Deyneha Oleksandr, codename Chub.
Before the war I was a rental agent in Kyiv. I was conscripted into the army and enlisted for another three years.
I was on the Maydan from the beginning. You can say I answered Nayyem’s first call. Then the entire situation in the country angered me.
Мy attitude towards my country: I love my country and will not allow anyone to trample her. My patriotic views were instilled in me when I was a child.
I can’t suffer and watch as someone encroaches on my country. As a result, when such a situation arose, an aggressor appeared, battles raged.
Considering I had been conscripted, completed the Military Academy, was an enlisted soldier for three years, and had a lot of knowledge, I went. Because I would be embarrassed, in front of my parents and my future children. I couldn’t just sit around.
Regarding my family, I told them I had been mobilized by the military commissariat. I forged the summons and showed it to them. I said: “I’m an officer, a military man. They’re largely sending the National Guard there. The Donbas Battalion is located on my base, therefore my unit is mobilizing me, because I’m an officer.”
I retreated to Chervonosil’s’ke with my battalion. In Chervonosil’s’ke, suggestions were floated that each soldier should retreat on his own and that the wounded be left behind. This was proposed because there were wounded soldiers who couldn’t defend themselves, some couldn’t even move.
My squad got together. There were boys who expressed a desire to retreat. But I also had Yar (codename - ed.) who, as a medic, had no desire to leave the wounded. He understood that without his help, many might not survive.
And I, as the squad commander, supported him. And knowing that even just one of my men was staying behind with the wounded, I, as the commander, also stayed.
We stayed. 36 hours of shifting battles followed, then captivity.
We were taken into captivity by Russian soldiers—they surrounded us and shot up our column.
It is now acknowledged by everyone, and there is video evidence, that during the 36 hours that we were defending ourselves, our boys destroyed more than one armored vehicle near Chervonosil’s’ke. And took prisoner 6 men who had documents on them attesting to the fact that they were enlisted and serving with one unit or another of the Russian Military.
I personally spoke to sergeants, regular soldiers, and to the junior lieutenant. All of them were representatives of the Russian Federation. They did not dispute this charge. They were not Ukrainians.
If, today, solders were given the chance to actually fight, and not just sit as the Minsk agreements dictate… These agreements bring injuries or death on a daily basis. If only they could use the equipment, for example, they had at their disposal in the 2014’s, with today’s artillery training.
I understand that we can’t have everything, as written in the textbooks. But if they gave soldiers such possibilities, then I’d go.
Or alternatively, if they attack us, then I’ll have to go. Regardless of the spinelessness of the government and so on.