Part II
Everyone started surrendering, the army troops went out of the house. Two guys ran over to us, they seemed to be Russians. It was noticeable that those were not separatists. Where would separatists get an AS Val rifle and and a fully modded AK with a fancy fire transfer handle and all?! Those were young guys, probably 20-25 years old probably contractors or something. There was a flag of Russia on the uniform of one of the men, but except for that, I could not see any identification marks, since shoulder straps were wrapped in white cloth. One of them said in Russian, “Oi, there is a wounded guy here,” and the other replied, “Well, F*** him anyway, he’ll walk on his own.” And they ran out of the house. I got goosebumps upon understanding that I would probably die there.
Shortly after came the moment I will never forget. I tried crawling out of the house because the shelling started again. I thought that we had to get out, otherwise we would be done. Lyonya, “Ryba” lwas still laying outside, and there were also some other wounded. “Senya” (Serhiy Vasylkov) was crawling, wrapped in some sweatshirt, and holding two magazines in his hand (the deceased “Vosmyi” had given him his pistol – either a TT pistol or a Stechkin automatic pistol – before the breakthrough).
“Senya” was lying wounded in the KAMAZ this whole time, it is a miracle that he survived. I still do not know he got out of there either he fell out, or someone pulled him out. So, “Senya” was crawling and shouting his lungs out, “You maggots, don’t even think about surrendering, I’ll f***ing end you all if you do!!!” While being wounded, some projectile or something broke his legs. And he was still crawling and shouting this. He is now safe and sound, lives in Lozova.
And then I heard a phrase that really burned into my memory. While everyone who could walk gathered outside. I crawled to the hallway. And “Gal”, Anatoliy Vynohrodskyi, whom I will consider to be a real piece of S**t for the rest of my life, said, “I was negotiating with Russians, they gave us 60 minutes to take all the wounded and dead then leave. But I made a decision that we’ll leave under the radar.” I said, “What the F*** are you doing? You’re leaving us? They’ll kill us all!” We could already hear single shots here and there. “What kind of officer leaves his wounded? Have you no shame? How can you do this?” He looked at me blankly, then they simply departed and that was all. Katya (a nurse – editor’s note) came running to me and said, “Vinnytsia, sorry, S**t happens, we are leaving,” and took off.
I cried and said to “Senya”, “What shall we do, bro?” “Senya” replied, “We crawl.”
“But we’ll die. It’s hot, cause its August. Either heat or gangrene will kill us in the field.” He said, “Bro, at least we will die as free men, and not in captivity.”
Then Sasha “Haydamaka” ran over to us and while crying. I said, “Sanya [shortened from Sasha], why didn’t you leave with the others?”, “How can I leave knowing that you are dying here?!” How can I live with this?”
I think this was a heroic act, but he broke off the main group after which “Haydamaka” was accused of being a coward, even though he should have been given a medal. “Sanya, but how are you going to save us? You are alone, but there are many of us here.” “Tar” was beaten up and lying in the basement, and there were also “Monakh”, “Senya”, “Ryba”, and I. He went to the Russians and they told him, “Oh, so you are from the “Donbas”, and he fed them a lie, “No, I am from the police battalion, I fell asleep here at a checkpoint and woke up in the morning, there were explosions, and I was the only one abandoned here.”
They said, “We’re not interested in cops.” He said, “There are wounded there.” The Russian officer “Lisa” first wanted to refuse, “How will I take your men, if so many of my men are already wounded. My men are dying, and you offer me to take yours.” Sanya replied, “Take them. At least they will die normally on the Russian territory, cause otherwise they will be tortured by separatists.” He said, “Okay, bring them here, but if they die – they die.”
When they were carrying us, I had to throw a USB stick, a SIM-card, and a cell phone away, because they checked everything. There were quite a few things to find there. “Senya” shouted, “F*** you, I won’t give my chevron away, I’ll kill everyone for it.” I said, “Bro, you will buy a new chevron, but you can’t buy life. If they find out that you are a volunteer, they’ll kill you.”
They thought us to be some kind of special forces. The level of delusions then They shouted, “Who are you?” I said, “I’m just a construction worker.” “And where did you serve before?” “In the Army.” There were a total of around 1,000 of us in Ilovaisk and outskirts at the moment of breakthrough, but someone fed the bullshit that they were going against 5,000 men strong group.
They brought us to the Russians. I saw our destroyed KrAZ lying on the ground and two burned bodies. Later I found out that those were Andriy “Bravo” and Lyonya “Bronya”. And there was that sickly sweet smell in the air. A piece of burnt body was thrown in the grass near the road and there was a cracking sound inside that piece. I do not know who that was. I sniffed and asked, “What is it?” One of the men said, “This is how a burnt man smells.” I still remember that person’s smell to the point of bringing tears to my eyes…
“Lisa” said, “Well, now your life depends on this “Gal”, where the heck is he?” He abandoned us, but later he was walking around, puffing his chest and telling everyone how valiantly he got almost 40 people out! Some soldiers ran over to us asking their friends, “Who is this?” “Who is this?” And someone said, “The wounded ukrops from Ilovaisk.”
The men shouted at him, “F***, you should have killed them, they had killed so many of our boys!” They started recording video of us on their phones and someone told them, “And you f***ing thought what, that they are some sheep and would be harmless? They are warriors, they know what is at stake in combat and what they fight for. And what the F*** are we even doing here?” I thought, “Holy S**t! A Russian saying something like this.”
September 4, 2014. At the scene of the shooting of the Ukrainian military in the “green corridor”.
It was getting dark. They said that they would take us to Rostov, would give us some medical treatment there and that we would be tried as the enemies of the Russian Federation. The Russians did not conceal the fact that they were the group of Ulyanovsk Airborne brigade, showed the AS Val rifles, told us that they had been waiting us for three days. They said if it had lasted for one more day, they would have just left. When we were asking about the “corridor”, they replied, “No one was actually going to let you go.”
I asked them to give me something to numb the pain, because it hurt a lot. They even gave others water and cigarettes. But they did not want to give me anything. “At least give me a piece of tourniquet to fix my leg, I understand that I am an enemy for you, but there must be some kind of a code.” They gave a piece of tourniquet after all and I fixed my leg with it.
There was one man there, who said, “Well, ukrop, your leg is getting black, you will have it either cut off or you will die before we exchange you.” And “Ryba” grunted, “So finish us off already. What, you thought I’d be begging for mercy? I knew what I signed up for, I’m a warrior.”
To which he unexpectedly replied while also speaking with to his buddies,
“See, here is the difference between us and them here – we bury our men in the shallow graves and they do not even beg for mercy. They are ready to put up with the stench of the corpses of their dead only to be able to take them along, whereas we bury our men in a forest line like dogs.”
After a while they said, “Lucky you, ukrops, you will live, we have an agreement to exchange you.”
When I was being carried out, I was slowly growing weaker. Losing conscience all the time. It was September. We were taken to a field hospital near Zaporizhia via “chopper”. Doctors were running around, one of them was constantly bending to turn the wounded over. He said, “F***, how many of them are there? What a bother.” And the doctor told him, “If you continue to talk S**t, I will send you to where they came from, just continue carrying them.” Then I was brought into the operating room. There was a woman in a surgical coat there, I told her, “Mother, can I just die already, this leg is torturing me so much.” And she told me, “Boy, keep yourself together, where is your phone?” I said, “I threw everything away when we were captured.”
And the leg began to look the shade of coke, it was very dark and already stank. The doctor asked, “What is stinking so much?” “It’s me, doctor, it’s my leg.” He said, “Wow, man, gangrene is already on the march. Can you call home? Where’s your SIM-card, where’s your cell phone?” I had been there for three days, and I kept the SIM-card in my mouth during all that time. It is a mystery how I did not swallow it and how it did not dampen. I took it out, the woman went to check whether it was working, and when she came back, she said, “You won’t believe – you have 170 SMS and 190 missed calls.”
Out of all the phone numbers, most calls where from Alla Serhiyivna, our mayor’s wife. She was the only person who knew that I was in Ilovaisk. She supported me through the course of battle like a mother. My sister, brother-in-law, daughter, and many other people had also called.
Then we were brought to Dnipro. I was thirsty and cold all the time. They carried me in an ambulance. There were two young women there. I said to one of them, “Hold my hand, I want to die so badly and you’re so beautiful in your white coat.” She started crying, “Don’t die yet. How old are you, 40?” “No, I’m only 35,” I said.
And the other woman said, “Dear Lord, what did you go through out there, that you aged so much in last two weeks?!”
I was brought to the operating room at the hospital. The doctors operated us – “Senya” and I – on two tables. They said, “Life or death? If we leave the leg, there is no guarantee that we won’t cut it off in a year and there is a high chance of septicemia which will kill you. Or we cut the leg off and there is a chance to save you.” I said, “How will I live without a leg at my age?”
However, I signed a document in which I consented to the leg amputation. “Cut his vest and belt and take them off him.” I caught his hand mid-air, “Take them off properly. I will not allow you to cut the vest and the belt because those are the only things left from Ilovaisk.” He said, “You do not quite look like a dying man now, in fact strong enough for me to not even be able of taking my hand away.”
I still have that vest (Telnyashka). I had been going to a construction site in it, it was covered in putty a little bit, and I got through the war in it. I said to my kids, “When I die once, give it to a museum.” However, they did cut my pants, but kept the vest intact. They also cut my shoelaces, took my boots off, and the socks were already gone, as if they had dissolved. They poured something resembling hydrogen peroxide on my leg. That was all. Then I woke up already without a leg.
July 2019, Vinnytsia region
On the third of September civilian volunteers came and brought me a cell phone, I called my brother-in-law and said, “Serhiy, I’m okay, but my leg was cut off.” Then I heard something falling to the ground. My sister lost consciousness. Later she was undergoing treatment for a year, because she had seizures. She fell, Serhiy brought her to her senses, and she said, “It is good that you are alive. One can live without a leg.” Then I called my ex-wife and said, “Please tell the daughter what happened and that I am alive, just without one leg.”
When I came home I was in a lot of pain, I could not handle it, so, I made injections of nalbuphin and tramadol. I became a beginner drug addict. I tried to fight the addiction on my own. I switched to two injections a day and was mixing nalbuphin with analgin. My sister and daughter had the most trouble with me. Once I was even threatening my daughter with a knife. Then started telling her, “my dear, daddy is not making injections already,” after which I found somewhere private to get another hit. I greatly regret that she had to see me like that.
Photo: Yuri Velichko
Once I got really scared, because I mistook something meant for toothache for analgin. I made an injection, everything went numb, I started crying. My brother-in-law took a look at the ampule and said, “This is supposed to be injected into the gums to numb them. At least mind what injections you are making.” And then I could not sleep at night, I often had nightmares.
When the kid (daughter – editor’s note) was sleeping, I was looking at her and thinking: “Damn, what will happen next? I’m a cripple without a leg and a beginner drug addict. I have a young daughter – what can I give this child?” I decided that I had to quit. At two o’clock in the morning, I called my brother-in-law and said, “Serhiy, the situation is as follows, we need to go to Vinnytsia, I’ll be ridding of this habit for good, because I’ll either get on the bottom of the bottle, or die of overdose somewhere in the bushes.” The next day we went to a narcologist in Vinnytsia and talked to a doctor. He took a look at me and said, «I do not see the point in putting you into a hospital. If you got to this point from four doses a day on your own, then you overcome this by yourself.” He prescribed me some pills. I still made injections of nalbuphin, but slowly curbed the addiction.
2016, Mogilev-Podilsky, Vinnytsia region Photo: Markiian Lyseiko
Then I went to a “Walking School” in Austria. I came back from there on a prosthesis, leaning on a stick. I decided for myself that if I would learn to walk the way it would satisfy me than I would return to the ATO zone. I watched a video about an American man who was without two legs. It was told there that disability is “not a shortcoming, it is a challenge to yourself and the society”. So I thought I could find my own meaning in this struggle. And there was also a desire to avenge all those fallen. I did not expect that the war would become so stagnated, I thought we would drive them off all the way to the Ural.
I came to Petrivka, and one general told me, “Vinnytsia, if you want, stay here, we will find you a place to live, you will get a calm paper job in a headquarters.” But I replied that I wanted to fight even with prosthetics. He looked at me closely, “I respect this, but I don’t know… Filin is forming the 46th battalion within the army, if you want – here’s Lermontov’s number, call him.” This was in March. I called him, and he said, “Hello, and who are you?” I said, “My callsighn is “Vinnytsia”, I was one of “Tur’s” men, “Vosmyi” was my commander, I would like to continue service.” He said, “You don’t have one leg?” “What kind of an amputation was this?” “How high?” “I’ll give you Filin’s number, you will talk to him, if he agrees to take you, then come.”
“Filin” told me to come in April. I was so inspired, I only had to lie to everyone that I was not going to the war, but somewhere else. I started telling tales that I was going to work at the ammunition storage and that it was 100 km away from the war zone. On April 10, Lermontov called me, “You can come, we are ready to take you in.” I arrived on April 16; there were probably 30-40 people in the battalion, 10 tents. I came to Filin’s office and he said, “Vinnytsia, frankly speaking, I do not know what to do with you, but since you are already here it turns out you will not be receiving any wage in the beginning, because nobody has yet come up with a job for the disabled.” And at that time the state was giving me UAH 2,700 (around 100 USD) of allowance. For four months, the battalion commander was arranging for some post for me and during that time I started climbing on armoured personnel carriers and tanks and fell off them several times. I could not get rid of my stick for a very long time. Without it I was walking straight, whereas with the stick I was tilting over to one side. I was struggling for two months before I threw that stick away and learned how to walk without it.
December 2015. ” Vinnytsya “in service in the 46th battalion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine” Donbass-Ukraine “.
Photo: Yuri Velichko
I learned to wear my gear properly, mount and dismount APCs, firing RPGs, SPGs and DShK. I tried walking in a swampy terrain with a DShK on my shoulder, but I got stuck in the ground, I couldn’t feel the leg properly in the end. At the Alliance (military training – editor’s note) I climbed to a height of 20 meters on a prosthesis. The guys went across a ravine, whereas I went forward, holding an assault rifle in front of me without a bulletproof vest. Velychko (Yuriy Velychko, who was the photographer of the “Donbas” battalion at that time – editor’s note) looked at me and said, “Oh, these will be some priceless shots” and took some pictures of me. These shots, as motivators were everywhere on the Ukrainian segment of Internet. I was told earlier, “We won’t take you, because you won’t be able to climb soothing like this.” “Yeah, right, you wish I wasn’t able to climb!” I would not climb over the ravine because it was too steep so I decided to climb across gas pipes.
I was told, “Vinnytsia, why are you even here, I do not understand.” The fact is I was simply drawn there. The last time I came to the battalion I stayed there for 10 days, and all that time Lermontov was trying to put an “shakhid belt” on me and send me to charge the enemy checkpoint. He asked me, “Vinnytsia, why do you even live, you have no leg after all”. This was his kind of black humour. And I said, “Great, the fact I have one leg means I have no use so let’s make me a suicide bomber and send me to die, right?!” (sarcasm)
December 2015. ” Lermontov ” and “Vinnytsya”, 46th battalion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine” Donbass-Ukraine “.
Photo: Yuri Velichko
Alyona Solovyova invited me to Mariupol to take part in the Games of Heroes “Power of the Nation”. She told me, “You’re an interesting one, so come over.” But I did not succeed at the first competition, I overextended myself. I am not a professional athlete after all. I tried, but fell and dropped out of the race, did not make it. But after this experience I decided to try my hand at sports instead. I started attending a local gym.
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I am currently studying at the Vinnytsia University, I will be a junior social worker. Need to defend my diploma paper on Monday and then I will transfer to law department. I think I will receive the rank of a lieutenant when I will be approximately 42 and then I will be finding guys like me.
I sent my son to undergo compulsory military service. He told me, “Get me out of this hassle.” “And now why would I do that? I served myself, I was at war and need to put a word for you so you just could not serve? If you want something like this then do it yourself, I won’t be covering you from something like this.” He said that he would serve, but only in the unit where I served, in Petrivka. But in the end, he decided to sign a three-year contract. He signed it, and 8 months or a year later went to the ATO zone. In a sense my son took over my place.
In the zone you understand how short life is. A bullet flies in, 3-4 seconds and you are done. And if you survive this you may live a much wiser life cherishing your family. Before the ATO, my son argued with his mother, even yelled at her. When he returned from the zone, I asked him, “How’s your mother doing?” “Mom is the best.” He said, “I got under shelling there and finally understood that I really love everyone and really want to live.” Yeah, I was the same.
I still have an old crucifix from Ilovaisk. Broke it and tried to fix it many times. When we were in Kurakhovo some people came and gave us these crosses. But I did not wear it. It fell off the day before the “corridor”. At that time Andriy “Bravo”, Lyonya, some other guys, and I were sitting in a trench. I said, “Guys, my crucifix fell off, I have a bad feeling.” Andriy replied, “Vinnytsia, it’s bad sign that it fell off, not everyone will get out of here”. And see what happened…
We have not won yet. The war is still not over. It will be over when they lay down their weapons. But if we lay down our weapons than Ukraine will be no more.
But if we lay down our weapons than Ukraine will be no more. They will either tear us to pieces or just split us in half. I think everything depends on each and every one of us. If we band together and drive them away from here, we can succeed. Everyone says, “Why don’t they (government) can’t end the war?” However, no one asks, “Why won’t Putin get out of here?!” I do not regret that we have shown that we are indeed a great nation, that we have kicked such a huge aggressor of country’s teeth in. On the other hand, the price was very high…
