The diary of a survivor in Kyiv. March 22. “A meeting with an old friend”

I was quite busy these days. I have a lot of things to do at work, at home. Kyiv slowly recovers from the first shock of the Russian invasion, and now there are many people in the streets walking, talking. People try to adapt to the new living conditions. When there is an air raid warning, nobody runs away. People just try to stand as closer to a building as possible and wait for its ending. The shops are provided with all sorts of food, except exotic, luxurious ones, and alcohol. One can buy everything. It depends only on the amount of money in your wallet.

I went to the nearest post office to take the parcel from Spain. It contains 20 CAT Tourniquets and powerful painkillers. CAT Tourniquets completely occludes blood flow of an extremity in the event of a traumatic wound. It is highly needed for the soldiers waging war against the Russian Orcs.

It may sound strange for the Europeans, but in addition to units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the units of the National Guard of Ukraine, and the units of territorial defence, there are volunteer units. They consist of men and women who don’t want to be in the Regular Army due to different reasons. One can meet businessmen/businesswomen, office workers, former prisoners, disabled persons, pensioners, young people, foreigners there. There is no anarchy in these units. On the contrary, the discipline of the order is on the highest possible level.

One of my closest friends on the name Valter (the name is changed at his request) is an active member of such a unit. He’s a successful businessman in Ukraine. But he doesn’t want to be legally bound with the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He’s a high-skilled sniper. He paid a lot of money and trained a couple of years to become a real shooter. He bought all the ammo, precision tactical rifle, other combat stuff himself. Valter called and invited me to the unit’s headquarters situated in his office. And the parcel with CATa and painkillers is intended for his unit.

I entered a former impressive fashionable office near the centre of Kyiv. Now, it’s a place to eat, sleep, and a situation room for the group of volunteers. Valter met me at the entrance. A young guy in a British Army MTP uniform with Kalashnikov replaced a gorgeous blonde office manager who used to meet the guests. Now, he looks constantly into the screen where is the information from the surveillance cameras. He looked up, smiling, and trying to act as an office manager, asked me: “Could I propose you a cup of coffee, dear sir?”. Valter interrupted him: “Shut up, Val. Your appearance is too scary to propose a cup of coffee. Nobody would take it from you.” Everybody laughed in the room.

I turned around and saw accurately stacked ammo boxes in the corners, Kalashnikovs, RPGs in an open space. I could hear the distant discussion from the meeting room. Valter accompanied me to another room. “They are arguing about the results of our operation at Moshchun” (a village of strategic importance near Kyiv), said he to me and continued “, We have problems there. We lost two cars.” He looked very exhausted. He lost his weight. Now, he is totally grey-haired.

We sat on the different sides of the sofa. 4 weeks ago, this room witnessed business negotiations. Now it’s an armoury chamber. “What happened there? Do you have 200th or 300th?” (“200” is a shorthand for a killed soldier, “300” is a shorthand for an injured soldier) – I asked him. Valter sighed and answered, “Luckily, we don’t have losses. But the fighting was very tough. D you want a drink something? Unfortunately, I can’t offer you a glass of whiskey like in the old times as we don’t drink in wartime, but coffee or tea is possible.” I asked Valter and smiled.

We have been through together much at the Donbas frontlines. We delivered a lot of military stuff to the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 2014-2016. I refused. “I don’t want anything. Tell me better what happened in Moshchun”. Valter started to talk: “The usual shit. We came to Moshchun together with a unit of a reconnaissance group from a mechanized infantry brigade. Previously, another group should have done an outside recon here. But they lost on the way here and could not provide the needed information. The Russian Orcs understood that this direction was very important for us. So, they decided to wait for us inside the village. But I understood that we could not enter the village of Moshchun from the main road. So, we used the field road to get there. The Russians used a drone and spotted our arrival. We left our cars in the forest and went on our feet to the village. The Orcs used 2S9 “Nona” (airborne multi-purpose tracked armoured personnel carriers which have an extremely light-weight self-propelled and air-droppable 120 mm gun-mortar) to destroy our cars and then trap us. When the first shells fell, the infantry guys told us that they would take the cars to another place. We agreed that before. But the second wave of shells which fell just in seconds, destroyed 2 Toyota Hilux. The group of soldiers evacuated our transport, and the rest of us moved forward to the village. We activated our drone. We spotted their checkpoint on the street. It was approximately in 700 from us. The Russians saw our drone and tried to shoot it down. Luckily, they failed. We attacked these Orcs from the right side from the checkpoint. We used a few RPGs to destroy their APVs standing on the road. They didn’t expect an assault from this side. They were taken by surprise. 2 APVs exploded, we killed 5 Russian paratroopers. The others fled to the centre of the village, leaving behind their fellow officers. We quickly searched them. The paratroopers were from Kostroma…Marauders. We found a lot of Ukrainian stuff. Mostly food. Fucking hungry soldiers of the 2nd strongest Army in the world. Ha-ha. Ordinary thieves, not soldiers!”

Suddenly, a guy interrupted our conversation with the news that the guys from another volunteer unit had come to talk. I had to leave.

The resistance of the Ukrainian people is strong. I just thought that this new Russian fascism looks scary and comic at the same time. As if someone had read books about Hitler and decided that they could repeat it, but hired the worst ever screenwriters, actors, and directors in the world. Russia has always stated that Ukraine is not a country, a failed state. But it turned out that Ukraine is very stable. And this level is incomprehensible to Russian Orcs. One must keep in mind that everything is fake in Russia. So, even Russian fascism is nothing more than a bad copy of the German one. They will definitely lose this war.