EIGHT YEARS WITH WAGNER

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Translated from Russian to English - www.onlinedoctranslator.com

Annotation This book contains the most striking stories and interviews with fighters of the Wagner PMC, collected by Kirill Romanovsky during his business trips from 2015 to 2022.

Kirill Romanovsky Editorial Preface Colleagues about Kirill Romanovsky WE ARE BETTER THAN THEY WE ARE RUSSIANS, NOT THE FRENCH Relations with MINUSCA Mongoose named Mashka Russian culture in the Central African Republic

THE WORST BATTLE

History will sort it out

The missed "Bardak" and the crumpled "Ural" The Americans raised all their aircraft DOCTORS ARE SCARY PEOPLE

“Sabotage is a form of sabotage” “We walked past your teeth for a long time” FORTY VS FOUR HUNDRED Afternoon battle in sunflowers The subtleties of an assault with heavy weapons “You took Grozny, go ahead!” How an ordinary soldier was mistaken for the main Tochka-U

One against twelve How prisoners of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were treated WATER FROM THE EUPHRATES

Assault on Mazlum

Night massacre cotton field

“Commander’s Day” (platoon commander’s story) “Commander’s Day” (machine gunner’s story) THE FIRST “MUSICIANS”

“We are not American PMCs, we have an idea” “This kind of work is like a lifeline” "Big family" "Men's interests" “A hero is one who goes and fulfills his task” Entry under artillery

HOW THE SYRIANS AND THE FATIMIDS FIGHTED "Nightlight" at the heights

Height 989 How to spot a howitzer SHOOT AND THEN ASKED Their

PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW BRAKES The first “meat grinder” battle Fortified area of spirits. The story of Viktor Blinov Ridges beyond Shair Karabine Mountain

About ISIS Palmyra tiger Airport Machine gun duel Stone mine Dragon LIPETSK Rotation of spirits and the theft of the gate that did not happen Daring Turkish infantry fighting vehicle

Roof in shanks

Rubilovo with “special forces” of militants Death of a friend and the difficulties of war Escape from the hospital

Mortars and fireworks

How the enemy worked The influence of hashish on combat operations. Circles from enemy shots. A testing ground for experiments.

“DANGER IS NOW OUR JOB”

"4th generation secret device" UNCLE, WILL YOU GO TO WAR WITH US TOMORROW? OIL Trenches Oil trench

Four in the "slides"

TWENTY-EIGHT "WAGNER" “We are not interested in money” Cleanup

HOW TO TRAIN AFRICAN SOLDIERS The language barrier

Preliminary results of the work THE BOYS TOOK GRENADES TO EXPLODE themselves AND NOT BE CAPTURED WE WERE RECOGNIZED AS A FORCE Ambush at Bambari

MINUSCA cooperation with militants MEETING PLACE Most memorable moment

Kirill Romanovsky EIGHT YEARS WITH WAGNER FROM THE AUTHOR

Over the years, I have worked in hot spots and met many of the greatest warriors of our time. Many of them wrote the history of great Russia with their blood. I bequeath these stories to be published after my death. Let only the truth remain in them. Kirill Romanovsky "Eight years with Wagner"

Editorial Preface Through the storms and fire of military conflicts of recent years, through the waste heaps of Donbass, the deserts of Syria and the impenetrable African jungles, the Russian man walked with a wide gait. Together with his comrades in arms - Russian soldiers, veterans of hot spots - he brings peace, order and justice to those places where the very concept of humanity has been lost. Popular rumor has retained different names for this group of warriors - the battalion-tactical group “Wagner”, PMC “Wagner”, or simply “musicians”. And all these years, along with the military specialists, there was one more person - not with a weapon, but with a camera. And if the fighters of the Wagner PMC entered their names into the military chronicle of Russia, then, of course, the very book of the military exploits of the Wagnerites was written by this very person. His name was Kirill Romanovsky.

Kirill had the extraordinary qualities of a military journalist operating on the front line. He made his way to the very edge of the fighting in Aleppo, Palmyra and Deir ez-Zor. Together with the assault troops, Kirill entered Debaltseve and took cover from the fire of Ukrainian snipers. On the front line, Romanovsky stood steadfastly with the Wagnerites under mortar fire, when mines exploded literally a few meters from the positions, and received shell shock and wounds. During his business trips, Kirill recorded his conversations with soldiers of the Wagner PMC. He managed to collect more than two thousand pages of typewritten text, which contains stories of the military exploits of the “Wagnerites” on the near and far frontiers. This book contains the most striking stories and interviews with fighters of the Wagner PMC, collected by Kirill Romanovsky during his business trips from 2015 to 2022.

Kirill Romanovsky was a bright and extraordinary person, easy to communicate with, a reliable and loyal comrade. Unfortunately, Kirill's last fight turned out to be the hardest. On the night of January 4, 2023, Kirill Romanovsky died.

He worked until very recently and, shortly before his death, systematized the collected materials and wrote a few lines “from the author,” but did not manage to publish this book himself. Therefore, we, his friends and colleagues, are releasing it in memory of Kirill.

Colleagues about Kirill Romanovsky “We were at the Liwa al-Quds Force positions in Aleppo. We sat near the observation post where they held the defense. Kiryukha decided to record a stand-up comedy, stood in front of the camera, and during one of the filmings it flew next to us. Everything around began to crumble and collapse, but neither he nor we somehow even blinked an eye. They just laughed. He then came up to me and asked: “Well, shall we leave this moment for reporting then?”, and I told him: “Well, yes, it turned out cool.” We then sat in the cafe. He is a guy with humor, he told different stories. He often joked, smiled, and did not lose heart.”

Oleg Blokhin.

*** “We saw each other briefly in Syria, and once sat over a drink in St. Petersburg. I remember then that he did a lot of things, “like the last time.” Nothing has ruined the term “military correspondent” more than the advertising of the Finnish people of the NKVD, etc. Romanovsky was as far from informational gypsyism as possible and always wrote about something of his own. This was read behind the lines of the most “combat” reports. The memory and creative legacy of Kirill should be preserved. And the best thing is to combine and publish.”

"Midshipman Ptichkin."

*** “We met back in 2015. I was still learning the basics of militarypolitical journalism, and by that time Cyrus had already skated in the Donbass. He literally smelled of gunpowder when he first walked into our editorial office - literally opening the door with his feet and greeting “Inshallah, Orthodox!”

Cyrus was the bravest military commander I knew. Not everyone will be ready to crawl under militant bullets in order to pull the Syrian military out from under fire. Cyrus was in several big troubles - and always returned alive. From one such trip, he brought me as a gift a piece of a mine that fell literally a couple of meters from him.” Commissioner Yarrick

WE ARE BETTER THAN THEY ARE US From the storming of Popasnaya I remember our first combat mission, as soon as we were brought to Ukraine. We began to enter Popasnaya from one end; one part of the city was already occupied. And we wanted to cut off the enemy from the other edge, where there was a fortified area with underground tunnels in which the enemy was located. This was probably the most difficult task, in which I lost a lot of guys with whom I had lived together for a very long time and carried out combat missions. Fortunately, not everyone died, many were injured. We stormed an enemy fortified area in an open area, it was a very memorable day, because most of the people with whom I worked for six months, three months, are knocked out of action, and you don’t understand which team you will continue to work with, because our detachment was practically reassembled from scratch . As a result, we rolled away from this fortification and began to enter from the other side - this time more successfully.

We were hit by artillery from three sides, I worked mainly on the AGS. I took direct fire and worked at the enemy at height. I watched how our guys, ordinary shooters, were in the trenches, and an enemy quadcopter was simply hovering above them, which then was not possible to shoot down. We had just entered the country and counterbattery work had not yet been established. The bird hovers over our guys and immediately begins to unwind them with mortars, cannon artillery, 122-152 caliber. There were a lot of losses in a short period of time, it was the most memorable battle. And then there was an assault on Popasnaya itself, they took new lines of houses and moved forward. There were losses, but not so significant. All the guys distinguished themselves well, without exaggeration. Then there was a team like this, guys who had been working together for a long time, who had three or four conflicts behind them. Maybe there was someone who wanted to hide, but I personally didn’t see them. All the guys were perfect. I remember the moment, we were helping another platoon work, when the platoon commander Mora comes out on air in a whisper and says that there is a huge amount of dill around him. I worked directly for the AGS,

about a kilometer away. And so the artillery work begins, I am with the AGS, another colleague of mine from another AGS helped to work. And all the dill then got hit in the teeth and were forced to roll back. Another moment I remember was when there were many wounded. It was a very difficult night; it took 10–12 hours to get the wounded out, but it was not possible to get them out. The relationship between the guys is brotherly, and every minute you think whether we can get them out or not. But we got everyone out. It has never happened that we left our soldiers dead or wounded. It is a great honor for everyone to pull out the body of a comrade in arms. There is no such thing as in dill - here bodies are lying everywhere, no one takes them or even asks for them. We worked quite closely with the Ministry of Defense then, next to the Marines. We held one flank, they held the other and moved together. That is, the Ministry of Defense was directly involved in the capture of Popasnaya, but in terms of the number of people, at least what I saw, there were much more office guys than from the Ministry of Defense. There was this regiment that moved with us, and everyone else was somewhere on hold. And if I was not in the very center of the action, but a kilometer away from the enemy, then the military was behind me.

At that time, cooperation with army artillery was not very well established. But when we asked, they helped us with artillery. However, there was a very limited supply of ammunition. Even my AGS received 3 zinc grenades per day. This is enough for half an hour for a tight battle to extinguish the enemy and force them to run away, as we are doing now. And this is my supply for the day! Our mortar guys also helped, but they also had limited ammunition consumption, which made the work difficult.

*** I have been with the company since the summer of 2020. Back in 2017, I worked in the Syrian Arab Republic on behalf of the federal forces, where I met the company, worked together, stood near Deir ez-Zor with our office artillerymen. And I just liked how the company works, the level of interaction within, between employees.

It doesn’t matter: a commander or a subordinate - everyone is equal, everything is built on mutual respect. Still, there is no such thing in the army.

Even though my battalion commander was good, everything is still done there differently: I’m the boss, you’re a fool. And the company doesn’t have stupid rules like sleeping in a bulletproof vest if it’s really not necessary. Walk only in shoes. In Syria we wore helmets, shoes and bulletproof vests. It seems like this is our safety, but when it’s +30 - +40, you want to remove the whole thing. And if the company could put on slippers and relax, then we are wearing these helmets and body armor around the clock, I didn’t really like it. Then I found out about the company, but I was 20 years old and then they didn’t hire me because of my age.

I waited until I could get a job, and at the age of 23 I was hired as a specialist. We are fighting for the interests of the Russian Federation. I have always protected them. I’m not a politician, I don’t even know 20% of the reliable information. What Putin, Biden, Zelensky are agreeing on there is incomprehensible information for the average person. Right here I am fighting for the interests of our people and state. We are better at them than they are at us.

WE ARE RUSSIANS, NOT FRENCH Initially, in the Central African Republic, we began, of course, training the army corps. Their army was in very poor condition. We can say that they have practically no army left. When we arrived in the CAR, only 15% of the country was under the rule of President Touadera. In my experience. Now the state controls most of it, there are military bases. And this, first of all, is all thanks to us. When I gave an interview to UN press secretaries in Bambari, I referred to the fact that we are helping the legitimate president of the country, who turned to our president for help. At the same time, I discovered the shadow side of MINUSCA, the UN peacekeeping force. Like, you at the UN know how many of us came to the Central African Republic (I won’t announce the numbers) but there’s a full contingent of you here, you’ve been here since ’13. Question: have any of you woodpeckers put things in order here? I then listed what I specifically know, that you are transporting sex slaves from refugee camps, diamonds, gold, and weapons on UN ships. They were very terribly surprised by this. I say: “Well, dig deeper, and at every UN base you will find a person who knows that this is happening.” It’s hard to say about first impressions because it was a tough flight and it took quite a long time to get there. When I unloaded from the plane into the Ural, about 30 people were packed. Everyone started smoking at once, and the road was so difficult. We arrived at night and settled down. But it was unusual - people of the Negroid race, a lot of them, I haven’t seen so many of them at once. We arrived in Bangui, and by the port we also went at night to Berengo - a training camp. I was an instructor there for two months, and then they started throwing us around the bases. Well, it’s ok, I drove around the whole Central African Republic, I can say that it is a beautiful country.

Then the base on Bree had already begun to open, and we were sent on our first trip overland - to bring water and food. When we drove past Sebut, the UN sheep stopped us and, asking where we were going, twirled their finger at our temples.

- Where are you going? - they tell us. — We go there in 20 cars, 5 of them are armored cars - and we are being robbed. Are you driving two Urals?

“I have orders,” I answer.

Let's go there. We reached the first Seleka checkpoint - they all surrounded us there. There were 8 of us in total - and these were standing around, with guns, huddling together.

- Do you have a paper from our general? - they ask us. —

About the fact that you are allowed to travel.

I had a translator - Manas. He was a legionnaire, so he spoke French very well. I tell him: — Ask the elder, will such a paper suit him? Asked machine gunner on the roof - pull the bolt. He pulled the shutter, I said: — Will this paper suit you? - I say. The guy went nuts from this turn of events, stared at me in confusion, and couldn’t utter a word. “Remember,” I tell him, “we are Russians, not French.” Therefore, if you start a war at this checkpoint, then no one will leave alive. We will be here until the last. None of us will give up guns, equipment, or food. None of you will leave alive. Then this main “Selek member” had a fight with his people and said well, to hell with you Russians, I’d better not mess with you.

Relations with MINUSCA The relationship with MINUSCA was strange. There is little heroic in them. More precisely, there is nothing in anyone at all. Except for the Portuguese. I don’t consider everyone else to be soldiers. They were ready to stick a knife in our back at any moment - constantly, no matter where we were. I built a base in Bangassou, built a base in Baua, built a base in Bakaranga, built a base in Bouar - everywhere MINUSCA put a spoke in our wheels. Everywhere I had to fight my way through problems, through failures. You can't cook porridge properly with UN sheep.

A typical story - they always claim that we have no right to travel anywhere without UN accompaniment. I say - okay, let's escort, we'll go somewhere, we need to look around, look around, reconnoiter, and so on. We have orders from management. And they constantly delayed it all. As a result, when I had already acquired some connections with the locals there, they began to report to me that on the road, say, from Bouar to Bakaranga, Seleka ambushes were set up. And the information could not come from sources other than MINUSCA. But we still went to Bakaranga - we opened a base there and drove out the barmalei. A day before our arrival in Bakaranga, the militants were still collecting tribute from the locals: they walked around the market, took any women they liked, collected money from businessmen and terrorized populated areas.

On Bouar I went all out. When I arrived there, the base already existed, there were people, but it was not completed. And I’m used to doing everything for myself on the spot - accordingly, I made a base for myself, got in touch with local peacekeepers from MINUSCA, got in touch with the governor, with local businesses, with local criminals. Almost immediately after arriving, local smugglers came after me. I refused them - they asked me to accompany them to risk areas. They say they transport goods across the border and asked them to protect them for money. Theoretically, I had such an opportunity - I had transport, armed people. I refused them - and offered another

scheme: we can have mutual cooperation if you help me with information. According to UN-sheep. We often turned to the Peruvians for help we did not have a dentist, but the Peruvians had one, the only dentist in all of MINUSCA. I then met their commander, gave him a case of beer, and asked for help with the dentist. He allowed the Russians to use their dentist. I took all the boys who were at my base - they all had their teeth fixed and their fillings filled. The trouble is that in the Central African Republic, teeth are falling apart because of the local water. Well, it so happened that we became friends with the Peruvians. They came to our volleyball base all the time to play. They even visited our bathhouse a couple of times - they wondered what kind of Russian bathhouse it was. This is about the Peruvians. We also met the commandant of their base - from Bangladesh. It was like this: when they were making a shooting range for MINUSCA, not far from our base, they simply asked us to stand guard. The boys stood there with the permission of the management - they just sat on the chip for four days while they leveled the area for the shooting range. As a result, we had an interaction, and in the future we also used this training shooting range. We communicated with the general several times and became good friends with him. Thanks to this constant communication, I began to understand French and English quite well. You may not speak, but at least understand what they tell you. It’s one thing when you speak with a translator, and quite another when you constantly communicate with a native speaker yourself. While we were there, we also had to learn sango. 260 words - I couldn’t find more from them, they replace the rest with French words. I taught him specifically to communicate with the locals. For the most part, we were engaged in economic activities there. Well, I'm an active person, so I started making contacts with different people.

Modernity and the Stone Age. Before leaving for the CAR, while still at home, I studied this country quite well on YouTube and articles on the Internet. And that's why for me it's not

It came as a surprise that in the Central African Republic the 21st century is adjacent to the Stone Age. But I admit, this is actually the first time in my life that I have seen this. In Syria, for example, this is not the case. Before that, I had never traveled abroad, because I simply had no time - I was minding my own business and had no desire to go either to Egypt or Turkey. But having visited Africa, specifically the Central African Republic, I saw this juxtaposition modernity with the Stone Age.

The people here are very lazy, in fact. Natural conditions allow them to be lazy, that’s why they live like that. They have nothing to strive for. Plus, the colonial policy of the French is still very much felt.

Housing, food preparation, methods of obtaining food. They still engage in hunting and gathering. Not even farming, but gathering! Natural Stone Age. What kind of tools do they have? Every second one has an almost wooden hoe or a digging stick. So, one wonders, why do they have a fun funeral? I thought it was nonsense, some kind of legend, like how in America they played jazz at funerals. And when I saw the funeral in the Central African Republic, I realized that their funerals were better than our weddings.

I came to Bakarang to watch this ceremony. They place the deceased in a coffin for the night - and all night long 200-300 people around him dance, drink, bring him a cup, pour wine, whiskey, beer on the corpse. The coffin is completely furnished with bottles. Whoever wanted to show off the most, let’s say, brought an expensive bottle of whiskey for 40-50 thousand francs and placed it near the coffin. And all night they beat drums, tom-toms, and primitive dances dance around him. That is, they seem to be having fun.

- Why are you having fun? - I ask one guy

local. — We, in Russia, have such a custom that people mourn when a person dies. It's a pity. - But with us it’s the other way around. We're all having fun because he's gone to another world. He will be better there. And here he has already suffered.

- How old was he? - Forty nine.

- Not a damn thing! It turns out that he is 7 years older than me, and you

Are you glad he died?

- Yes, he suffered, you don’t understand, he will be better there! That is, this is the attitude. Well, in the morning, when I went for a run at half past seven, I was just running past this place. All 200-300 bodies around the coffin lie side by side, drunk in the trash. They began to get up only at half past eight, to leave the funeral. Only a small funeral procession took this coffin to the cemetery and buried it. The most important thing for them is goodbye. Some funerals are such that the whole village boozes for three days - saying goodbye. Everyone brings booze, lamb, goat meat, fry it on the spot, steam something, boil this cassava - and have fun. Because a person died and went into another world. It’s dangerous to get involved with them, there are a lot of diseases, their medicine, roughly speaking, is not developed at all, there is unsanitary conditions. Even when we were stationed at hospitals, there were cases there.

Well, there was a young girl, she was not yet 20, who came and had a small cut on her finger. They processed it, rewound it, bandaged it and told her to come back for a dressing in two days. She came only two weeks later, when the finger had to be amputated - infection had started. As a result, her finger was amputated. And all because she did not go to him for a dressing, but to a local shaman. And naturally the shaman told her that she shouldn’t go to the white demons. And they have a lot of such cases when they first turn to a shaman, and when magic no longer helps and everything gets worse, and because of trivial cases, they turn to our doctors. When it's too late. Well, in general, it’s sad when this happens to children.

Their relationships in society are also something with something. The attitude towards life itself is different. They give birth a lot because they die a lot and die very quickly. There was an example in Bangassou. A neighbor boy came running to us, who was just cleaning up our yard for plastic bottles - he said that his neighbor’s child was dying of malaria, they say, can you help with pills? Well, we had pills - let him carry it. The mother eventually brought the body of the child - he was 4 or 5 months old. — When did malaria start? The guy came running quickly, 20 minutes ago.

- Four days ago.

This once again speaks about the attitude even towards your full-term children. For four days the child was burning with fever, his bones, which had not yet formed, were broken from malaria, he was screaming like crazy - and his mother didn’t even think that he could get pills somewhere! There are missionary organizations there, such as Doctors Without Borders, plus we were literally standing next to each other, 300 meters away! This is their attitude towards life and death. This is how they treat everyone else, the people around them. For them, death is, on the contrary, deliverance from the hardships and deprivations of this world.

Mongoose named Mashka In the Central African Republic, many people got pets, and many got into mischief. The commander lived with the mongoose Mashka, he was a nasty little animal. The only ones she didn’t bite were the commander and me. She bit the rest, she constantly gnawed local Africans, especially if she was a little annoyed, if she saw someone in slippers. Healthy men ran away from her because she bit hard, bit through and was quite painful. We found Masha small and was dragged in by local residents. They quite often bring monkeys and other animals and sell them. Well, guys mostly take and have pets. Well, the mongoose lived for a long time, then ran away to the market. She didn’t come back, but she lived with us for quite a long time and grew up. The boys took her when she was little, went out, then left, and when the commander left, after the guys who remained, they say she ran away to the market and did not return. And so I walked with them the entire business trip, 7 or even 8 months, well, such a cool little animal was. Others got dogs or monkeys, but they did not get along with anyone, and the dogs ran away. Masha somehow found a nest of snakes, there were still worms there, apparently they had just crawled out, and she tousled them. And I haven’t seen it deal with an adult, large snake. Well, the locals try to mow the grass in the places where they live and trample the ground. In many settlements, they don’t just remove the grass, they remove it along with the soil and the turf, so that there is bare ground and there are no snakes.

Russian culture in the Central African Republic

The Central African Republic is a wild country. Our platoon there showed them our Russian culture so that the local population loved us more than FACA, the UN and others. When we celebrated the New Year, we were given permission to fire one rocket launcher into the air, like a fireworks display, and one magazine of tracers. The UN sheep got scared, came running, “Urus, are you having a fight here?”, and the locals surrounded us and danced joyfully around us. This is the attitude. Only we could afford this. We got sick with the paint job a lot... It’s +50 degrees outside, but the paint job “warms” you up to 40 degrees. You lie in your sleeping bag, sweat, and feel cold. Some had immunity, while others went to the toilet and lost consciousness right there - they were already brought back. But after three months we felt as if we were born there. They have already eaten snakes, fried them with onions, and they taste like pollock fish. The local population helped when they gave us gifts for the New Year - we gave candy to the local children. We went for water - they immediately had to wash their clothes, they came out to look at us. We gave them empty bottles, they needed them. They respected us; if you ask for help, they will do it. And we respected them too: for example, if they had a holiday all over the street, and we were driving, we stopped, did not honk at them, but on the contrary, as a sign of respect, we waited and admired their parade. And in such situations, the Fakavians honked and dispersed. So we showed our culture. Or here's an example. We go for water - and they have a funeral. We are about a hundred meters behind, we reduce the speed, and let people finish their ceremony and route. This showed them that we are kind and ready to help. There were two girls there in the third grade, they had seven children in their family, and there wasn’t enough food for everyone. Well, my partner and I always invited them to eat with us. They sat us down at the table. For the local army men, this was incomprehensible how can a white man seat local children at the same table with him?

There was one little boy, we called him Tyson. We met him, he was dirty, his clothes were all torn. They took him, went to the market, and dressed him in a tracksuit. Or, when they were too lazy to do the laundry themselves, they brought things to the locals and paid them a thousand local francs. This is their salary for a full working day, but here they earned it in an hour

so many. And when they started leaving, when they found out, they cried. No matter how we came, sometimes with chocolate, sometimes with canned food, we understood that it was difficult for them, we helped them, and treated them with respect. So they said goodbye to us with tears in their eyes. This is what I remember about CAR.

THE WORST BATTLE In January we were brought to Khsham, we were distributed throughout the village and prepared for the attack. On the night from the 7th to the 8th, we formed a column on one of the streets - we didn’t move anywhere, we stood and waited for the command. And at this moment the grenade launcher, my comrade Sasha, hears and sees how the sky is marked with stripes and flashes, like Bengal ones. The command to bend down sounds. Everyone lies down, and Sasha, like an ostrich, bends down - and his butt sticks out in the direction of the rocket’s arrival. We Sasha: - Sasha, what kind of pose is that? As it turned out later, these stripes and flashes were the work of the Apache, which was hammering at the artillery. That is, it was already working - but we thought that it was ours who were working: before that we were told that there would be support from our artillery. We hear a plane flying. We think: “This is definitely ours.” And at that moment, two arrivals came from the plane - at the head and tail of the column. The first car was pierced right through, but those behind us had already realized what was happening and jumped off the vehicle for cover.

We all got out of the cars - and then it began. First, the column was completely shot through. It lasted a long time - from half past twelve to four in the morning. They did not fly beyond the demarcation line - beyond the railway, which ran immediately beyond Khsham. To be honest, we were lucky that they worked from their territory: if the Americans had flown behind the “piece of iron,” then probably no one would have come out alive. We went to the village, but they were already afraid to work in the village. And the plane we heard was a fighter, because the speed was high. There was also a drone and two Apaches. As we left the column, the Apaches arrived and began to hammer in turns: one works, the second circles around, then they change. They worked at the mill. The spectacle is terrible. On the left our squad is sticking out in the field - they have nowhere to go. When we got out on the road, there were two more arrivals. Apparently, one of the “Apaches” loves us Russians very much - he finally entered our territory through the railroad, fired into our crowd and “killed two hundred” a machine gunner, an assistant machine gunner and a grenade launcher. And those guys who found themselves in the field were literally shot point-blank by the Apache. You can’t even call it a fight—just a meat grinder.

We had an ancient tank in our column - I don’t even know what kind of tank it was. The Apache pilot probably looked at it and thought that this was a monument - and did not waste missiles on it. And the tank driver did a great job, he brought the car out and also helped the car get out of the ditch, pulled it out. Although for a helicopter a tank is the primary target, the Apache did not shoot. But, for example, the T-72 was knocked out immediately. The most terrible fight. It's nothing you can do.

History will sort it out At night the spirits began to fire at us. The decision was made to fuck them. At 23.45 we hit them with all our guns. We warned the allies in advance that a big mess was expected at night, asked them to hang up their planes and turn on their air defense. And we would tear them apart and reach the Iraqi border in a few days. But we were simply betrayed. When we went on the assault, we didn’t know that the planes above us were only American, and the gunmen all climbed under the women’s skirts.

The commanders, they say, tried to call someone in uniform, but they simply turned off the phones. For several hours they simply ironed us, leveling us to the ground. Several “Apaches” were spinning a “carousel” in the air, an A-130 “flying battery” was working, a B-52 bomber lifted from Qatar, several “reapers”, and all this crap would be enough to destroy all of Syria. As a result, many of our people died. But before we got torn apart, we crushed the Americans pretty well. They wanted to push us back beyond the Euphrates, but having suffered losses, we not only did not roll back, but also advanced 500 meters. Since they were hitting mainly the second echelon.

I hope that someday history will figure out where these creatures were who betrayed us. The guys know their names and titles.

The missed "Bardak" and the crumpled "Ural" We were given the task of occupying the factory; spirits were swirling around it with all their might. Throughout January we were gathered in Khsham and prepared. Before the start of the advance, we sat and slept. At night they begin to line us up in a column. A moonless night, pitch-dark darkness. We stretched out in a column, got up at 6 pm - we stood there, dumbfounded. Our platoon stood right in the center. I was sitting on a T-64 tank, it also had such a moronic, Italian sight. They brought the sadyki from somewhere, it didn’t work at all - although it was like a range finder. They all tried to fix it, but no one knew how to do it. We were sitting, it was already dark, and we started exchanging art—we hit them, they hit us. The radio says:

- It arrived for us. — Are there any killed?

- No.

- We're standing.

But they said that the VKS would help us. We sit for an hour, an hour and a half, and we’re already hungry. I'm knocking on the tankers. I had never seen a tank before, this was the first time I sat on it. The hatch opens, I put my head in there - an iron can, there are three people there, such big faces, healthy men - it’s smoky, smoke is pouring out. Like in American films about blacks who drive and blow their trumpets, and smoke pours out of all the windows. The stench is worth: - Guys, do you have anything to eat?

A hand sticks out of the smoke, holding out something like a Syrian Snickers. - Thank you.

Hop, they closed - everything is fine there. I go down, lean on the armor, stand and look. There was a village just to the right of the plant, and from there there were jet exits, like the Grad working. As soon as I sat down, the arrivals began, right where the artillery battalion was stationed. I sit down and tell my partner: - Damn, we were gouged along the way by the Grads.

Here, in short, we hear the sound of an airplane - probably not even landing, not diving, but rather the opposite - as if it was leaving. I think: “Ooh,

ours have arrived." Everyone there probably had the same thought: since our guys have arrived, then now we’ll let everyone fuck off. And then it was crazy — it turns out they hit the first car in the convoy with drones. Most likely, the drone was operating in a “warmhouse” at night, and the head “shishiga” was just tented and glowing. Because if they wanted to hit a tank, they would hit the tank. We scattered and didn’t attract much attention, and there was a whole infantry vehicle and the Americans fired a missile into it. Then, after some time, a minute and a half, they hit me in the tail and aimed at the T-72. And the second one, it turns out, went on the road, we were lucky. We're right away from the tank ticking. The ambulance arrived there immediately - apparently, the boy, out of his own enthusiasm, rushed to the “shishiga”. Everyone is quickly loaded into the ambulance, the ambulance turns around on the gas and leaves the column. As soon as you turn on the siren, the drone launches a missile into it as it departs. There wasn't even shrapnel damage anymore - there was a lighter there. Whoever was at the epicenter simply burned out. Well, the man is intact, nothing was torn off, but the fact that he quickly turned into ember is a fact. They hit 72 just in just a couple of minutes. Our doctor rushed there, thinking of helping someone, but everything was on fire there, the BC was still flaring up. Impossible neither inside nor outside. We retreat to the first line of defense. We sit and think about what to do. The command gives instructions to retreat to the second line - we retreat there, the signalman ran with me with a large walkie-talkie. We moved to the second line and sat under the house. The chest of drawers is like this:

- Let's make loopholes.

- How? We don't have a damn thing except shooting. - Let’s use stones, we’ll dismantle the fence, let’s break it with stones. - To hell with it, come on.

We hit the wall with stones - the stones simply crumble, the clay is shitty. The loopholes didn't work out. Just at this moment, “Bardak” slips past us. Everyone was like: “Oooh, good job, “Mess” slipped through.” Because the column is on fire, the glow already illuminates and you can see where to move. We look - our Ural is hiding between the houses. And there is such a distance - the Ural came between the houses, the doors were clear to open. Well, the driver jumps out, grabs his briefcase, the grenade launcher, the driver, someone else was there. The sergeant-major does the same - he throws his jacket on top, and this Ural starts ticking.

- Oooh, Kolyan, handsome, pulled out the Ural.

And we were all so happy - bam! - it flies straight into this Ural. We all fall to the ground. Let's get up and look, fuck it, how is that possible? The Ural doesn’t even burn—it’s just somehow squeezed inside. What is it? How can this even be? There are houses nearby, they are intact, but here we arrive purely at the Ural. We saw the turntables later when we moved on. We went to the third line there the doctor began to gather people who would go to pull the “three hundred” out of the column. We were sitting there, someone said something about the air, something else. In radio communications it was officially passed: — American aviation is working, everyone is getting ready, preparing for counterattack.

Two boys passed by snipers not far from us. One is walking with a machine gun hanging from his neck, he is walking straight just looking. And in front of him there’s a guy with this either a “Mannlicher” or a “Kord”, he just drags him by the belt, took it under the barrel and just drags him. The butt is dragging along the ground. He's walking, and he doesn't give a damn about anything. Turns his head towards us:

- Which platoon?

- Third.

- No, we’re from the second, we’re looking for our own.

And we moved on. It just hit me over the head, they go on their own wave, they don’t need anything anymore. The two of them stomp around like ghosts.

Then we retreated to the third line, and began to notice that as soon as we retreated to the next line, after three or four minutes the line in which we were sitting was simply burned out. We retreat and they are already starting to hit us. They began to drag up three hundred people. Where to load them who knows: evacuation by car is impossible, because the car just starts to drive away - it is opened. Tankers and "Bardaki" began to dive into the buildings, simply ramming the walls. They will stop in a house, hang out there for 15–20 minutes, then use gas, break through another wall, and jump into the next house. They brought in one of the three hundredth, his face was all torn up and he flew into his leg. It wasn’t too bad, his face was torn off and burned in places. And his leg was leaking, a splinter flew into his calf and was dripping down his leg. The doctor rewound and said: - Help me pull him away.

I undermine myself and grab his arm. -Where are we going?

— There should be an evacuation behind the house.

We drag him there, hand him over to the boys, and come back. I sat down and waited for the command. We're standing. The reconnaissance was delayed, they were generally smashed there. There's really no one left. They are moving there, their commander begins to lead them out. We say to the chest of drawers: - Well, what are we doing? How long will we sit? - We are waiting for the command.

To hell with it. The platoon commander gives the command “Retreat.” We started to retreat in groups, we went back behind the house - the tank was standing.

- Fuck it, let's get out of here. As soon as we move away, it starts up and follows us. We enter another line, and he is a herax! - and just drives through the fence after us. - What are you driving? Why are you following us? Then, as it turned out, the mechanic thought that we were showing him the way, and he followed us (laughs). We knew that the equipment was being burned, we needed to stay as far away from the tank as possible, and so we zigzagged back and forth. By the way, the tank we were sitting on—T-64—remained intact. He remained in the column and stood there - the boys forgot to switch the radio to the general channel. About an hour and a half later they just heard that the war was going on. They have their own atmosphere there, they play music there, plus he himself is wound up - everything rumbles, they can’t hear anything at all. They click on the channels - there is silence for everyone. The radio operator was killed - that’s it, there was no communication. The radio was messed up and there was no connection either. Nothing happens, no one comes out to the tankers. They are in general and there is generally terrible stuff going on there. They can’t understand anything, and in the end they opened the hatch, stuck out the sting, and saw that everything around was burning and exploding. They closed the hatch, gave it gas and escaped from there. They just left two days later and were hanging out somewhere near the villages.

I had a kent in reconnaissance, he was hit three hundred times, but he wasn’t even wounded, just a piece of a corpse flew into him. Upper body. I hit him with a 72, he fell, all his organs were knocked out, he couldn’t get up, he was covered in stones. They lift him up and ask him about the piece of corpse lying nearby:

- And who is this?

- Who the hell knows. This is the first time I've seen him.

- Our? - No, not ours.

They dragged us to the ambulance, loaded it in - just another squad of ambulances pulled up, because there was no longer room in ours. We were sitting at the evacuation point, and then some guy jumped up: - Why are you sitting here?

- What should we do? - There is a RAV warehouse here, run away from here.

We run to another building, walked about 150 meters. We sit, walk for about 30 minutes - and the glow begins. We turn our heads: -What's burning there? Maybe the column, the village caught fire? That one again

the same voice:

- What are you doing here?

- In terms of? Let's sit! — The RAV warehouse was set on fire. We need to get out of here.

- Fuck your mother, do you ever have good news? will you tell me? Let's tick away from there. We started to walk around the evacuation point from behind, there was a construction site there - a pit had been dug, piles were standing. We began to walk around it along the inner radius, someone else was constantly trying to fall into the pit, the earth was disappearing under our feet. Well, let's go, we just have to walk to the crossing - it's probably 6 kilometers away. Let's go, here's a shout:

- Air! Well, air means air. We fall. One explosion. And it turns out that I fell, my helmet was riding up, my forehead was open. I look up and see a flash, an explosion, a second flash even closer. I lie and think: - That's it, okay. Luckily I fell. Now the third and everything is in us. And we were always taught that when you fall and there is an explosion nearby, hold the machine gun out in front of you. If he cuts his hands - well, to hell with him, the main thing is that the head is intact, the brains remain in place. I’m lying down, and my left leg is pointed somewhere to the side. The second explosion, and I pull this leg under me so that I don’t get hit by shrapnel. They shout to me: - Are you alive? - What will happen to me?

And then the understanding comes that there were only two shots, that is, there will not be a third. Phew, it's gone.

The Americans raised all their aircraft We knew that an offensive was planned even when, a few months earlier, the Americans entered ISIS positions in the Conoco gas field.

We stood only one and a half kilometers from them, and saw how weapons and ammunition were brought there at night. Our snipers said that they saw them pissing from the parapet in our direction. They behaved rudely, in general. And our allies, let’s say, were a little crap from the presence of the Americans. And there was also this commander Yasar, the foreman of the base, and when the Americans arrived, he remained at his post. At that time we did not have our own air defense and our allies had to cover us. From them we knew that the Amers’ planes were flying over our positions, and their “reapers” were constantly hovering over us.

Our main task was to go in and cut along the M7 road, in order to subsequently cut off the spirits and their allies from the south of Syria, from all resources. Along those roads were convoys of tankers with oil spilled by the States in Eastern Deir and its fields. The Americans' goal was to push us back beyond the Euphrates. They, apparently, also knew about Assad’s words - not a single Syrian soldier would cross the river.

*** At the beginning of February 2018, the 2nd assault detachment was located in the northern and eastern parts of the village of Khsham, behind the railway, in a complex of administrative buildings the 1st assault platoon was located. On the left flank, also behind the iron line, the Karpaty detachment occupied positions. In the rear stood the 5th assault detachment and a combined artillery group (D-30 and BM-21). In addition, we interacted with a Syrian unit under the control of the Russian Defense Ministry, which was supposed to move to Jaded Agedat at the appointed time, where the enemy (ISIS) was located.

According to the plan, on 02/07/2018 at 23:00, the Karpaty detachment was supposed to move out from its positions and occupy the Konika plant 2 kilometers to the north, after which we were supposed to start moving parallel to the north to the Konika-Agedat highway and turning east occupy the Jafra plant and the railway marshalling station north of Agedat. 5 SHO was supposed to follow us until the turn to the east, then go out to the support north of the Jafra plant. A Syrian army unit led by Russian Defense Ministry officers was supposed to attack Jadet Agedat. Before the start of the operation, at a meeting with officers of the Ministry of Defense, we were promised support from the air defense located at the Deir Ezzor airfield and two Su-35 attack aircraft.

At about 18:00, with the onset of dusk, the detachment's units began to reach their starting lines, at the same time it became clear that all the officers of the Russian army who were supposed to work in cooperation with us were absent from their places.

At 23:00, according to plan, the Karpaty detachment moved from its positions to the Konika plant, at the same time the BM-21 and D-30 batteries began working on planned targets, from the position of 1 ShV we began working with a 120 mm mortar on the nearest enemy stronghold. After the first salvo of our artillery, attacks began on us. The positions of BM-21 and D-30 were hit by rocket artillery fire and American strike drones, 5 SHO, which stood in the column ready to move, and positions of 2 SHO, which we left before. Several Apache combat helicopters and a Reaper attack drone were working on the Karpaty detachment, and the rumble of a heavy turboprop aircraft was also heard in the sky. Despite this, part of the Karpaty detachment managed to enter the enemy’s forward stronghold and push him out of there.

There is no point in talking about any opposition from air defense and aviation from the RF Armed Forces, there was none, enemy aviation worked at full speed, without fear of anything. In addition, Syrian units were left without control. All this continued almost until dawn, after which all units received the order to retreat. The greatest losses were suffered by the units of the combined artillery group, the fifth SHO, and the Karpaty detachment. In the second SHO

One T-62 tank with the “Kon” crew, two staff pickup trucks were destroyed, one employee was wounded by shrapnel.

DOCTORS ARE SCARY PEOPLE We approached the fortified area from the right flank and practically removed the mines from this bridge. We thought that the military would support us with tanks, but, unfortunately, the tanks did not come, and the guys practically walked through the landings, like a postcard. That is, practically no one supported them. Both we and the third platoon then had to move along the road. These two platoons began to take on some enemy attacks. The military promised us tanks, but the tanks did not arrive. Those two or three tanks that were supposed to support our guys did not come, and we would have dropped into this fortified area. Well, there was no proper support and the artillery began to unwind us. An order was received from the command to withdraw for a while, we moved away a little, regrouped at night and went again. They asked the question: why didn’t the military support? They personally approached the tankers and asked: why did you hit with a tank, and the shell was almost higher than 10 meters and exploded somewhere in the fields. And they would have demolished this fortification with a tank, and we would have entered easily. They answered us: “If we go out even a meter, they will burn us, we don’t want to do this, we will be punished for burning this very tank.” But people die. There was some kind of incomprehensible interaction with these military men, some kind of sabotage was going on towards us. Why? Because those people who were supposed to help us, they practically did not help at this stage. At night we regrouped and went again. They said: everything will be great, everything and everything else. But the military again did not support us, the tanks did not come. Our AGS and AGS of the third platoon practically broke into the enemy’s defenses, we must give credit to the guys - they brought it all out almost by eye and mowed down the enemy infantry. Their artillery worked very well at that time. And having reached a certain point, the reconnaissance platoon began contact, the second platoon began contact. The artillery began to unwind, and in order to withdraw a little, we stood up to our full height. It was Mora, me and Naiba. They stood up to their full height and went towards the dill, and accordingly turned the fire on themselves. We lay down straight and couldn’t move for a long time. Well, we were just lucky, to be honest, we were very lucky that the dill was placed like this,

that we weren't caught. They would have unwound us, that’s one hundred percent, but we were just lucky at that moment.

The guys from both the reconnaissance platoon and the second platoon were pulled back and evacuated. Well, we crawled into the forest again. We didn’t know many things, but the management knew that some of our radios were lost and were with dill. There was silence on the air, but then we already understood what it was connected with. In principle, everything was done correctly and in the evening the order came to go home. We understood, we retreated, at that moment we would have taken 100% of this fortified area, but there was no military support, unfortunately. We had losses, we had many three hundred guys from the reconnaissance platoon, from the second platoon. There were a lot of dead guys, this could have been avoided if we had been properly supported and had tanks come. We could practically do all this in the forest. We've seen it all.

“Sabotage is a form of sabotage” The fact is that there was a delivery distance to our positions. There were supervising military men who could give us a ride. But we carried it out on our own hands and feet. You know, there was some kind of sabotage. As Stolypin said, “Sabotage is one of the forms of sabotage.” There were some nuances: they could load us up, give us a ride, and that’s it. But we ourselves carried these boxes on our arms and legs. Water, food.

When we were transferred, there was not much equipment. Now we have expanded a little, the equipment has arrived, but at that time we were entering the initial phase, many things were missing. Some soldiers helped, some gave us lifts. You go out beyond Popasnaya, there was a forest there - the tanks stood in one line, the infantry fighting vehicles stood in one line. They could simply destroy all these houses in some volleys, where the guys took each house individually. This would help save many lives. The guys acted skillfully, some pioneers learned from others. We stormed this town with dignity, the guys behaved with dignity despite all these difficulties, with all these difficulties, conflicts with some military personnel. We say: “Damn, you could have helped the tanks with guns.” They answer us: “There is no order, if they burn us, then we will have problems.” Despite all these difficulties and difficulties, the guys were given a task and we carried it out. They just carried out this task. That's all. It wasn't like we wouldn't go. Everyone knew what they came for. That's the problem. Yes, it’s clear that someone is making money, why not? Good work should be paid for.

“We walked past your teeth for a long time” Many of the guys left from the reconnaissance platoon performed well because we knew clearly what we were doing and how we were doing it. The streets were cleaned and cleared, house after house was taken. Slowly, but they took it. We had pioneers with us who performed well. I was not in this platoon for long because I was wounded in Popasna. There was an intersection, we were moving from this street, and from the next street the guys were chasing dill. There was practically no one in this house, no matter how many times we crossed this intersection. Then the shooter started working, we didn’t understand where or how. And, while running across the street, landing on my knee, a bullet hits me on one cheek, crushes all my teeth, passes through my nose and exits through the other cheek.

I fell, opened my mouth and almost all my teeth fell out, I began to choke, blood was coming through my nose. But the guys ran up and pulled me away, and then I got up and went in. I can't even say what I was thinking at that moment. There was just inner anger. This is simply not the first time I have been injured. Again hospital, again treated. I'm very afraid of doctors, to be honest. After Palmyra, I was given seventeen IVs at once. There I lost thirtyseven kilograms, all these injections, all these procedures... Well, I’m afraid of doctors. Yes, I’m afraid of injections, that’s the thing. Just like the dentist. We are men, like children, only adults. We are afraid of the doctors, that my mother will scold us and everything else. That's the problem. My teeth were blown out there, my face was torn apart. The guys surrounded the house and simply burned it down, without letting anyone out. We did not understand where such shooting was coming from. According to me, they understood and determined that our guys had abandoned it. From our platoon, the third platoon, the Logist squad, Buddha, Mora's platoon, they did not allow it, and then things went easier, easier, easier. Naiba, the guy with the grenade launcher was destroying some buildings like in a shooting gallery, popping up like a postcard. He masterfully wielded this grenade launcher. Platoon commander Twenty-third, he is now at headquarters.

All the guys got involved at that moment, everyone I listed, they were in command. I didn’t stay in this platoon for long, because they transferred me and assigned me to this detachment. I was flying with

Mali from the ninth squad. In a short period of time with this platoon, we cleared the streets a little. Then my face was torn, leaving all my teeth behind. Then the guys say: “We walked past your teeth for a long time.” They did it in Moscow, they put in all the plastic teeth. Everything is fine, all the guys worked fine because they understand. They climbed and pulled out the wounded. I was pulled back. I got to my feet. I understood that I was standing, which meant I had everything intact. The only thing that saddens me is that I have to go to this hospital again. You see, these doctors are terrible people. I didn't think about death. From the experience of these wounds, you understand that you will live. I scan myself to make sure my vital organs are not affected, but I was afraid that I would lose a lot of blood. The guys pulled me up, I got to my feet and went into the house. I want to say a big thank you to the doctor from the 57th brigade. The guys came up there and helped us. There were about forty people there, they fought with dignity. They are from Khabarovsk, I can’t say for sure, they are from the Far East. They fought well, there were about forty of them, I think the eldest was twenty-seven years old. They helped us. Their doctor turned me over there, pulled some fragment out of my palate, and more blood began to flow. He provided me with such help that I was then able to move, I ran another three kilometers to the evacuation room, where the “motor league” picked me up and took me to the doctors. Well, the anger was that I was going to the hospital again. After Palmyra, I had five operations in twenty-four days.

What makes you return to such conditions? There is no answer to this question. Well, maybe purely male work is like a drug. Every time you come, you think, “Why did I come here? all this again?”, but then some time passes. You understand the need and importance of your work. You come home, people are all fussing about, back and forth. It's like I can't explain some things. You just sit there towards the end of your vacation and start missing the guys. You start to miss certain things. You automatically start collecting some things, I need that armored vehicle, back and forth. Although you say to yourself: “That’s it, I won’t go again.” At this point you begin to collect something, one friend called you, another friend called you. There, at that moment, you are needed and important, not just by your friends, but by the country and everyone else. Well, since I’m in demand, it means that both the company and the country need me. The task is set and it must be accomplished. That's all. You learn on the fly from both your subordinates and your seniors. I like

learn even from subordinates. Guys can offer such ideas, good options, just as creative people. Here in war everyone is like an artist. If you have an interesting idea, then you need to implement it in such a way as to be a winner. And inside the spirit must also be a winner. I would like to praise my guys, we have brilliant guys in intelligence. Different characters, but what drives us all is that we are not a herd, we have become a flock. That's the problem. And in a pack it is always good to tear apart the enemy. I believe that a pack can do everything... And my platoon is such that it’s not a herd, but a flock. Young people come, they've combed everything and just tear them to pieces. Have you seen how a pack attacks a bison or a wolf? They circle him from all sides, surround him back and forth, he still fell and is morally depressed.

*** I have been with the company since 2016. I had some breaks, rehabilitation after the injury. It was necessary to restore my hands. And before the company, I was in both the LPR and the DPR, many guys went down this path - they started with the militia. Many guys, old employees of the company, they also went through all this, gaining experience in other countries. A common fate, like that of all company employees. There are guys who are heroes.

FORTY VS FOUR HUNDRED The task was not easy. The commander came, we were in a forest belt 5 km from Lugansk airport, opened a map in front of us, pointed his finger at it and said: - Do you know what this is?

— Yes, this is Lugansk airport. - Yes sir. We'll take it tomorrow morning. And we are a little more than 40 people.

- Well, okay, but how much dill is there? - Why do you need to know this?

- No, well, tell me what we are going to. - Well, guys, there are 400 people there according to approximate data. And, as you know, an assault is carried out with a five-fold superiority of the attackers over the defenders. But here it was the other way around - there were ten times less of us! The only thing that saved us was that we had artillery support: Grads, mortars, and other rubbish.

In general, at about three in the morning we reached our positions. While we were sleeping, a fairly successful artillery preparation was carried out. I want to note right away: we did not have a single refusenik. Another group, from the militia, refused to go in full force: they were supposed to support us, there were about 100 of them. - All of us, we’re already on time, we’ve been here for a whole month, their commander

said. We are leaving.

“A task is a task,” our commander said then. - If she set, then we will fulfill it.

And so, we went with 40 people, knowing that with a very high probability we would die. When we were going for the assault, no one spoke at all - everyone was ready to die. People recorded dying messages on voice recorders and phones: listen to your mother, be a good boy, you are the eldest son in the family, so now you are the eldest. Well, they kept them on their chests, so that in case of death, the guys could give it to their relatives. There were no illusions: everyone understood that the battle would be terrible.

Afternoon fight in sunflowers Nine puzzled over how to accomplish this task for a very long time. But, in my opinion, he picked a very good time. I've been going over this for a long time, all these years: the best time to attack is after lunch. Neither morning, nor evening, nor night.

- Why after lunch? - Well, among soldiers, lunch is considered a kind of holy thing -

according to the schedule, all people have lunch, not expecting an attack at this time, and relax. And the Ninth gave instructions to our groups of observers to detect this moment. The Dills had lunch, went to the dining room, went to their bunkers, went to play on their phones, with electronic books, and some went to bed. And at exactly 3 o'clock in the afternoon we entered the airport. That is, we drove closely, brazenly almost into the airport territory in a convoy, and abruptly entered.

Some people are lucky. Although, I don’t even know whether to consider this luck or not. They went for a bigger postcard than we did. We had about 200–250 meters from the forest belt to the airport fence, where most of the people were walking. It was a sunflower field, with prickly sunflowers, it was August 29th. Terribly prickly. If you have, well, let’s say, a bare surface of your body, then you just tore the meat out. Here. Plus it was mined. To the fence - 250 meters. — How did you not run into mines? - We got into trouble. Right left. Look, there’s a gap on the right, pieces of the body flew. On the left, pieces of the body also flew. There were no stretch marks, only pressure ones. Dill prepared in advance for such a turn of events, which is why the field was mined. We passed only because I spent long enough on the head patrol, and I know what I’m talking about. I see these things very quickly and stop them. Further. They started shooting from that side. The big one flew from both sides: the charger from our side, the charger from their side, we are in the middle. This gap is where we go in the middle. They hit from 12.7, from “Utyos”, from “Dashki” on both sides. 23 millimeters is a charger, 14.5 is a KPVT. On both sides. Moreover, from that side they were also hitting with explosives, because when we started hitting the fence, one guy from our group,

Mona, it hit me in the leg. When an explosive bullet flies from 14.5, it clings to a branch and explodes. In short, he was hit in the leg. Out of our group, only Mona was “three hundred” at that time. The rest seemed to remain untouched. Oh, no, Vlad was also “three hundred.” But also like that, not much. Based on what losses there were - out of 57 people, I cannot say for sure, but according to rumors, we had 17 two-hundredths. Of the remaining 40 people, 31 are “three hundredth”. And 9 people, including me, were not injured at all. No one. And the vast majority of my group. I remember the guys who selflessly went into battle, while they were many times outnumbered. There was one guy, his name was Mechanic - he stormed too fearlessly, so much so that he simply died there. He walked without bending down, they shot at him - they shouted at him to bend down, but he walked on. And there, most of these people were like that. For example, former GRU officers - they are all, as one, heroes in essence.

Subtleties of assault with heavy weapons We walked at maximum speed, and each of us weighed 30 to 40 kilograms. I think this alone was enough to be called heroes. Go on an assault with a huge amount of BC. We did not have the task of taking the airport in one go - we had to go in, gain a foothold and hold. But we did everything so successfully that we essentially took the airport right away. This has never happened before. Never, not a single unit in the world, probably even during the Second World War, could boast of such successes. Our group, 9 people, walked a little slower, because of this we were pulled back a little - that’s why we had almost no losses, only one in the group died. The task of our group was to take the airport building itself and hold it. But the rest had to go through the entire airport, the entire territory. Therefore, we had a small reserve of time. I was still a newbie then, everything was new to me, and somehow you understand that you could die. I was a grenade launcher, I had with me 2 huge “thermal bars”, each weighing 5 kg, plus fragmentation “pencils” - more than 10 pieces. The weight is simply catastrophic, and we had to walk at enormous, simply insane speed, and through a field of sunflowers. And these sunflowers cling to you, they cling to every millimeter of your clothes. Not only do you have to run at great speed with 40 kg of weight, plus you also have to run through sunflowers, which also slow you down. The effort was simply catastrophic. When we reached the airport building, all the heavy ones - two machine gunners and me, as a grenade launcher - simply no longer had the strength. We are 100% exhausted. When we reached the building, we decided to make a short stop for two minutes. And then our own armored personnel carrier attacked us it drove off the road and turned the turret around. I was lucky that he was crosseyed, and I saw fountains flying in my direction. I then asked the commander a logical question: — Is this our armored personnel carrier in general, or should I use it?

- He's ours.

- Why the hell is he shooting at me then?

Shelling from the control room.

As soon as we dismounted from the road, we dived into the ravine and they immediately started firing at us. There was a control tower there, and someone was sitting on it. We were very lucky, we just jumped, just dived, lay down, started to look around, and then they hit the bushes. It felt as if the wind was flying over my ear, and for some reason it seemed to me that the branch somehow swung and hit me on the ear. There was a complete feeling that a bar had been clicked on the ear. I checked

- there is no blood. My partner lies next to me and says that the PC was used on us. We crawled around, lay down, and immediately shouted to the guys. And then I don’t remember, either from a gun, or even from a tank, they rushed there, jammed it, suppressed the point. Then, after the battle, I found a bullet hole in my Panama hat. She passed so carefully that there was no trace, no blood - as if she had just been slapped on the ear. But there was a hole in the Panama hat. Let's all check - who has a hole in his panama hat, who has a hole in his pants. Someone says to Andryukha: “Andryukha, give me some water to drink, you have some in your flask.” He hands over the flask, the fighter tries to open it, but it doesn’t open. “I don’t understand, either my hands are weak, or my nerves,” he says. Not

opens. Maybe it got stuck somewhere? - No, I shouldn’t, I just drank yesterday, it was normal. I took it myself and it’s true, it doesn’t open. We tried one, two, three times - and then let’s look at her. As it turned out, a small, thin fragment, a centimeter long, got stuck there: it went straight into the lid, pierced it and the neck, and jammed. Of course, the fragment was picked out. But the stores saved Boryan. There were magazines hanging on his left hip - and fragments flew there too. Either a bullet or shrapnel, I don’t remember exactly, I won’t lie, but the magazines protected my leg. By the way, in this place he still carries those same holey pouches with magazines. He says: “Let it be. Just in case".

About fate and fear. Vadim Marshal was with us, he is from Belarus - in Khryaschevatoye a bullet passed along his head and struck him. It turned out that

the bullet jacket remained under the skin, but the core slipped through. So he was rewound, literally 2 days later he went to the airport (and he had such a serious injury, he might not have gone), and he died at the airport. He led his group and died there. Many guys are given such warnings in the form of small wounds, in the form of some kind of signs, but the guys still push on... Everyone should have fear, this is normal - the main thing is that there should be no panic. You understand that at every exit it can fly at you. It seems to everyone that all the bullets are flying at him, there is such a thing. But you don’t dwell on it—the hair on the back of your neck just stands on end all the time. All these running between gaps, searching for useful shelters, all these things. It’s always scary, I won’t say that there is no fear. But you just don’t bring yourself to a state of panic, otherwise that’s it. There was an example when we had already entered the airport, we had already more or less occupied it, and half the job was done. There was heavy shelling from the dill - and it turns out that they were all holed up in the bunker, and we couldn’t get them out of there. And so, they probably treated us well and thoroughly for about 40 minutes.

We climbed, I remember, into a firing position, the deepest for standing shooting. There were steps, several platforms, covered with an ordinary wooden pallet. There were sandbags on top, but they sank, and you can’t go down there anymore. But still, consider that psychologically there is a whole meter of protection on top. On the second step - Lech, he lay down on the second step, and he was also completely covered. And the third step is 30 centimeters from the ground, another Lech lay there literally pressed into the ground. Well, that’s it, you can’t move there anymore, everything around is on fire. Lekha lies on the third step, crosses himself, reads prayers, the second Lekha lies silently, and I sat down and waited for 15-20 minutes. Everything around is torn and explodes. Well, I think, how long can you be afraid? I sat down and began to think about my daughter, remember where, what, in order to distract myself. Well, I dozed off. I remember clearly: I dozed off, and then bam! — the gap is somewhere close, and I woke up. I think: “Okay, I’ve poked around.”

“You took Grozny, go ahead!” I remember that the people were a little taken aback by the barrage of oncoming fire, to which the commander encouraged us: “Why are we lying there? You took Grozny, go ahead!” And we climbed through the minefield to the airport - consider it, we went right through it. Only later did it become clear that the video camera was filming us; the Ukrainians were not ready for the assault and relaxed. Afternoon. Usually they expect attacks at dawn, in the morning, everything is like science. And we came after lunch, when people had already hung up their footcloths and decided that there would be no war for today. This effect of surprise, by and large, saved the lives of many: the minefields in our direction were quite serious, and if they had been raised, then your humble servant would not be talking to you here. There were 90 MON-ki with an interval of 15, maximum 20 meters, a full bed.

We photographed anti-tank guns, ATGMs, and walked right through the airport. My friend returned to help the “300th” and pull him out to the evacuation group, but after taking out the wounded man, he never made it to our combat vehicle. Another of our guys was cut off at the entrance, and the two of us were left in the ZU-shke. When we already

We came up against the very end of the airport, and there was also a tank coming along our line - the ZU-Shka could no longer get through, there was no room for maneuver. The artillery worked very closely because the video cameras were watching us. We go 20–30 meters away and an artillery attack comes to the place where we just stood. We only move forward another 20-30 meters - again the arrival. They were literally right on our heels. But in this way they themselves helped us morally understand that we will not go back. In general, we reached the fence, jumped over it and went to take the central terminal. It turned out that there were two groups of us, ours on the right side, the other entered the terminal directly from the left side. There, in front of the central terminal, there was a parking lot, several more shelters - there were armored personnel carriers and tractors. In general, we took cover behind them and began to slowly take down the top shooters who were sitting on the roof of the central terminal and on the side buildings. Well, little by little we moved forward.

When we passed the central terminal, we went into the hangar to wait. Just at this moment, the dill began to be hammered from somewhere with howitzers; they came quite strongly and often. What remained after that were 5-meter craters, 15 meters in diameter. When we waited and left the hangar, the entire area in front of the airport turned into the Martian surface. Even this asphalt parking lot.

How an ordinary soldier was mistaken for the main one Ninth comes to us in the hangar. And we had a fighter in the group, call sign Goliath - he was long, tall, like a tower. He approaches Goliath, takes off his Panama hat, takes off Goliath’s helmet, puts the Panama hat on him... Goliath stands there, looks at him, and he says: “According to the radio interception, the dill said that the longest is the most important. Therefore, you will walk next to me.” Then the first guy from our group died. There was a group of buildings further from the central terminal, and our guys wanted to drive into the shelter in a ZU-shke. He just went outside... I don’t know why he went out, and at that moment he was covered with cluster munitions. They shot dill with cassette cartridges. He was completely cut: chest, collarbone, everything. This is the first “two hundredth” from our group, Kamysh. He, together with Karel and Leshy, picked up the ZU-shka. Karel was also wounded then - a gunshot to the arm, a stray shot came from somewhere. Well, he quickly bandaged himself on the spot and continued firing. Until the very last, he did not evacuate anywhere. We went to clean the bunkers. We cleaned the bunkers along the road, Karel was sitting on the charger. We were very worried about one machine gunner - there, near one of the central buildings, the pipe was made of red brick, the type that is found in boiler rooms. And because of this pipe, the machine gunner constantly watered us. We couldn't move forward for about 7 minutes, probably. They called Karel, he drove up from the right side so that he could see him. The machine gunner stood up - Apparently he wanted to change his position when he saw that the Zushka was leaving - and then Karel simply cut him in half with the Zushka. Two pieces fell to the sides. In short, we have moved further. We reached the fuel and lubricants warehouse, where aircraft are refueled. They cleared everything there, took someone prisoner, grouped them in one building - and then we receive reports that at that moment the dill called fire on themselves. Apparently, they realized that it was useless to hide and mess around. They already realized that they had lost.

"Tochka-U" They said that Tochka-U or Tochka-N would arrive, something like that, they were attacking directly from Kyiv. Until then, none of us had seen what it was or what it was connected with, but supposedly knowledgeable comrades said that there would be a crater about 500 meters away. The dead zone was 500 meters, and no one else would survive. Therefore, hide in the basements while you can, in some bunkers. We, in general, hid in basements, in bunkers, and waited there for about an hour and a half. Then we were informed that the dill changed their minds and did not bomb. Either the UN sheep intervened or something

- like it’s too high-profile, there are too many people. They were forbidden to shoot from large ammunition. After that, in principle, the main battle then ended. Our tankers rode around there quite heroically. They directly broke into the enemy’s ranks, circling back and forth around the airport. The tank stops, the commander climbs out of the hatch, and shouts something to the driver. Apparently the connection didn't work. Screaming at the top of his lungs, pointing his hand somewhere. They both jump into the hatches, seal them and from the spot at full speed, straight up on their hind legs and take off. And immediately at this place where they were standing, 40 Grads arrive, the full package. They stop a little further, get out again, and discuss something again. Just 40 Grads are leaving again. This did not stop them, they worked competently, and in particular with their help we achieved such an amazing result.

One against twelve From my group - everyone who was there - no one was hiding behind their backs. They pulled out all their wounded. Nick, who later became my squad leader, sent me, Sultan and Evil to the second group to stop the Zombies. Zombie - squad leader! — he ran alone to chase the Ukrops, about 12 people. The Ukrops ran towards the fence... well, they tried to escape from the territory from where they were being fired upon. He ran after them alone. And, as it were, we ran after him 200 meters just to stop him. Moreover, he ran after the Ukrainians, they began to climb over the fence, he comrades them, they fire at him from the other side. The zombie, without hiding at all, walks with an open chest and knocks down - one, two, three. We already realized that they were about to overwhelm him because the fire started too densely. In general, we came to his aid and helped him out. Of the memorable boys, Elektronik was, Sarkozy... died at that time. At Elektronik, I remember just a few days before that his wife gave birth in Rostov. He is a former legionnaire. The guy died too - he was a sniper.

I think our most important action was that from the Lugansk airport before our assault, 17 Grads and 12 howitzers were working around the clock, shelling the city around the clock. We deprived them of this opportunity. Accordingly, the 70 thousand residents who remained in Lugansk at that time breathed freely.

How prisoners of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were treated The prisoners were always treated normally, they were never offended. They sat them in a circle, and someone there was standing there lecturing them that they were wrong, that they needed to come to their senses. There are these guys sitting there - grimy, young. Someone sits like that, head down, someone looks like a wolf, not hiding their hatred. Open. We even gave them cigarettes. In my memory, there was only one case of assault - and that, consider it, in a state of passion. One of our guys had a close friend who died during the storming of the airport. And out of grief, out of nerves, out of emotion, he grabbed a machine gun and hit the captured Ukrainian Armed Forces soldier with the butt of it. We stopped him and pulled him away. And so they were never touched. And they knew about it and behaved calmly. Then I don’t remember, we apparently exchanged them. And then, already at home, I was sitting, scrolling through videos on the Internet and came across a Ukrainian documentary about the Lugansk airport. Like, their view of all these events - what brigade was there, what troops were there, how the Il-76 was shot down, back and forth. And one of the eyewitnesses is a guy from that very pack of prisoners. I still have photos of them, I remember him very well.

And so he sits and talks. They ask him how he was captured: - Well, we were sitting defending the airport building.

They fired back and forth, and there were no more cartridges left. And then the Russians roll up a tank, point a gun and say: Surrender or we’ll level everyone here now. So what was to be done? And here he sits like this, and I think - what an infection. We didn’t do anything to the prisoners - we didn’t execute them, we didn’t shoot them, as the Ukrainians are trying to imagine. They were taken prisoner, then given up, exchanged - and that’s all.

After the airport, what I remember most is that we entered Lugansk in a column, and we were met by local residents. It reminded me of the chronicles of World War II, when they met the victors. Well, with flowers here and there. We were really welcomed by the whole city.

WATER FROM THE EUPHARTES Euphrates... I never thought that I would ever wash my feet in the Euphrates in my life. Some people dream all their lives because the river is ancient, biblical. In general, in Deir ez-Zor the enemy was experienced. He wasn't afraid of us. In other places, the spirits sat in positions of two or three people, and we walked as a whole platoon or squad. But on the Euphrates, a toothy enemy was caught - he snapped. We crossed the Euphrates, it was in the morning, on rubber boats. I immediately remembered the Great Patriotic War, when our grandfathers crossed water lines on rafts, and the Germans fired at them. In principle, everything happened in the same way. We sailed on rubber boats with Chinese engines that tried to stall. The flow of the Euphrates was very large, apparently at that time there was a decline in water. And there were explosions all around - of course, everything was enchanting, but it seems to me that it would be difficult to film something like that even in a movie. Near the shore, right beyond the Euphrates, the tank began to give us nightmares. It is coming closer and closer to us - the gaps are approaching. And there was a hill nearby - we thought that an observer was sitting somewhere, adjusting the fire. We decided to climb up the hill - 5 people, I was bringing up the rear. Approaching the slide, I just heard an exit, a whistle - it felt like someone hit me on the head with a baseball bat. The gap is right in front of me. I open my eyes, everything is falling out, everything is black... you don’t understand whether they killed you or not, whether you’re alive or not. Everything seemed to be in slow motion. I shout: “Guys, are there any alive?”

- and on the other side our people are laughing. Not only did it not stun anyone, but no one was even hit by the shrapnel. There is a layer of dust and dirt on us and we only swam in the Euphrates, we just washed, everything was clean. After this incident, our commander told us the following phrase: “No, guys, it’s too early for you to go to heaven.” We stopped at a position on the Euphrates at night. Well, as usual, we sleep like this - where we need to, we sleep there. We didn’t pay much attention to the conditions: yes, two boys were bitten by snakes at night. She bit one, he grabbed her, threw her out and she fell on the other. But there's nothing wrong with that. And when we were moving forward, there was a huge ditch - and a balloon launcher was found in it. I was simply amazed - like in the film about Baron Munchausen, how he climbs onto the cannon,

here is the same huge trunk. And how they equipped it is not clear - maybe they lowered the muzzle down? I was shocked by this gun. During one attack, the spirits burned down one KamAZ truck of the riggers, as a result of which we were left without water for some time. There is little water, there is not enough water - what to do? It got to the point where they drank water from the river: they took kettles, carried water, boiled it, and sat. No one whined - everyone understood perfectly well what the situation was and what they had to endure. They endured it with humor and laughter. Tea from the Euphrates, okay. But there will be something to remember - someone went to Egypt on vacation, and we drank water from the Euphrates. Not everyone can repeat this at home.

Assault on Mazlum Deir - it was really hard there. When the time came, he sent us to Deir ez-Zor. We arrived at the river, the Euphrates. By that time, units of the “six” and “five” had entered Marrat. We walked across the river, sat down in Marrat and sat there for 3 days, the fighting took place behind the embankment at most. The first combat mission we received was the assault on Mazlum. I was then present at a meeting with Nick and Ratibor - they studied all the maps, all the positions, like what, where everyone is going. Ratibor subsequently behaved heroically there and fought at the very front with his boys. Wearing a bulletproof vest and a helmet, he walked away from my left flank. In general, the disposition was as follows - we grouped all the platoon along the line of contact: first I stood on the left flank, then Lotus stood, then Leshy. I don’t remember where the others were — in my opinion, at that moment someone was there with Nick in the back. Well, the mortars stood behind with Nick. In general, we set the time for the attack with all the platoon commanders and agreed on all this. Let's go on the attack. It was truly the moment of truth. At the entrance, our gun was knocked out - it burned down there with its ammunition, at the entrance to Mazlum, three or four people were seriously wounded. We sat down in the anti-tank ditch, extinguished, extinguished. I had to run through the entire platoon, through all positions and bring everyone to their senses. That attack reminded me of the beginning of the assault on the airport in Lugansk - because we walked along thorns and grass about 250 meters all the way to Mazlum from the anti-tank ditch. At the height of the assault, I had three “three hundredths”, Lotus and Leshey had more, because they were generally walking across an open field. At least I had some bushes. Then the cleansing of Mazlum took a long time. The Rus and Vetra departments worked very harmoniously, we walked more towards the center - there were already abandoned points there. But Rus and Tourist went through the very crucible - through the right outskirts, they had a very hard time there. There was a mosque there, and three spirits sat down near it and shot back for a long time. They poured fire on them for about 20 minutes, until they were calmed down by the ZU-shki. They drove up from behind and started hammering at this mosque until it calmed down.

I can say that Mazlum was one of the most difficult attacks in my life. Although it was fast... well, how fast - two and a half hours. The spirits also defended themselves very, let’s say, courageously - they sat down tightly. Some of them were definitely on drugs there. At the very end we pushed them back to Khsham. We began to take up defensive positions in Mazlum. The spirits left a lot of ammunition, a lot of captured guns. We searched everything there, inspected the positions - because by that time we knew that the spirits always mined their positions before leaving. To avoid losses, I forbade my people from climbing into houses, so that God forbid they would run into mines.

There was such a moment. We stood along the front, touching the “unit” - with Truck, he was then a platoon commander. The fourth squad independently occupied the house on my right flank. I came there - and, I don’t know, maybe my instincts worked, or something else, but I told them: “For some reason I don’t like this house of yours. Let's move to another one." They packed up their belongings, just moved, and Lotus sent one of its branches to this house. And then, from the side of Khsham, the spirits began to hammer from the artillery, and the shell flies into this house. As a result, Lotus has 2 “two hundredths” and 1 “three hundredths”. Exactly to the house from which I removed my own.

Lotus stood on the right flank on Mazlum, I stood on the front, Leshy sat in the mortar as guard. Uncle Tolya stood in the center, and then the “five” pulled up to him.

Night massacre The spirits launched a counterattack on the very first day we occupied Mazlum. The leaders of ISIS gathered there troops consisting of completely crazy militants. The spirits were very well armed - most of them had “warm caps” and “night lights”, because they were clearly tracking us and did not allow us to raise our heads at all from behind the parapet. I tested this myself. When the boys were being fired at, I went to the left side of the house - there was a wall there and there was a broken brick. I went there to take a leak, looked out from behind these bricks, and immediately hid. And at that moment it immediately flew into this hole. This can only mean one thing - the spiritual snipers were watching us through the “warmhouse”. You can’t track it so accurately with a night light. We held out for about two and a half hours - during this time the spirits made three attacks on our positions. We held on well, there were few losses, only Bedouin was wounded. He screamed so hard that I took pity on him, and the Wind and I ran together to pull him out. It hit us like a jackhammer. We were not hit, but Bedouin received a second wound in his heel. They sent him to the rear for evacuation. We continued to defend. At that moment, spirits approached Thor closely. I watched with my own eyes how this happened twice: the spirit machine gunners were hammering from a prone position, the snipers who extinguished the dots from a prone position, those who stood up tried to shoot back. The grenade launchers stood up to their full height and fired from grenade launchers. And so they walked towards us in steps: a machine gunner with snipers covered the spirits, they advanced forward - they lay down - they hit us with an RPG. And while we are recovering, they have moved forward once again. They didn't reach Thor about 30 meters. By that time, Thor had three people who were three hundredth, thank God, alive and well, and had recently seen each other.

In short, they evacuated Bedouin, evacuated Condor, and someone else from the third department. The first squad, Rus, had the worst ass. They were on the corner, on the right flank. There was a building there, something like a school - and the most severe attack was in this direction. There the pressure was twice as strong as ours. Even though they

were behind large walls - the building was large, three-story. Senya, the AGS-nickname, was wounded first. Then he died in Moscow from blood poisoning. This is what happened. While they were carrying him, his intestines fell out; they took him to Moscow, but did not save him. He was a good AGS nickname. In general, they began to carry him away - and at that moment, when they began to carry him away, there was a very strong attack on the first squad. This was the first time in my life when I really trembled with fear: I thought that it was all over, Khan. Even though I ordered my men not to retreat anywhere, Rus started to get into such a mess there that I told him: “Let’s pull back to a reserve position if possible.”

While we were retreating, we lost two more boys, Malachite and Darva. During the retreat, the spirits came close, and from the same school from which Rus and the boys retreated, they fired at them as they retreated to a reserve position. I ordered Thor to get everything heavy, everything from the RPG, and ordered Goliath to unravel this school into trash. We held out for another five minutes after the boys retreated and after that the spirits began to leave. For the first time that night I took a deep breath, at least some kind of respite. All this lasted two and a half hours, influx after influx, influx after influx. The boys are already tired of loading magazines. I was mostly sitting on the radio with binoculars - a guy walks past me: “I’m empty.” Let's charge up. Charging. After 10 minutes it comes again: “I’m empty.” And so on several times. Problems had already begun with the BC - everything that we took with us was almost all charged. Stores are on their last legs; if the spirits had launched another attack, I don’t know whether we would have remained at this point or not. And in general, whether we would have survived or not. The truck with the “unit” was also holding on there with all its strength. At a certain moment I just thought: you have to believe in fate. My life line is long, if I survive, then the boys whose hands I also looked at will survive. Therefore, we stand until the end and do not go anywhere further. And during these minutes, when I was thinking all this - to retreat, not to retreat - the spirits rolled back and stopped the shooting.

cotton field One moment was simply out of the realm of science fiction. We went out into a cotton field, stretched out in this field to go further well, we stretched out as expected, and it turned out that they surrounded us. They started hitting us from all sides. And there the distance is 150 meters, I don’t even know how they shot at us like that. We just fell into this field - and it’s flooded, like the rice fields of the Chinese. Everyone was covered in mud, all the radios were stuck, they just shouted at each other. One of our guys was in front and shouted: “Let’s get to the building!” There the houses stood next to the field, and, if you think about it adequately, the spirits couldn’t get through there. As a result, we came to the general conclusion that we needed to go back. There are buildings around the field in a semicircle, and from these buildings they simply opened fire on us - literally from every building. You can't see it - cotton is growing, corn is growing, and there are houses behind the corn. Where they are they are not visible. As a result, we, like worms, cannot be compared with anything else, poked around in this field. Then they decided to run - one got up, ran over, the fire was turned on him, then the other got up and ran over, and that’s how we got out. And whoever came out, one by one, began to take houses and from there covered their own. We raked for about an hour and a half from this field, although it would seem

- the distance is small. Everyone was wet, not because they had swam in mud, but because they were completely sweaty from such movements. If you fell, you got up, you fell, you got up, you still have your trunk loaded with you. Everyone was wet from dirt and sweat. The next day we were given another task - to approach the school and occupy it. We moved forward. On the way to the school there is a lock on the gate. Locked. We look at the point on the GPS - where to move out, where to go. And imagine the picture: a man like this looks at where to move his head and raises it - hoba! and there are two ISIS sheep sitting on the roof, they didn’t have time to hide. - There are spirits on the roof!

At one point everyone turned their attention there and started hammering on them. Those two were immediately demolished. They started to crumble - it worked

so that the first squad went to the left, into the house, and the second squad occupied the house right in front of this school. At that moment we were caught there were a lot of spirits there, and the sniper hit very close somewhere: one of them had his neck artery clearly broken. The deceased Topol was somehow hit by a VOG; he had a VOG-25 hanging from behind him. The bullet tore the VOG, and he lay in the ditch for a long time, screaming. A man ran out to him, Pickup to help, another one of ours was covering him, Caucasus. The pickup ran out to pull Topol out, and the sniper hit him clearly in the heart, that is, also 200. And while the Caucasus was covering, his jaw was blown off with a shot, also 200. The next moment - it was necessary to pull out the “two hundredths”, the Pickup and the Caucasus. They called an armored personnel carrier, but she couldn’t drive beyond a certain point - something was wrong with the reverse gear. Then the tank crew distinguished themselves greatly:

- Let's launch the tank now, they tell us, it leaves, does a few shots and at that moment you load up the guys and start running after the tank. It will still be safer. We took a curtain with a wounded man, two corpses, and moved there lightly. They only took a couple of stores because it was hard. And then they finally pulled the guys out behind the tank, without losses. And here we are on the defensive. There was a school about 150 meters from us there were a lot of spirits in it. Everything is shot through, you can’t lean out, you can’t get through, nothing. At most, we could jump out quickly, hit the school with the “Fly” and quickly return, because there was nothing else we could do. You can’t even put your hand out there and they shoot right away.

We stood there all night. We were told that help would arrive soon — “four” seemed like it should have been suitable. While help was approaching, one fighter and I tried to break through to our people, to the first squad. It was necessary to cross the alley - it was all shot through. We tried to break through there. At first it didn’t work out on the first try, the gate was closed, but on the second try we jumped in line and somehow got out. There turns out to be a house on the right side, and when you jump out, there are continuous vegetable gardens and some kind of field all around, and right from there they start shooting right away. So the guy and I fell into this trap for about an hour. Our people are shooting here, there are spirits there, if you scream, you won’t be able to finish screaming. As a result, then, after an hour, we simply spat and quickly rushed back.

The next day, or rather morning, the “four” approached us. Nobody warned them that the entire alley was under fire - and without knowing the ford, they went straight into this alley. - Damn, get out of here, run away! - we yell at them.

- What is this? - they didn’t understand. Only later, when

They started shooting through the alley, they already understood and went home. We were sent further to a point just opposite the cornfield. I don’t know, maybe someone cleared the houses poorly, because you seem to be walking calmly, knowing that the houses should have already been cleared, and from there, no, no, someone is shooting. We went into one house; there were five men and four women. There were no children at all. That is, it’s strange - the men are seasoned, in dressing gowns, all so stern. Then you go, you cross these same fields - and then some idiot sits in the field, he has a hole there. And he sits and shoots. As a result, we had to stand at this place and wait. Because our headquarters was a little further away. We walked through the field, looked around, and then they started shooting at us with large bullets - 12.7. They started planting on the roof. Everything seemed to be calm, I had just figured out who was standing where and set up posts. I go upstairs, everything seems calm

- and then the kid runs up and calls me: - Listen, listen, I saw someone there.

He just runs up to me, and then the block parapet on the roof shatters into pieces. And the metal tank with water was also pierced right through. The guy stands there, freaking out - and, apparently, the shirt of the 12.7 bullet scattered and cut him with fragments. He stands covered in blood his head, side and leg are hit - and cannot get over the shock. It arrived fine for him. I ordered him to go down, he fell on his belly and crawled down to the boys. Another guy stayed with me on the roof. He fussed a little and began to duck behind the parapet. There is a block on the roof in one place, a wall about 1.5 meters high, you can hide there. And in another place the thickness of the block was 40 centimeters; it was probably just that it was torn apart. The guy also fell on his belly, trying to put on the unloading and go down the stairs. Apparently, he wanted to run through the gap between the block and the stairs, and this part was just under fire. And so he jumps up, and his sniper is on the other side

hits right in the back and flies tangentially. He opens his back, he yells. I think everything, at least “two hundredth”, judging by the screams there in general, everything, agony and last gasp. But no, it turned out okay, he just got scared, fell, and the boys pulled him out.

I also had to get away from this roof somehow. As a result, I unloaded and looked to the rear - there seemed to be silence. The flight of stairs is high, I didn’t risk going forward there - I just jumped there. He landed unsuccessfully, injured his knee, and broke the cartilage. Then they told me that I couldn’t run, which meant I had to stay at headquarters. - Let me at least go to the NP? - Don’t worry, everything will be fine. Then you could say I was forcibly sent, because there they sent shellshocked people home. They sent me to the hospital. Then, for six months after knee surgery, I came to my senses and was jumping on crutches.

We then slept for a long time. Some stood on the chip, some slept until lunch. We reloaded the ammunition, regrouped, counted losses, licked our wounds. Plus, I also received some bad news - my friend from the “four” Sultan was killed on the left flank by Mazlum. He and I have been together since 2003, as well as with Evil. They also served together under contract. We started together, entered Ukraine together. That's how it happened. They headed in one section towards the village of Neizvestny, as we called it. We got stuck in front of some quarry, on a building. The spirits surrounded them in this nook and began to shoot methodically. So the Sultan and another guy were left to cover the retreat of the others, and, in short, they both died there. His younger brother, Grinya, was a sergeant major in my platoon. Naturally, he was all on edge and hysterical. What will he say to his parents? At that moment I decided to at least take the Sultan’s body. Although this was the territory of spirits, it was shot right through. In general, I agreed with the boys to provide Grinya and me with escorts who would show us that place. I took my 5 people and we went there to pick up the bodies. But the attempt was unsuccessful. We were literally 50 meters from the bodies, they were already in sight - but

We couldn't get them out of there. The spirits apparently knew that they would come there for the bodies, and they placed several machine guns there. Thank God, no one was “three-hundred” or “two-hundred”; he barely dragged Grinya out of there. All this was under such heavy fire, under such pressure that it felt like another assault by Mazlum. At that time we were not able to take the bodies. But only later, when we took the village of Neizvestny, we still took the boys. True, our medic went to pick up the bodies and was blown up by mines. Before leaving, the spirits mined the bodies too. After two days of respite, we received an order to take the village of Neizvestny, which was located on the left flank of Mazlum. We walked together with the “four”. The problem was that all the way to the village there was an open area, probably one and a half kilometers long. Clean sand. There's nowhere to hide. At that time, the Chinese commanded the detachment, because Nick and Zombie had gone on reconnaissance. And, in fact, the Chinese decided to attack Unknown in pickup trucks from a swoop. The decision was extremely risky: some will be lucky, some will be unlucky, some will get to the front end, some will not. But, as it turned out later, the decision turned out to be correct. Everyone formed up just before the place where Sultan was hit two hundred times. In front of the hill, everyone grouped up, sat on the wheelbarrows and quickly broke forward in three parties under heavy fire. The spirits fired at us mainly from heavy weapons, from DShKs, from ATGMs, and from whatever they could. We reached the edge of the village in three parties and, having wedged ourselves into the defenses of the spirits, we continued to cleanse Neizvestny on foot. We reached the middle of the village and settled there. By the way, there I fell ill with malaria for the first time in my life. Because we stood near the Euphrates for some time, and no one knew what kind of disease it was. Everyone thought that the flu was in severe form. No one had any pills, but there was such weakness that the arms and legs fell off. But somehow we had the strength to work. It’s like this: there’s work - they blew themselves up. It doesn’t matter whether they are weak or not, he took the barrel in his teeth and walked forward. And when there was no work, everyone was lying around so that they could not lift their arms and legs. I reached my destination on Neizvestny, settled there and died with malaria.

I had no losses in the Unknown, thank God. The boys did everything with an A+, just like practice. Then, when we occupied the lines, it was necessary to equip the positions - I ordered the nearby houses to be dismantled into cinder blocks. As a result, the boys there built almost the Great Wall of China - such an impressive size. Even during construction, the spirits tried to break through them several times, but the boys repelled the attack. Two weeks passed, we then retreated to the Euphrates and began to prepare. Everyone knew: an assault on Khsham awaited us. At first they were supposed to go in six detachments - but then only 2 detachments were left. And two weeks later the most interesting thing happened - “commander’s day.”

“Commander’s Day” (platoon commander’s story) When we approached the extreme line from which we were supposed to launch an attack on Khsham, we met there in a large building, like the former administration, a group of special forces officers. The guys were in an extremely depressed and exhausted state. As we learned, they tried to climb into Khsham for three days in a row - and for three days in a row they barely crawled away with “two hundred” and “three hundred”. As a result, having lost all their strength, they settled in these administrative corridors - some wounded, some inadequate, like zombies, looking at one point. The spectacle is not for the faint of heart, in short.

Nick gathered us, the commanders - me, Leshy and Lotus. He distributed tasks, distributed us along flanks and directions. And the next day we went on the offensive - again one and a half kilometers in an open field. It was also very scary. We crossed the river during the day in a column under wild fire - and the only thing that helped us was that

The military started sending packages there from Grads. Plus we worked two times from “Pinocchio” on the outskirts of Khsham, which we should have taken first. This helped a lot - if it weren’t for the shelling of our people, we would not have walked along this postcard. But the Syrians hid under the bridge during the attack. None of them even reached the first milestone. About 50–70 people, they all climbed under the bridge and sat there. They're scared, you see. Thanks to the training from the Grads, we approached Khsham, entered and took the first line. The second squad led by Veter was the first to enter. To our left was a group of four—the fourth squad: my friend Roger, Dan. I walked further: I had the third squad on the left flank, then I was in the center with the second squad, and the first squad on the right flank. We reached a large quarry, a large pit. There was a half-kilometer wasteland there - and it, in fact, separated the outskirts of Khsham from the village itself. And we all settled there in a huge pit. You can't go further than 200 meters there, not a single shelter. The spirits opened fire with everything they had - they wounded Leshiy, wounded Lotus. I called Rambo on the radio - he arrived in a UAZ under fire and took the “300th” to the rear. I assessed the boundaries, the spaces ahead, and thought about what to do. And then, while I was there trying to give out orders, trying to set someone up for an attack, at that moment I heard on the radio: “You’re already sick of it!” Branch

- forward!". This was the fourth department, Kyrgyzstan. He was sitting under the very shelled zone, and realized that if he didn’t go forward, under the cover of the houses in front, then he would be screwed. Therefore, he simply rushed forward without my order, ran to the front building and lay down there. At that moment, I gave the command for a general offensive - since there were no platoon commanders left, it turned out that I was in charge of three platoons: the Lotus platoon, the Leshy platoon and my own. He gave the order to attack, in short, and now we, as it were, reached the next line together. By that time, at my direction, Cossack had suppressed two spirits - one machine gunner, and one grenade launcher. Gera dismantled another machine gunner from the tank along with the house from the right flank. We settled at this line, grouped ourselves, and I deployed forces there. Those who were “overwhelmed” were evacuated. In general, we got time

for a break. As soon as everyone was positioned, he began to plan the offensive further.

At this moment I failed. Failure in some way. The only space there was in this shelter, which was under fire. In order to get there, you had to run six meters. At that moment I was talking to Nick on the radio, and I felt like I was being skewered like meat. I felt it exactly. I forced myself not to lose consciousness - because I had seen this situation many times: when someone is shot in the legs, then the sniper finishes you off along with the others who are helping you. Therefore, he forced himself not to lose consciousness and began to crawl forward into cover. At that moment, Kirghiz and Moro dragged me into the shelter. - Where did it hurt?

- At your feet. Two legs were pierced through with one shot. It didn’t touch anything vitally important—it just went through the meat. Gib immediately provided medical assistance there, on the spot. I remember that I then yelled at him: “Mine immediately with chlorhexidine! I don’t want to die from blood poisoning.” Therefore, without even injecting the anesthetic, while I was in deep shock, he stuck two vials into my legs.

Another moment: they wanted to cut my pants, and I yelled at them: “Where, bitch? Take off your pants! Where are you cutting?!” They took off my pants, helped me, rewound me, and put me back on. Then they took me away - the boys called Rambo again and sent me to the rear. In principle, I know everything in detail about how it happened next. Zmeyka, my

favorite sapper, died - he was hit in the head by two hundred while breaking through to the next line. He was also a desperate guy, young, and stuck his nose in. Well, the only thing I regretted was that I did not have time to correctly transfer the platoon to the deputy. As a result, the man was not ready for such a burden of responsibility, and as a result, the entire further attack in Khsham was carried out by the commanders of the squads in Tora, Ruse, Vetra, and Kyrgyzstan.

I was sent to the hospital, with Lotus and Leshiy. In general, this is where the Syrian campaign ended for me - I spent almost a month safely in the hospital with Lotus. We were given all the necessary help, everything was done in the best possible way. A huge bow to the doctors. In general, we checked out on the same day as Lotus, and,

when the boys from Khsham arrived home, I already met them at home. On December 28th I arrived in my car and met the guys.

"Commander's Day" (a machine gunner's story) The most serious assault was Khsham, or rather Little Khsham. There was a bridge behind the canyon - on it the spirits “thrilled” a lot of people. Even then it really almost hit me. There were four of us left, plus the assigned doctor, he was our commander of doctors in the platoon, but he decided to join us as an attack aircraft. Everyone told him that he was crazy, that he had “stormed his brain.” But apparently he couldn’t stand it - he went to the assault squad himself. When the assault began, there were losses - but many of those who were wounded near Khsham later returned to duty and remained alive. But at the same time, all the platoon commanders of the third detachment were reduced to three hundred. We begin to work, and we see that there are broken high-voltage power lines hanging in front of us and broken wires. I was immediately alarmed when I saw it. We ran across the canyon, there were 20 people watching. There were other platoons on the left, but they also suffered losses, they were sitting under the bridge - and there the shelling was very serious. And we are running across this canyon, and then I was very surprised by the Syrian tank crews. They usually always slowed down. And here are two Syrian tank crews, they just loaded up. A tank is driving, and then - time! — an RPG shot flies over him. The tank stopped, came to its senses, and moved on. Then two RPG shots, both missed. By the grace of God, they all flew over the tower, I don’t know how the grenade launcher didn’t hit it.

We simply used this tank as cover. They hid behind the box, advanced and took the line. Well, the work began - the assault was heavy, we scattered. I run, run, run, I didn’t take a defensive position, I just ran so as not to run into a bullet. There is such a trench nearby, I remember that you can’t go into the trench - because it could be a booby-trapped trap. In front of this trench there were two false positions; in our detachment we were taught to do such things. Like, the enemy thinks that you are there, but in fact you are a little further away, behind another parapet. It turns out I was working, they didn’t understand my maneuver, the boys moved forward and the other squad moved on. It turns out I’m processing the front. Then a guy came up to me and asked me to help - he covered them very badly

AGS, it was necessary to crush him with fire. But I can’t, in our detachment they said: “Everyone has his own sector.” But in combat, it’s not possible for each sector to hold its own. I look - their AGS is simply “trehsotit” and “trehsotit”. The guys are dragging their own people away, I can’t - I have to cover my own people too, and there’s also this AGS hitting, I can’t get it. I hit, it goes higher, but it doesn’t work. Here, on the spiritual side, a grenade launcher and a machine gunner begin to work in tandem. Basically, people are all right-handed, and everything will shift to the right. In short, I take it, don’t disconnect the box, change the lid, throw a 25-point tape from the B-32 (armor-piercing cartridges) at the base of the receiver, and start watering. I think to myself: “Now I’ll catch you.” They worked together so clearly: the machine gunner works, then changes, the grenade launcher fires. In short, I start working in advance. It seems to have quieted down:

“Target, work,” I shout, so that our people know what I’m shooting at. I’m used to, like in the army, loudly announcing my actions. - Why are you screaming? - the commander answers me. You see the goal -

Work.

The guys did not understand my maneuver, that I was using this fortification for the purpose of my cover. And they climbed behind this cover. It turns out that one guy gets three hundred, and the other gets his finger torn off. The first one gets hit in the neck by a fragment: a few more centimeters and he would have died, it almost hit a nerve. They drag him away and shout into the radio: “Three hundred, heavy.” And he snatches the station: “I’m not heavy, I’m light” (laughs). I was surprised how calmly they took everything. Nearby, one of ours starts working with the GP-shki. Then one man, who came from St. Petersburg, runs out to raise a platoon and starts yelling: “We're going to overeat! Attack! Are you crazy? And there’s a postcard - well, where? First you need a tank or a mortar. But there is some kind of constipation with the tank, just like with the mortar. He didn't seem to be there. We are simply being beaten, all the platoon commanders are wounded. A man raises a platoon, and his machine gunner mows him down. The guy fought in the USSR, such a cool guy. And then a machine-gun burst just cuts him down and he falls. I thought he was screwed, but he wasn’t, he turned out to be alive. Just imagine, the grenade - the UZRGM was even pierced by a bullet. And in

The bullets stuck into the magazine, and only penetrated the thigh. He didn’t have any armor yet—he was unloaded, in an “Afghan.” Anyone who knows knows what an Afghan woman is. Long story short, he gets a hole in his thigh, and he crawls with his back to the parapet. The boys immediately run up to him and he:

— Why are you slowing down the assault? I can handle it myself. Let's move on

continue, And he looks at me. Boy, change your position. But I understand that it’s impossible, there’s simply nowhere. On one side I have a grenade launcher, on the other the guys are all crowded together. Well, there is no shelter there. I know I need to shift, movement is life. That’s what I thought - I have standard armor, the SVD doesn’t hit 7.62 at 100 meters, I checked. In short, to hell with it, if it hits three hundred, maybe they’ll give you a medal. I think my arms and legs are closed because I’m in a trench. The head - well, if it flies into the head, then it is God’s will. In short, to hell with it, I’m working, my guts won’t fall out, I won’t get into my heart. Either the collarbone or this, but I will remain alive. I thought so and then started working. The guys are being evacuated, the grenade launcher cannot work because there are people behind. As a result, out of 12 of us, there are only 4 people left and an attached doctor. Here, in short, the grenade launcher gets hit hard, a bullet flies between the armor plates and pierces his lung. His squad leader takes the grenade launcher from him and in that direction - bam! - shoots. I see the boys and the medic moved out to get the “three hundredths” from another department. We need to continue the assault, but there’s a postcard there, that’s not an option. The guys and the medic on the spot had to pull the wounded to another area. I see these bursts of bullets on them, I start working, reloaded. The boys put the already wounded man on the raincoat, pulled him out, handed him over to the doctors - and we continued further. Then the tank drove up, hit the enemy and that’s it, the spirits died out. The Syrian hit from the tank, and we ran across the entire postcard, like our grandfathers ran during the war. We occupied the trench of the spirits, we look here they have a good Romanian machine gun lying around. The medic stops me and pulls me by the rope - suddenly I was bombed with a grenade, to clear the check. There was no trap — and we calmly took the machine gun, loaded it, and the medic helped me cut the easel tape in half. True, there was a piece of brains on the machine gun and a piece of hair, a piece of the skull, everything from the spirit -

machine gunner left. I removed this thing from the receiver and disdained it a little, and it made me shudder.

The grenade launcher was clearly chipped with something. But they held their position. The commander tells us: “Don’t kill the grenade launcher, I’ll hire him!” Like, the grenade launcher worked well for the enemy. We laughed, of course. But in the end he couldn’t be hired and was liquidated.

That's how we were left with four people. We continued, there was already a stronger onslaught, the spirits began to retreat, another AGS began to work. In short, we began to storm further, moved, and then it became difficult. We started entering buildings like stormtroopers, because there wasn’t a damn thing left of us. We got more or less settled and thought: - So, we need to hollow out the “chip.”

We made a “chip” in the fence and decide who will go first. One of ours says: - Okay, I'll go. And immediately into this “trick” from a grenade launcher WHAM! — the projectile arrives. The guy looked at me like this and scratched his turnip:

- Fuck this “trick”!

We must give the militants their due, they made their own retreat until the snow melted, everyone died while the rest were leaving. As the Lord said: “Love your enemies.” I didn’t treat my opponent as my personal enemy, I didn’t like bullying. In our department, the following concepts were immediately established: do not shoot at women, do not kill unarmed people.

THE FIRST "MUSICIANS"

“We are not American PMCs, we have an idea” - The fact that they say all sorts of nonsense about us, saying, “mercenaries,

crazy people, fighting for money, without an idea, without a goal,” is fundamentally wrong. Because for the most part people who join PMCs are people who once served in the armed forces. This is the bulk, let’s say, the main composition of the company. Our opponents are trying to impose on us the idea that our work is some kind of animal instinct. This is a completely wrong understanding of the issue. I come here as if to work. I don’t worry about how I will live without all this, whether I will find myself or not in a peaceful life. It’s just that when I came and started doing this work, I realized that for me this was more than a job. This is the meaning of life.

We must understand that we are not a campaign like American, British, or any other PMCs. We always have an idea anyway. And money is not the main goal at all. When I'm at work, I don't even think about money. The most important thing is to complete the task. And my main motives are to realize myself to a greater extent. After all, I studied this once, I did this. I’m trying to implement my experience gained in the service here. I'm the same person as everyone else. I just understand that something I do needs to be done anyway. This work is needed. I believe that we first of all protect the interests of our state. Being on the territory of other countries, we primarily represent the Russian Federation. No matter what anyone says, first of all we are citizens of the Russian Federation. And no matter how we carry out our work, we must remember that we are, first of all, Russian people, who cannot live without such an idea, without such a motive - to be Russian. And my goal, my work is not just making money and improving well-being. My work is my idea, my life. I get pleasure when I see the result of my work. Yes, achieving these results is a very difficult path, requiring a lot of mental work, and sometimes physical work.

“This kind of work is like a life preserver” — I was doing business, I had two computers

a store that repairs mobile equipment, laptops, and so on. By that time, by the summer, everything was not very good with business, firstly, the competition was quite high, and secondly, there was an economic recession in the country. Therefore, starting from June 14th, I have already been tracking trends regarding Donbass. Before that, I served in the special forces for many years, since 2004, when I left, I was a civilian - but I was drawn, let’s say, to all these things. No matter how sad it may sound, if you have tried such a life - on business trips, somewhere with weapons, and so on - then it remains an imprint on you for the rest of your life. It’s rare that someone simply goes into civilian life and remains a civilian forever.

The fact is that what is associated with such heroic deeds are some of the most vivid and memorable memories in life. At least that's what I think. In the army there, in a war somewhere. And accordingly, it is human nature to idealize the past, and he is drawn to constantly return to such things. In the summer I kept track of all this, and in July I received a call from friends with whom I served under contract during my time in Chechnya. They said there was an option to work. It's not even about money. For me, this kind of work, let’s say, was like a life preserver. I didn’t think twice - I immediately explained to my wife that I was going to accompany columns of refugees and humanitarian missions, and left for Rostov. It was July 21st. Well, on July 22, as part of my people with whom I served at one time - 5 people, plus another 16 of us, we entered the Donbass. The story about the fragment.

— I went to Donbass as a volunteer and typed on the Internet

"DPR military registration and enlistment office" called and they told me the address. I collected my things, sat down and drove off. Although I felt fine - I have a good car, an apartment, I have everything - the work was absolutely crazy. But, you see, I used to live in Ukraine, a long time ago, but then I left there. And I just hate these fascists, Bandera’s goats, but here they are

They started doing this, they burned people in Odessa. This was actually the last straw for me. And so I just arrived, walking through empty Donetsk to the former SBU building, where there was a militia assembly point then. And then the dill began to shell the city in large numbers. And then a fragment 20 centimeters long flies past me, it definitely weighed half a kilogram, sharp, bastard. It flew nearby and I could already feel the heat from it, even though it was winter. This is how I experienced baptism by fire - on my first day of arrival in Donetsk.

"Big family" — In 2014, I joined the company. My comrades called

service. At that time I had serious difficulties with work; at that time I was working at a factory. 30 of us gathered and arrived in a GAZelle to the location for preparation. For about a month we ran in the fields, practiced tactics, there was shooting every day. Twice a day: in the evening we have tactics and in the morning we have shooting, or vice versa. There were also specialists - they came, each from his own bell tower explained all this. That is, the preparation was normal. Explained fully, from start to finish. And there were no problems with ammunition - they shot every day. The team was normal, like a big family, it was interesting. Almost like an army, but everything was much simpler - there were no problems with going into the city, there was trust in the employees.

"Men's interests" I will judge by myself - the company and I have the same male interests. Those who have already been to Chechnya, Afghanistan, guys and men who have already smelled gunpowder - they know that then you are drawn back again to the combat zone. A warrior is already a warrior for life, this is forever. And here you have the opportunity to realize yourself in this regard, to feel like a man. How much stronger my brother and I (he serves with me) are now on our feet, compared to the time when we just started. In this regard, the company is extremely grateful for the fact that all this was created. I think that for a man who fights, this is an ideal option. And most importantly, the company works in the interests of Russia; there cannot be anything else here.

“A hero is one who goes and completes his task” — It seems to me that a hero is someone who goes and fulfills his

task. At the same time, he made his choice for himself a long time ago, and reacts correctly to any situation. Every such person is a hero. In our conditions, such a person will definitely prove himself. In another life, you may not see him, but in war such a person is at ease. I retired, and in 14, Ukraine began. In June 14th they called me and offered me to work here. That’s when I realized that I had finally returned back to the service - where I was needed, where there was a special role for me. Not there, in civilian life, but here. Here's your weapon, here's your task - work, think, execute. Many people in their lives did not manage to associate themselves with the army, with some units. But here there is a bright ability - the opportunity to prove something to oneself, if someone wants to prove something. The surest way to do the same is to prove to yourself who you are and what you deserve.

Entry under artillery “I prepared for this for a very long time, I watched videos on the Internet.

I just felt sorry for the children. When they started killing children, I couldn’t stand it. I prepared for a very long time. A friend of mine went as a volunteer, there, in Donbass, we worked together. There he and his relatives met the guys from the PMC. They told him - come to us. He then came on vacation. He says: “Will you go?” So I went. Before that, as you can see, I had a second emergency, the second Chechen one. I seemed to understand that there, in Donbass, everything was completely bad. But Ukraine, compared to Chechnya, is nothing at all. It was hell there, the enemy’s artillery worked very well there. When we first arrived, I remember we went into a school building in Bajrachka; there was a bomb shelter there. Of course, it was creepy to look at all this: small children, old people sitting in the basement. They fed us, of course - we don’t really have food, we only gave them dry rations. I felt sorry for the people. We ourselves lived in two-story buildings. Ukrainians were hammering at them with artillery at night. The Nona stood there, a 120-caliber self-propelled gun based on a BMD. It was made for landing. Inserts are also placed on it for different calibers of shells. When they were dropped from airplanes, back under Margelov, tests were done so that this vehicle could be thrown behind enemy lines so that it could fire their shells. Up to 120. And from the garden where “Nona” was parked, our two-story building was clearly visible—from there they hit us. One night they started to cover us, and we were lying on the second floor. There was no roof there, just slate. If it hits, then fuck it. About 10 of us were there in this apartment. - There is such a military rule, I learned from my father. When did you take it?

blessing so that they would let me go to war, he said: “War is a holy cause, but only you must be a warrior. Kill only to save human life. Wars and disasters are given to us only so that we come to our senses. Live and act like an Orthodox person. Don’t be like that, like you came to a foreign land. Nothing like that: where the Cossack set his foot, there is his home and his homeland.”

HOW THE SYRIANS AND THE FATIMIDS FIGHTED Then we couldn’t take one height for a long time, we stood there for a long time, my machine gunner died. We then went in a group together with the Fatimids and the Syrians. According to the plan, the Fatimids were supposed to go forward and go to the flank, I was supposed to enter the center. The Syrians worked from the right flank. We walked through the mountains, along the mountain ridge to the junction. There the road led to Iraq. In principle, from this height we controlled the ridge, but it was difficult to deliver artillery there and, due to the complexity of the terrain, there were problems with the delivery of food. It was both mentally difficult and physically difficult, plus the business trip was long and there were a lot of fights. And if before that I went without losses, then here I already lost my guys. First, the “Fatimids” disappeared - as if they had disappeared into the ground, although at first everyone said: “Rus, Rus, we are with you everywhere.” And then they disappeared. I gave the command to the Syrians so that they, too, began to carry out an offensive - we had all already reached our positions and by time we should have already begun actions. But when I went to the center, I found myself alone with my group. The whole trio of Syrians, Russians and “Fatimids” were supposed to separate the militants into small groups, and then, in principle, we would quickly, quickly knock them out of there. But we were left alone - and it turned out that for the enemy we were like in a shooting gallery. They concentrated all their fire on us. As we later found out, the forces of some Indonesians were concentrated there against us. At the same time, there were crests there, which is the most interesting thing. How did we determine? They had our camouflages and dots, that is, podzhopniks, but in the SAR no one uses podzhopniks. There were 20 people in my group. Our grenade launcher, my commander, and the machine gunner were immediately knocked out. We must give the machine gunner his due, he covered us: when the grenade launcher died, we had to pull him out. So the machine gunner stood up to his full height, my age, such a healthy kid, from St. Petersburg by the way - and began to hammer at the enemy. He covered us until he was wounded in the leg. He then fell to his knee, stood up again and continued to fire. As a result, his sniper

they just pierced everything: they hit him, he got up again - and so on several times. I don’t know why he did this, but he was such a person himself, he never ducked. We couldn’t get the guys out right away, because then I would have lost even more people - the fire was very dense. We came out of this pit to our height, dug in again and at night fired a volley of tracers at our dead boys. What’s most surprising is that the spirits after us also fired a volley of tracers - they also fired a volley to my dead. Like, they were worthy warriors. This was the first time, and I have never seen anything like it again. By the way, during that battle there was a boy in my squad - when they tried to pull out the dead, he crawled under a very heavy barrage of fire to the dead machine gunner and tried to drag him. But I couldn’t do it. I’m already yelling at him into the radio station: “Everyone, leave, now they’ll kick you out.” He has already taken off his belt, hooks it around his body and begins to crawl. He cannot stretch his body, he scrapes and scrapes.

“Let go, brother, otherwise we’ll all end up here,” I tell him into the radio. And then he let go. But the boy was worthy of respect: despite the fire, despite the lack of strength, he still tried to pull him out in any way. Later, of course, we pulled out the bodies. And we didn’t give it to the enemy - we knew where the guys were, and even at night we were on duty so that no one would approach them.

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On the opposite slope they made holes in the rocks and hid there during artillery preparation. When the artillery was working and the infantry, that is, we, began to work, the enemy again jumped into position and again began to hammer at us. It was basically impossible to knock them out from this height. I then called the helicopter pilots. At least they can, they gave the militants a good hard time on the opposite side. Then I called in more artillery, then they covered us with smoke. In short, we eventually flew to this height. When they were already clearing it out, the spirits in their holes began to explode. They had special collars with explosives. You fly up to him - bang! and no head. This was done so that they could not be identified later.

That's what the fight was like. It lasted three days. When we reached the height, we hung our vest at the top. Then the Syrians arrived, television, all this garbage they dragged themselves there, they wanted to take off the vest and hang it up

instead there is a Syrian flag. They could have taken it off, but then the Afghans, the “Fatimids,” stood up to defend the vest. They flew up to the Syrians, started shooting at their feet, and pointing to their vest, they said: “Rus, we won’t let anyone hang another flag here.” That's the kind of respect they had. But the battle was, of course, very difficult. To be honest, we couldn’t even count the number of the enemy - because he was running away from us, taking cover on the sun loungers. But judging by these sun loungers, there were about 30 people. Consider it a whole platoon. Such a good, high-quality support point. First echelon, second echelon, holes. It’s good that at least aviation helped - if it weren’t for the “flyers”, we would have had to fight for this height for a long time. Now, if the Syrians and “Fatimids” had come with us, then everything would have been simpler, the terrain would have allowed them to see and shoot through everything. By the way, I was very disappointed in the Afghans then. I thought they were a more warlike people. But, as it turned out, no.

"Nightlight" at the heights El Barda is two heights. On one side stood the “Carpathians”, and the railway ran in the middle. They called her "Neck". They also wanted to roll a train along it, mine it and launch it towards the spirits. Nearby there was a ridge leading to Palmyra. It was an interesting fight, but we had a good laugh then. Then the weapons were good, the equipment was supplied. We went to a height on the left flank, the commander of the soldiers standing there told us: “You sit for now, there is still spirit activity there.” We went out, secured a foothold, sat at night, and then my observers reported: “Spirits!” I command “For battle”, everyone went to their positions. The spirits pulled out the DShK, t-r-r-r-r-r in the air, fired - apparently they thought that the Syrians were standing on the high-rise, and just the sounds of the DShK would make them crap their pants. They walk in tens of them - satisfied, happy: they say the Syrians will leave now, and they will take a position. And we have night vision devices. Plus, one of ours had the Pierce system, it helps the night devices, like the moon - you turn it on and the night devices see well. True, the enemy also sees you well, if he has “night lights”, you can light up. So, the guy turns on “Pierce” and everyone in the “night lights” sees the territory as during the day. Well, we sat down and, like at a shooting gallery, started clicking them. We then killed three spirits, the rest literally immediately evaporated.

Height 989 I went with the guys to Palmyra, the first one, with the “troika”. They climbed the hill, I joined them in the morning, because they were busy in the evening, and I rode with them through the mountains for two weeks. We spent the night in a “kopeck piece”; it was spring, but for some reason I didn’t take a sleeping bag, and at night I froze at my post. I only had a rug, I wrapped myself in it and hid myself in a crack in the rock. I then caught a serious Dubak. And then, in the morning, the wind rose, there was little dust, and visibility dropped significantly. And Zhenya, our commander, took a platoon - we went down the mountain, crossed a hollow between two ridges, maybe two kilometers there. We crossed to the ridge, climbed it and walked along height 989 towards Palmyra. We arrived, took up positions, found the Dukhovsky abandoned supports and dugouts below. The snipers moved forward - and the spirits settled on this ridge, which we went around. That is, they came to their rear. They can be seen, the distance is about 1500 - the SVD gun accordingly does not reach, we had one long-range gun made from a PTR (PTRD or PTRS) from 43 years ago. Well, the spread there is large - we had to correct for the fountains of hits. We lie with binoculars and observe. The deuce advances, squeezes the spirits towards us - and we throw them behind their backs. They somehow don’t understand where it’s flying from, they’re turning their heads. One was wounded - the spirits later did not tempt fate; they grabbed the wounded man, withdrew from their position and went downstairs. We report to the station that the spirits have left, the guys have knocked them down, which means we can go. But the guys didn’t climb up, but walked along the gorge between two ridges. We also observe them for about two kilometers. And it turns out they are walking along the bottom, we see them, two people at the forefront - and spirits are sitting at the top. And it turns out that our spirits were burned. We yell around the station to tell the guys that their spirits can see them. It was unpleasant: you see everything, but you can’t do anything. But the spirits really left, they didn’t wait - apparently they realized that a rather large group was coming, and they moved away.

They drove them to 989, there someone left across the plain towards Palmyra, someone stayed there. But it’s already like that, fuss.

How to spot a howitzer Then the spirits from Palmyra pulled up a howitzer and began throwing it at us. It’s a little inaccurate, but it’s getting closer and closer. We corrected it somehow. I was sitting in my position and saw a flash. And sure enough, it fell to the side. I found an approximate point and gave directions to the commander: to the left of the landing. I'm watching further. Another flash. I start counting to roughly determine the distance. They calculated it, the normal ones gave the coordinates to the army men - so they hit this square with 152 in response. They didn’t destroy it, but they put it nearby. The spirits realized that they had been burned, curled up and left. It’s also interesting: boom, they’re shooting at you, and you’re waiting for it to fly in, where it’s going to land. Interesting. When the assault took place, we were surrounded. The spirits did not attack us head-on, but knocked out the Syrians from another height. We were in front then, and together with the Syrians stood the boys from the first detachment the Utes crew, four or five people. And against them there are 30 spirits. They were already throwing grenades there. The Utes guys placed it on one side of the height, then on the other. At night they moved to one position, during the day to others.

The spirits had a drone, well, these bottles were flying. They made drones out of plastic bottles and hung a GoPro camera on them. The first time this thing flew over us, we didn't understand what it was. And this drone looked at where the boys’ positions were. And at dawn, an ISIS sheep with a suicide belt runs into one of the “Utyos” positions. He ran in and shouted “Allahu Akbar!” and blew himself up. The boys look at the position - there are some sticks scattered in all directions. At first they didn’t understand what had happened... But what happened was: this spirit jumped into a false position - the boys rushed in advance and made a false position there, which the ISIS sheep took for another point with the “Cliff”. As a result, he blew up not a machine gun, but a stack of sticks and rags. And the guys say: we watched from the sidelines and didn’t understand at all what it was.

SHOOT AND THEN ASKED The first two days we tried to enter from the north side, but it didn’t work. Because the military did not support us. They tried to come in, they didn’t succeed, and they moved away. And then the dill unwound us with artillery. Then we went to the streets of Popasnaya, there were only 37 of us. We walked several blocks, on one side there was a cemetery (there were dills everywhere), and on the other side there were dills all over the street. We went in and started aiming artillery, they didn’t even know we were there. They walked past us for three days. Then sometimes we got into direct clashes, we worked from the microwave (Chukavina sniper rifle), they gave us. When we entered the cemetery, we still didn’t know who had what bandages. The first time we came in, we had white armbands, the militia had red, and the Ukrops had yellow. A sniper runs out and says “who are they with the blue armbands?” I say, “I don’t know, I’ll ask now.” They told me “these are dill, cut them down.” And we've already failed. He shot me and then asked. It went on like this for three days, then the assault began. “Kopeyka” approached from the right and some army men. They didn’t even know we were there, they started throwing grenades. — How did the assault usually take place?

The task was to gain a foothold at a certain point, and we carried it out. If we came across fortifications somewhere, that is, houses with dill, then we dismantled them with grenade launchers. They worked with tanks and hail, and destroyed our entire street. At first they fired constantly, without a break. The fire was very strong. Now maybe they have less ammunition. When we entered an area with high-rise buildings, we heard the commander radioing to us that something incomprehensible was rushing towards us, they saw it from a copter. I tell the grenade launchers - let's move out. And just at that moment a Ukrop infantry fighting vehicle rushed by. She came for her three hundred rubles, our house there was four-story and there were a lot of three hundred rubles there. They loaded up, she leaves. The first shot missed, she slowed down and there was a gap in front of the BMP. Then she

she went, we ran out and shot him in the ass after him. Then they found a burnt BMP. They later found a grave nearby; they buried someone. They simply did not expect that we would bypass them from the rear. There were cases when we were promised reinforcements, that a battalion of Marines would come up. As a result, 16 people came to us without officers, they did not know what to do, then they withdrew and left. There were militiamen who helped pull out the three hundredth, but they did not take part in the battle, only in the evacuation.

Their There was a task - not far from this village there was a fortification. We walked through the plantings, walked along the highway and turned here. There turned out to be a good fortification there, they dug in well. The bird flies and doesn’t see anyone, everything is covered with brilliant green. I sent a reconnaissance squad of four people. They reported seeing “Boot” and hearing conversations. They were sitting there, drinking tea, but didn’t notice ours. We threw mortars there, started to enter a second time, and a battle broke out. We had two of them. They pulled back again and worked with mortars again. The birds had already dropped low, identified all the targets and were already working normally. The second time we came in, they were no longer there. They found a lot of different weapons, and for the first time we saw that they were attaching 82nd mines to RPGs. That's how they worked for us. The next day we moved out into the ravine to observe. The artillery was supposed to work on the eastern side of the village. The commander asked if there was any movement, there was none. We were told to go in in two groups, there were about 20 of us. After the shelling, the Ukrops retreated to the other side of the village. There was also a second group of us, 10 people, walking along the landing. We began to advance, and platoon commander Mora arrived. There were locals here, they were hiding in the basement. One woman came out and said: “Be careful, there are a lot of them sitting further down there.”

As a result, the second platoon came out, met the dill, and a battle ensued between them. We called their squad leader. At this moment, our second platoon pulled back. Maura and I were on the summer veranda covered with mosquito netting. Then they tell him on the radio that our second platoon has pulled away and ask what to do with them. Maura says bring them back. And it turns out that we are already at the very front. And at this time I look, dill is coming, there is a yellow bandage on the butt. And Mora and I were in dill uniform.

He opens the door, he asks: “Ours?”, We say: “Ours!” He looks and looks, asks: “Ukraine?”, We answer: “Ukraine.” He turns around, waves his hand to the others, and calls.

I went into the house to warn that the dill were coming. Shooting started and they surrounded us. They shot from all sides, bullets fell on my collar and ricocheted off the iron bars. I took an advantageous position and could conduct all-round fire. We shot back, me from the inside and Mora from the outside. And they moved back one house, and the signalman and the squad leader remained in this house. Mora and I shot back together, then he said, let’s go back after them. We leave by radio - they don’t answer. In the end, it turned out that they did not move in our direction, but to the right, where ours were. Mora and I were left alone, shooting back. Then we move away and look - there’s some kind of crowd. We walked around with them, turned them around, “Fuck you, you’re eating them,” and these were dill. We turned them around, they went back. They pulled back even further, behind the house. Then we shoot back, I see two people coming, just to the rear of us and with weapons at the ready. I run out, I thought our guys had come and were eating us again.

I run out, grab one by the hand and say: “Wait, where are you going?” He turns, looks at me and asks: “Where should we go?” I answer, “That’s where we fucked off and are holding the defense. Why are you running here and there? I’m already tired of bringing you back.” I turn them all around and lead them to Mora. I see there is still a crowd in greenery sitting there, they

turn around silently and follow us. I brought them to Mora, he asked them: “Why are you constantly leaving, climbing here?” I told them, occupy that house and hold the defense there. We turn around, Maura walks ahead of me, they go around the bend and move on. And I went into the house, I thought they went there. I walked in, opened the door, and there was no one there. I went out, looked out, and there was no one there either. I think, well, they shouldn’t go any further, there are dills there, why will they go to the dills. I didn’t think that we were walking around with dill. He entered the house again and went through the rooms. I go out and look - there is shooting. A man in a dill uniform runs by, it was Mora. They’re shooting from behind the gate, I think, “They’ve surrounded me again.” I went out on the radio and contacted Mora.

They had a lot of losses there, everything was bloody. Cars drove up there and started taking two hundred and three hundred cars. This village was called Vyskriva.

PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW BRAKES We entered Syria, received an assignment there, and went to the site. First, the boys came for reconnaissance - I didn’t go there, so I can’t say my impressions about the reconnaissance. The task was as follows: we have a narrow isthmus, or rather two narrow isthmuses. The “four” went along one narrow isthmus to occupy the lines. And we are coming from the right flank. At that moment I did not look at either the cards or the enemy’s disposition. At first I had to tinker a little. The Syrians told us that they and their sappers cleared the mines of their own line of defense for our passage. But I don’t trust their sapper skills - and since I spent many years in the head patrol, I went first in the “got” and removed seven more mines. The whole squad had to follow me - the boys had already removed several additional barriers and seven more mines. All this was in complete darkness, almost by touch. I didn’t even use the “night light” - because my vision was impaired due to concussion and the “night light” and the thermal imager blinded me greatly. I try to rely only on my eyes in the dark to see and feel many things well. We cleared the line instead of the Syrians and moved on. We have reached a certain milestone. There were very big problems with navigation back then, so in some places we got a little lost. Again, there was little time for preparation, and I did not study the map personally. We went a little to the side, then, when Evil took out the navigator, we were very afraid that they might find us. You see, at that time we did not yet know what the enemy was capable of, and we thought that he had a lot of technical means that could take direction from us. But the Evil One still couldn’t bear it and took out his navigator. I determined our location and realized that we had gone 300 meters to the left. We returned to the ridge and sat down on it. Our first operation, in principle, went without much fighting. Only one group started a fight at that moment, but the Igiloids shot back and left. There were also noncombat losses: on that day, while we were preparing, the guys decided

to mine the side approaches, and then 2 people died. They ran into their own mines out of ignorance.

Translated from Russian to English - www.onlinedoctranslator.com

The first "meat grinder" fight While we were sitting there on the ridge, our people launched a drone. We found out the enemy's positions, distributed them into platoons - who took what. We were assigned to carry out the task at night. In general, the first such meatgrinder battle took place here... We received the task, we were distributed into platoons, who takes what coordinates, where they advance, who commands whom, the combined groups were assembled and off we went. Again at night. I felt that the enemy could be waiting for us with “night lights” and “warm tanks”, and therefore sabotaged, let’s say, the time of the offensive. It’s not that I was trying to hide behind other people’s backs and so on, I just waited for a more opportune moment. Because I understand that I am responsible for people. As it turned out, later, almost all the commanders sabotaged in the same way, and at a certain time no one entered the given square.

It was an hour and a half late - until dawn. As soon as it began to dawn, we went out to the given squares. I also sped up with my group. We reached a given point and met resistance. Of almost all the platoons, except mine, the offensive immediately floundered. Most of the boys walked through the open area, the sun rose - and the spirits sat on the commanding heights. They have snipers, machine gunners, ZU-Shka, AGS - and we are just infantry, we didn’t have anything heavy. Everything heavy came from behind, far away. I would have acted differently if I had been given command of this operation, especially knowing the initial data. In general, we took the Dukhovsky fortified area assigned to us. My squad showed itself to be quite tough and heroic - no one turned on the back, I was in the front row, I controlled everyone. We entered positions, took them, and secured a foothold. At that moment, Zloy, the platoon commander, was with me. Rus and Tyson were with us - the people thanks to whom all the attacks on this entire business trip took place in the first place. Tourist, Veter, Thor, Rus, Tyson - people who, like me, do not know the brakes. If you have an enemy ahead, then they all know: if you start retreating, then you are potentially “two hundredth”, and if you go forward, then you have a chance to both survive and complete the task. I don’t know, maybe I imposed this psychology on them?

We took our fortification, cleared it, secured ourselves - and it seemed to me that this was not enough. Because all the other platoons had just begun the assault on their fortifications. On my own, as if without instructions from above, I took all the boys - 2 squads. I left one compartment there and took two compartments. During the assault on this height, when we cleared out and went forward for inspection, my best friend, Evil, was taken down by a sniper. He went to a high-rise building that a reconnaissance platoon was supposed to storm - they were sitting there under heavy fire and could not climb up. The evil one ended up with a gunshot wound to the head. I want to say a special “thank you” to the company for treating him at Sogaz for two years. He experienced clinical death, they took him there and saved him. The treatment cost a simply fabulous sum - 600 thousand a month. Afterwards he was sent home because the doctors threw up their hands and said that there seemed to be no further options. The company gave him a pension of 100 thousand rubles, and also gave him a state pension. That is, in principle, you can live quite well on 120 thousand, even if you are disabled. But it so happened that his wife did not want to tolerate him any longer, and they divorced. He now lives with his mother. I went and visited him this year. In short, when he was wounded and evacuated, it really spurred me on. We took our height, and I see that a kilometer to the left, a kilometer and a half to the right, there is a massacre going on. I went to help Karabine at that moment, in his department the commander of the second platoon had “two hundred”, Bekas - he served with me in military service, he was a sergeant major. Then in civilian life he joined the riot police and rose to the rank of colonel...

We came to his high-rise to the Carbine. The snipe was “two hundred”, they had several “two hundred” in a row there. Twenty meters from them, near another mountain, a wounded guy lies bleeding. And these are afraid to run from place to place, to help him, because everyone is afraid. I sent my boys, they fired at the high-rise building, at that moment I ran across with the Tourist, but it was too late. The boys and I tried to bandage him, but he died in our arms. We were all covered in blood, he was gushing right there, apparently his artery had been hit or something. He died in our hands.

We moved on. We entered this hill from the right flank and dragged Carbine and his people there. We finished off the spirits. Two of them managed to escape - they fell onto a nearby high-rise building. I planted Carbine on this high-rise, and, without contacting the management, rushed towards Lotus, because they were also stuck there specifically. Here. He ran there with one squad already - he left the squad with Karabin, and he himself captured the first squad and ran there.

We got to Lotus under terrible shelling. The charger was beating

— while we were running, two were lost by the “two hundredths.” We pulled the guys away and evacuated them. We reached the Lotus, and a Zombie just pulled up to it at that moment. We discussed the details of what we will do next. Well, we went on the offensive. In general, they took their high-rise building too.

Then they drove together a small detachment of spirits. There were two or three militants retreating, we chased them for five kilometers - we just stupidly ran after them. They fired back, we ran after them to the line. There was a huge river bed there, and when they reached the river bed, the detachment commander shouted to us: “Stop!” We reach this milestone and go nowhere further. “You can still drive them for so many kilometers.”

All in all. The distance was quite large - 600 meters 700, they just didn’t hit them. This, let’s say, for me it was a battle when Lotus proved himself quite well - he was a new person in the squad at that time, and maybe he didn’t know the people, maybe he felt somehow insecure. But, apparently, my actions gave him selfconfidence. Then, in subsequent operations, he specifically led his platoon. We, one might say, competed with Lotus to see who could take the most high-rise buildings, and so on. Just for the result.

When the battle was over, the losses were counted. At that time, including the “three hundredths,” I had 7 casualties in the platoon, of which three were “two hundredths” and four “three hundredths,” heavy ones. All are heavy. We regrouped and received a new task - to go to the factory.

Fortified area of spirits. The story of Victor Blinov We knew that we were going to take the plant. But before the plant, it was necessary to deal with a fairly strong fortified area of spirits on the approaches. We went there during the day for reconnaissance. We walked with the commander of the third platoon, with Morgan, and with his soldiers. I then took the most trusted ones from my squad and Morgan’s platoon. No matter what anyone says about Morgan, he is an instructor, not a combat officer. In critical situations, he was unable to lead the platoon at a sufficient level to prevent people from scattering. Plus, when we walked, ours launched a quadcopter and checked the positions of the spirits. I tried to convince my superiors that it was enough to drive up the tanks and shoot at these points from a distance of a kilometer. If there were no tanks, we had “Boots” with us and AGS-s, and it would also have been easy enough to shoot them. But Nick is a fan of night operations, so he prescribed a night operation. My platoon goes to the front, Carbine's platoon comes from the right flank. We have reached, according to my estimates, almost to the milestone.

We reached the line and ran into the defense of the spirits. They started spraying us with machine guns from three points. But we didn’t stop, we moved on. I stepped over a ditch - the bed of a small river, and the guy who was following me, call sign Kerosin, walked into this ditch and stepped. He was simply torn to pieces. That was the first time we encountered pushers, with literally massive use of pushers.

Kerosene was torn into pieces, and I - I was about 3 meters away - was thrown up to a height of about four meters. I lost consciousness, and when I woke up, I thought that now I would ask the boys to shoot me. I couldn’t feel the left side of my body at all, the whole thing was gone. Started to feel - the hand seems to be in place. At first I thought that my arm and leg were torn off. I started to feel with my right foot - it was also there. After 15–20 seconds, sensitivity began to return. Apparently, the nerve endings were temporarily paralyzed. A medic ran up to me and, together with Rus, helped me get up. They found the barrel and the radio and went on to attack. In this battle, I lost a man who was brought into my platoon a day before this assault. Then he gave me no peace all the time. What is he, who is he, where did he come from? I knew his last name, first name,

patronymic, because as a platoon commander I was given his details. And when I then started looking on the Internet, I really went crazy. It was Viktor Ivanovich Blinov. This is a legendary personality - from the Soviet Union, he was in Alpha, stormed Amin’s palace, and participated in many hot spots. As I later realized, my grandfather came to die in battle, like a real warrior. He already had stage four cancer. Everything was wonderful with him in Moscow, I talked with him the night before the assault. He said, like, his grandchildren are sick of it. But, as for me, he just came to die like a man. When we reached the line and went on the attack, initially I did not see behind the mountain what was happening with the Carbine and Zombie platoon.

— What was his call sign? - Berserk. This is his main call sign, which he still had while serving in Alpha. And he also came to me and introduced himself as a Berserker. We have crossed the line where we can hide and regroup. I looked at my people to check who was left, and at that moment a Dukhovsky machine gun wounded one guy in the lung. The guys helped him - and on my tip, everyone tried to shut up this machine gunner. There were about 100 meters left before him, he was watering us openly.

Rus and Kalach entered from the left, Yaschur was standing on the right side, I was in the center, in short, standing with Vadik. And at that moment they buried themselves, and no one could go further. Although we fire, no one hits this machine gunner. They watered for 3 minutes - no one got in. At that moment, grandfather Berserk came out behind me and said: “Let me try.” Well, I just didn’t think about what he was going to try there. I say: “Come on, try it.” He took a grenade and launched it at the machine gunner - full-length, openly, right at him. He didn't get there, probably 30 meters, and the machine gunner mowed him down. But with his release, Berserker diverted the spirit’s attention to himself, and at that moment the machine gunner was crushed by Rus from the left flank, also cut off by a machine gun.

I ordered the guys to drag grandfather Berserker away. He still had a grenade in his hand, despite the fact that the ring had already been pulled out. He was dead, and the unexploded grenade remained in his stiff hand. In general, they pulled him away and moved on.

Ridges beyond Shair Then we went to the ridge. The “four” first approached there, with the Tramp and they approached the left end, to the foot, where the spirits settled. There the guys frantically fired from the DShK, many were blown up by mines, and retreated about 3 kilometers.

We received an order to begin by occupying a ridge where another small ridge ran right in front of the main ridge. I received orders to go first. First, Zombie went there with a reconnaissance platoon. They reached the foot, did not meet any resistance and decided to gain a foothold on this small ridge. I came there with my platoon. There was no communication with the authorities; Zombie tried to contact him - but to no avail. The difference in height is 250 meters. I looked through binoculars and said that there was nothing for us to do here in the ridge. Because at night the spirits, if they roll something heavy onto the ridge, will simply unwind us from above. Well:

- What do you suggest? - Zombie asked. “I suggest taking the ridge.” - How so? - Yes, that's it. I am now observing what is there now in our zone reach only two points. Let the boys hammer away from this, and we advance at this moment. Once we get down into the valley, we'll be in range, and we'll climb all the way to the top. Well, Zombie tried to contact Nick to get his approval. He couldn’t get in touch and shouted: “Okay, let’s go.” At my own peril and risk, I take responsibility - come on. And off we went.

Lotus went to the left, I went to the right. We walked onto the ridge, the spirits realized what it smelled like - and began to run away from the ridge in panic. No one remained in their positions. Lotus drove them to the left, to the ridge where the “four” stood, drove them for about three kilometers along the slopes. And I drove the spirits to the right side, where then the “one” stood up - for about 7 kilometers my platoon drove them along the ridge. A wild skirmish passed through all the positions of the spirits: one position runs away, warns the second - and the two of them are already running to the third, and we are chasing them.

It was raining. We chase the spirits along this ridge, but the boys stayed and fixed on points. As a result, we occupied the ridge, just as Nick approached and we firmly entrenched ourselves there.

When the “four” approached the ridge on the left side, they naturally feared that everything there was mined. I sent my people there, they found heavily mined fortifications in several places. Naturally, they called a sapper brigade. They shout: “Oh, okay, let them come in.” I say: “Okay, let them come in? My people have already found there...” They say: “Come on, there’s no

fig". I couldn’t stand it and said: “Well, go, go and have a look yourself.” In general, here is this guy who kept saying “oh well”, “okay” — he went straight through and blew himself up. Thank God it’s not “two hundred”, but

"three hundred", but was blown up. I don’t remember his name, he was a brigade sapper.

In general, our sappers were sent back, Avram cleared everything there well, and the “four” were put there - in the ridge. We climbed the ridge ourselves, stood and waited for three weeks, watching the spirits and their high-rise buildings across the valley in front of the ridge. The fact is that behind these high-rise buildings on the left flank there was already a small factory. We received, accordingly, the task of capturing a small factory. They tried and tried several times, Lotus was sent there as a scout, the German and his daredevils and I climbed there several times - and invariably came under fire. Once we had to help out a reconnaissance group. They fell into the cauldron - the spirits squeezed them on both sides, and we went to help them out. We then entered from the right flank, diverted attention to ourselves, and they were able to escape from the cauldron.

Karabine Mountain

War is, rather, an intellectual thing... Such battles, where everyone gets together and kills each other at a distance of 20-30 meters, are very rare. Nevertheless, we had such a battle in Syria. It was on Karabin-Gora, as we called it, not far from Shair. There is even a sign on the mountain saying that it is included in the list of attractions of Syria. There is a tower there - naturally, it had already been put down, and it all fell down. And the spirits came there and came so close to us that they threw grenades. And they have grenades, so you understand how the German ones are - with a long handle. The grenade is relatively small, and the handle is quite long. That is, it can be thrown much further than an efka. We threw “efki” at them, and they threw these grenades back at us. They threw it so much that they flew about 10 meters behind us, in short. And because of this, we did not suffer from their grenades. They are kind of stinky, homemade, I don’t know, they stink of some kind of saltpeter. The battle took place at night, at about 9 o'clock they attacked. Unfortunately, we missed the trick, although there were signs. We had such a peasant there, he still serves us. He is a former Afghan, an old man already... He is 65 years old or even more. Well, he's big-eyed and treats war like a real job. Feels responsible, which is rarely enough. Especially for veterans. They usually: “Uh... Yes, it’s okay, everything will be fine!” And this one was watching and observing all the time. And he saw the spirits approach several times. But they didn’t attach any importance to this. And then at one fine moment they attacked us, they came very close. They drove up to our hill in a tank and brought the infantry directly on the tank. They set up a command post, that is, a command and staff center, not far from this mountain, from which they coordinated the battle. Moreover, they had another 50 people standing there at a distance. And 50 of us were attacked. And we had about 11 guys there on the mountain, well, a squad, roughly speaking. I wasn’t on the mountain then, I was standing under the mountain. And these 11 people fought with superior enemy forces until help was sent there. They had a pretty tough fight there. In the very first minutes, the squad leader was wounded. Five minutes later he said,

that he was wounded twice. After another five he reported that he had been wounded three times. And he got three hundredths, three hundredths, three hundredths... In general, the result of the battle

- 26 people of the “three hundredth”. And there were only 11 fighters there before reinforcements arrived. And only one “two hundredth” died at the very beginning. He was such a guy, a former Alpha man. In general, it was a fairly “validating” fight. Until the very last moment we thought that we would not be able to maintain the height. Then forces from other units, from other platoons, came to us. And we went on a counterattack. I was already at the AGS at that time - I took the AGS upstairs, but it was of no use. They told me: “You are now an ordinary shooter. Give up the AGS, it’s not needed here yet. When they retreat, then you will hammer.” I loaded the boys’ magazines, as the platoon commander ordered me. Once you've arrived on the mountain, load your magazines. I also equipped grenades. We have a friend, thank God, he is alive and well, a fairly well-known person among us. And then he leaves the position. Everyone there is almost crawling on their bellies, and he comes out to his full height. And he walks towards me from the direction of the battle. He comes and asks: “Do you have any cartridges?” I answer: “Well, yes, bro. Charge." We sat and loaded up. At this moment I continued to equip grenades. Well, he got ready, put the magazines in his place, and with the same walking steps went there - to battle. Without bending down at all, I don’t care at all.

- Stop! - I shout to him. - Why, maybe you need grenades?! — Grenades? Why, there are grenades?

- Yes, sure. I brought a pomegranate to you on Bardak.

- Oh great! Come here!

- How old are you? - Come on, everyone. How much. He piles it on his arm, presses his arm bent at the elbow to his body, and picks up a whole bunch of pomegranates. He holds a grenade with one hand, and the grunt “unclips” it with the other! throws it towards the enemy. And he went to throw them, in short! In short, about 20 or 30 grenades were scattered all over this area. The mountain was just jumping. But you have to understand that I brought somewhere more than 100 grenades, “efok.” And all these grenades were thrown towards the spirits in literally 15–20 minutes. They simply had no chance there. It was just a meat grinder. When we repulsed their attack, the fire from their side began to subside; apparently, they were already running out of ammunition. And the delivery

stopped because it was already dangerous for the spirits to bring ammunition from their side. From that moment on, the spirits began to drive up this mountain directly in jeeps. Even on tanks. They dropped ammunition on their own, picked up the wounded, took them away... What else I remember is that there, under the mountain, a little to the left, they built something like a hospital. Literally a hundred meters from the mountain. When they retreated, they left about six people there with signs of violent death. They all died there. Apparently, they abandoned the dead and did not take them out. They mowed them down there, bless you: the road from the mountain was covered in blood. We simply defeated them, despite the fact that there were not so many people on our side.

By the way, I shot there for the first time with a warm-air gun. How it was. A group approaches the enemy on the hill from the right side and goes straight up the hill. The boys were scouts there. Many had “warm caps” and “night lights” on their rifles. We didn’t have anything like that - we are an ordinary assault unit. The commanders tell us that ours are coming from the right side, now we will organize a counterattack from our positions, knock them out of the mountain and drive them to the bottom, in short. The counterattack begins, we run - and then I see these scouts coming out from the flank in the dark. In pitch black. However, the silhouettes are distinguishable. And I see two people approach the corpse of the spirit, one turns it over. And the spirit had a grenade cocked on his chest, without a moderator. It explodes, they fly head over heels, fall... and lie there.

I think: “That’s it, guys are screwed.” I run up to them, look, one gets up, taps himself on the head once, says everything is fine, and runs on. And the second lies there, blinks his eyes, and flows away from the explosion. I grabbed him by the chest and dragged him into some hole. And there is uneven terrain, I drag him, it hurts him, he shouts: “... your mother! Leave me here! Don't drag it! It hurts me! I say "No. We need to cover you." Somebody dragged him into a hole and laid him down. I say: “How are you? Whole?" He answers: “I guess so. Now I’ll lie down for about five minutes and then run to continue the assault.” Yes, that’s it, I’m saying, you’ve already had enough. His head was completely shaken by the explosion - he can’t think at all, but is eager to continue into battle. “That’s enough, I say. You are lying here." And I see that something is glowing. It turned out that SVD thought it was with a night light. I tell him: “Give me

I want her, I’ll make fun of her, you have a good “night light” there.” He told me: “This is not a “night light”. This is a “warm house.”

I snatched this rifle from his hands, even though he was actively holding it - he kept wanting to storm it - and rushed to the battlefield. And there, as in the game. These spirits are running, their command post is visible in the distance. There, nearby, the bed of a dry river goes to the left, 600–700 meters from this mountain, and there is just a sea of spirits there. Someone is walking somewhere, carrying some zinc, another five people are standing - from behind the mountain you can see their heads moving. And I’ve never shot from a “tepljak” before. And he stood at four times closer. How do I know where the “krats” are? In front of the mountain, our boys begin their assault, and I’m lying with this rifle, with the “warm cap,” and I can directly see these spirits. First parapet, second parapet. Behind the first there are two people standing a little further from each other, and behind the second parapet, judging by the way he waved, yelled, and gave them some orders, the commander is there. I immediately take aim at the commander’s head, thinking, “Well, well, judging by the fact that the commander is huge (his head is so big, I can almost see his face), I need to hit him right in the jug.” Bang! Shot, he seemed to wilt. I think: “Cool. The commander was eliminated." I catch the second one. Bang! And he doesn't even move. I think what kind of things are these? But I didn’t know what a “quadruple” was worth. Missed.

He scratched his turnip and took it a little higher. Bang! The bullet missed about five meters and fell in front of him. Fourth shot. Bang! And I end up in the parapet right in front of the commander’s face. In short, he realized that they were shooting at him and, apparently, using something at night, because they saw him. They take it, unload it, throw their machine guns, lie down - and roll head over heels backwards. It’s just that when you increase the height of your body to forty centimeters, it’s almost impossible to hit you. And they rolled across the field, over all these thorns, without weapons, without unloading. This was the end of my fight. We started looking for the wounded. Together with the company commander, we found one spirit shot in the stomach. And the darkness is terrible, you can’t see anything. For some reason, I was the only one with a flashlight. And it lights up dimly red, the battery is already running low. We shined the light on the ground and suddenly: “ah-ah-ah!” Someone is moaning. We move away a little and look - there is a body lying there. We approach, but the body has no arm, and like in the movie “Alien,” all the meat has been torn out of the sternum and

the spine is visible. This one was dead. I say: “Careful! There’s an Alien rummaging around here somewhere!” Everyone laughed.

Then, by the way, they found the “Predator” - there the spirit was lying in a low place, killed even before the battle, already green. The jackals ate his lower jaw, and from his upper jaw such a scab was hanging down. “Here, I say, there is an Alien, and here is a Predator.” In the end they found this moaning spirit. We first pulled it with a rope to see if it was mined. They delivered him to our positions. He kept losing consciousness. He lies on his side, then passes out for five minutes, comes to his senses again and groans. They took me to headquarters and interrogated me. We had a boy intelligence officer, all of us know him, and he was also shot in the leg in this battle. The battle was almost over, but we didn’t know that at the time. And he jumps on one leg. The second one doesn't work for him at all. He jumps and keeps saying: “What, when are we going to storm them?!” Let's navigator! What the hell kind of assault are you looking for?! You only have one leg! And he says: “Yes, I’ll jump on one leg!” And the second intelligence officer was wounded in the hand, and he also walked around like that, with a PKK in his other hand. And the shot hand hangs. “I, he says, will heat until it melts, I won’t stop.” That is, they rushed forward. Desperate guys, in general. Fierce.

About ISIS The spirits defended themselves like real fanatics. Until the last drop of blood. Just before the small plant we took the Dukhovsky fortifications immediately after the ridge. One spirit - he was wounded, I don’t know, maybe 10 times already wounded, he had no ammunition left. He was young, his face was untouched - he was 15-16 years old. And when my boys ran up to him and wanted to examine him, at that moment he opened his eyes and unclenched his hands with two grenades. He blew himself up trying to take the others. But the boys jumped over the hill in time, so none of my people were hurt. But I remembered this moment.

You understand how many times I encountered spirits in Chechnya - they will lie at your feet there. I don't mean Chechens. Then in Chechnya there were a lot of mercenaries: the same Uzbeks, Tajiks, all sorts of blacks - Senegalese. These will lie at your feet until the last moment, begging for mercy, offering money, and so on. But in Syria, I never encountered anything like this: the ISIS were fanatics of their cause, they went on the attack to the last, and remained on the defensive until the last drop of blood.

And most importantly, most of them were very young. Everyone who was left in hopeless attacks in positions - they were all young. There were no old people there. 15 years old, 16 years old. I can’t say that there were hordes of them, hordes - during the Shair campaign there were few of them, about 50 people, sometimes 30, sometimes 70 people. In scale, this is not much, in principle. But they fought quite well.

I can say one thing: we have encountered a worthy opponent. But the Syrians who ran with us to attack were unworthy people. Half of them threw their machine guns during the attack and fell in the opposite direction. But the spirits were a really worthy opponent. After such fights, you are never ashamed that you went against such an opponent and defeated him.

By the way, this is why I personally did not allow my guys to mock the corpses of spirits. It's one thing to take something from their equipment; especially since they had previously acquired a lot of Western weapons, body kit, and ammunition. This can be useful in battle. But cutting a corpse into pieces is not a joke. I believe that either you are a warrior, and

in a fair and open fight you take a trophy for yourself, or you are a vulture and do bullshit. This is beneath my own dignity, so I forbade this to my people.

Palmyra tiger Near Palmyra in 1717 we stood in the same position. Our guys went ahead, and we covered the rear for them - our units. So, there were two mountains, our tent was below, and on two hills there were two observation points (observation points) - on both sides. It was night, my friend and I were standing in the former spiritual improvised caponier - it’s so big, it’s all made of stones - and we’re watching so that the spirits don’t come. We observe, we observe, and suddenly a friend says: “Look into the warm room! What it is?" It was pitch dark. No moon, nothing. You can barely see the road. Once, I look into the “warmhouse” and there is some kind of tiger standing right on the road. Well, the cat is huge, with such a one and a half meter tail. It stands, and then it comes at us. I don't know where she came from here. I didn’t even think that there were such cats in Syria. I don’t know what it’s called, it’s just huge. And such silence... There was no wind, nothing. We look and look, and then - once - this tiger disappears from the screen. I tell the commander: “There’s a healthy cat rummaging around here. If so, is it okay to shoot?” He says: “Well, if he rushes, shoot!” I pulled the shutter, stood there, looking where she was. She’s gone, no... And then my friend leaned out and showed me: she’s sitting under the caponier. Like homemade. And he looks straight at us. And she can only be seen in the warm room. And I don’t know what to do with it. It's a shame to kill. She examined us and went down to the tent. I tell the boys on the radio: “You are sitting in a tent, don’t stick your head out.” And she went down to the tent, walking around looking for something. Maybe she was looking for food - the spirits left a lot of things and food at this place. The boys were like: “Well, what? Has she left? I say: “No, she’s near the tent. Visible in the warm room." The boys later said that they couldn’t hear her near the tent at all. She walked around, walked around, and left. There are sad moments, but there are some life moments... Memorable ones. Let's say how we captured the Dukhovsky fortified area. We were the first to jump in, because it was better for the others not to walk in front of the fortification; there was a minefield. We went there as a squad and distributed ourselves. And the spirits had just left there, and they

there is a saucepan there. We want to eat badly - but they have boiled potatoes in their jackets and fish. Still warm. We walked around the fortification, everything seemed clean, we didn’t have time to mine it. And right where they were sitting, we lit a fire, put a kettle on, and heated up the potatoes. We sat down in the places where they were sitting and took out jam from them. That's what I remember - date jam. Very delicious. It's not even jam, it's marshmallow, something pressed. There were no shops available there, so it was so unexpected and delicious for us.

At the end of the meal, I exclaimed: “Thank you, fellow ISIS fighters! Very tasty jam!” Everyone laughed...

There was one mystical incident when we were hit with an ATGM. In the morning we got ready to eat and looked for dry rations. Our people say, look in the store, it’s still there. We climb on board, look, no. We jumped off, retreated behind the “Ural” and at that moment an ATGM flew right into that same anti-tank gun. Literally in half a minute - and we would all be “two hundredths”. Lucky. As the Syrians say, “Inshallah.”

Airport Machine gun duel The evening, on the first day, the assault did not work out, it ended. We came close - and, it turns out, there was a machine gunner on the enemy’s side, and a machine gunner on our side. It’s still light, we stand and watch this duel of machine gunners. They fought for about 20 minutes. Silence along the entire front, and the two of them tried to shoot each other. Well, there was such a break that everyone was sitting - some were charging, some were doing repairs. As a result, the machine gunners fought for about 15–20 minutes, and our enemy was finally defeated. We went to Palmyra with the first detachment. The first detachment went through height 939, we climbed up together, realized that it was impossible to carry out the equipment - and led us around 939 to withdraw all the equipment. Per day. All the firepower is there... In fact, during the day we gave such a detour that “Ratibor” himself, the commander of the first detachment, told us that we were handsome.

And we went out to Palmyra with a “kopeck,” first to the substation, and then from the substation to the school. And so from the school we went through the gardens then to the airport. There the battle began in the evening on the edge. There were a couple of arrivals. We took this entire route, walked the whole way, and filmed everything that happened along the way. "Ratibor" was pleased. Probably not a single detachment commander said anything bad about my group. We worked with everyone - no one ever said anything bad, because the boys gave it their all. Everyone's legs are bleeding. The distances are long. I then stood in the same hangar at the airfield where the burnt tank in the photograph was captured. And the Syrians drove to the airfield by car and set up their tents - just like a circus tent, in a circle. When the cannon started hitting them, they were all alarmed and immediately ran away. Only our gun was working - the D-30 was stationary. So they fought back, but these guys all fell down - abandoned their guns. Of course, we all laughed at them, at this whole circus. We sat there at night without light, without anything. Because blackout, they’ll burn it right away - they’ll hit you and fuck it. And with these, everything is on fire, there, blinking. I think - why the hell did you set up this tent circus? Well, what's so funny? It's not funny. People were dying.

Mine made of stone The most inventive military IED is the stone that we last found. There are varnished wires. And when these wires are varnished, they are like human hair. That is, “plus” and “minus” are ordinary. And these microswitches, which are made from a tin can... Well, not from a tin can, from a tin can. He was practically invisible. Just like a cobweb around this stone, spiral-shaped. Or it was lying across the road and spray-painted to match the color of the asphalt. Even when walking, you can step on it. Not to mention the fact that the equipment will pass, run over and trigger a landmine from the side. And that’s all... Moreover, the spirits had small-scale production in the rear. That is, they had entire mini-factories producing all this. In this regard, they are, of course, great as inventors. You should never underestimate your enemy. They, of course, have their own spiritual people and their own professionals. Quite experienced people, apparently, worked there. And we invented it ourselves. And there are more than one such inventions. They bought the first car with a remote control, and I made a shell. And we attached a rake behind it. I designed the shell in 1917 in one night: in the morning I quickly sawed the metal, made a metal shell and two “baskets” on the side for mines. And then the guys finished the rake. Actually, why - when the machine was launched forward, it used a rake to lift the soil and unmask the “pressure” along the unit’s route. And after this typewriter it was more cheerful to walk. Then the guys started attaching control mines to these cars—remote ones. They were also used. Then cameras were attached to these cars. Well, I think I made a prototype. Then they attached a grenade launcher to the car. With a camera. We have such sappers there, they are called “fixies”. They solder and do everything. Here the guys were making a grenade launcher on a machine on a control panel: it rises up and down, either the RPO or the RShG was installed. Then “Bumblebees” was made at the control center. On a tripod. Then what else did “Cliff” do on the control panel. But then it was never used. We made it, designed it, the guys made the remote control

control, I also cooked metal there. That is, he turned left and right, up and down. Our “fixies” did the control system, and I mainly did the mechanics. I'm not very good at electronics, but I used my skills in mechanics. I understand how to do it this way and do it this way, cook it so that it all works, spins, spins. And there the trigger mechanism was made from a window lifter. It scrolled and produced a short burst. And the guys have already made a control panel - they took it from large machines, soldered it, and remade it. Well, there were quite a lot of advantages. The machine cost 30 thousand rubles, and the Defense Ministry mine detector cost 300 thousand. Well, in this relationship, as they say, the need for invention is tricky - so we tried to get out as best we could.

Dragon There was also one moment when we went to help for Palmyra. There was an operation, our army men were in command, and the performers were locals and a Lebanese platoon. There were fortifications ahead, and they could not take them because there was a large minefield in front of him. And we installed the “Serpent Gorynych” on the GAZ... And I agreed with the army (and there the distance was five kilometers): when the Lebanese advance, you throw mortars at the fortification. The closer they come, the more you begin to unite so that the enemy cannot raise their heads, so that we can shoot from the “Snake Gorynych” and make a path for equipment and personnel. Well, they took all the distances from me... But in the end they made a very big mistake in the distances. And we, having already reached there, realized that we were not getting there, we had to get closer. Well, with this missile launcher, in fact, one hit weighing one and a half tons, consider that there would be nothing left of us there at all. There would simply be a giant crater there. In general, the shooting battle is already beginning slowly. We were given a platoon of Lebanese, they don’t speak Russian at all, but we need to command them. And now we reach the range of a shot from the URC, and there we still have to walk a kilometer. We walk another kilometer, from there - either an ATGM or an LNG-9 flew from the enemy side. It lay down next to the car. The URK was deployed and launched with grief. And all the old equipment is from warehouses.

NOTE: system is yourself launcher installation and a multi-meter sleeve filled with an explosive mixture. The essence of using the system: the machine fires a shot with such a sleeve, the sleeve falls onto a mined area, the sleeve is detonated, as a result of which all explosive devices installed in the ground at a distance of several tens of meters detonate. In general, they fired. The Lebanese rushed to attack - but they don’t know what the URC is! This is deadly! In general, “Gorynych” lay down on the ground, and the Lebanese lay down next to these guts. And, in general, half of the Lebanese personnel were torn to shreds

platoon There wasn't even any dust left from them. But we completed the task, made everything easier for the army men and actually did their job for them. Once again.

LIPETSK In Lipetsk, the violence began almost immediately, let’s put it this way. It was a brutal war, but our guys stood very steadfastly, even taking into account the constant shortage of heavy weapons. And, naturally, the tasks were the most difficult from the very beginning. We were immediately thrown from the plane to the front line. The first heavy fighting began in September 19th. I had 4 friends, we all sat on the “Cliffs” together, two of three people. By coincidence, all my guys remained at the same line, and the battle began. There was a dense, intense battle, the guys fired from the Utes, knocking out three enemy armored cars. Then we received a command: an enemy drone is looming over our territory, we need to be more careful. Nevertheless, the boys continued the fight, regardless of the consequences - and the drone, in short, destroyed the entire crew with one missile. All four boys were covered. These were all my friends. There was also a battle going on from the other flank, enemy drones were also working, and they were also hammering very hard. I went for ammunition, the foreman sent by car. I went out with a friend. We went to the warehouse and went a little ahead to the intersection, then returned to the warehouse behind the BC. At that moment, the drone tracked us, and when we had fully loaded the car with boxes of ammunition, the drone fired. Also a direct hit, but at that moment I literally jumped off the car in 3-4 seconds; there was no one to load the last box. I jumped out of the car, went into the warehouse, and then there was an explosion. Then we were all blown to the wall by the shock wave, the BC began to explode, but we miraculously survived. True, the foreman, when asked over the radio whether they were alive or not, said that they were all “two hundredths” and that when the ammunition burned out, he would collect us, or all that was left of us. But to his surprise, we all remained unharmed.

A group of 30 people was planning to fly. Some were in the reconnaissance platoon, some mostly. And that’s it, it turns out that we flew to Syria - and on the spot they told us to change into Syrian uniforms on the runway and board the plane.

- Now fly to a new direction - to Lipetsk, we

They say.

We didn't even know where we were flying. Maybe the commander knew, but we didn’t know. We put on their uniform, we laugh at each other - unusual uniform, everything is narrow. We had a little fun and loaded up. We arrived at X., the bus immediately pulled up so that no one would see us, and from there we drove to the base. We received weapons, and we were put into the 6th detachment - they made us into a reserve platoon. Well, from intelligence. And that’s it, a day later we were transferred to T..

We drove in a convoy. First they transferred it to D., and from there they moved cars to T... There were new pickups there - 18 pickups, or something like that. We were driving calmly - and then, not reaching 40 kilometers, a drone attacked us. "Bayraktar". That's when we first realized what it was. We had never dealt with such things before. That's it, the heat immediately rose, we picked up one of our “three hundredths” and pulled it across the desert.

Rotation of spirits and the gate theft that did not happen It's the end of February - beginning of March. Early morning, the birds are singing. I leave the house where we lived to get some fresh air. I went out onto the territory, stretched, peeled an orange. And then I saw a car, a pickup truck, approaching. Some black-bearded, unknown people are sitting in the car. At first we thought that the Arabs, the allies, had arrived - we then stood with them. I stand and look at them. I'm eating an orange. And then these people calmly get out of the pickup truck and begin to remove our gate. I even went crazy from such impudence. - Freaks, what are you doing? Come on, let's get out of here! - I shout. There was no answer. The blackbeards stared at me in surprise, after which one of them raised his machine gun. I just managed to fall on my butt and crawl around the corner. The shooter gave a burst. The bullets whizzed past my head - fortunately I survived. I won’t say what happened next, but as you understand, we defended the gate. After some time, we found out what kind of race it was. It turned out that the spirits who stood opposite us had a rotation - new people arrived at the position of the spirits approximately every two months. And, in fact, either the newcomers were not explained who was in front of them, or the spirits themselves did not know where we were standing and where the gardeners were. In any case, the new squad decided to travel around the area in search of targets for looting - and eventually arrived at our house.

Daring Turkish infantry fighting vehicle

That was another funny thing. There were about 300 meters between our positions and the spirits’ lair. At this distance there were Dushman “chips” observation strongholds. And from our house to the road it was about 200 meters. No one ever drove along it, because there was continuous shelling, both from our side and from the spirits. One day I was in our “trick” at the post, along with my partner. Everything seems relatively quiet. And then my friend and I hear the roar of an engine, somewhat similar to a motorcycle. My partner says he looks through binoculars, but he can’t understand anything. I hear a sound, but I can’t figure out where it’s going. It seems close, but where and on what road is unclear.

We put away the binoculars, and then we see - from behind, on a road not used by anyone, some Turkish infantry fighting vehicle on tracks is driving at a speed of 70-80 km/h. And so brazenly, so quickly. The most interesting thing is that the BMP first went in one direction, then turned around in the other. Twice - back and forth. Either we got lost, or the adrenaline was running high.

There was no time to reason. We immediately went out onto the roof, fired two shots with an RPG - we missed. Just a couple of meters were missing - both grenades flew over the BMP. We fired from a machine gun and hit her because we saw sparks, but she drove away safely; we were unable to hit her. But, of course, we did not expect such impudence. You could say we've almost entered the yard.

Roof in shanks About combat operations - every day there is shelling, mortars, recoilless rifles. When we moved in, our house was intact, a four-story building. And when we left, our entire roof was covered in the tails of unexploded mines, and the entire eastern side was also covered in mines. The building where our post was located was also completely damaged. They tried to break through the third floor with a grenade launcher, but fortunately no one was hurt - only shell shock. In general, the department where I was located was in first place in terms of shell shock. Of the 8 people, 5 or 6 had concussions and were sent to the hospital. Fortunately, it’s medium, not heavy, the ears are intact.

What else? Mortars were flying... or rather shells. When they fly overhead, of course, it’s scary. When the shelling begins and you adjust the fire, you give an approximate azimuth and distance.

And the most nasty thing is that either the Polish or the Australian mortar was working. Usually, when there is mortar fire, you hear the exit of the mine and the arrival, that is, an explosion. And when this miracle of technology was working, I only heard the arrival. There was no pop or sound at all coming out. The most disgusting ones. When it flies over your head, it’s quite scary, you just want to shrink. There’s a whistle and a rustle, depending on what kind of projectile is flying. When it explodes, it’s not scary at all. It exploded, and it exploded. We were in T. from February to May - you get used to it. But I think it's a bad habit to break up. For example, when you’re sleeping, shelling suddenly starts - and you’re so used to it that you’re already waving your hand: “Ah-ah-ah... it’s exploding, it’s not exploding.” You don't pay attention anymore. My guys, who also fought in Syria, say that this is the worst habit. Because you get used to it, you give up on everything, and... yes... sometimes this causes losses.

Rubilovo with “special forces” of militants Yes, we had military operations. Once or twice under T. the spirits wanted to break through, because before that they had broken through between the “seven” and the “two”. Between these detachments stood the Arabs, and the spirits knew about it.

- and at this line the positions were broken through. Then our people plugged this hole and also suffered losses there.

So, when the spirits broke through at that line, they also wanted to pass through the same maneuver on our part. But, apparently, they did not know that the Russians were there. We were attacked, as we were later told, by some local special forces. As a result, we destroyed an armored pickup truck with a heavy machine gun mounted on it, and probably killed two or three squads. - How many do they have in the department?

- Well, if so, offhand, about 20-30 militants, somewhere in such limits. The fight itself was also funny. To be honest, the whole war is both laughter and sin, as they say. That’s how it was for us - our house stood, then a crooked road ran from it, abutting an asphalt highway. And at this point the road was blocked by iron gates, which were opened just enough for a car to pass through. These freaks decided to break through the bars, they decided to literally come into our garden. - they say, they’re in an armored car, they’re not afraid of anything... We let them get within 100 meters and blew them up from the roof using an RPG. Then she drove on autopilot to the mine - we mined everything there, out of harm's way - and hit a mine a second time and turned over. The driver remained right there; they couldn’t get him out, and he burned to death. Accordingly, everyone stayed on this road.

At night the spirits came for theirs. No one fired at them, because there was an unspoken order for emergency assistance, a humanitarian one. Like, don’t touch those who come by taxi to pick up the wounded. They let us pick up all the wounded. The only thing is that they have one person, an officer of the local special forces, who was seriously wounded, crawled to our positions, and somehow made it to the kindergarten near one of the houses. But there he was blown up by a tripwire, because we had mined this place in advance.

The death of a friend and the difficulties of war

We were lucky that there weren’t two hundred. But in combat operations, the guys died during shelling. This is how my friend, sapper Saf, died. He was engaged in clearing mines in the area, apparently he was discovered and covered with a mortar. This happened literally two days before our redeployment. It’s a pity, the man went through Donbass, knew a lot, had a lot of experience. Periodically the spirits came out and exchanged fire. Once the density of fire in our house was very heavy - the spirits fired, it turns out, from three PCs and one anti-aircraft gun. As a result, the roof and walls were broken. The disco lasted literally 10-15 minutes - we thought there would be an attack, but there was none. It was as if they were just shooting.

- What did you not like about these actions?

I didn’t like the fact that I had to constantly carry sandbags to the fourth floor. We know what we need, but it’s hard. Now I understand how our grandfathers fought during the war: they dug trenches, strengthened dugouts. Hard work. Very heavy. Every day we drag sand to the fourth floor, cover the walls, make positions. There were healthier men there than me - no one was indignant, but they tore their backs. It was hard, in a word. But when the battle was over, relief came.

Escape from the hospital There's just work. You're doing your job. You either do it well or poorly. As for me, I do my job well. I also managed to stay in the hospital, the 120th mine arrived with a concussion, fortunately the building was covered by a wave. I vomited a little there. This is fine. But when I was in the hospital, it became scary. From silence. Because in war you already get used to the fact that they are shooting, you get used to it. And when you are brought to a peaceful place, you find yourself in a completely different world. Silence, light, TV playing. They feed there: salads, not salads. Parrot. I had to drip for 5 days - and on the second day I escaped from there. Because the situation is oppressive, the silence is oppressive. She scared me. When our instructor came to the doctor, I told him: “Take me away from here. I want to go there, home, to the boys.” The doctors laughed, gave me a bunch of pills and let me go.

When I arrived at the location, I went up to the “chip” on the second floor. When I climbed the floors, the pressure jumped, my head was pounding. He got up and sat there. The only plus was that when they strengthened their positions, the guys carried bags, and someone had to stay on the “chip”. I couldn’t leave, I couldn’t get up, so I stayed on the “chip” and watched the approaches.

Mortars and fireworks They decided to have fireworks on May 9th. Tracers into the sky, it was beautiful. And as it turned out, the spirits also had Slavs in their positions they also set off fireworks, and then hit us. After our fireworks, it turns out that about 20 minutes later the spirits opened fire on us with a mortar. Well, not much. For the sake of decency, so to speak.

How the enemy worked liked, How perfume shot. They they're shooting organized, almost according to the scheme. Especially towards the end they got used to it. They had four or five points from which they constantly fired at us. The tactic was this: the spirits arrived in a pickup truck at the point, fired four to six shots, and immediately left for another point. While ours were aiming, they were no longer there. And so they safely passed all their five points. It was very difficult to catch them. To me

Then, one night in T. I noticed how they were shooting from a large caliber from the mountain. On our right side there was either a high hill or a hillock. It was clearly visible through binoculars: two pickup trucks rolled out, unloaded two magazines of regular magazines and one magazine of tracers - then they calmly sat down, without haste, and drove away. They didn’t hit accurately - so, they poured not in our direction, but in the direction of the “seven”, a little further away. I just wanted to shoot, apparently. But we all saw two cars, the little men calmly got out, they weren’t in a hurry. They loaded up, fired back and left with impunity.

The only thing I didn’t like was that they left with impunity. Then we knocked out this pickup truck during the battle. I wanted to inspect the pickup that same day, but they didn’t let me - everything was shot through. As a result, we went to look the next day. There was a lot of blood because they tried to break through in two directions. But we also had bulletproof vests, a couple of machine guns, unloading gear, bandages, and all sorts of small things with us. We were told that it was some kind of local special forces. As they explained to us, spirit commanders sometimes pass by and sniff the trunks of their fighters. Whoever smells means he fought, he’s done well. And whoever doesn’t smell means he didn’t fight, so they don’t pay any money. And so they don’t even fight as much as they pull out a machine gun into our window, fire two or three horns - that’s it, I’m a warrior, give us money.

There was also one sniper shooting there. Not good, but selftaught. Our road was visible to them, and there was constant sniper fire from their side. From there the road is well covered, like in a shooting range - but almost always by, we just run like targets. Apparently, they gave the man an SVD, and that’s fine, let him shoot. But

the way he shot... actually, we all survived. If he had been a trained fighter, a good sniper, we would have been in big trouble. But in order not to tempt fate, our good guys tentatively threw an AGS at the window from where he could shoot. Since then, no one else has appeared.

They also had good fighters. One of us was hit three hundred times - the sniper shot into the loophole and hit one in the arm. So, it’s okay, the hand is intact - only the meat was spoiled. But the problem is that everyone knows that others will come to the aid of the wounded soldier. And that’s why the sniper was specially made “three hundredth” so that the others would pull him out.

By development

work

was

hard.

Very

strongly

The distance is disorienting. If you look from your post, the distance seems small - from here to there. And when we looked at the pictures that we took from a copter, it turned out that there was a huge distance there, everything was completely open. And the houses are completely different from the places you see them visually: one is closer, the other is farther away.

The influence of hashish on combat Rotations for the spirits took place every 15th, approximately. You could always hear it. After the rotation, they all used hashish and all started shooting - they showed that they were warriors. We have already determined this: so, the shooting began, is it clear - the 15th? 15th! Two days pass - silence. The hashish is over. That's the only way it was possible to find out.

— Did drug use influence the actions of the militants?

“It didn’t affect the battle, but it did affect the shooting.” They didn't mow, no missed, they just didn’t shoot accurately. Let's say they went out - how many stores they have, either into the air or into a building somewhere. All. They did not have a specific goal where to shoot: at the loopholes, or anything else. The main thing for them is to shoot all the stores and release the ammunition.

Circles from enemy shots There were, of course, individuals who targeted the loopholes. And it flew towards us, and when I was standing, it also flew there. And my friends and relatives stood and beat me too - it hit me several times. And they were next to us too, in the neighboring rooms. One sniper hit there periodically - there were impressive dents and through holes in the walls. I then began to circle them and write the date and time. So, I tentatively went in, saw a new hole, circled it, and wrote the date. In that room I had writing all over the wall. But then you know when there was a hole - and you roughly understand where the fire is coming from. I was on duty one night, on the fourth floor. And also, snipers were shooting through the floors - and right above my head a bullet stuck into the wall. My hair under my hat started to move, and I could already feel the heat from the bullet. I think I need to go down to the floor below, I went down from the fourth to the third - it seemed fine. And then I look — there was an elevator shaft there, and you could see how it was hammering through the floors, shooting through the stairwells.

Test site It rained there twice, I remember. And most of all I liked the morning from about 8 to 9 o'clock. You sit - cool, silence, not a single sound at all. Birds are singing. It’s as if there is no war, just beauty. Even the dogs don't bark. You look: the blue sky, the birds are flying, what else do you need to be happy? I absolutely loved standing on the “chip” at this time. You sit there, dreaming.

But basically work is like work. The only thing is that sometimes bad thoughts came to mind. When there is mortar shelling: they bang, bang, bang, bang, it flies into houses, flies there, fragments rain down. You think: “Oh my, when are you going to die?” Of course, you can’t do this, but such thoughts were there, they came to mind. At such moments I wanted to gather the guys and go on the attack, hit the spirits - and then die there, during the battle. Because you think: a mine will come and bang, and what will you do? You can't do anything. Otherwise, you will drag at least one of the spirits with you to the next world.

— Many people call this war high-tech, and it was

which didn't happen.

— The most dangerous enemy is the Bayraktars. It's scary under them

Yes. I didn’t catch that time, but people said that they used to hunt for our groups. Usually a group consists of five people, three people minimum. And then the Bayraktars began to hunt even single individuals. You can’t see it, but high-precision weapons can fly into the window. Then we were told that many countries were testing their new weapons there. The same "Bayraktars".

“DANGER IS NOW OUR JOB” Akerbat at that time was considered an area where the enemy was very densely concentrated. That is, this is a huge area of enemy concentration. From this direction, the militants could move in any direction at all - towards Homs, towards the Shair fields, in a southern direction, towards the road that connects Palmyra and Homs. That is, in principle, it was a strategically important settlement: there is a very dense building there, in which it is convenient to hide, live, etc. We started in the “six”. At first we were put on the defensive guards guarding Shair. We stood there for three months, changing periodically with the “kopek” and with the Syrians. And literally, as soon as we changed the boys from the “kopeck”, they reported the situation to us. “Oh, everything is calm there, everything is fine,” they tell us. Immediately everything went hard. At first, the suicide bomber broke through in a car, trying to break through. The Syrian alone removed it from the grenade launcher. Shahid apparently wanted to get to the Syrian headquarters, but in the end he didn’t get there and was carried off the border by a Syrian. There was such a good gap, the car was simply torn into molecules. And from then on it went.

There was such a moment. When we covered the road between our positions and the positions of the allies, we found something like a cache at a short distance from the road. Not even a cache - but a whole bunker. The bunker was very deep, up to 15 meters deep. It was well equipped: several entrances and it was clear that the militants ran out from there and threw away their ammunition loads, sleeping bags, and clothes. One of the bags contained fresh dates. There was an external antenna, they even cut through the windows. Inside, as we could see, even two brand new motorcycles were abandoned. But we didn’t go down: who knows what they could have left there, we could have simply exploded there and not gotten out. They just looked around, that's all. Well, when I was at the Syrians’ headquarters, an MTR group arrived. I tell them: “Guys, there is a cache nearby, literally a kilometer away. It will count for you, there is a job for you. Go and see, the place is good,

the territory is not controlled by anyone, and the enemy can secretly use it. Launch quadcopters from there, conduct reconnaissance, or drop explosive objects from this quadcopter.” They say: “No, we won’t go there, it’s dangerous.” I told them: “Isn’t danger your job?” They didn't answer. Apparently, danger is now our job. First we moved to Akerbat, we walked for about half a month, probably. First, they walked through the mountains and smoked out the spirits from their holes. In fact, they had magnificent fortifications there - the spirits almost tore out a palace underground. It was very interesting that the entrance was made on one support from the dugout, and the exit was somewhere in the distance. And at the same time, the ceilings in such catacombs are high—three meters. That is, it seems that you go into a small loophole, go down and down - and inside there is a huge cave. Before us, another platoon cleaned this cave, Vector’s squad cleaned it - with heavy losses, Vector himself also died. Then there were small skirmishes when they fought with the spirits. There were times on Akerbat when they wouldn’t let us on the mountain. They were shooting from all sides, but you couldn’t see anything when or where they were shooting from. They hide behind the stones, and everything blurs before your eyes. The commander shouted to us: “Come on, boys, go ahead!” and it was impossible to get out there. As soon as you raise your head, bullets immediately whistle overhead. In short, we think moving forward is not an option. The commander of the first squad and I conferred and went around the hill. As a result, two of us distinguished ourselves then, they were the first to jump up the mountain, the deceased Serpent and there was another person with him, he was the heavy “three hundredth”. They were the first to jump out onto the mountain, where they shot one spirit at point-blank range. Then it turned out that there, at a height, another machine gunner caught a wedge

— he didn’t have a “Utes”, but something like a Chinese “Dashka” (DShK), and this Chinese DShK jammed at the most critical moment. If he hadn’t caught the wedge, we all would have had a hard time. When we reached the height, we looked down - and there were 8 people moving away along the slope. We haven’t realized it yet - they have lumps (shape), like ours in color. We also tried to get out by radio, but ours were not ours. But while they were leaving, they already realized that they were not ours.

The tank crew stood with us. We semaphore him so that he can hammer on the departing spirits. He starts shooting at them, and two

catchy. In general, many boys distinguished themselves then.

"4th generation secret device" It was also interesting with Akerbat. There the boys collected enemy weapons - ammunition, explosives, homemade products, in general, everything they had - and put them in a barn. There was such a shed (a pen for livestock, like a barn) downstairs, it looks like appendicitis, and everything in the shed itself was mined. They put them on “knife fences” so that if an enemy group came in, they wouldn’t leave. The enemy was constantly trying to probe us, both from the left, and from the right, and from the flank. The snipers began to shoot the militants, but their range did not allow them. 1400–1500 meters, we worked with ASVK and Mannlichers. They knew for sure that we had engineers working there, they also had observers - but I don’t know why, they went to this mess. As a result, the explosion was such that I thought it was like a nuclear bomb had exploded. The fungus has grown, everything is as expected. Of the large fragments, only small pieces of clothing remained - a group of 10 militants was literally sprayed into small parts. Ours put a bookmark just in case, but lo and behold, it came in handy. Apparently, the park decided to outflank us - and ran into us. Second case in the same place. The spirits lived in holes and shook out the sleeping bags in the morning - this is how we found out where there were secret forays. A small group of 4 people set out to probe the spirits. There were snipers working, and there was a guy from our unit - he worked with an army “night light”, then he was given the call sign “secret thermal imaging device of the 4th generation.” Everywhere the third, but he has the fourth now I’ll tell you why. The distance was approximately 500 meters. At that time I held the position of squad commander, and the guy with the “night light” said to me: “I am observing the target, machine gunner, a distance of 500 meters.” This is at the maximum speed that can be pulled out of a night light. He says, “Give me a shot, I’ll just focus.” I tell him: “Come on.” He fired and, he says, hit. We didn’t believe him - but then, when we came to inspect the battle site, we made sure that we had hit it exactly. The bullet went through the bipod, the spirit went into his hands and died there, his friends took his personal belongings and left.

The plain near Akerbat was bare, not a pebble. There's nowhere to hide. We then stormed one hill, and it’s good that there was a strong wind, the sniper was working on us, and the wind blew his bullets to the side. You lie there, you work on it, it’s “given, given” on you, but you can’t do anything, you can’t hide anywhere. And this sniper started working on me for something. I was already thinking: that’s it, we’ve arrived, now he’s going to shoot me. Probably seven or eight times he worked like that for me. At one point I even pretended to be dead: I was a hedgehog, not moving, maybe he’d think he’d killed me. And he keeps working and working.

I’m already thinking: “Fuck your mother, switch to someone else or something... Why are you shooting at me?!” And then I look back and there’s also a sniper lying behind me. He hid behind me, an infection - and, most importantly, he put on reflective glasses, they shine and give away his entire position. I semaphore him: “get out of here!” In short, he ran over to another fighter, and after him the spirit began to work on the other fighter. Well, I think it’s okay, at least I’ll rest a little.

UNCLE, WILL YOU GO TO WAR WITH US TOMORROW? One of the situations was during the assault on Popasnaya in a private sector, where we came into fire contact with the enemy and were pinned down near a private house. There was contact from right and left, we could not get out. The enemy also shot through the approaches to this house. We found ourselves in a small fire pocket. The weather was hot, the only supplies we had with us were BC, no water, nothing, everything quickly ran out. We were saved by the basement of a private house; there were a variety of cold and non-alcoholic drinks.

After sitting near this house, constantly coming into contact with the enemy, for about 3-4 hours, we decided to move forward. We had no option to stay in this place. In the evening twilight they would have shot us and pinned us down with an RPG. I had to decide to shoot the enemy from the pipes. The working distance was about 25 meters, no more. The pipes are RPG-30, this is 26, all disposable. I threw the first house beautifully right out the window, the house classically doubled in size and folded, the fire from that place, as it seemed to us, stopped. The second shot was fired to the right, and the enemy was also firing from there. What happened was that we shot into the house, I pushed into it from the chimney, and a body crawls out from there and starts making mischief. He didn’t care that everything was already burning above him, the house was on fire. Comrade, they turned back, covered each other with fire and seemed to crawl away. At this time, the Cossacks went to the right along with the marines. They didn’t reach us about 40 meters and stopped. We were bored, we had orders not to go forward, but we disobeyed him a little and went forward because we were really bored. We crossed the road under enemy fire and hid under another house on the other side of the street. We thought that the enemy was in the house that we first destroyed, that everything was there.

Then we realized that they had this house as cover; their firing position itself was behind the house, through the windows. They knew roughly where we were, and we were just hitting the house. And they seem to have zero

emotions. We had to squeeze in, the feds finally came to us, we covered them. We crawled closer, we had to go forward. How to move forward — we don’t know, there is constant fire contact there. As soon as we climb out, they fire at us. We can't understand. And then a small moment happened: a radio station was found near one of the dead dills, their balalaika. We grab a local Cossack by the collar and say: “Bro, let’s go to the radar, come out and say in Ukrainian that I’m wounded and need help.” At least let them come out, so we can at least understand where they are coming from. He said on the balalaika that everything is fine, he said, “lads, I’m dying, save me.” We wait, we stand, we think it won’t work.

And then dill begin to emerge from all the cracks, as in the best Lord of the Rings films. There’s just a horde of them coming out, we look and don’t understand where so many of them came from. We had to shoot a little, we, of course, went crazy, the feds too, there were young boys, they got there immediately after the emergency. I had to go forward, we went together with my partner from our company. We had already missed the enemy, and he was about ten meters away from us. Two heads just crawl out of the trench and start shooting at us from a PC and a machine gun. How we survived, I don’t understand at all. We were just a layer, there was another Cossack guy with us. Our common comrade decided to throw a grenade there, he stood up, they covered him with fire, and carefully approached the trench. A shot comes from the trench, right in the forehead of our partner. I think that's it. I drag him in, turn him over, his helmet is all swollen, but he doesn’t even have a concussion. He just lies there, stupefied, and says: “I’ll fuck him the fuck up.” He goes back to the barn with the RPK, sits down and starts looking for him. About 20 minutes pass, a body shoots from the trench, he goes out and shoots. We hear a “ding” sound, like a helmet. And our comrade says: “Don’t fucking touch the helmet, it’s mine.” We all lay there. It seems that somehow we tried to squeeze them, they were hollowed out from the pipes. But there was a platoon commander and a company commander there. The major and the elder were sitting there. He knocked one into the tower, and the second one shot back to the last. He was all bandaged there, his insides were already expired.

We understand that it is already getting dark, we need to settle down, because going somewhere at night is not an option. A federal man comes up to us: “Uncle, will you go to war with us tomorrow?” And we have

Our command gets in touch and asks, “Where are you?” We answer that we are in our positions. “Why are they shooting at you?” We say that our neighbors are shooting there, and we sit and drink tea, but we have orders not to go anywhere, we sit and relax. The funny thing is that we have both Cossacks and federals, I’m talking about those federals who were at that time, most of them did not understand what needed to be done. Where to go, what to do, no connection. They couldn't even contact their own people. They asked us for a radio station, let us contact our people directly. Even through your stations with your command, they have your radio stations, we will contact them. That is, it was complete confusion about where they should go, what they should do. They almost destroyed the house where we were supposed to go. We are already entering this house, literally about 10 minutes and we would have gone there. And they hit it from two pipes. “Why did you shoot there?” They answer: “Well, we thought there was an enemy there.” That is, there was no relationship.

What's the most memorable thing?

This is when I started to get sick. When we were walking to the railway depot, I crawled out from behind the door, an RPG exploded between my legs, and I flew to the side. I thought that was it, 200. Yes, it seemed like I was shell-shocked. I was taken to a safe place and immediately flew there. That is, I was shell-shocked twice. It was twisted and they couldn’t remove the armor. They held him back and walked. I crawled on all fours to the militia, to the five-story building. They look at me, I’m crawling on all fours, they ask, “Who are you?”, I say, “One of my own.” They took it to themselves. The garage also collapsed on me. There was a compression bruise and contusion. The concussion went away in three days, but with my spine I had to go to the hospital and was sent to Russia. At first I lay in Lugansk, then I decided to return, returned back to the detachment, well, it came back to me, because in Lugansk the doctors treated me incorrectly, or rather, they simply did not treat me. They only gave injections, but Moscow received more serious treatment.

***

I have been in the office since 2020. Well, I’ve been a volunteer in Donbass since 2014, everything is familiar to me here.

OIL Trenches They (the Syrians)Note ed.) they fought with the spirits there for a long time. They have a gray zone between the positions of the sides - only 100-150 meters. Both sides are dug into the ground up to the nostrils, as in the First World War somewhere there is a mirror sticking out, somewhere there is a window, somewhere a pipe is poured into the parapet. On both sides. So they sat at the airport for five years, completely blocked by spirits.

The offensive took place near Es-Sukhne towards Deir ez-Zor along the road. We advanced along the route from left and right. On the left side was the combined Syrian corps, I think the 101st corps. And on the right flank there was, it seems, the first corps. In both corps, the command was replenished by our officers from the Ministry of Defense, who were literate and commanded normally. We advanced as if in waves: on the first day the Syrians advanced, reached the planned line, the next day, starting from their positions, our units advanced. And then one day we are given a task - during the offensive, to reach the front line of the Syrians and understand where they have gained a foothold after their advance. I rode along the left flank with our colonel, the military adviser to the Syrians. We look at the left flank - everything seems to be fine, the Syrians have completed their tasks. We look at the right flank and see that to the right of the road the cars were moving straight towards the enemy. Well, we think - well done, Syrians, they are advancing straight in a column. Moreover, there were a lot of cars - I counted about a dozen pickup trucks. We went behind the column to see where it would anchor. We are driving in two cars: the advisor from the Moscow Region is driving in the first, and we are in the second. We crossed the road and followed them in the direction of Deir ez-Zor. We drive and drive, but there are still no Syrians. There is no leading edge of positions. At all. “What the hell is this?” I think. And the adviser is driving in the car ahead. Suddenly I look - there are cars in the distance, Zushki are standing, the crowd is somehow incomprehensible. I look at the reaction of the car in front - it sharply hits the brakes, turns sharply 180 degrees and begins to take off. I understand that something is wrong, I give a command to the driver - let's get him urgently, in the opposite direction.

Then it turned out that it was the enemy: he was retreating, and we just came across him. And there the distance was up to 300 meters - we almost drove into enemy territory. We have almost caught up with them. As I understand it, they themselves did not understand who was moving behind them - they thought they were their own, so there was no fire from their side. We returned back, began to investigate, and began to look for the positions of the first Syrian corps. And when they found it, it turned out that they didn’t even go anywhere. They remained in their previous positions and remained there. And thanks to the inaction of the right flank of the Syrians, only one detachment went on the offensive.

Oil trench - There was such a case. We have a car, one for platoon. Ours are coming

past the sands, and it so happened that we took a wrong turn. On the way, he follows us all and turns to the spirits. Those, accordingly, begin to hit her with everything that was. Our guys, having assessed the situation, jumped out of the car and saw that there was a huge oil puddle there. Apparently, oil was being extracted nearby, and it flowed like a river past the road. Well, our people jumped into the oil - up to their nostrils. The spirits came here and there, stole the car, took everything. And ours lay in the oil and then, when the spirits left, they quietly left until we were located.

- So they lay under the car?

— They jumped out of the car, and there were 15–20 meters around

oil spill. The spirits thought they had run away. They were sweating with foam there. — And they were scratched by the glass there. Well, they are so easy.

- Easy “three hundredths”, yes. And all the blacks, all covered in oil, were washed for a long time.

“One of the guys was hit in the leg then.” Shot through ankle strong. But he doesn’t care, he runs 20 kilometers - the main thing is to tie his leg to his shin with a cord. - Maybe they were already lying in the dark? Apparently the perfume just doesn't

noticed.

“There’s oil there, you won’t see people there anymore.” Even if he

will be in oil. It's not easy to smooth - there are bumps somewhere, something is lying around. You simply won’t see a person in it. It was a pity for the car, the “balalaika” was lost to the spirits.

- Not only the balalaika, they got everything, a thermal imager, and

"night lights". We received a normal response from them - but then they responded normally, it doesn’t seem like much.

Four in the "slides" We were heading towards Deir ez-Zor, and in the area of the factory near Es-Sukhneh the spirits cut us off from the route. One fine morning, militants blow up an ammunition depot right in our rear! There was a long distance between our posts - a kilometer and a half. In general, they somehow got through between the posts - and not because of our oversight or negligence, but because it was not clear where the Syrians were standing, where the Fatimids were standing. Because of this confusion, the militants brazenly drove up to the location, did their work, and settled down along the embankment. We remained against them as part of one squad: we threw grenades, a quadcopter dropped mines on us - NATO ones, and not of the Soviet type. We had two “three-hundredth” lungs at that time... But, we fought them off in the end, everything went fine. Let's go, storm the heights. The enemy rolls back and slowly attacks us, of course, but we move behind them and press them down. We rise to a height, I look through binoculars from a height, I see - from the spiritual side, four people in “slides” are calmly walking along the valley. In the “slides”, the beards are short - they seem to look like ours. I gave the commander binoculars, he looked and confirmed: “Yes, this is most likely our other detachment. They should gain a foothold here right now. Everything is fine". Well, we sit down where we entered. And there the area is bare - you sit as if on a frying pan, there’s not even anything to cover yourself with, you can’t even collect stones. And the platoon that we accompanied stood a little higher behind us. We are sitting, waiting for some command to come in order to move somewhere. And these four in the “slides” calmly bypass us, climb onto the next slide - and begin to pummel us. They can see us clearly - it’s clear that they have the predominant height... We somehow “hid” in this frying pan, ran back and forth, but you can’t run for so long, you have to knock them out of there. And not only did they have the predominant height, but at this height there was, as it turned out, a large spiritual fortification. There were some antennas and solar panels, in general, some kind of important fortification.

We went down our hill and began to run in dashes to the height where they settled. And here, in the hollow between the hills, one of us turns his head to the left while running and looks - the tank is standing. "Seventysecond." As it turned out later, the ISIS tank crews left it there because, when they began to retreat, they were afraid that aircraft would start attacking them if the tank was spotted. Plus they didn’t have either water or antifreeze. A one hundred percent working tank. In general, to prevent the tank from boiling, they abandoned it, covered it with something, camouflaged it, thinking that we would not reach it. When the spirits realized that we had found this tank, they immediately began trying to destroy this tank so that we wouldn’t get it. They shot at him from the "Boot", but they only had fragmentation weapons, so nothing happened. First they shot at the stern, then at the side, but it didn’t work. As a result, we recaptured the fortification without losses - and even got the tank as a trophy.

The spirit was coming towards us in a Shahid mobile. But, apparently, the driver’s “brothers” forgot to weld the doors in the car. He got lost, drove around the plant, looked for us, but didn’t find us. Since they forgot to weld him, he just came out, spat at us and left. In general, we found this “suicide mobile”: an open door and a bunch of explosives in it. There is no spirit. Gone. Or ran away. It was useless to shoot at him - he had 30 centimeters of armor welded there.

And another “martyr mobile” got lost in the fog. There was fog, we all hid in it, he couldn’t find us. The boys were talking. They are told on the radio: the suicide bomber has passed, hide, hide... He drives around, can’t find anyone. No one even touches him, well, to hell with him, let him ride.

We broke through the ring of militants who kept the airfield surrounded, and our platoon was the very first to go there. We go out to the airfield - everyone is dirty, we have walked through all the quarries, we have squeezed the spirits out of their holes. We look like fighting homeless people. I'm wearing a helmet and holding two ATGMs. And a Syrian comes out from this gang that ran the airport there, he saw us and said: “Inshallah!” Like, praise be to Allah, reinforcements have arrived. The spirits abandoned everything and fled. They were already running away across the river, leaving everything behind, almost swimming. And the other side was just being shot at by Su-25s - I remember they flew there and sneezed normally. The tactics the spirits used were mainly something like containment. In one place a pickup truck flew over and they detained him. There they brought up machine gunners and grenade launchers. If there is a big plug, they can tighten up the ZUSHKU. In general, spirits were respected. As fighters, there is something to respect them for. Not all of them, of course, but there are especially seasoned ones. There is something to remember, but somehow everything quickly fades in memory.

We reached the Dukhovsky stronghold and, when we were already moving the front, the martyrs attacked the airport. There was an old fire station there and two suicide bombers blew themselves up there. I don’t know what kind of explosive charge there was, but when these terrorists exploded, they were completely scattered across the territory. I then walked through these fragments of equipment, scraps of suicide bombers - the largest fragment that I saw was the size of a palm, a piece of the spine and ribs. In Deir ez-Zor in September, when the factories passed through, the fighting there was severe, and we were very tired. We sit behind the embankment and have lunch. We hear -

bang! We turned around and the cylinder fell about 150 meters from us. It exploded and white smoke poured out. Well, okay, at first everyone was scared... Bang! Second! A little further... Bang! Third. Everyone is sitting quietly, not rocking the boat, no one cares. In short, I kept throwing perfume from the balloon launcher and throwing these balloons to the left, to the right, closer, further. In short, we realized that he was trying to shoot at us, but he was not succeeding.

An ordinary person would definitely be scared in such conditions. And so, you are sitting, eating, the cylinders are bursting next to you, you think to yourself: “Yes, let them burst.” Do you actually know what you would like? Meet with some film directors, sit in a bathhouse with them, sit with vodka and talk about our adventures. They would go nuts. I saw everything with my own eyes, 6 years already. And everything that they talk about on these Internets is such nonsense, by God!

TWENTY EIGHT "WAGNER" The military is now teaching this operation - how the storming of the island took place - even in academies, it turns out. The problem was that the balance of forces was generally unclear to us. When we asked [the Syrians] how many enemy forces there were, they told us that they had no idea, maybe there were about 20 people. The spirits sat on the island and did not show activity, at least in relation to the Syrians. As it turned out later, there were about 300 of them there, if you count them together with those who surrendered. The Kurds wanted to release them and opened the floodgates so that the spirits could leave. In response, ours “locked” the spirits on the island by raising the water. One detachment was stationed on that side, and another detachment went on the assault. We and the spirits remained on the island; there were 28 of us. We even had this joke: they say there are 28 “Wagnerites” sitting on the island. When we were thrown there, we had no sleeping bags - nothing. We slept on wet ground. The nights were cold - November. After the first night, everyone developed a raw cough. We have already been in positions several times to clear the northern part. But I had to wait. As soon as we started, they immediately stepped up their strength. And there are thickets, limited visibility, and they have a lot of forces pulled up. There are thickets on the left flank, there are reeds there. In the thickets, visibility is poor, and spirits constantly flank these thickets and try to approach us. The day was already drawing to a close. I think we need to gain a foothold on the frontiers of the unprepared. There was no hope of working at night. The spirits tried to attack our positions, but, fortunately, the drone detected them. There we started using both AGS and large-caliber weapons. And just from the AGS they hit well: with the second salvo, right into the pile where they were gathering. After that, the spirits scattered and did not try to storm our nook again. Our assault was not immediately successful, since they had good trenches. They did not allow us to advance, and we could not reach them with anything. Then, when they came and looked: they have such good ones there

there were dugouts. They dug a hole behind the trees, they had a stove there, they slept there - and there was nothing to reach them.

“We are not interested in money” There was an interesting moment. Negotiations with spirits were planned. They informed everyone via radio stations not to open fire if the spirits came to meet them. A man went through all the positions and said: “Guys, now there will be negotiations. If you see someone, don’t open fire.” Literally five minutes passed - and shooting began from everywhere. At first there were several queues from the spirits. I don’t know whether there was a radio command or not, but heavy machine guns started firing. We were sitting in the green, and a tank drove out five meters from us and started shooting straight volley after volley. Through a translator, I reached one spirit and said: “There is an offer, you surrender, we will save your life.” He's in denial. I then say to the artillerymen: “Give them 30 shells, around the island.” Well, they did. I call back: “Well, will you give up?” They say: “No.” I go out to the artilleryman again: “Give me another 15 there.” I called again and said: “Are you sure you won’t leave there?” The spirits agreed to negotiate. We go out, one time, a man comes out - I don’t remember his name, some Abu, there were two commanders with him. As it turned out, some of the spirits went to Meyadin, and one and a half thousand are sitting on the island. They tell us:

- Let go, we will give you money, 4 million dollars.

- Bro, we are not interested in money. - We need to go to the Kurds. - No, you won’t go to the Kurds, we’re not even discussing it. I can you take it back, and we will level your island with artillery. As a result, they begin to surrender and take out their weapons. We inspect them, we even provided first aid. All fifteen hundred surrendered. We flew over the island, calculated all their moves, looked at the dungeons, that's all. And I watch one guy, he’s walking with a donkey. He went behind a tree, looked around, and began digging under the tree. He unloaded the sacks from the donkey into the hole, buried them, covered them with branches and left. I called the intelligence chief and gave him the coordinates of the place. That's it, we stormed the island, I forgot about that incident - there was no time for that. Then he went to another direction - he met that intelligence chief.

- Listen, did you dig a hole on the island then? - Well, yes, they dug it up.

- So what was there? - Children. Chopped. In bags. Rare creatures. According to the scout, there were a lot of remains there, a lot of bags. From kids to teenagers. If I hadn’t seen it then, no one would have known that these freaks chopped up the children.

Stripping We inspected absolutely the entire island - completely. From start to finish they walked in a chain. I walked in the middle of my platoon. On the left was the first, in my opinion, platoon, on the right was the third, together with the second. We moved through the bushes, through everything. There was no engineer. They left behind a lot of “suicide belts.” We found everything, destroyed everything, as expected. I also remember that they found a bulletproof vest there, made just like a “suicide belt,” stuffed with plastic with destructive elements. There were a lot of “suicide belts”. There were houses and mud huts there, and I remember, during the assault, I looked into one shed. I saw the IS flag, jerked towards it, I thought: I’ll tear it off, there will be a trophy. I walked halfway through the room and looked: and under my feet there was a whole layer of “martyr’s belts” piled up. I think, well, let this flag be taken by those who need it more.

When they started clearing the island, two “martyrs” ran out between us and the fourth platoon. No one was hurt, only one guy was shell-shocked, and everyone was pelted with scraps from the militants. There were scraps everywhere. There, olive trees stood about 100 meters from the explosion site - they even hung on them. The largest fragment was a leg with a thigh. At that time, I remember, I also joked: “Look how fat the leg is, but they say that they were starving here while they were surrounded.” Well, the leg did seem big. It was only later that I learned that a limb, severed from the body, looks much larger than it actually is. We walked all over the island, and it’s cold there at night. We decided to collect some mattresses from the surrounding mud huts so as not to sleep on bare ground. We raked them up and saw: the spirit was lying there. Well, we: “hands up”, took him prisoner. He didn’t know that we were looking for warm clothes, so he decided to hide under the mattress and wait. The spirit later said during interrogation that they left five behind. Two “martyrs” were killed, he was captured, but two were never found. Well, maybe they decided to stay and hid in the greenery.

HOW TO TRAIN AFRICAN SOLDIERS By

In January 18th, the first group was established, and work has already begun

deployment of a training center for local military personnel. A program was developed, and personnel training lasted two months. By agreement with the Ministry of Defense of the Central African Republic, it was discussed that local military personnel, regardless of how long they have already served, they undergo training and receive a certificate. And this certificate further opens up prospects for them to continue serving in the army.

I got into the second stream, that is, I went there in June. I worked there for two business trips, in this center. In the process, our work and the work of the center were constantly improved. In fact, this was done on the basis of the enthusiasm of some very trained people in the company these are people with outstanding organizational skills who simply created a training base from scratch, out of nothing. Each time, about four hundred people passed through the center during a two-month period.

People can neither write nor read, they do not have any primary education even for basic topographic calculations. And the task was to train them, to give them some idea. There was training in combined arms combat, offensive and defensive training, and shooting was carried out. At first it was individual training on general issues, that is, fire training, tactical training, the basics of topography were given, and command training was carried out with the officers.

We also had additional training with specialists in all areas, including engineering training, and sappers conducted classes. To prepare the command staff, a plan was developed, which also included all the specifics of management and organization of the daily life of military personnel. Our army was taken as a basis, no one came up with anything: they taught it the same way, they raised it the same way, they determined all the points in the same way at the beginning, because there are nuances that are different in our armies.

For example, women serve in their service. Against this background, at the initial stage, attention was paid to discipline, because there was a serious infringement of rights. Example: women wash officers' socks. All food was kept at our base and was also allocated to them - once a decade a certain amount of cereals, meat, water and the rest. It was the consequences of how they previously existed in their army that were reflected in the basis of work already at the instructor center. We give it to them, and immediately it all goes towards the implementation of certain points on a personal level. That is, they gave him water, he won’t use it, he’d rather sell it and buy himself sneakers, because he walks around with holes in them. And against the background of this, there were problems with the provision of clothing (these attempts were stopped), rude relations with women and attempts to use them not as military personnel, but as labor.

It got to the point that we immediately instructed each new batch on the procedure for completing the training at the instructor center. If anyone is noticed in all this, regardless of whether he is a soldier or an officer, he will be immediately expelled from the training center. Thus, all these attempts were stopped. It worked, as I said before, we always improved the work of the center.

The language barrier Regarding the work itself with them, of course we tried to use their language, learn French somewhere at an elementary level in order to understand, to know how to call them by their positions. We had one translator for 400 people. Partially I had to teach them Russian, the basics: shoot, don’t shoot, cease fire, lie down to fight. They are very trainable and have a good memory.

How did we compensate for the load caused by the fact that there was essentially no translator? We released the company, and took the best 10 people from it. And it was these 10 people that we left at the base as platoon instructors. They already understand Russians better, some separation issues. And a year later, for 6-7 graduations that I conducted, these 10 people actually completely replaced the instructors. If we conducted some kind of instructormethodological classes, prepared for classes, determined a plan for how we would work, in fact, the distribution of how training points would be organized simply depended on the instructor. These same instructors are posted at these points. Roughly speaking, they already understand everything, know everything and have already been trained themselves, they have already conducted several graduations, it was easier to work through them.

Well, there were some cool moments, because they grasp the Russian language a little, but at the same time they distort it a little in their own way. They called the assistant grenade launcher “assistant” when groups moved as part of elements of the battle formation. Practicing actions on the battlefield, when the commands “Red”, “Green”, “I hold it - go” are given, it looked something like this: “I dare you to go!” Zeleny. Cool." Our instructors worked well and taught very well - but the main problem was that there were no local army men at all. They just have zero level of training. Until our guys started training them, before that the French taught them only to march and give a military salute. They were not taught anything else, it was simply not profitable. And after we held demonstrations before graduation, the president came, all these representatives, diplomats, deputies - they were shocked by how

their military personnel were trained. We began to raise and teach military affairs there. What they need to defend and protect their country. Based on the results of the training, demonstration performances were held at the end. The leadership of various Western analysts, observers, and intelligence agencies came—let’s not hide it. Including the President of the Central African Republic and his retinue. About 140 cars came to the base there.

During the “show off” we fired blanks, made colorful explosions - we blew up towers and fences. We played out the capture of a car, hand-tohand combat. The blacks broke the bricks with their hands. Everyone there was just screaming. The public came there, and they had a holiday there - consider that the self-esteem of the entire people rose. And they believed that those who were trained in our instructor school were the elite of the army. They did not perceive everyone else. Especially those who studied with the French and Western specialists - they were considered lower in terms of training. And graduates of our instructor school, by the way, wanted to come to us in Russia and continue their studies. Their social level increased, career growth and wages began. Those who studied poorly, we had expulsions, they directly clung to them, cried, because if they were expelled, it was a shock for them. But there were some guys who lagged behind in their studies. Well, there was no way to explain it to them. We also carried out a medical examination upon admission - we immediately excluded people with all ulcers. And there were a lot of sick people there: unsanitary conditions. We also immediately removed those who were sexually transmitted from the camp. They were already in shock. Then we started physical therapy. The locals, although patient, cannot compete physically against a European. They don’t know how to do pull-ups at all, or do push-ups. Their superstitions are still very developed. For example, the incident took place at the base. My friend was in charge of interacting with them. They are very afraid of chameleons. The superstition is that if you look into the eyes of a chameleon, you will die. Like chameleons are possessed by the souls of shamans. So our comrade, in order to wake them up in the morning, took the chameleon and went into the barracks with it. After 5 seconds there was no one in the beds - they were already jumping out of the doors and windows.

They also have their own personnel and performers. I had an assistant instructor from the army men who had completed the course - we called him “Ninja” because his surname was similar to ninja in our language. A good guy in general, he was from the very first draft - and he was the toughest: they wore normal body armor and helmets, we were strict about this then. And the first call was understood more, they knew more. And then, on the second issue, they told us: — Leave people who have learned the material well so that they helped you in the future.

Still, it was difficult, the language barrier, you already had a big head explain to everyone. They seemed to be afraid of weapons, they smelled crazy - they had their own unusual smell. But for them it’s probably a smell, but for us it’s a terrible stench. For example, I couldn’t bear it at all; I immediately began to feel sick. It took me a long time to get used to it. The girls showed themselves in different ways. Yes, and women came, but over time their arms, legs, or heads began to hurt and they were quickly eliminated. The girls were like that, running around with machine guns. I remember the machine gunner’s assistant was alone, running around with boxes - like a thunderbolt! It’s normal for them that women work side by side with men. Moreover, what is most interesting is that they all sleep in the same tent, wash together - but then they were separated. There were healthy, muscular guys, but they were weak, they had no stamina. It seems to me that this is due to nutrition: they don’t eat normally. What will this cassava give them? If they were fed meat as they should be, it seems to me that they would be more resilient. And these are weaklings. They always said: “Here we are with you, with the Russians, the food here is good.” Now We’ll go to our unit, the food there will be bad.

Preliminary results of the work At that time, the president controlled only the capital, and even then not completely - there was a gangster quarter at the 5th kilometer in Bangui, he could not calm it down. During the year and a half of our stay in Africa, the president has expanded his influence; he has army bases that operate fully and independently. They stopped being afraid of bandits, who together could ride in on a motorcycle, shoot in the village and disperse everyone. Now the military is fighting with militants, killing and even taking prisoners. The army got some kind of boost — they were explained that they needed to fight, and not be afraid. They sort of understood this, now they have more or less come to the conclusion that they have an army.

When we came in, they told us that the contract was signed for a year. But Russia is still there, and this is already an indicator. My opinion: after the CAR, many African countries also want to conclude a RosRussian agreement with us for training their army or for another purpose. In general, the fact that we went to Africa is a big political step. Diplomats from nearby countries and ambassadors came to us, looked at all our training - and wanted the Russians to train their fighters too. We made a lot of useful contacts. We are a military people, we don’t know all the political ins and outs - but our diplomats were very pleased that all this was done with our help. The President of the Central African Republic himself has grown stronger in the eyes of the people. And in general, we did the right thing. I think we need to continue. The Soviet Union left Africa and there was nothing else there. And we, roughly speaking, became the first sign of Russia’s return to this region. It started to happen, and then little by little, agreements were signed and the Russia-Africa summit took place. 49 countries have signed various agreements with Russia. Russia is returning to the position of the Soviet Union, but the USSR had a very strong hold on Africa at that time.

THE BOYS TOOK GRENADES TO EXPLODE themselves AND NOT BE CAPTURED We first entered from the North of Popasnaya, but the Ukrainian artillery worked hard there, stopped us and did not allow us to approach from the northern side. Then they entered from the south side. We were transferred to the next day early in the morning. We entered in gray. Well, that is, in the morning, there was such a little fog there. So we went to the first street and, as it turned out later, we went to their rear, that is, we ourselves did not know that the crests were actually sitting there. How did you find out? We went into the house, took up a perimeter defense, and our sniper came on the radio and said: “I see crests here.” As you see, there shouldn’t be crests. It turned out that we just went to their rear, the sniper worked on two of them and they started to panic. They didn’t understand who was shooting at all, that is, this shouldn’t have happened, they were the ones sitting there everywhere.

They couldn't find us the first day. Our sniper constantly practiced them. We ran out from different houses there and worked on them from the PB. On the second day they discovered us, they already understood where we were and all the fun began.

When we started clearing, the fighting was tough - 20 meters, 15 meters there was direct close contact. There they argued with them and talked on mats. “Go home, you Russians, you fagots.” They were fighting, the Right Sector and the 54th Brigade were there. From the 54th brigade we took a lot of prisoners. “Right Sector” moved in black suits. It was clear that “Right”. Well, our boys worked. There weren’t many people in our department— seven or eight people. At one time there were six people per department. There were many more of them. So, I remember, we hacked ourselves to death, there were about 20 of them in the house, and there were seven of us. We fought with them for probably three hours. As a result, they worked normally and competently. They took many prisoners, they had a lot of two hundred men.

When we passed the first street and went to the second, our rear remained open. We asked for our rear to be covered, and the Luhansk militia helped us. Well, it’s clear that the boys were afraid, there were mobilized ones there. They were afraid, but they helped. That is, their task was to cover our rear. Although we also did not believe that they would cover properly. That is, we looked at 360°, and we watched them so that they did not run away, and we also watched the enemy. They are great, they brought us BC, they carried out the wounded, they carried out two hundred boys, that is, in this regard they are great, they themselves left and brought everything to us. Here we had Cheba, such a grenade launcher. I just arrived and worked from the “Gnome”, it’s a five-shot type of “gap gun”, and he really liked to work with the “Shmel” from them. Then for the first time in my life I saw the roof rise from a bumblebee flying into a building. I saw the Bumblebee fly into high-rise buildings. Well, how impressive. And when the roof goes up and down, I’ve never seen anything like this. There was a situation there - three Ukrainians ran into the barn and started working on us. Well, Cheba jumped out of the Shmel and right out the window. Everyone saw and was amazed how the roof of this barn rose and fell. When we went to look and clean it up, there was nothing left of them. It burned them out. There is only some burnt birch tree and some clothes. Everything was torn apart. We worked from Utesov from their houses, that is, they pressed us to such an extent that we even brought Utes into the house. They worked directly from their houses because they did not allow them to go outside. It was really tough. Especially the art. That's what I remember most - artillery shells were flying like bullets just overhead. That is, you are walking and everything is whistling nearby, everything is exploding, and you won’t understand whether it will fly at you now or later. Well, everything was whistling harshly. Now the artillery works differently than in Popasna. They don't hit exactly, they just hit much less. In Popasna, everything was flying there - the Grads were working, the tanks were working, mortars, guns, everything was working. That is, if they saw you in the house and burned you down, that’s it, they completely leveled everything there, that is, they leveled the entire square.

Therefore, we tried to enter quietly, even if they saw us, that is, we changed houses in the evening, moved in in the dark, there was one house after another. And they hit this house steadily. That's an RPG

will fly there, or something else. And we sat next to each other, that is, in safety. I was a squad commander, and basically I taught the boys that we go into a house, work on the enemy, and we have to leave this house anyway, because there are “Bumblebees” in response, RPGs. Well, that's how it's always been. They were afraid to come close. At least once. I served my time on the chip and left. The boy sat down on the chip. I woke up from the noise, I looked - everything was burning, I don’t understand. I think, what's the matter? We took our clothes, jumped out, and then we found out that a fighter was sitting on the chip and heard something like a lighter, “chirk-chirk.” I don’t understand, I think maybe one of our people smokes there. I looked into the room where you sleep, everything was quiet. And then a Molotov cocktail simply flies through the window, that is, this is the only case when they were not afraid, they actually crawled up and threw a Molotov cocktail. Everyone was alive, we immediately jumped out. In principle, we don’t have much stuff there. We also slept in armor and helmets. We occupied the roundabout, in response they threw grenades there, of course, and just moved to another house and that’s it.

I got in such a bad way once that it turned out unpleasant. We were surrounded, we were surrounded by crests, there were about 30 of them. There were also 7-8 of us always in the department. We didn’t have many 10– 12 people, because when we arrived from Africa, there were probably 60–70 people there. They sent us here and divided us into sections. We were surrounded, the “kopek” stormed the house, we were sitting in this house, and that house was further north. We thought there was a “penny” sitting there. We relaxed a little. Well, at night the fishkar calls me in a whisper. We knocked a hole in the wall. I’m watching - there’s really a crowd there, I’m just crazy. And he looks in that direction where the “penny” is and in ours. I thought maybe there was something “kopeck” there. But she would look the other way. It was clear that there were such charged chains, the commanders were in charge, there were about three people sitting there. That's it. I contacted the commander on the radio, everything was in a whisper, the boys took grenades in case something happened to blow themselves up, so as not to surrender.

Well, you understand, you will still die only in pain. And we even heard them running around the house. And then I came out on the radio and called in mortars on ourselves. Well, for some reason the mortar men didn’t start firing. And so we had an agsnik, Chinya, a handsome guy. So I went out to him and said: “Come on, hit right at our house, because we are surrounded, it will be an ass.” Well, he started with two AGSs. And around the house

flew around. This is what saved me. Well, they had a lot of three hundred. We even heard them groaning and groaning as they pulled them out. That is, Chinya is great, he saved us. Because if it weren’t for Chinya, they would have entered the house anyway. We were scared to death then. They may not have known that we were in this house, but in any case they would have come in, because they were already moving towards the “kopek” and towards us, that is, running under the windows. We directly saw the silhouettes. What surprised me was how competently they worked. There was no noise at all, I watched from the greenhouse. That is, no whispers, no conversations. Obviously not mobs, it was either the “Right Sector” or some kind of mercenaries. Because they approached clearly, that is, they only saw it in the warm room. Although we stopped by at the beginning of April. Well, anyway, there were still dry twigs there, that is, they were cracking. And they even moved, you could only hear steps, that is, you couldn’t hear any branches, you couldn’t hear anything, they were all gestures. One group went there, one came to our house. And there was another squad leader, Twenty-third. I also called him on the radio, they were where Gong was, at the end of the street, probably 300 meters from us. So I went to Gong, on the Twenty-third, and said: “Guys, pull up, because we are surrounded,” and the boys pulled up. Then we already sighed - if something happens, we will fight back and not be captured. Well, AGS really saved it. Because they wouldn’t let the boys approach, because they were already sitting on the corners of the houses. Well, of course, we would start shooting from the windows. Well, a lot of people would have died. And while the AGS was working and the Twenty-third pulled up, Gong began to pull up. We even called mortars on ourselves, because no one wanted to surrender.

*** I don’t remember what kind of brigade it was, I remember that it was motorized rifles. They come with us during the day, at night we show them that you are closing our right flank, that is, we already hope that they will close it. At night, a person goes to check the posts, but they are not there, that is, they constantly went into the night. In the morning they appeared from somewhere. Again we move on, that is, they did not move with us, did not fight.

Marines from Kamchatka just moved and fought normally with us. Well done, guys, handsome guys. There was even a case where our boys were trapped in a house there and there were three hundred. We also couldn’t knock out the crests; we didn’t let them approach the boys. So they asked one of the Marine commanders. That's what surprised me very much - the box flew right up to the front. There were probably 200 meters there. So he just tore apart this house with crests at point-blank range. He turned around and left. This was completely surprising. There the militia was asked: “Come on, what are you talking about, there’s a front end there, no equipment will go there.” They asked the motorized riflemen: “No, no, no, no one will go there,” but they asked the Marines - and literally for about five minutes, they flew up and worked.

That's it, the boys pulled out three hundred. That’s how they moved with us, there weren’t many of them either, because they said that a lot of them were killed in the Kiev direction. There were six or seven people in their department. Another thing that surprised me was that the boys were 21–22 years old and they were all contract soldiers. They only had squad leaders, sergeants. Young boys, double basses. I say, “Guys, why did you come here?” They answer: “Khokhlovs should be killed. Will be working". The guys are such enthusiasts. I say: “Do you want to go home?” “No, we will fight here until the last.” Well done Kamchatka Marines. They received ammunition from the military.

How to say. It is unrealistic to work with artillery in the private sector; we did not use it. Because if you are sitting and crests are sitting 100 meters away from you, there are only rifles, RPGs and Shmeli.

We tried everything ourselves, we were always cunning. The enemy is really smart and also fights competently. They took a prisoner; we, of course, did not expect such resistance. The fifty-fourth brigade arrived there. There were three thousand of them, and two thousand were mobilized in Popasnaya, such as terrorist defense. And so they just arrived, in two days almost half of the personnel were knocked out, this is what the captured crest told us. Then they began to panic, closer to the high-rise buildings. But they tried not to engage in battle and retreated. The toughest thing was the private sector on the cemetery side. This is the toughest thing. There they had the most basic fortifications. They thought they would hold it. Well, it didn’t work out, and then they started moving in this direction when they started to occupy high-rise buildings. Everything was much faster there.

Judging by Popaska, urban battles were harsher in T. Well, this is among high-rise buildings. In the private sector they had all the strength and resources there. They had the task of not letting us near either the railway station or highrise buildings, that is, they focused on the private sector. Well, there really were such fortifications. There is no art there, nothing will be taken. There are concrete pillboxes. Everyone on Popasnaya was a hero.

WE WERE RECOGNIZED AS A FORCE I visited the CAR twice, the first trip lasted five months, the second eight. I remember the first time we saw blacks. There are poor people everywhere, everyone walks barefoot. By the way, I haven’t seen a single toy among the children in all this time. Then the second commander brought sandals and toys. He said to his wife: “Come on, there is general poverty there. It’s simply impossible how people live,” and so he brought sandals and toys for the children.

The locals greeted us normally, but we realized that they had zero preparation. Generally zero - they saw a weapon for the first time and held it in their hands for the first time. Some even stand there with spears - at some checkpoints. Instead of a barrier there is a big bamboo stick. And the warrior stands with a spear. — We performed different tasks. Once local militants The large church was blown up on Sunday during their mass. About 30 people died in this church. Accordingly, the guys from the government handed over the task to us - to our instructors and local gendarmes - to carry out a clean-up at the 5th kilometer. It was a special place. Muslims lived there, and no one could get there, neither the UN nor the military.

For 4 days something was coming, we couldn’t go there. Then Boris Borisych sets the task - to stand and wait, every day. We stand. And then, one fine day, something began to move at the 5th kilometer. First, three people went to investigate. The platoon commander and the squad leader worked off one or two gangsters silently. They walked away and said there were a lot of them there. We started reconnaissance of the area there using drones. Reconnaissance was carried out for a week. We understood the situation. Every bush there was studied. Because it’s a new area, it’s still night time to go there. Let's look

— and their posts in front of the district are reinforced every day. More and more local resistance forces are coming.

Boris Borisych says: get out, the reconnaissance platoon is coming. And it turns out that the gendarmes should have gone behind us. In short, we arrived at one o'clock, and then it turned out to be such a joke. On the Ural, the bridge broke and had to be secured with an iron chain. There was a middle bridge. AND

the driver says, “If he falls, the chain will fall and we will all crash.” There are no wheels, the Ural is on a chain, we are going to the task in such a Ural. We get there and quickly distribute ourselves there. In five minutes we dispersed into positions, and again distributed the task to everyone. The UN didn't see us at all. And it turns out that our second squad on the right has gone. We started the battle, slowly we walk, we walk, we walk... and in front of us stands a big stone. I was almost point blank, there were about five meters left, I looked from the “night light”, and from behind a stone some gangster came out and waved a lantern in our direction. The second number and I - he walked nearby and looked through the thermal imager - shot this bastard at point-blank range with a silent gun, and fired almost simultaneously. Here, apparently, the others noticed that they were coming at them - and a close battle began. Our machine gunner started working, we had half an hour of active combat there. I fire at them, and I run back to the right, throwing three grenades - to where the cluster was. We hear - the first department has begun to work. We reached the house and gave the command to the gendarmerie - that's it, storm it. They carried a ladder with them there, about 3-4 meters, although it was easy to climb over the fence there. They were supposed to storm, in short, but they never got up. They just lay there stupidly and that’s all. Our guys got up and kicked them, but they didn’t get up to attack. They tried to scare me, they fired into the air a couple of times - no, they got scared, in short. But we weren’t supposed to go inside according to the task - the gendarmes were supposed to storm. At first they were angry - they say, “Why should the Russians enter the area first, and not us?” And when it came to the assault, they lay down.

As a result, the battle lasted a total of an hour. It was forbidden for us to practice with a mortar - only small arms fire, machine guns and grenades, large ones were not allowed. In short, the bandits simply locked themselves in the houses. It’s normal for the blacks to die there. You see, we completed our task, we entered the area - it was up to them to do the rest. In the end, they didn’t take anything. But if they told us that we needed to take it by force, we would take it calmly. Their houses there are small. For example: a two-story house, made of clay. Not like civilized ordinary houses here. We could just burn this house, the roof there, the straws. That's all. We were told - that's it, go to the base. — Was there a lot of three hundred?

- We have? It was interesting with the three hundredths. Wasn't in the reconnaissance platoon

- but in the gendarmerie, who were supposed to follow us... It turns out that we were the first line, and they went to the second. They were somehow “three hundred”. From somewhere to the left they threw a grenade, one got hit in the eye, another got hit in the stomach with a grenade. But our people immediately provided them with medical assistance and took them to the hospital. Boris Borisych then called a plane for them. He’s a good guy - if there had been a different commander, by the time they called the board, they would have already suffered. Because medicine there, among the blacks, is generally zero.

Ambush at Bambari The second such real incident is Bambari. We were on our way to open a base in Bangass. There were 114 local people with us, from FACA

- and there are 20 of us. In the middle of the city we stood up to wait for escort: we were told that we could not go further without MINUSCA escort. They say that in the areas where we are going, there are no agreements for our passage. Well, we waited for the UN sheep - and when we set off, we were attacked right in the center of the city. The column was divided into two parts: three cars went forward, the remaining 12 cars remained on this side. The three of us left were me, Rambo and Manas, plus the rest of the boys who were in the cars. They started attacking us from almost three sides at once. - and I ordered on the radio not to move away from the line, to stay in place. They say, if you try to attack, they will lure you into a trap and start pushing you down from all sides. Therefore, stay in place where you find yourself, gain a foothold and stay in place.

The guys were not taken aback, they gave a normal fight back - they gained a foothold, pushed the strikers 150 meters away to throw them off the road. Thanks to which I was able to go back, even under fire - to connect to the column. During this time, we had only one three hundredth - Dobry, he was wounded in the leg. The guys, in an organized manner - just like in training, covering each other, providing assistance pulled the wounded man away. When I got to this side, he was evacuated, and I contacted Pioneer to find out what we should do next - continue the offensive and clear the area, or retreat somewhere. While we were deciding what to do, the guys took down a few more targets.

I can only say that the local troops, the so-called FACA

— everyone immediately fell down the cracks as soon as the gunfire began. Half ran away, throwing away their weapons. The captain, who was their senior, generally stated that he was leaving for shelter at the MINUSCA base, took most of the personnel with him - and simply left. He abandoned two bullet-ridden vehicles of his own and eight personnel - they remained, pulling the vehicles away from the center.

Then we pulled out their cars, shot through, under fire. Eight people remained with us - two soldiers and six drivers. I

I then noted them and sent lists for awards to the authorities of the Central African Republic. But the rest simply ran away and abandoned everything. Moreover, knowing that we would now arrive at the MINUSCA base, MINUSCA gave the blacks rations for everyone. So those who ran under cover to the base devoured our dry rations, which were issued to us separately. When we dragged everything away 2 hours later and retreated in an orderly manner, it turned out that we had no food.

Then we arrived at the MINUSCA base and the whirlwind began. We were stuck there for 10 days - they didn’t want to let us go forward. Either they don’t have agreements there, or they have an agreement, but the weather doesn’t allow it. Lots of excuses. In short, we stayed there for 10 days. I suffered from malaria again. We held several press conferences at the MINUSCA base; we came from Bangui, and we came from somewhere else. I gave a minimum summary of what I considered necessary to tell. Accordingly, it was as if they attacked us treacherously. It was so, in fact, we did not open fire first; they attacked us. I can’t say whose group it was because everyone, including Ali Darass, all refused to take responsibility. Darass later said that these were scumbags who screwed up his orders and decided to fight separately. Not just radicals, but radicals squared.

MINUSCA cooperation with militants One of the FACA soldiers was with us - he had a relative who lived in Bambari. He told us that day when we were about to leave that they were already waiting for you they say that ambushes had been set up around Bambari. And that he specifically saw the transfer of ammunition in the alley, that MINUSCA arrived and handed over a bunch of ammunition to the militants.

Something had to be done. When we were being formed into a column, I recalled the UN general, the base commandant and the escort commander. And he told them publicly (their press secretary was still standing there), through an interpreter, that if suddenly shooting starts and they try to get away, I mean the escort trucks, I will order my people to shoot them with grenade launchers. - You won't go anywhere. Either you are with us and go on the attack if she will happen - or you will simply be shot from grenade launchers. Do you understand everything?

- Are you threatening me? - I'm not threatening. I warn you about what I have information about the impending ambush. If you leave, it will mean that you are in cahoots. It's clear? As a result, we left the base and the first armored car of the UN sheep broke down near the gate. Supposedly it broke. We drive, we reach the first checkpoint at the exit from the city, their second armored car has broken down. I swallowed it all. We drove about 4 kilometers and the third armored car breaks down.

I couldn’t stand it: “Column, stop!” I tell the UN-sheep - we’re waiting for them to fix it. They tried to get out of it, like, they can’t fix it, it’s impossible. - Okay, I say. Then throw this armored car to hell, get into our Urals and let's go. After 5 minutes the armored car was already repaired, and we moved on. In a dangerous area, where, according to my information, there were militant bases, they stopped to pray. There were Gabonians there, Muslims. They stopped, they say, we need to do namaz.

“There’s exactly one minute of time for prayer,” I tell them. I'm in it

I don't plan to stay in the area for a long time. If you stop further, we are going without you.

To be on the safe side, he told the boys to move their armored cars along the side of the road so that the columns would not be disturbed as they passed. They immediately squealed:

- How can it be that you will arrive ahead of us, our superiors

will fuck you for this.

- I don’t care. I'm going without you. I'm not afraid of being attacked - I will give a worthy rebuff, I don’t need such accompaniment.

In the end, they realized that it was useless to argue with me - and all the way to Alendao, until they reached the Egyptians, they drove calmly. They didn’t hesitate to pray or anything. For me, this was a serious wake-up call that MINUSCA was in cahoots with the militants.

And when the Egyptians and I didn’t reach 50 kilometers to Bangassou, and they said that they wouldn’t go any further, then I completely understood everything. There began the territory of influence of the Christian group “Antibalaka” and the Egyptians are Muslims, and, accordingly, in collusion with Islamic groups. And since they refused to accompany me in the Christian zone, then for me this is already a green zone, and they will definitely not touch me and the boys here. So let's move on. It was difficult in terms of the fact that the French put sticks in our chariot. They tried to somehow turn everything around so that Russians are not needed in the CAR, that we are supposedly bad, and they are handsome. In fact, I looked at the CAR: it is a former French colony and the French have done nothing for it. They built them a brewery and a tobacco factory, that is, smoke, drink and die. There are no more enterprises in this Central African Republic, the poorest country: poverty, hunger and devastation. An example of the opposition of the French: for example, there is no supply of fuel and lubricants, they are not allowed to go here and there, they put up some obstacles, they constantly come to check something, once, twice, three times, and somehow they are not satisfied with everything. And constantly small dirty tricks.

Have you encountered bandits? Yes, that's where we stood in Bambari. There was a small conflict with them - there was supposed to be a holiday, their president and ministers were supposed to come. Local Selekans (militants from the Seleka group) asked for money so that this holiday could take place without incident. They were refused, and from the very morning they began to fire at the police first. We had a command not to twitch, only in case of an obvious attack on us. The only thing they gave us after lunch was that we

ran to them, and they live there separately - Christians on one side, Muslims on the other. And Christians don’t come to them at all, but Muslims and women don’t come to the Christian market. That was the only moment when we went to their neighborhood, cheered them up a little, and returned. Our task was to promote them a little - there was a neutral park between Muslims and Christians, there we had to cheer them up. No one really bothered them there the UN peacekeepers don’t care about anything, even if the grass doesn’t grow, the police can’t really do anything to oppose them. Well, we went and pushed them through, at least, as far as I know, the high command liked the result. At least that side began to contact ours. If before this “Séléka” treated us with some disdain, after that they began to respect us. And the local military began to look differently, and Muslims gained respect. We were recognized as a force.

MEETING POINT In Popasna he was a machine gunner. I myself served as a conscript in the Marine Corps, and when I found out that the feds were coming to our aid from the Marine Corps, I seemed inspired, I thought that I might see some friends there, because I keep in touch with some of them, but when the special operation began, there was no connection. I didn't know which fleet they were from. We are waiting, they say the Marines will come to you, don’t attack yet, but you have to literally cross the street. Marines will come to you, don't attack yet. What is it? We've been waiting for half a day already. We have already been identified, and flights to our homes are beginning. We are starting to replace the basements, they are gone.

One of us couldn’t stand it anymore and shouted into the radio: “Do they even exist, these Marines?!” Well, management starts asking who is smart, and they come to help you. In general, after waiting for an hour, Price sent me and another one to look for the Marines. We went down the old route and saw one scared soldier. "What is the problem? Where are you from?". He answers: we are Marines, the ensign brought us here, put us in place, and said, “Wait, I’ll be right there.” And disappeared. The rest are below. I found them, I look at the Marine Corps chevrons. We started talking. I'm calling with us. He tells me: “We have no right without an elder.” Okay, where's the eldest? He said that he would come over now. Well, they contacted our leadership and explained that 12 people had come to help, but they simply refused to go. Then, as it turned out, in the evening, when I was taking them to their base, the signalmen actually came, they asked this warrant officer to receive medals, they wanted to distinguish themselves. It was enough for them to literally reach the first houses when the arrivals arrived, and that was the end of it. The ensign immediately went somewhere to go about his business, but these guys remained in the basement. This is, unfortunately, the kind of help we had here. There was a corner house in the private sector. It was prepared in advance as more effective in receiving intelligence data. The house was cleaned, a concrete capsule was poured and two approaches to it were dug through the gardens and sheets were laid, tens of thicknesses. It’s laid down, everything is growing, the socalled radish. An old house is placed on top.

The neighboring group began to advance, and shelling began. We saw that the fire was coming. There was a machine gunner and a sniper working. On the right there was a forest plantation. Slowly they began to stretch out so that he would spend more than the bookmaker on us. They couldn’t understand whether they were coming up to them to look at the house. We started going around them. Some short time passed and large arrivals began, the AGS is working, we can’t understand. We go out to command - no one is working, we can’t understand. Our neighbors, the platoon, are silent, everything is fine. Then, as it turned out, the federals were approaching, they heard a shootout behind the forest plantation, and in order to protect themselves, they decided that they should throw in there, only then enter. They just hammered at us. You can't imagine it on purpose - the Cossacks were approaching from the third side. The Cossacks are watching - some kind of shootout. They are throwing at this forest, throwing at us, throwing at the warriors. The warriors are starting to throw more at the Cossacks, saying hello. No one will understand that everyone is their own.

Until the command went further and agreed that there was only one point. It seems to me that the Ukrainian Armed Forces members could die of laughter there.

*** I came to the company because it was time to leave the service, I worked in the Ufsinovsk special forces, rose to the rank of major, and I achieved all the heights that I could reach there. The time had come to leave and it seemed that in civilian life there was a lot of work, a lot of interesting things. At the same time, I am involved in mountain tourism and high-altitude training.

I quit my job and was faced with the fact that I needed to reassign myself to teaching, and no one needed the month of December. Looks like it was '21. My daughter finished her studies, I’m raising her alone. She was finishing 11th grade. And now I’m watching the news - I’m thinking, maybe I won’t even have time to participate. My mother retired, stayed with her daughter, and at the end of March I came running. I have two colleagues from my old job here at the company. Well, I've heard a lot. I made a decision, didn’t regret it for a minute, and gained experience.

Most memorable moment There were five of us, there was a four-story building, a repair area in front of the depot. According to the information there, about 60 people had accumulated there and they were planning to transport them. The neighboring platoon came in from the left and cleared the five-story buildings. We were given, in addition, either militias or someone else. Since there are five of us, I go out to the right with a machine gun, there is a concrete dilapidated fence.

We cover the right side, and they fly into the main entrance to the entrance and begin clearing, and we pull up to them from the right. We reach the fence, the guys are running, everything is fine with them, but a machine gunner looks out from the third floor and starts mowing down all of us. The emphasis was on us, because we had a great view from the angle, we could see how they were moving away. We pressed ourselves against the fence; they didn’t hit us. We turn left and watch how these militias pressed their machine guns and flowed back. This machine gunner pinned us down, we were neither here nor there. It’s already evening, we started to find a common connection, I say, let’s hurry up. They ran out of ammunition, how could it run out when they didn’t fire even once. We realized that there was no way for us to go back with these guys. Gritting our teeth, we crawled through the fence and ran straight to the corner towards the assault. But the enemy focused on a different angle. They had equipment there and five-story buildings. Our neighboring third platoon was working there, and when we ran in, we saw their backs. We flew in and dealt with them.

After the cleansing took place, these militias appear and say: “We did a good job.” In front of us, they report to their management how they completed the task. I won’t name their call signs, but we were wildly surprised. There was no time to sort things out; it was necessary to move on. Well, when I pass this house, it is very much imprinted in my memory. We joke with the guys that when everything calms down, this will be the meeting place.