach...

I smoked and sat with them looking over the positions, these UAZs will destroy the tanks from far away, all that will be left is to fight back in the trenches, how few of us are here, where are our tanks that were yesterday? Probably the others have taken the city in a ring, the airport will have to be held by us.

I relaxed a bit and smoked with them, chatted about "the Russians do not surrender", we tuned out. It sucks when in such situations, all there is to help is remembering the exploits of people who died long ago, in other wars. Patriotism in your hands, instead of good training, provision and modern equipment.

I had to go to dig a trench, went two hundred meters back and to the left to the mortar room, I saw that most of the trenches had already dug themselves a line of single trenches for lying down to shoot, I chose a place next to my squad of 4 men, began to dig without stopping ...

When I finished by putting grenades around the trench, one of them I left in the trench, we got together with the squad, warmed our drip packs and ate a good meal, we boiled water and drank coffee from the drip packs.

During the day we sometimes heard shooting from somewhere or volleys of guns, several times we saw from somewhere behind the terminal the Pantzire missiles were shooting down drones. It was already dark, and when I walked around the mortar positions to chat with everyone, I noticed how much I liked the attitude of a Dagestan sergeant, my age, who, even though I could see that he was also worried, was brave and told everyone around him that we would fight back, that the Krauts would be fucked, we would stand our ground to the last man.

Toward midnight, tired of waiting for an attack on us, I went and lay down in my trench, and the guys brought up a sleeping bag with a broken lock. I lay down in a trench, wrapped in it, lying on my back, hugging my machine gun. I put a grenade, which I had left in the trench, under my head.

I was lying on my back looking at the sky, it was very beautiful, many stars and an unusually large number of satellites, it seemed to me life was beautiful, I had no energy left to analyze everything around me, I decided I would sleep, falling asleep I thought that when a battle would begin I would not back down, whatever happened, if I was wounded or taken prisoner I would blow myself up with a grenade under my head, "I was thinking "God give me strength to accept with dignity what is in store for me", "where I was born (in56), 10 years of a completely different life in the past when I was working with horses, it didn't seem real, as if it was not me, in another universe, it was not me, I am real here now, I had these thoughts in my head, I tuned up and felt absolute happiness at accepting my fate, and I started to switch off. .. I was still not completely asleep, one of those who were patrolling the positions came up to me and with the words "Pasha, you're still awake, let's have a smoke", began to say something about his family, his children and wife ... He was sitting next to me in complete darkness and I was lying on my back, wrapped in my sleeping bag and hugging my submachine gun.

February 28

I woke up at dawn, "My God, this world is beautiful. I wanted to live again. At night I heard some explosions and gunfire, I do not know where, I slept too soundly, I remember waking up in the night from the cold and immediately falling asleep.

After walking and chatting with everyone around us, we started warming up the suhpayas, there was no attack during the night, it seemed like artillery from afar did not let us get close, I do not know the details, only rumors.

There was a rumor that our scouts had found the commander and commander of the mortar company with them, two companies had gone forward on February 24th, I did not know if it was true or not.

I heard a rumor that someone shot a civilian car that did not stop with a BMD cannon, there was a mother and several children in the car, and only one child survived. I'm not one of those people who have illusions about war, the death of innocent civilians has been and will be in any war, but it gets ugly at heart. While our governments are figuring out between themselves how to live, and the military on both sides is their tool, civilians are dying and their usual peace is crumbling. It seems clear to everyone, but when you realize this and don't know what you should do. You drop everything and leave, then you become a coward and a traitor, you continue to participate and become an accomplice in the deaths and suffering of people. A chess fork of sorts.

An hour later, I see UAZs of the 4th and 5th companies pulling out and taking up positions in front of us and to our left. A feeling of joy begins to overflow, it means everything is not so bad, I go to them all to say hello and ask where they were in general, what happened to them?

When I went to them and wandered from car to car, I learned that they crossed the bridge, took cover in the woods, waiting for the main column, there was no communication. I will not list the details of what they were telling me emotionally. Only the participants know what is true and what is not. I took a few packs of cigarettes from them and went back in high spirits, at least some good news. When I returned to the trenches and saw the commander of the mortar barracks, who by the way had changed his appearance, probably like all of us, I learned that we were again digging trenches for mortars.

In a couple of hours we received the order to abort, we are going to assault Kherson....

There was a feeling inexpressible, whether it was fatigue spoke in us, or a sense of failure to understand the big picture, no one really knows anything, find out from no one, all brought to the last moment. According to the idea the Airborne Troops task is to make a quick strike, to take a bridgehead and hold it till the main forces come, there are no serious armament and equipment in the Airborne Troops, we are not the main army, our total strength in the whole country is maximum 40 000, some of them are conscripts and they are in garrison. Where is the army? Why is only my 6th assault company staying at the airport and the 4th and 5th companies, which have just arrived from the other side of the world, are already heading for the storming of Kherson? Will one incomplete company be holding the airport?

With such thoughts we are going for an assault, there is nothing to do, nobody is going to back down.

In the afternoon, at about 17: Our mortar truck should go in UAZ companies with mortars and a small stock of mines, trucks remain at the airport, on the move we throw mortars and everyone on the move looking for a place, as a result, I did not want to climb into the overcrowded UAZ, waiting until the last UAZ in the convoy, it turns out my company UAZ, he was the only ride of the 6th company. I jumped in, the column was moving, there were 6 of us in the UAZ filled with ammunition, grenades, Utyos and ATGMs. I struggle to sit down, everyone is eating with weapons ready for combat and in control of everything around them, ready to open fire at any moment. We leave the airport, as we drive I see the back side of the airport, sometimes there are places where it looks like there was a firefight. The convoy moves quickly, everyone is tense, several Tigers come towards us, seemingly with Kadyrovites, we greet each other by raising our hands. We pass through some suburbs, some hangars, private houses, towards groups of civilians with bags, fleeing the city. While we were driving I could hardly keep my hands off the open body of the UAZ, it was crowded, grenades and grenade launchers were scattered on the floor, we were sitting and standing on them and thinking to myself that we were blown up and then written off as "I was heroically killed in action". While driving, I look around through the sight of an automatic rifle and think about how in case of an ambush, we will have to manage in this tight space to jump out of the UAZ (bullets this bucket through, and given the number of grenades and RPG it turns into a powder keg). Drove not long, ahead of us appeared a small bridge, flanked by a dried up river covered with tall reeds, this is the entrance to the city, then start high-rise. I really hoped that we would not enter the city in column, it seems wrong, on the bridge of our column stands still and stands still... It was a perfect place for an ambush, the column was on a narrow road, with tall reeds on each side, private houses on the back, high-rise buildings in front and on the left, a factory on the right...

I can't get this fucking thing out of my head...

We're just a perfect target in our unarmored UAZs, standing there for 20 minutes without moving...

Civilians are coming and going all around us. It looks like it's going to get dark soon...

Just a clown, the question in my head is why we have not been attacked so far, or are they luring us further, or are they going to surrender the city...

For 20-30 minutes, the column stood like that, tightly car to car.

As a result, the first car began to try to turn on the narrow road and slowly move back. It turned out that we had fucked up the right turn. One company had positions on the right of the bridge, the other on the left, some of the mortars on one and some on the other. I got the position on the left. Civilian cars were passing by us at breakneck speed, half of them had people filming us on their phones, a Woltswagen minibus flew by, inside I managed to see that it was packed with sturdy men... no one gave a command to block the road, a motorcyclist flew by with one hand filming us with a GoPro type camera...

All this time we were in a circular defense type position, with the private sector behind us, and across the river in front of us, overgrown with reeds Kherson. On each side were approximately 15 UAZs, reinforced with 82 mm mortars, with Utyos, AGSs, Pturas in the companies.

The atmosphere is tapered... It starts to get dark quickly, rare gunfire starts to be heard from the city. The command to entrench themselves is given. From our side, it seemed no one went there, but I learned that the remaining troops of our 7th Division approached the city from different directions, our parachute battalion was there as well, each regiment had its own direction and point to be taken, we were assigned the Seaport, I wonder if they would send us into the city at night ...

A small earthen embankment in front of the river, not a bad position, but behind us are private houses, I think that bypassing us if desired and attacking, the enemy who knows the area will not be difficult. It is dark, the houses do not turn on the light, I do not leave a slight thrill of adrenaline, what is our plan is not clear, as always around no one knows anything. Behind us, men from private homes are beginning to gather in groups and come up to us, expressing their apparent displeasure at our presence, we try to politely explain something, people are somewhat afraid of us, but some civilians are very rude, we are also a little on edge, it is unclear what to expect and from whom.

At about 11 p.m., something starts burning at the positions on the right side of the road, and about 10 minutes later, there is a fire on our left, too. Someone set fire to the left and right of our positions with dry reeds. Obviously someone did this on purpose and it was definitely not ours. Now a strong wind is blowing up, a huge fire is blazing, lighting up our positions as if it were daytime, everything near us is bright, but because of the fire we cannot see what is around us in the darkness. In our ranks we became restless, everyone took positions and watched closely around us. The locals stopped approaching, perhaps we were being illuminated for artillery fire.

The reeds in the river were getting hotter and hotter, the trees were catching fire, and the fire was getting high and strong. I was standing next to an embankment, with several guys lying on it, watching the other side of town across the river now covered in fire. Someone said he saw someone there, then he shouted louder, "I'm going to shoot". I ran up to them and lay down hiding behind the embankment, pointing my weapon down and peering into the dark places in front of us, somewhere there was a fire burning, but there were gaps that had not yet burst into flames. In one of those places below us, now I saw a dark silhouette too, aiming at it, I started shouting in the scariest voice I could, something like the following: "stop, bitch, I'll shoot you in the head now! put your hands up! crawl over here! Squat down!", about the same voices next to me shouted.

The silhouette hesitated, but eventually began to approach us, crawling up the hill on his hands and feet. When he was close enough to me, I stood up and grabbed him by the collar, yanking him toward me over the hill, the big kid flew at me from the top to which he had crawled toward us, I somehow crashed down the slope to my knees.

Immediately jumping up and running up the slope, back to the unknown kid and trying to take him by the scruff of the neck again, I see someone nearby swung and was about to hit him in the head with the butt, I shout "Don't hit him!", I jump towards him, the butt sliding in my hands with a clang meets his head (not that I felt sorry for him at that moment, but to talk to him was much more interesting and just beat him, if he did not resist, I had no desire to).

The kid starts yelling "don't hit me!", I pull his sweatshirt over his head, he's wearing black pants and a black sweatshirt (not in the weather), we twist his arms, I start searching him, he has nothing but a lighter and he smells like diesel. I tried to frighten him by shouting and then switching to a calmer tone, I asked him why he was setting fire to it and who ordered it, and he answered that he was on his way home and repeated frightenedly, "Just don't hurt him. By the way no one hit him, I can't guarantee for our entire army, but no one mocked or even raped anyone in front of me. We lifted him up and led him head down to the commander's UAZ, there were several other men in civilian clothes with their hands tied with clamps.

I go back talking to other guys at the positions, I have no doubt this guy was setting fire to the reeds and he certainly didn't get lost. As I walked back, I saw a group of men come out of private houses and one of them was talking in foul language to our guys, I approached with my submachine gun on my chest, our Daghestani officer in charge was trying very politely to explain to them that we weren't threatening them, trying to convince them to go home. Five minutes later, the men leave, they do not look friendly, I have a fear that maybe they are from the AFU and they just changed their clothes and came up to our positions to get a better look. It's dark all around, everything is burning near us, shooting is sometimes heard, we already have detainees in civilian clothes, and people do not stop walking around. All that is clear is that these arsons mark our positions. The feeling of anxiety and excitement from the adrenaline does not leave us, we do not know what to expect. There is some anger towards civilians, I certainly understand that we are uninvited guests here, but for their own safety they had better stay away from us. That's why it makes me angry and surprised at the behavior of civilians. What the fuck are we doing here anyway, this is definitely not our specialty, where the Russian Guard, we are not the police or riot police, everyone is set up for clashes with the AFU, but no one wants to explain to civilians "why the fuck we came here", we do not fucking know ourselves, orders come from the command at the last moment. It's too late to reason, you're on the front line and it's either you or you.

It was already two o'clock in the morning, it was very cold, frost had begun to fall, and some of us started trying to sleep one by one. None of the mortar men had sleeping bags, a strong wind came up and began to chill to the bone in the freezing cold. I, like some people, walked around patrolling the positions, it was warmer that way if I did not stop. Sometimes I could see someone in the distance, as if throwing Molotov cocktails, not letting the fire at our positions go out. It was reported that some of the detainees had a Telegram group on their phones, in which people were posting information, photos and videos about how many troops they had seen and when. We are being watched online and a lot of civilians are involved. It does not add positivity, the atmosphere is crap, there is nothing to eat, mortar crew left without sleeping bags and drypacks.

Walking along the ditch where our people were entrenched and watching the city, again I hear someone shouting that someone there in the ditch, there is a strong fire in some places. I run into the ditch, the guy starts shouting threats down "raise your hands!", seeing the silhouette, I also start shouting in foul language, aiming at the silhouette, I understand that if the shadow begins to do something wrong, I will shoot without delay, my nerves are already at their limit. A silhouette on his hands and knees is crawling toward us, at point-blank range, I see that it is a girl, I grab her by the collar and drag her across the ditch. Also not dressed for the weather. The girl is very scared and rambles something in a bunch, mixing Russian and incomprehensible to me the words in Ukrainian. I take her by the arm, as on a date and lead her towards the commander's UAZ, my comrade comes up and takes her by the other side, slowly walking, we calm her down, she's hysterical, she cries and says she was looking for her husband in this burning ditch and was hiding because she was afraid of us, some kind of bullshit. I tell her to show me what she has in her pockets, she quickly pulls out her phone and gives it to me and says something like take whatever you want. I look at the smartphone, ask her to unlock it, she unlocks it and gives it to me, I look at messengers and messages. Almost all of the latest messages were in the vein of "Where are you?", "I'm over there", "Soldiers are everywhere here", "Here (address) are also Soldiers", a lot of what is written in Ukrainian I do not understand, but I did not read further and gave it back to her, it was again kind of gross from all this crap. Calming her down on the move, we bring her to the command and leave it with them. At this time, on the other side of the dried up river, shouts like "Glory to Ukraine" were heard and as if some of them were shooting somewhere, the distance was large, poorly visible and we did not shoot back.

It was very cold and tired, and it was just chopping us off our feet. Half an hour later, a girl walked past us towards private houses in the back, she said she had been released and would go home. At the end of the street, 200 meters away, there was a group of men, they did not approach us, she left to join them and together they disappeared behind the crossroads behind our positions. I did not like this idea of the command and when I saw the commander I told him so. I do not like it either, but it is obvious that a woman in her right mind would not crawl in the dark under a military position, especially since everything there was on fire. What she was doing there, we can only guess. By three o'clock in the morning, I was just passing out, making sure that there was someone else watching, so I lay down under a tree next to a concrete pipe, behind it, hiding from the wind lay a young kid with a mortar gun. He was shaking and gritting his teeth, saying he was very cold. I was freezing to the bone too, so I got up and went somewhere to find a sleeping bag. There were not enough sleeping bags for everyone, not everyone took them and left most of the things at the positions at the airport. After walking around everyone, I could not find a sleeping bag, those who had them were not ready to give up theirs, everyone slept while there was an opportunity, something like that, two sleep and the third on duty. Some found some cardboard and rags, covered themselves with them, and tried to sleep until they had to watch. Finding some oilcloths and walking past private houses that were ten meters behind our position, I see that one of them was kind of abandoned and did not look like a dwelling. When I opened the gate and walked into the yard in complete darkness, I saw that this old house stood in the same yard as a good, obviously residential house. Cautiously I reach the shattered house, but there is nothing in it, looking at the house next to it, which is in the same yard, I stand and fight the desire to enter it, if there are people, then ask them for blankets or something to take cover. If there are no people in the house, I just go in and get something to keep warm...

After a few minutes, I give up the idea, thinking that if there are people there, especially with children, then my entering their house at night will simply frighten everybody and their reaction can be very different, because they already have something going on around the house that no one would wish. Quietly closing the gate behind me, I take the found blankets and go back to the chimney, where my young companion tried to sleep baring his teeth. The feeling is vile from all around, we are like creatures just trying to survive, we do not need an enemy, the command has put us in such conditions that the homeless live better. I heard from some people grumbling in despair at the cold, that he was about to go break a window and climb into some house, but no one ever did. I put a piece of oilcloth on the ground, we lay down with the boy close to each other for warmth, we covered the top with another oilcloth, it was not warm but a little bit of protection from the wind. In a half-dream after half an hour, we got up even more frozen and started walking around to try to get warm, it did not help much, but we could not sleep from the cold. Just like us, almost everyone who did not take sleeping bags slept. The cars were not warm enough for 150-200 people, and 30 UAZs were not enough. There was a ban on the fires and an order to stop the fires in the evening. Despite the fact that everyone in the town already knew where we were and how many of us there were, and there was a fire blazing in front of the positions, lighting us up in the darkness like the palm of a hand.

Around 4 a.m. I saw that the commander's UAZ had started up and was warming up; the heater was running. Those UAZs that had a working stove followed suit, no one cared anymore, the cold and fatigue overcame caution. I gathered some wood and made a fire under a tree near a concrete pipe. One officer started telling me it was forbidden to make fires, but I didn't give a damn about such a command and everyone began to change at the fire to get warm somehow. Such nonsense, everything was burning all around. In the end, the objecting officer also didn't mind getting warm...

This is how we met the dawn of a new day.

March 1

From about five o'clock in the morning nobody slept. The battalion commander assembled the 4th and 5th companies and marched into the town in almost full strength. The mortar men remained at their positions, with the task of covering the mortar fire if necessary, and the individual platoons and drivers stayed with us.

They came back an hour later and told us that there were trenches dug and bottles with combustible mixtures on the other side, they were waiting for us at night. If we had come in a column at night, we would have been hot, not cold. The companies went on a reconnaissance mission.

I found an UAZ with a working stove and climbed in, there were two people in the car. I tried to warm myself up by talking to the driver. My legs were aching as I warmed up, and when I opened my legs I saw bruises and swelling on my knees and tibia bones (consequences of the fall from the ditch, when I pulled the firebug on myself).Thanks to my Motherland for the knees. Rubbing the swelling on my legs, I wistfully let out a bottle of beer. The accumulated fatigue, thirst, hunger, cold, and lack of normal sleep quickly reminded me of how we don't appreciate all these things in our normal lives. I imagined how I would drink a bottle of cold beer and dreamily told the driver about it.

He listened attentively looking at me, after a minute of my story he reached into the back seat, from there he took out two cans of beer and handed one to me, saying that he did not have any more, but listening to my story he decided to share with me, who knows what will happen next. I couldn't believe my luck, took my time drinking it and felt an indescribable buzz. Things got a little better. Tiredness had let up a little and relaxed a little, it was the best beer I've ever had.

Again we received the command to fall in with the 4th and 5th companies, they had gone back to town in a hurry and had not rested after the last outing. We were left with mortars and separate platoons. The thought occurred to me again that I didn't give a shit about mortars with a range of three kilometers and would have been better off going with them. The city was gray and gloomy, joined by rain and snow. Shooting began in the city from just the direction ours had gone. The rate of fire was increasing and grenade launchers were exploding. A radio station in the SMM command began receiving information about the fighting. Several Tigers drove up onto the road and began firing at the roofs of multi-story buildings with short bursts of gunfire. The fighting intensified and information about our wounded began to come in. Anxiety appeared among us, I saw some people getting very nervous.

I felt uncomfortable that I was here and the fight was going on ahead. I had no desire to kill more Nazis, but I had an uneasy feeling I was not there now. From the shooting and explosions in the city, I got the impression that it was "fucked up. I could hear shooting from other directions in the city, i.e. from other parts of the city, ours were also coming in.

There was information on the radio that two tigers of special forces were about to leave with the wounded, so that their own would not shoot them out. They flew past us in the direction of the airport. The UAZ needed a volunteer driver and a machine gunner mounted in the UAZ to transport our wounded and take them to the airport. The driver was found and I volunteered to be a machine gunner (even though I had fired from the Utez once in my life). I had a slight jitters from the cold and adrenaline, I wanted to do something, but not to be on the sidelines. Half an hour later the lights went out, the wounded were taken out in other cars, according to information we had only two wounded, I could not believe it, given the rate of fire and the duration of the battle. Several times we received coordinates for mortar positioning and readiness to work on targets, but after some time there was no response. Observers noticed movement in the reeds of the shallow river, then it turned out that they seemed to see a woman there, so I with the mortar commander ran there. With short runs, at the ready to fire, we found a woman in the reeds, about 50 years old, checked her bag and found out who she was, we saw her through our position. She worked in the water supply, ran away from work when the shooting started, her house was behind our positions.

The town was grey, the smell of gunpowder was everywhere, there was shooting and explosions, something was burning and somewhere smoking, there were almost no civilians to be seen, as if the town was extinct, and the snow, rain and wind emphasized the gloom.

After lunch, the shooting began to diminish in frequency. A command came in to start preparing the cars to move into town.

At about 5:00 p.m., we stood in column ready to move.

Nearby stood the UAZ Patriot of the commander, with no one in it except his driver. The UAZ, in which I sat with my squad, was overcrowded, it didn't have a working heater, and the driver, seeing our overcrowding, began waving inviting me into his UAZ. Without thinking I jumped out and got into the Patriot to warm up, the driver was only glad, that at least in case of something somebody could cover me. After smoking a cigarette, I put my machine gun out the window and controlled everything we passed. Broken cars, stores, in general the city was lucky, if I can put it that way. Occasionally the column stopped, once again stopping near a house, I saw a man and a woman standing next to it, they were looking at us, I asked him if he had seen any Ukrainian troops around here, the man smiling oddly and shaking his head in the negative turned away, said he would not say anything and went into the house.

Half an hour later we arrived at Kherson seaport. It was already dark, the companies that had marched ahead of us had already occupied it and were accommodating themselves, looking on the go where they would sleep and where they would wash up. The area consisted of a checkpoint, an administrative building and a building that looked more like a dormitory with warehouses, locker rooms and showers. Ships were parked at the dock. Mortar was assigned a large office on the first floor. Other units, the Stavropol Airborne Troops Regiment and the Stavropol Special Forces (former GRU) began entering the port. I went to wander around the neighborhood. Have you seen the paintings of "Barbarians in Rome"? That best illustrates what was going on. Everyone looked exhausted and feral, everyone started searching the buildings for, food, water, showers and a place to sleep, someone started lugging computers and anything of value they could find. I was no exception, having found a hat in a broken down truck on the territory, took it away, Balaklava was too cold, but on lugging home appliances, even I too, feral from life on the street, became disgusted. Walking around the building I found an office with televisions. A few people were sitting there watching the news, and they found a bottle of champagne in the office. Seeing the cold champagne I took and took a few sips from the bottle, sat down with them and intently started watching the news. The channel was in Ukrainian, half of it was incomprehensible, all I understood was that Russian troops were advancing from all directions, Odessa, Kharkov, Kiev were occupied, shots of broken buildings and injured women and children began to be shown. I felt sorry for all the dead and wounded, especially the civilians, but the news gave me a bit of optimism, I wish our forces would take Kiev, Odessa and Kharkiv so all this shit would be over sooner.

When I came out of the building I saw the commander with officers, greeted him as required by the regulations, he greeted me by shaking my hand and I took his cigarette, a red Marlboro, and I was smoking and asking him about everything. All he basically told me was that everything was fine, it would all be over soon...

On that note, with the hope in my soul that soon it would really be over, I went to the offices where the mortar company was stationed to go to bed.

The offices had a canteen with a kitchen and refrigerators. We ate everything like savages, all there was was cereal, oatmeal, jam, honey, coffee...

Everything was turned over and we ate everything we could find...

There was absolutely no care at all, we were already pushed to the limit, most had lived in the fields for a month without any hint of comfort, showers and normal food, and after that people were sent to war without giving any rest.

Everyone was chaotically looking for a place to sleep, and there was scolding over the line for a shower. I was disgusted by all this, even though I knew I was part of it all. How much the command should not give a damn about their own people, about those who with their sweat, blood, health and lives should carry out their plans, which were not clear to us. How wild the people can be driven to the state they are in without thinking about the fact that they should sleep, eat and bathe. We lost such a big city as Kherson with little blood.

Despite the fact that I do not have a lot of nerve, I decided not to fight with anyone over the queue in the shower. It seemed to me that now we would be holding the city and there would still be an opportunity to wash. It was toward midnight, so I took off my flak jacket (for the first time in a week), stripped down to my thermal underwear, and lay down on the big two-meter table, along with my weapon. A feeling of bliss came over me, my whole body was buzzing and demanded sleep. The office was good and for some people maybe even very good. Lying on that desk on my back, my head automatically covered with my uniform, I remembered that I had once worked in a similar office, too. I was a different person, as if in another life. Now I lay like a savage in the office we had turned upside down, on the desk, and I felt like I was in a five-star hotel, if you ignore the occasional gunfire that came in.

March 2.

I was awakened at five in the morning and had to go to a post with a comrade; we got the gate of the checkpoint to the port. The Stavropol Airborne Troops Regiment was leaving and I did not want to let them through...the commander or the commander of the regiment did not know the password...What nonsense, the passwords were not coordinated with each other. In the end I gave up and let them through, all they had to do was load themselves into the APCs in front of the gate, there was zero coherence between us.

At dawn, the Stavropol Airborne colleagues left for the unknown. For me it was a surprise, because I was sure that now we would have to hold the city, all my hopes that we would stay here and still have a chance to wash were dashed. I left to at least wash my face and brush my teeth. Walking through the offices it was obvious that we had turned everything upside down overnight. I went out the other side of the building to look around for curiosity, and I met people breaking the coffee-machine in search of hryvnias, I do not know why they gave up.

At 11 o'clock, the companies left for the city, it was reported that to control negotiations with the administration of the city. The mortar company and the Stavropol Special Forces left in the port for control and support in case of what happened. Partisans remained in the city and snipers were shooting somewhere.

Taking positions in the windows we watched, mortars stood ready for battle. I was in the director's office, leather furniture, a large area of the room and a huge desk, the safe was already open, a good library, most books in Russian. We spread out to different windows to observe our surroundings. A guy came to me with a bottle of cognac and a chocolate bar and offered me a drink, I agreed. He was from the Stavropol Special Forces, after drinking a few sips and chatting with him, I was pleased that he was far from stupid, he didn't like all this bullshit either. He spoke about how long this shit would last, he knew how fortified the AFU was near Donetsk and did not believe that our forces would be able to quickly break through the defenses there.

Asking me why I was wearing a green demi-season jacket, I told him how I had to buy it myself to keep it new and in size. He gave me a set of Ratnik camouflage coveralls and sneakers, saying he had more, they had better than ours, it was evident that it was his stuff, they were not new but washed, I can not tell how happy they were at that moment.

I am generally struck by our ability at the level of ordinary soldiers to help each other and unite in war, where we become brothers, but in peace life we forget about it again. As much as ordinary soldiers unite there, so much the big command does not care about us ...

After lunch, several UAZs arrived, and we crammed into them like sprats, together with mortars, and drove into the center of the city, where the rest of us were. We cordoned off the city center and controlled it until evening. The Rosich special forces unit was there too (I think we had no chance to talk to them properly). Mortars were useless and we, along with the others, held the center of the city. Negotiations were going on in the administration.

It started to get dark, and we were like sprats again, crammed into UAZs, driving out of town to Kherson airport. As we drove, we prepared to attack, and holding our weapons at the ready, local civilian marauders came across us looting our own stores. At the exit of the city, our OMON, reinforced with APCs, appeared and inspected rare civilian vehicles. Back at the airport in darkness, we settled back into our dug-in trenches earlier. There we learned that while we were gone the airport was being shelled with artillery and there were casualties.

March 3.

The next morning a rumor flew that we would go to assault Nikolaevsk and further to Odessa, I could not believe it, really top do not understand that the people are exhausted ...

Soon there was a command for all to load up and leave.

A convoy of our regiment consisting of UAZs, trucks and BMDs moved towards Nikolaevsk; we already had noticeably less equipment. At first we drove along the highway, then through some fields, as it turned out we were going to assault the airfield in Nikolaevsk. In the afternoon, our column, which was moving through the fields, came under artillery fire, the column halted, explosions were going off, we jumped out of the cars and prepared mortars for action. A few UAZs went that way, we stopped firing, we saw explosions from artillery ahead of the column next to us. First the ambulance went that way, then it drove back, the wrecked UAZ drove back behind the trophy ambulance. Artillery fire continued on us, but no more than three guns, the column was still standing, no one gave us any more coordinates. Half an hour later, the column moved on. Private houses appeared, abandoned Ukrainian equipment, it was obvious that not badly fortified positions had been recently abandoned by the AFU. We received an order to entrench near its outskirts, while we were setting up guns, supported by a platoon of anti-tank guided missiles, there was fighting a little ahead, almost everyone had gone there. Around us were abandoned AFU positions and equipment, boxes of Javelins and abandoned Ukrainian BMPs. There was shooting and explosions next to us but a little ahead of us, who, where, whom was not clear, Dagger type missiles flew, aviation was heard, several Javelin type missiles flew back over us. When it started to get dark our UAZs started to drive back past us. When I stopped them and asked what was going on, I realized that no one could explain clearly, they were caught in the middle of a pisshole, there were heavily fortified AFU positions ahead, and it looked like ours were retreating randomly...

Who is in charge of all this shit?

It's almost dark...

We also received a command to move our cars, literally 500 meters away, we stood up and the command came to us all to lie quietly and sleep here. Without strength we slept in the bushes on the ground, very cold, patrolling at night, it was not clear who was where, there was a rumor that the commander had been killed ...

March 4

At daybreak, by cars, we drove back, it was not clear where we were going. Three kilometers away, we took up positions in the forest belt, the helicopters flew forward. We take advantage of the pause in the road, some of us are trying to eat, some of us are trying to sleep. I saw the company nurse, I asked him "What happened with the company, brother? We were under artillery fire again, it was unclear who and where from. Hiding in the forest under a big tree, someone says to the officer hiding behind the same tree "Comrade Major, what should we do?

The answer is "I don't give a fuck what to do, I'm not a commander, I'm a deputy major!"

It's clear, no one expected any other answer.

Again with the cars, everyone drove chaotically backwards, on the way I saw the NONS of the parachute battalion occupying positions and firing towards Nikolaevsk, I saw my company jumping on the UAZs.

In general, the feeling is that everyone is going back chaotically, but on someone's order, the shooting has subsided.

I see helicopters flying away from Nikolaevsk, later I learned that at least five were shot down there.

We drove back, I couldn't understand a damn thing...

I don't know why, but on the way back, I had the impression that maybe they had made peace. Before it the commander said that everyone will celebrate March 8 at home, and a couple of days ago I saw on TV in Kherson port how they were bombing Kiev and Kharkov, that our cities were encircled, there was a rumor that marines took Odessa...

I don't know why, either in raving, or from weariness, or looking for hope, the thought appeared that possibly it was the end of the War, after all above should understand that anybody cannot attack effectively during 11 days without rest ...

In the afternoon we returned to Kherson airport, we saw that the troops were added there, there appeared artillery Msta, Pinocchio, air defense and infantry, it was not so sad anymore. The infantry was strangely dressed, old helmets and old camouflage, as it turned out later they were mobilized from the DNR... We looked down on them realizing they would be of no particular use, most were about 45 years old and were dragged here by force. Now rumors were spreading that the infantry of motorized riflemen were refusing to go en masse, perhaps that was why we had no opportunity to rest. There was anger at the refuseniks.

Having already given up everything, everyone burned fires and warmed rations, after having eaten and discussed rumors around the fire we collapsed into the trenches to sleep without energy. Thanks to the troops that arrived, we had the feeling we could relax a bit.

March 5

In the morning again we heard a rumor that we were moving back to Nikolaevsk... During the night artillery was working on Nikolaevsk. Having assembled in a column, we again moved there. Wandering around the fields in the suburbs and getting under artillery fire, we were changing positions until night...

March 6

The morning began again with artillery fire on us. Jumping into Cars and throwing smoke, we again stopped in different places and again changing positions falling under fire, including Grads with cluster munitions. By the way, the accuracy of Ukrainian artillery at the time was not very high.

By the evening having found a position somewhere near the border of the Kherson and Nikolaev regions we spread out over a huge distance of about 20 km with our small number.

March 7.

My squad with mortars is sent to a position near my 6th company. I spent one night there and I met some of my guys, one of the sergeants said there were not many people in his platoon and they had lost four men near Nikolayevsk, I told him without thinking twice that I was leaving for my company in that platoon, especially as up to that moment the mortar squad was standing roughly on the side.

A little later the mortar unit began to suffer losses as well, losing more than half of its wounded.

Then it was Groundhog Day for over a month. We were entrenched, artillery was working on us, our artillery was working on AFU, our aviation was almost invisible. We just held positions in the trenches at the front line, we could not wash, not eat, not sleep properly. Everyone was covered in beards and dirt, and our uniforms and boots began to fail. Different rumors started to appear, we never saw the high command. Rumours varied, that many people refused to go to war, that we would be paid 5 million on our return, that we had almost won, that our losses were enormous and NATO was sending its soldiers, that the dollar was 150, that sugar had tripled in price. We had nothing to eat except for the drip packs, and time after time they said one box for two days. Then they said there were no more packs in the division. Some time later some clever man on the top decided to put a field kitchen in the back of our position, where they found volunteers from our company to cook. The shelling increased because of it. They announced that they would pay money for every AFU soldier killed or equipment shot down, just like the insurgents used to do in Chechnya. Our company was looking for volunteers to be cooks, the previous volunteers refused, the crap they sent for cooking was not particularly edible. Most didn't eat it at all. Not one clever person with stars had guessed to put a ban on daytime movement of equipment, which increased the shelling, from drones it was visible where the equipment was going and after it with high probability the shelling began, so almost all equipment was out of order. In the end they said that there were BMP 1! Which are already 60 years old! No one ever brought us new uniforms, shoes, ammunition and warm clothing. The couple of boxes that did arrive, called humanitarian aid, contained cheap socks, T-shirts, underwear, and soap. In fact, only packages from relatives and wives in Feodosia reached us. But for some reason, the parcels did not always reach their destination and were opened. It was only thanks to them that we were able to eat tea, coffee, candy, and canned food at least "normally". The AFU tried to counterattack from different directions. As long as the airborne troopers and 33rd infantry regiment from Kamyshin held out, they did not succeed. Someone started shooting himself in the limbs or deliberately setting himself up to get 3 million and get out of this hell. Our prisoner had his fingers and genitals cut off. Dead Ukrainians at one of the checkpoints began to be put on the seats giving them names and smokes. At night satellites flew over us like nowhere else in the world. A girl in a neighboring village had her heel torn off due to AFU shelling, our medics helped her. Because of artillery shelling, some villages nearby practically ceased to exist. Everyone around was getting angrier and angrier. Some grandmother poisoned ours with pirozhki. Almost everyone got fungus, some had loose teeth and flaky skin. Many were discussing how when they came back, they would ask the command for the supply and illiterate leadership. Some began to sleep on duty because of fatigue. Sometimes we managed to catch a wave on Ukrainian radio, where we were called orcs, which only made us more bitter.My legs and back hurt terribly, but the order came that no one should be evacuated because of illnesses. Someone started drinking heavily, and I don't know where they got their liquor from. There were rumors that we were going to be treated like World War II veterans. Group O was withdrawn from near Kiev, saying that as a sign of goodwill and negotiations began. I immediately said that this was bullshit, no one would withdraw the grouping in such a way, it means that the losses were big. After the withdrawal of the O grouping, the pressure on us intensified and helicopters and aircraft of the Ukrainian armed forces began to fly to our positions. The regiment held its positions until the end. But there were losses. Every time the shelling came, I pressed my head to the ground and the thought floated in my head again that "God, if I survive, I will do everything to change this! I don't know how, but I wanted everyone responsible for our army's fuck-ups and messes to be punished. I wanted the war to end, there was hope that the politicians would finally come to an agreement. What was happening can only be compared to the stories of the Great Patriotic War, sometimes it seemed that the whole world was at war too. I was not afraid to die, I was offended, offended to lose my life so ridiculously, I was offended for all those who gave their lives and health because of this shit for no one knows what, for whom? Offended for my father who served his whole life in 56, where I am serving now, where I spent my childhood and youth. Where was it before? How could they ruin the legendary 56 I knew! I was offended that the top brass didn't give a shit about us, they showed in every way that we were not human beings to them, we were just like cattle. I was offended that before the war they did everything to ruin our army. And every time they shelled me, I kept saying, "God, I'll do anything to change it, if I survive. Even then I decided that I would describe the last year of my life, so that as many people as possible would know what our army was now. An army that was steadily falling apart while we were all silent and believed the parades on May 9 in Red Square, on May 9 when we thanked our ancestors who had ended the war, did we their descendants unleash it.

By mid-April I got soil in my eyes from artillery fire, nearly two months of wearing lenses dried out my eyes, and the soil in my eyes aggravated it and keratitis began. After five days of suffering, because of the threat of losing my eye, when my eye was already closed I was evacuated after all.

That shit is over for me, but I am still bitter about the fact that people there are still destroying each other and are only increasing the mutual hatred with each passing day.

In this retelling of those events, I have tried to be as honest and authentic as possible, to convey my thoughts and feelings at the time, what I saw around me. To retell it as if I were confessing to myself. I don't want to lie, embellish or conceal anything. It is exactly as I described that this war looked to me.

I came back not believing my ears and found out that it was forbidden to say War, really? What the fuck is that then?

The RF Armed Forces desCRIption law is against the RF Armed Forces themselves! What about the many other laws that are designed to make me as a citizen not feel like a slave?! Have they been repealed?

Our government, has found a great way out for itself, to prohibit us from talking about it, we are only allowed to speak positively about it. But I am convinced that by hiding it all, we will never change anything for the better. Problems need to be raised, discussed and solved, not hushed up and hidden, making the present state of affairs even worse. Probably telling about all this is scarier for me than being in a war, because I understand that the system will chew me up and spit me out calling me a "traitor". I stayed alive, unlike many others. My conscience tells me that I must try to stop this madness. I don't know where I got these thoughts, "God, if I survive, I'll do anything to stop it. But I had to keep that promise...

As one famous song says, "Standing on the wrong side of heaven called hell," I don't want to.

About the reasons for the "failures" of our army, a lot of "experts" have spoken, often very far from the army.

I will give you my opinion:

1. The main reason, we had no moral right to attack another country, moreover on the people closest to us. Most people in Russia pretend that nothing happens and don't want to darken their thoughts by this, and Ukraine has rallied as well as USSR in 1941. No matter how much both sides hate each other now. But thirty years ago, we were one country, the roots are Russian from Kiev, Ukrainians and Russians are the same people, we have many family ties. This is why everyone in Ukraine hated us, because the betrayal of a "relative" is much more painful than that of an outsider. We were separated by national borders and different political views of our governments. But nevertheless, when it all began, I knew few people who believed in Nazis, much less wanted to go to war with Ukraine. We didn't have hatred and didn't consider the Ukrainian people as enemies. Many Russian citizens do not think so now, I draw this conclusion from conversations with ordinary people around.

2)The second reason is the way it all started, to start the "special operation" with shelling the territory of Ukraine with artillery, aviation and missiles... What kind of reception from the civilian population did we expect when civilians woke up on February 24 to the explosions of artillery, aviation and rockets? The Ukrainian people, just like us, survived the invasion of the Nazis in 1941-45. They were brought up on the exploits of their grandfathers who fought against fascism. On the deeds of those who defended their country at the cost of their lives. How did we look on February 24? Who expected that after such a start, the people would not rally against the invaders? Or was the plan to sow real hatred among us?

3)The third reason is the terrible corruption and mess in our army, its moral and technical obsolescence. For twenty years, people entered military institutes on bribes and through graft. Many ideological and worthy people who served in the army left it, realizing that it is useless to fight the system. That they would do anything except real military training. Career advancement is possible only with connections and loyalty to the system. In the present army, in order not to have problems, you have to do what you are told, even if you have been told utter nonsense. The system of military institutions and the structure of officers' steps has outlived its usefulness. Certainly officers will tell that how I should know that I have not graduated from military institutes, and I will answer that exactly therefore I see better from outside, in fact I have not been trained for five years to carry out any order silently, but since the childhood I have spent a lot of time and observe how everything is arranged in army and I see, as now also sees all world that with Russian army something is wrong. Officers are still being taught how to run a conscript army, not a professional army of contract soldiers, who are often older than young officers. Army selection is far from common sense, it's hard to get a job, and it's even harder to get discharged. For many of these reasons, many really promising and interested in military affairs, go to PMCs. The contract serviceman's salary is far from decent. Decent it is only for people from the lower income groups, so why is it surprising that many men do not want to join the "contractual" army. Is it any wonder that someone cannot resist taking trophies in the form of a computer, if his salary does not allow him to buy one? How can the army be run by people who have not served in it? How can they know and understand its problems and needs? How can really promising and enterprising contract servicemen work their way up? There is no way! A person must get a military education after finishing school and then enter the army as a 21-year old lieutenant and pass the 100 circles of hell from bureaucracy, mess and humiliation to become a company commander, then the new circles of hell for the deputy commander of a battalion and then again and again. That is why a great number of officers abandon these services and leave. Those who managed to achieve high positions sit in silence and keep their teeth clenched in their posts and do not fight back, because it was not for nothing that they endured so much to achieve this. They do not realize that because they are silent, the system is eating itself. It is impossible to create strong and friendly teams under such conditions. We all dreamed of being in the military and not doing anything but real military training, but we end up doing anything but military training. The system lets up not the most promising, strongest and smartest, but those who were able to adapt to it, the higher you climbed, the more you had to get dirty. In our country millions of men have left the military because of the lack of common sense in this system, you either do nothing or leave. Military regulations were written for the army of the past and they still haven't been adapted to modern realities. We're all out there serving ourselves, not making the army stronger. Everybody knows this, but we all keep quiet. We are forbidden to say it and raise these issues, if you talk about what is wrong you are a traitor, as a result we now continue to fall into the abyss of our inaction. Modern warfare will not be won by numbers of untrained infantry. Tanks, planes, ships, and missiles are all great, but you need a strong professional, mobile, disciplined assault infantry. It cannot become like this without education, training, selection, and strong motivation. For such an infantry to emerge, there must be an opportunity for feedback, when the problems and needs voiced below are heard and addressed at the top, rather than demanding to pretend to report back later that all is well. At the moment, many people who have returned from the war are taking their experience with them, even if it is a negative experience. Because when they come back they cannot get the payments they are entitled to, and they see that no one is going to change anything. Everyone sees that not all seven people received compensation for the victims. A person is listed as missing, but nobody cares when witnesses come and say they saw him die. Awards are not always given to those who deserve them, and they are not given to those who do. In our regiment I do not know that anybody was given an award except posthumously. At the same time I heard that they signed a decree on awarding me the Zhukov medal. But I won't be given one, because I don't think I did anything good and am deserving of it. It is impossible to win a modern war by the number of mobilized and unprepared infantry. Artillery and multiple rocket launchers will overwhelm that crowd. Much of our equipment is obsolete or insufficient, and our complex system of supplying new equipment is not working efficiently. Much exists only on paper and in reports.

Our ammunition and uniforms are uncomfortable and of poor quality, as evidenced by the fact that most soldiers buy and change into American, European or even Ukrainian designs. Why not ask the soldier what he needs? But before you ask, assure him that he won't get a beating from his superiors for telling the truth...

Why again, as in 1941, we are not ready to the modern military reality, because if now we will be attacked, it will cost us millions of lives. Why doesn't history teach us anything?

Why do millions of men who served in the army know about this and keep quiet about it?!

When I went back, as I wrote in the beginning, they fixed my eyes and let me go on my own, sneezing on the fact that I limped because of my legs and back, and my right eye could not see well even with correction. After being examined at a private hospital at my own expense I realized that the cause of pain in my legs and back was a sequestered hernia in the lower back, a herniated disc in the neck and three protrusions. I was diagnosed with dorsopathy on the background of degenerative-dystrophic changes of the spine, muscle-tonic syndrome, astheno-neurotic syndrome. In spite of the existing order about rehabilitation nobody sent me to a sanatorium. I had to pay for treatment and medicine at my own expense. For two months I tried to get treatment from the army, I went to the prosecutor's office, went to the command, to the head of the hospital, wrote to the president. Nobody cared, nobody helped. No insurance, no treatment. I asked to be transferred to other units because I was objectively blind and had a bad back. I knew by my father's fate that nobody would appreciate it and my problems were all my problems. Having spat on everything, after a conversation with the deputy commander, I decided to pass my medical examination and leave because of my health. After I submitted my documents and passed the medical examination, nobody showed me a medical examination session for a month already. As a result, they told me that they had lost my documents, and the commandment declared that I had evaded from service and handed over the documents to the prosecutor's office to open a criminal case, not caring that they were impeding me to pass the medical examination. Many people take this kind of flattery and try to send me back.

The deputy battalion commander, Mr. Shchennikov, a scoundrel and a drunkard, who was sitting next to me under artillery fire during the unsuccessful storming of Nikolayevsk, when our commander was killed, answered in panic, "I don't give a fuck what to do, I am only a battalion deputy officer! Later, he drunkenly overturned in his UAZ and probably treated it as a combat trauma. The command sent him back as an alcoholic. And now this "officer", having returned from the war, is bravely making a case against me for my absence from service, getting back at me for my attempts to enforce the laws against me, for complaining about him, for futile attempts to obtain justice through the Ministry of Defense, the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office and a letter to the President. I took advantage of the fact that I decided to leave this mess because of my health and I have been undergoing a medical examination for more than a month, the session of the commission was not appointed, and as a result my documents were simply lost there, there was not enough doctors in the hospital, the old shattered hospital was full of wounded people in the corridors. Just yesterday, he was impudent with impunity and just stood in front of everyone and said that he did not care, write letters to the president, now he is absolutely sure that he can behave as he pleases, apparently they have already been given carte blanche from above. Their goal, for the sake of a new star, is to throw as many people back as possible, even if without training and equipment. Finding a soldier who can't answer him, just stood there and insulted him by calling him "schmuck, fucker and scum" for not wanting to go to such a war again. Finding those with whom you can talk like that, they are just humiliated and humiliated. Those who won't let themselves be talked to that way are simply prosecuted under any pretext, or they'll find another mechanism for influencing them. In all my time in the war I can't remember how the officers got into problems and led the soldiers, many of them got drunk and sat in normal fortifications, while all the crap was done by regular contract soldiers. It was there, gentlemen officers, that we needed you as father commanders, it was there that you had to prove yourself. Not in the day-to-day service of useless formations, work and dressing down. Where the measurement of a good soldier is just shaved and obedient. The only one who was an authority there for the common contract soldiers was the deceased commander. I do not want to say that all the contract servicemen are good and all the officers are bad. But at least it's not normal when no one speaks positively about most of the officers from his soldiers.

And it's not normal when the officers look, behave and treat the contract servicemen with disdain. Wasn't it in our history that such injustice led to the revolt of soldiers and sailors under the red banner. God forbid this to happen again.

An army in which their own soldiers... Those who have already been in the war, those who do not want to go back there, to die for it is not clear to them, those who know that there are many dead, whose relatives have not received compensation, and the wounded and sick, in most cases are denied compensation and insurance. In a war where no one will give a damn about your provision, what you will eat and drink. Where even packages sent by family and friends can be stolen. Where humanitarian aid often does not reach the front line and all the cream settles in the headquarters on the second line. I didn't believe it would come to this, but in this war they just decided to fill Ukraine with our corpses, the broads will have more. When more than half of the regiment is gone, some have resigned for various reasons, the sick and wounded, the dead. There are even those who still have not been paid anything, because according to the documents they were not there, and again letters to the Defense Ministry have no result. Three guys in my company served eight months before the war, and they still had no military ID! And now they just take people from civilian service, often aged 40 and over, and put them on three-month contracts without any training, without providing them with any normal support, and are trying to fill the personnel void. They are making a militia regiment out of the legendary 56... Surely Uncle Vasya would be horrified to see what the Airborne Troops have become. There are hundreds of thousands of men in the country who served in the Airborne Forces, have you forgotten how paratroopers were abandoned in Afghanistan and Chechnya? Have you put up with it? So now, what they did to us in Ukraine outweighs everything in history! We were always on the front line, and in the end the broken system screwed a lot of people.

Why do so many people get the feeling that those at the top are just trying to exterminate us by misusing the troops and putting them in such conditions! At least they did not think of landing us in ILs! That being said, I do not know anyone who chickened out and ran away! I know someone who, having returned, does not want to go back. Despite the lack of normal training and supplies, I have not seen anyone who ran away! But now I really see that the troops are being decimated by talentless leadership, after the losses of wounded and killed, the Airborne Troops are simply recruited all in a row and immediately thrown to the front line. The latest rumour that they will be recruiting from prisons is totally fucked up. Aren't you ashamed of what this talentless command has done to the airborne forces? Who's the traitor? Am I in favor of this? Or the command turning a blind eye to all this for the sake of a career? Who believes that this war can be won like this?!

Why did they even start all this?!

Where are the real enemies? How the government does not give a shit about those who must, at the cost of their lives and health, carry out their plans, which we do not understand.

When I returned from the hospital and gained access to telephone and Internet, I greedily absorbed information from everywhere.

Our federal sources were dryly and hiding the truth about some other reality.

Bloggers and YouTube stars were saying that they were ashamed to be Russians and ashamed of Putin's army... beautiful fuckers, while we were there not understanding why and not understanding why, dying, maiming and enduring what they can't imagine in a mine life, you called us Putin's army! We are not Putin's army, we are the army of Russia and we swore an oath to the people of Russia, and you, who carry a passport of a citizen of Russia and are Russia and if you, could not gather your balls into a fist and go with other people to demand the government (which you chose) to cancel the war, then all this shit is on your hands too. Russia is not Putin, Russia is people with RF passports. The Russian Army, can't make decisions, there's a strict hierarchy, so that tomorrow if someone attacks us, the Army won't think, but will act immediately to secure your pissy ass that you have hidden overseas. And you say you're ashamed of us? Are we ashamed of you? Where were you while we were dying, maimed and suffering deprivation? Where?! You were afraid for your comfort and couldn't come out to the administration building and say "No to War!" for fear of getting an administrative penalty. Let me tell you a secret that even many riot policemen who chase people away at rallies refuse to go there so that women and old people don't yell "occupiers" in their faces, many of them do not want to take part in it. No to war, it is these consalidated words that can stop anything.You sit in your comfortable homes, or abroad and whine that you are ashamed of us "Putin's army". Tear up your passport and don't you dare call yourself a Russian, never and nowhere! The West doesn't need citizens like you either, if you don't know, read about how Western society built democracy at the cost of their blood, how US citizens died and fought Great Britain for independence and citizenship status! How U.S. citizens were able to stop the war in Vietnam! And what did you do? You ran away! Declaring to the world that the army was not yours! That you're ashamed of the nation! That you're ashamed of the president who became King because of your inaction and cowardice! You are a plebeian! You don't deserve to be a citizen! I'm ashamed of you, just like I'm ashamed of my talentless command thinking only about their asses, just like I'm ashamed of the government thinking only about itself and forgetting about the people, just like I'm ashamed of the president who is detached from reality, just like I'm ashamed of you carrying a passport of a citizen of Russia, You are a slave and a product of a corrupt system, tear up your passport or go and become a citizen, if you are not ready to stake anything at stake, do not disgrace the long-suffering country in which you are a parasite and nothing more. Most of the military don't want to kill anyone and especially don't want war, but we are constrained by laws, we are constrained by guilt before our fellow soldiers, no one wants to be a coward, we can't drop our weapons and run away, we are constrained by a sense of patriotism through which we are used by propaganda.

When I returned to Russia I struggled with a strange feeling that I was against the war and I felt pity for the people of Ukraine and that I was drawn back, because the most real and authentic life opens up in the face of death, when you know that at any moment you will be gone, only at that moment you understand what life is and how beautiful this world is. To these feelings I added that I was ashamed to be safe while others sacrificed themselves, the more so when you go back you will be abandoned by the command trying to ruin your life for refusing. We have all become hostage to many factors such as revenge, patriotism, money, duty, career, fear of the state.

I believe that we have played too much, we have not annexed the DPR and LPR, we have started a terrible war, a war in which cities are destroyed and children, women and old people are killed. I think the Ukrainians are to blame for this too, when they didn't stop their oglets who have been yelling that they have been at war with Russia for eight years (our propaganda may as well be yelling that we are at war with NATO) when they didn't shut up those who were going to march on Red Square in a defeated Moscow. Did you get to yell? Despite the fact that the Russian army has shown the whole world all its flaws and a mess in it, but nevertheless there is hell going on in Ukraine and the AFU has no less casualties than the RF Armed Forces, in a country where many of our relatives, military of both countries and civilians who happened to be nearby are dying. Our fervent people picked up the wave of yours and dragged everyone into the war, now we are all caught up in the madness. We, two brotherly peoples, Slavs destroy Slavs, we like madmen hate each other. We two nations are the victors of fascism, we ourselves are turning into fascists on both sides, while the majority silently watches it happen, fearing for their safety. Of course, most of the blame is on Russia, because we were the first to attack, but we must not forget how many slogans there were in Ukraine, where Russians were directly insulted and called second-class. How YouTube is overflowing with videos from Ukraine supposedly "proving" that Russia is a second-class country. You've got to be fucking kidding me! And all sorts of devils are only too happy to watch us destroy each other. No matter how crazy it may seem to some, there's only one way to stop it. Both of our nations, Orthodox, we must both begin to forgive each other, vengeance and hatred will only make things worse every day. Thousands of years of history have taught people that war is pointless, but we do not understand it. If it is at the level of nations that we fail to reach out to one another for reconciliation, we will simply exterminate one another. The rabid Ukrainians are screaming about how they will take over the Kremlin and will not stop after they have liberated Ukraine, not realizing that they are making things worse and that such slogans make even those who are against the war in Ukraine think twice. The Ukrainians mock and cut off our soldiers' genitals, our soldiers bomb cities with rockets, women and children die, and the propaganda of both sides only adds fuel to the fire, openly calling for you and me to destroy each other... It's just horror, wake up, we are human beings, we are Orthodox, we are not different, we are not enemies, we were pitted like dogs in an arena and we feel the blood and can't stop! Where are all these damn Christian churches! Whatever you say offends the believer, but where are all these believers who have suddenly forgotten the commandments of the prophets! We break the main ones, we hate and destroy each other! How can we believe the church after that?! It blesses us to destroy one another! I wouldn't be surprised if it comes to nuclear weapons if people don't start talking about the problem. Everything is in the hands of our nations, not our governments. The government is the representatives of the people, until the people make it clear to the government that no one wants war, this extermination of each other will continue. I met a huge number of ordinary people on the street who are against the war and a small number who say we probably had no choice, but I did not meet anyone who said they wanted to go and kill. How with all this, the extermination of each other continues?! And God forbid anyone should think I'm calling for the barricades, it will only lead to more bloodshed. Now is the moment when we must tell the truth, and the truth is that the majority in both Russia and Ukraine don't want to kill each other. And while that majority sits silent, more and more people are drawn into the war.

Every day this madness continues, there is only more death and hatred for each other for the dead that is added daily on both sides.

Many may not understand this, but this is the reason why people who have not sacrificed themselves in war have no right to decide to start it, starting this mechanism that is hard to stop. What moral right and who has the right to decide on a war where thousands of your citizens and citizens of another country have to die there?

I do not see the children of Skobeeva, Solovyev, Kiselyov, Rogozin, Lavrov, Medvedev in the trenches, but I constantly hear them calling to kill. Which Duma deputy's son is at war? Are their children more talented and intelligent than the children of workers and peasants? Or don't their parents wish them the same fate as ours, when many of them go there because it's at least a chance to earn a living?

They're only willing to scream about sending the children of workers and peasants to their deaths for the sake of those who are cut off from reality!

We have an aging population in this country. There are plenty of elderly and sick people around, and we are waging a war where young and healthy men who trust the propaganda are dying.

All they can do is send their children and mistresses to study and live in the West! Get citizenship there and enjoy real justice there! They want everything there is! But they can't create anything like that in Russia, all they did was steal and loot the country, thinking only of themselves! All these reforms and initiatives only served to enrich those who absorbed the budget.

I am ashamed of the officers and commanders who have traded their honor and conscience for pensions, stars and awards!

Thank God that I did not go to a military institute back then, because almost everybody knows how long they were taking bribes there starting from 2000 and that is the generation of officers we have now!

How few commanders have been able to raise their men on the attack and lead them! How few of you are able to cover your men with yourselves, and that's what every soldier will be saving you for! It was not for paperwork and licking the ass of the command that you went into service! Each of you is a commander that people have to follow! How many ordinary contract servicemen have heard that we are second-rate! I'll never forget the evening parade where the commander starts talking about how some freak somewhere raped his grandmother and that God forbid some freak of yours does that, and you stand there thinking "What are you talking about?!" Yes, most have no education and are from dysfunctional families, but that doesn't give you a commander the right to talk down and send people into combat staying safe while getting a much bigger paycheck and awards! What has become of you? What do they teach you in military institutes now? They don't teach the Suvorov Testament? Instead of team-building, most of you follow the "divide and conquer" rule, destroying collectives.

I am ashamed of any level of government from the village to the capital! I am ashamed of the teachers who fake elections!

I am ashamed of doctors destroying health care and looking only for profit!

I am ashamed of the police force that is dying of corruption! When often you really need the help and protection of the police, you can't get it. And I have no doubt that most went there to protect.

Why have our courts become the epitome of injustice? I can't believe that judges went there just for profit and not to do justice.

I can't believe that there are people in the prosecutor's office who didn't want to be a bulwark of law for citizens.

Why aren't there any representatives of the people in the Duma?

I am ashamed of our people, who are fencing themselves off from all this, hoping it will not affect them. You have not yet understood that it will affect everyone! Every year they turn us all into slaves. If you don't want to do it, we'll force you, if you don't agree, if you don't like it, we'll lock you up.

I am ashamed of myself, that I cannot and do not know how to fix it!

But the worst and most important institution of the state is the army! There is not a single country without an army! The army is the country! The army is the face of the people! The army is those who, at the cost of their lives, must defend the borders of the country in the event of a threat to it! None of us wants to be an invader, this is not the ideal we grew up with, we all wanted to be defenders and were brought up on the glory of our ancestors who defeated fascism when it came to us, and now they have made us into invaders!

The worst thing is the collapse of the army, and that is exactly what happened to us long ago. If parents do not want to send their children to the army, it means that everything is already bad. Most of those who have weight, power and money in this system do not send their children to the army, knowing that things are bad there. The Kiselyovs, Solovyovs, Simonyans and others will scream to the end, sending everyone to war as long as they get paid for it, but they send their children to the decadent West. Even if we can take over all of Ukraine years later, why the hell do we need it, don't we have enough land left to us by our ancestors? How many millions of Russians, Ukrainians and other peoples of Russia, do we need to destroy for this? How miserable our country will become after this? Come on, people, wake up. I do not understand what is going on, why everything is upside down and how we came to this imperceptibly. Probably the same as two years ago, despite the fact that everyone understood the uselessness of masks, but humbly wore them because they were forced to, and now suddenly Kovid has disappeared from Russia altogether.

We are just now, destroying our army, which was already far from being in the best position. When our army will be completely weakened, do you think the militia, armed as they are and without equipment, will be able to stand against the modern army of China, the USA or the EU, which has already attacked us? No, after we further weaken our own army by our own indifference, someone else's army will come to us and no one will fight back in a modern war with pitchforks and rifles.

Years from now, when our people are exhausted by the war and poverty, when everyone understands how awful war is, when we go hungry, when state employees stop getting their salaries again because the state is bankrupt, then everyone will understand, but it will be impossible to change anything. Russia will collapse on its own, and then kind uncles from the West will come to scare the children and China and lend a helping hand in exchange for lands and resources... When this emaciated nation once again has nothing to eat, when it is unable to field an army, it will forget about all imperial ambitions and will agree to any terms. There is no empire in history, all empires fall apart sooner or later.

Now we are following the path of Byzantium...

We don't need an empire, we all need a normal, free, fair, modern country. Where we can live, develop, work and love.

I believe in God, but I don't see God in our church which has forgotten the main commandment "Thou shalt not kill" and blesses us for killing our Orthodox brothers. I just can't believe it until now. I don't want to be Kochubei, I want to be Peresvet. In my understanding, upbringing, conscience and heart there is justification for killing only if I save my life, someone else's life or defend my land from an invader.

Why the fuck did you send me to Ukraine? Why the fuck, after losing my health and wanting to resign, do you want to put me in jail, depriving me of all the rights prescribed in the guarantees for servicemen? For what? Because I don't see the point in the war in Ukraine? Because I have no health left to carry out these crazy orders there? Because I tried to get justice by complaining on the website of the President and the Ministry of Defense about the fact that all the commands are busy only with the fact that they need to send as many people to war as possible? And their whole purpose is to serve until the next star. More than a month has passed, and I have still not received an answer according to the law!

One Airborne Colonel, a former friend of my father's, told me "Pasha, I am a grain of sand in this system, and you are a speck of dust. Let me be a speck of dust and my fate to rot in a "beautiful" Russian prison, but I will not be silent! My conscience and my whole being says that I despise this broken system! That I am doing the right thing! They are trying to make me out of a man who was brought up on the exploits of Russian arms and the glorious history of his ancestors, who humbled himself to die many times, and now they are trying to frame me for a criminal case for not saying what you think, for not wanting to serve in this army, for not seeing the point in this war! They tricked me into a fratricidal war, and now they'll probably lock me up! There's nothing more I can do now except write everything that has accumulated in my soul during this madhouse! For me God is not in church! He is inside me in the form of my conscience and my conscience says I am doing the right thing! Those who crippled and recycled invaluable human material of people ideologically and spiritually ready to give their lives for the motherland! How many people have already given their lives? For the sake of what? So many men capable of sacrificing themselves have been wasted! All that has been done over the years is to perfectly educate slaves of the system! Out of the great and educated people, the richest and most respected country in the world, they made herd-like, gutless slaves! That's all they could do, steal, divide and deceive a great nation!

As I see it, this government is either a complete failure, or they are agents of the west whose goal is to destroy the country. My favorite book is Quiet Don, as much as I do not want this history to repeat itself, but at the top they are doing everything to repeat it. Most people around here are unhappy with what is going on, but everyone is intimidated, everyone's hands are twisted and their mouths are shut. And this is just as often done by people who are dissatisfied, but by the will of fate ended up in the executive system. What about our special services? The same people we grew up with and were brought up on the same values. Why everyone who is unhappy about something and raises the topic that the country is full of injustice is declared an agent of the West and an enemy of the people?

Once upon a time, for general development, I read the Phagavat Gitta and all I see is that the Kali South predicted there is what surrounds us now. A great country mired in lies, deceit, theft and substitution of values. Huge lands are empty, the environment is destroyed, the economy is collapsing, the people are mired in the vice of money because of poverty, and the money belongs to the unprincipled and corrupt. A nation of winners has become a nation of invaders and aggressors for the whole world! Apparently, now is the time when the people are responsible for the consequences of their inaction and indifference. Degraded all sectors of the state - the ministry of defense, health, education, judicial system, agriculture, manufacturing and industry, space industry, defense industry, sports, culture, devalued the status of citizens and flooded the country with immigrants ... And this isn't what I was told on the Internet, this is what I see every day and everywhere.

The people in power themselves haven't served in the army and they don't understand what it means to be ready to sacrifice your life and health for the country for a penny salary, they don't understand what it means to live on 30-50 thousand rubles a month, when you can barely afford to spend it, the only thing that motivates you is patriotism, which seems to be absent in people long ago, but being at war, You think of your great ancestors, those who gave their lives for us to live in the greatest country in the world, destroying the strongest conquerors in the world like the Tartar Mongols, Napoleonic France or Hitler's Germany, great ancestors who, at the cost of their blood, gave us the opportunity to possess the greatest amount of natural resources in the world. Not so long ago we were considered the most educated nation in the world, the strongest army in the world and one of the greatest cultures in the world, why are veterans dying in poverty in my country, why have we forgotten who we are? Why has the whole world begun to laugh at us and hate us? Why have we fallen so low in every sphere? Why are we now in Ukraine with guns, because our roots are from Kiev, a thousand years ago our ancestors came out from there and created a great country?! Why should I along with these guys around me perish now, probably like thousands before me in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Dagestan, Yugoslavia, Karabakh, Georgia, Syria and many other regions, because the vast majority of the country will not remember about us when we are gone, there will be no men ready to give the most valuable thing a man has - his life and health, ready to give it for their country. We have no idea what's going on and why the orders came to go there or to seize something, we are in an unknown place, doing an unknown thing, while you, recording videos on YouTube that you are ashamed to be Russian, while you, very likely a conscientious objector of the army, living in a great country, speaking the richest language, instead of having the courage to go out and protest in the streets of your city, you run away from the country or anonymously write on the Internet that you are ashamed to be Russian or "glory to Ukraine", "death to Putin's army". Putin's army is the army of the Russian Federation and if you have a passport of a Russian citizen, it is your army, if you are not happy with what it is doing, then say so and demand its withdrawal from the government, while you have no time to take interest in politics, which with the tacit consent of Russian citizens, has completely disconnected from reality. While you were writing this, people like me were preparing to die, worrying that everything would be okay in Russia, many have died or have already been maimed, with thoughts of worry and not understanding what is happening in Russia, whether my home and my loved ones are safe. I'll tell you a secret - the majority of people in the army are not happy with what is going on there, they are not happy with the government and their command, they are not happy with Putin and his policies, and they are not happy with the Minister of Defense, who never served in the army and does not understand anything about it, just like you do, I, as a serviceman, am facing from seven to life in prison for writing this, and possibly death by some crazy "comrade" who believes I am a traitor who blasphemes against our army.

I do not know how to convey to the millions of biomass with Russian passports that we ourselves are to blame for everything that is happening, we are all to blame for the deaths of citizens of Russia and Ukraine, you are a citizen of Russia, aren't you? Didn't you say that nothing depends on you during the elections? You didn't go to the elections, did you? Did you bribe traffic cops? Did you buy your university degree? Did you know that all institutions that form the government, such as police, courts, healthcare, and education, are rotten away in this country, and that the army is the most important and complicated institution of the government. All of us, millions of citizens have watched indifferently while our country was falling apart all these years, but if you don't understand that, you'd better jump out the window. In my opinion, people who are not interested in their country and its politics should be deprived of the right to vote. The country is full of people who know nothing about it, no history, no geography, no political system, people who gave nothing to the country and are unwilling to do anything, people whose indifference is what started it all ...

But such "citizens" also often like to talk about "politics", saying "We can do it again" (go ahead and do it again! Why aren't you on the front lines yet? ) or "Navalny is a fag, I'm sure he's an agent of the West," (I don't give a shit whose agent he is, you were given the rundown on which official stole how much (from you and me) and instead of demanding that the entire country conduct a transparent investigation and punish or acquit them, we did nothing, we do not want to be citizens of our country, I see that we behave and live like plebs. ... No wonder there are unprincipled people who have usurped power in the country and elevated themselves to the absolute, because plebeians are not willing to make decisions and take risks, they will be decided for them and their opinion will not be asked. It feels like serfdom has remained in the subcortex of the population. This entire crowd cannot unite on any issue. People are so diverse and carry Russian passports that it is impossible to unite them on any initiative for the common good. Some yell that they are ashamed to be Russian and whine about it to the whole world, sitting in comfort and warmth, ashamed to be Russian? So kill yourself, motherfucker! Ashamed because of the war? Then go and get the authorities to end the war! Why are you embarrassing the whole nation with your whining to the world? You're a citizen of the Russian Federation, you have the right to express your views, but before you do so, read at least the Wikipedia article on the subject you're going to talk about! Others yell that we are a great country and the whole world wants to destroy us, but they don't want to do anything for it, they don't want to be citizens of their country, they don't want to influence the politics inside it, they don't want anything, by gluing these Z's to the window of your imported car, you thought that you have contributed to the victory? Or have you forgotten how soldiers in Chechnya and Afghanistan said war was terrible, so show me even one man who kept his sanity after the war and said he wanted more! They go back there to make money or because they are ashamed of being safe while most are there, they are influenced through feelings of patriotism, comradeship and duty. But is patriotism about being willing to destroy a neighboring state rather than love of one's country? Why put an equal between love of country and love of government?

But the vast majority of people in the country are in a tricky position of waiting, "house on the fucking edge", they're not happy with all this and understand that things are getting worse and worse, but they do nothing, let the others poke around, I will sit and see who will win, "idiots who are ashamed to be Russian" or "rabid with the letter Z on the car window", I will join those who will win. Usually these "citizens" make arguments that nothing depends on them, or "I have a family, children", so it's "You have children!", I do not understand you at all, you want them to live in such a surreal country?! What kind of future do you wish for them?! Every year the country falls to the bottom of the world more and more rapidly!

How many times in my life I have heard about the greatness of our army from various people who have never even been there, but when I tried to explain them something, I heard only a set of stereotypes from propaganda and they could not think about the fact that our army is in decline, hearing any arguments. There is another category of people, even more dangerous, those who are in this army, those who, seeing all the mess from inside, lie to themselves and everyone around them that everything is not so bad. They have different motives, not much left until retirement, big stars on their shoulders for the sake of which he has been shoving his common sense all his life and tolerating for so many years anything, just to advance in his career in this rotten system. Now all these people see that while they shoved their tongue up their ass, the army was disintegrated to the point that it was not even capable of coping with the Ukrainian army. What America or China are we talking about? Ask Ukrainians how much they like the presence of a foreign army, and not those who are "ashamed to be Russian", not those who "wanted to repeat", the presence of a foreign army in our country will not like in this case you will immediately regret your criminal inaction, but it will be too late.

I'm so sick and tired of watching the escalating madness in my country over the years that I just don't care anymore. Put him away for life, I don't want to see it all.

I'm not a slave! I'm not a coward! I'm a patriot! I'm sorry for my fate! I'm sorry for the Ukrainian people, my brotherly people! But even more, I am sorry for the used Russian people, the peoples of the great USSR, people who were used by others, but more unprincipled, ruining the biggest and greatest country in the world! My great-grandfather fought for this country, and he was dispossessed and exiled to Siberia! My father left early, giving his health to this country, and in return he could not get normal medical care! I, like many others who came from the war in Ukraine, cannot get normal medical care and have to be treated and buy medicine at my own expense. Who else believes in justice and guarantees in this country?

I understand that my name, this system is going to shit all over what I have written here and put me away forever in the farthest prison. But nevertheless I can't keep quiet:

I'm not a coward and never have been. I am not happy with what is happening in my country. If I come from a war and have no right to say "No to War!", who does? No one? Isn't this a sign that serfdom is back in the country?

I was brought up on the exploits of the Russian people over the invaders! I was not taught, not by my parents, not in military school, not in the institute, not in the army to be an invader! We Russians are not murderers of children, women and old people! They are trying to turn us into some kind of fighters. Most of those who are at war now are dragged there by deception, blackmail or need. The system has set it up so that many of the military can't leave because of mortgages, impending pensions or trivial financial need. Some do not want to be cowards, but there are hardly many who are fighting ideologically. Most do not want war and are not morons who believe in Nazis and want to kill everyone. Most of the people there are just like you, who want peace, who want to go home to their families and loved ones. Who also like Ukrainian soldiers do not want to die and like ours do not want to kill everyone. I do not know any personal case of one of our soldiers abusing people or raping women, of course I cannot speak for the whole army.

Here's one case I know of, a guy from my regiment, the Ukrainian media on all channels accused his wife of allowing him to rape Ukrainian women. He was stupid enough to call his wife from the front line, eventually they recorded his conversation and made a cut of it, making it look like she allows him to rape Ukrainian women and they laugh about it together. This is a lie, this guy was almost always in front of me and the places we were in did not imply female presence.

Where did he rape them there? Who was he raping there? In the column? In the trench? In Kherson, on the streets of which there was almost no one at the time of the assault? Everywhere we were, there were almost no civilians, and most of the time they avoided us as far as possible. Even if someone was going to rape someone, I have no doubt that his comrades would have shot him in the leg. This is a blatant lie, this particular case has been turned upside down, a competent slicing of the conversation has been done. The media on both our sides is just pouring lies to set us up to kill each other as fiercely as possible, and we like fools believe everything and rejoice at the new portion of crap being thrown at us like fans. Again, of course I can't vouch for the whole army. Just as no one adequate in the AFU can vouch for their entire army. Does anyone have any doubt that there were also those in the AFU who did not deny themselves looting, considering it their trophies? The worst thing is that children are dying under the fire of artillery, aircraft and missiles! Our Slavic children! We Slavs are very few in the world as it is! But do you believe that an evil Russian soldier, deliberately points guns at them? He was given coordinates, he has no idea where he is shooting at, he was told there is an enemy, of course, this is no excuse, but you should not turn everybody into animal and murderer. The main enemy of both Russians and Ukrainians is propaganda, it only fuels hatred in people even more.

I don't want to justify anyone, but if we don't understand that our madness with a shroud of hatred in our eyes from crazy propaganda of destruction of each other, if we Slavs don't calm down and sober up from hatred, then we simply won't exist, not Ukraine, not Russia.

Hate and murder will exterminate us, we must reach out to each other.

I fought in Ukraine, if I don't have the right to say "no to war". then who has the right to start it? I can't bring our army home, but I can tell my experiences and my thoughts about participating in this war and urge my fellow citizens to deal with their country which has so many problems of its own. Who put an equal between supporting the government's decision to go to war and supporting their army to execute this crap? Despite all the injustice to me, I still love my army and will not forget the deaths of my comrades, most often young ones, those who are willing to sacrifice themselves for their country. I can even find an excuse for a government which is disconnected from reality because the people are afraid and don't want to express their position and influence policy. It is a vicious circle, we are all guilty, but conclusions must be made, it is necessary to begin to correct our fall. Where is the breadth of the Russian soul? Where is our nobility and spirituality? I cannot believe that we have once again become serfs, and in fact our ancestors spilled so much of their own blood for the sake of freedom. Probably it will not change anything, but I will not participate in this madness. Morally it would be easier if Ukraine attacked us, but the truth is that we got there and the Ukrainians didn't call us. I find it very suspicious that the army has been systematically disintegrated, convincing the population through TV of the opposite, despite the fact that millions of men who used to serve know and saw that the army is disintegrating. At the same time we were told that our main enemy was NATO and Ukraine. And as a result, they are starting a real war after the army has collapsed.

I understand that this gesture of peace will cost me dearly, but I cannot shut up my conscience. Surely a "fair" court will give me up to life in prison, tell me that I was bought and am an agent of the West, but I can no longer look at all this in silence. I wasn't scared in the war in Ukraine, I was endlessly offended by the fact that I can't change anything. But for some reason I'm afraid to publish this text in my country, to voice what I think, because here you can no longer tell the truth and what you think, here you can't stand up for your legal rights, here you can only go to war to die for goals that have never been formed or survive for a happy future of the country, which is constantly running away from us, for some reason, further and further.

NO WAR!!!

Ha my last breath Ko God appeared to me.

And he said to me: Shame on what you've become!

And the devil followed him, scattering the acrid smoke, He gave me a moral to tell me He had nothing to do with it.

I'm confused, where's the truth and where's the lie?

What you sow is what you'll end up reaping!

I'm alone, I stand at the gate

On the other side of heaven, called hell On the other side of heaven, called, called hell

Today God said, I am ashamed of what you have become My lost son.

I agree with him

And the devil took off his mask And lifted up his face

He looked like me

And I only looked away

I'm confused, where's the truth and the lie?

What you sow, you'll reap!

I am alone, I stand at the gate

From the backside of heaven, called hell From the backside of heaven,

Called, called hell

I sink, I descend,

No regrets at all

Lower and lower, every day

I'm getting closer every day

My finale, my finale, finale, finale, finale, finale Getting closer every day

I'm confused, where's the truth and where's the lie?

What you sow is what you'll reap!

I'm alone, I stand at the gate

On the other side of heaven, called hell On the other side of heaven, called hell On the other side of heaven,

♪ Called, called hell ♪