SouthFront doesn’t support the so-called “anti-terrorist” operation of the Kiev government in Donbass. However, we are publishing this text because we want to show the real face of Kiev’s forces and the fate of “Ukrainian heroes” in real life. Their fate is very different from the image showed by Ukrainian and Western media.
This article originally appeared at Vz.ru, translated from Russian by Olga Seletskaia especially for SouthFront
My brother is a chastener. Recently he returned from ATO, got married, and now he is expecting a child. He gave an interview to a Ukrainian website “Censor.net .” It is the most common Ukrainian website; all it does is tirelessly promoting war with Russia.
Therefore, an interview with a man who volunteered in the Donbass , and drenched “separatists”, of course, was a subject of interest to the website. So they contacted my brother.
He told them in details, not choosing words carefully (editorial left his interview without cuts) how he wandered with his buddies from village to village of Lugansk region, knocking separatists.
He told them about how much drunkenness happens among Ukrainian soldiers, how much it interferes with a combat mission. About his first experience of killing a man, and so on… Generally speaking, he told them about weekdays of war.
It is interesting to note, that my brother regarded as his enemies “separatists”, and not invisible battalions of the Russian army, about which Poroshenko talks endlessly. Somehow, “Censor ” did not pick on it, but I did. My brother’s detailed story never mentioned clashes with the Buryat Marines or with the regular army of the Russian Federation in the Donbass.
The rest of this story is pretty canonical. The only thing that the journalist changed here was the language in which my brother told his story: he does not speak Ukrainian, because he was born to a Russian family and grew up in Kiev.
I remember before he went to the front, we spoke on the phone. “Because of people like you – the Russophiles – we have all the problems! ” – These were his last words, addressed to me, an ultimate Russophile .
My brother spared us.
He did not use abusive language when he was talking about criticism of Bandera ideology’s renaissance I the country or the passivity of its citizens. And before going to war, he carefully covered his tracks.
When it became known that he left for the front, I called my father. It turned out, the father knew all about it long ago. Moreover, he blessed my brother to become a chastener and to punish the Donbass for disobedience to Kiev.
“Where do you see Bandera followers here? You are brainwashed by the Kremlin propaganda! – He told me on the phone. – At his age, I fought in Afghanistan. Let him go to war as well. There is nothing wrong with it! ”
All this was said after the Odessa massacre and after the first civilians in the Donbass were killed in Ukrainian Army’s shellings.
So I learned that my father long and hopelessly settled his head on the Maidan . He settled it so firmly that he even produced his own video that promotes the value of ” dignity revolution ” among the Russian “brainwashed” population.
According to him, our relatives in the Volga region and St. Petersburg were so “brainwashed”, that my father and my brother – the Bandera-follower and chastener – cut off all the ties with them. Each of them did it in his own way: my brother broke off all the contacts with the Russian relatives on the social networks, and my father said everything to his sister who lives in Russia on the phone.
Now , after being wounded and returning to Kiev, my brother organized the “society of veterans of the ATO.” Its main objective is to provide a psychological support to those who in alcoholic daze were firing cities of Donbass.
Brother remembers how disappointing it was to come back from the front and to get a cheap pack of tea biscuits from the government, for which he fought . As he himself admits , many ATO veterans “find no support and care in the community ” and they can go into the crime. Criminal life is more attractive because that is what they are used to, and it is clear there who the enemy is, and who is a friend.
In real life, everything is complicated and unclear. His brother, that is me, betrayed the homeland and left; the mother for some reason does not to support “victorious” Maidan and is working abroad. The government threw them in the lurch. And now he has to provide his own family. It is tough.
So my brother-chastener again is dreaming of the trenches, where he slept “like a baby.” However, his brain injury does not allow him to do it. But the main thing – “there is a desire to continue to fight …”
This interview is concluded by laudatory comments that Ukraine still wants war and loves its heroes. At least virtually, on the Internet.