Codename Hrek, Khorynzhyy Artem.
If there is a war being waged in your country, and you are a healthy man, who can physically hold a weapon, you should go and fight.
I remember lying there, and it’s still summer. So the story goes: summer, scorching heat, everything around you is scorched, but there is green grass too. Really, not a bad summer day.
There are always bullets whizzing overhead, shrapnel, mortar shells. And you’re lying there thinking: “Maybe I should get some sleep?” Because in this exact situation, there’s nothing you can do.
The Russians’ attitudes towards us, basically, individually, was normal. Truth be told, Russians themselves were also scared to death..
“Bro, where shitting bricks here ourselves”. Regarding DNR folk, here too was a wide range of people… from outright savages to totally normal humans.
We all vividly imagined what it meant for a soldier from the Donbas Battalion to become a prisoner of war. No one imagined it was possible to emerge from that captivity alive, un-maimed. We had no illusions.
However, captivity was a quiet hell. Every day they beat someone, broke their bones. The sanitary conditions were deplorable. No one knew when it might end.
Secondly, you’re always feeling like you’re hanging, hoping that tomorrow they’ll trade us for someone. Or maybe the day after tomorrow.
Regarding food… we were given 10 plates & 10 spoons for 100 men. Obviously it wasn’t enough, we really were very hungry.
They fed us porridge with pieces of bread. I happily ate boiled barley. Imagine… happily! I hope I never have to eat it again, but then I ate it happily.
In the school, where we had repaired the roof and everything else, they initially treated us very badly. They cursed us and tried to hit us, and stuff like that.
But quietly they would whisper: “Boys, we love you and are anxiously waiting for you to return.”
Women worked there. From Chop to Vladivostok, these women in music schools and libraries are all basically the same. Just average, good women… normal people.
We spent 1.5 months with them, and they saw that we’re normal people; they started treating us better. When we were leaving, it felt like we were leaving family.
My family, of course, helped me very much. Very much. As did my own desire to drag myself out of that state.
But it was there that I understood that if I continued serving, I would never get out of there. Never. That is truly one of the most sacred truths about war, it’s almost impossible to leave it behind.
There, everything is so black & white, that it’s just plain impossible to leave it behind.
Passion, belief that you’re doing the most important job on the planet…