The Russians have launched an offensive along the entire front line. The enemy is putting pressure, trying to seize the initiative of the Defence Forces in the Bakhmut sector, where Ukrainian troops recently recaptured Klishchiyivka and Andriivka, villages important for the liberation of Bakhmut. Slidstvo.Info journalists spent a night at the 93rd Kholodnyi Yar Brigade’s stabilisation point to show the cost of liberating the fortress city.

This is described in the new story by Slidstvo.Info. The video has English subtitles.

THE ANT HILL

It is night. At the stabilisation centre near Bakhmut, there is absolute silence, the medics are sleeping on the cots for the wounded, but they abruptly get up from the sound of the evacuation engine. The soldiers have arrived. The empty and quiet room instantly turns into an anthill: each of the medics takes up his or her own work, the medics cut the wounded’s clothes to get quicker access to the wounds. 

One of the men is breathing heavily. He has several missile fragments in his body. He was wounded in the morning, but they managed to evacuate him from the positions only now, at night. 

He is being given strong painkillers and his wounds are being examined. He should feel better in a few minutes. At this stage of the evacuation, the medics can only do a minimum to stabilise the soldier and send him on to a hospital. There, the conditions allow for more complex manipulations and operations. 

The soldier gets changed and taken to a kind of waiting room. From there, another evacuation team will pick them up. The room is warm, almost hot, because the heater is on. On one side of the table there are bottles of water, a box of waffles and apples, and on the other side there is a bench where the soldiers sit. 

“I DIDN’T TELL MY CHILDREN ANYTHING, FOR THEM I AM FINE” 

The wounded soldier’s name is Vitaliy. His call sign is “Translator”. He says this “position” stuck with him from training in the UK at the very beginning of his service, because he speaks good English, so the defender helped his comrades and instructors to understand each other. 

It’s hard for him to sit and it’s hard for him to speak. Due to the strong painkillers, the fighter is nauseous. However, he continues to talk about his children and wife. Talking is a distraction.

“Translator”

“I didn’t tell my children anything. For them, I am fine, only positive. I am studying, I am not fighting. They know that I am in the army, but they don’t know where I am, what tasks I am performing. My children are more or less grown up, so I try not to upset them,” Vitaliy says.

He mobilised in July this year. He says that for a long time he did not tell any of his family about his intentions, not even his wife, because he knew they would react painfully.

“When I told my wife, she burst into tears. She said: “Why are you leaving? Let those who evade go. ‘ And I said: “Do you understand that if everyone hides, then who will fight? The guys are not endless, right?” the soldier recalls, smiling.

 “I WAS LUCKY! IT MEANS WE WILL FIGHT SOME MORE” 

“Shrapnel in the knee,” says one of the medics, leaning over the soldier.

In just a few minutes, the doctor removes a nail-like fragment from his knee and hands it to the soldier. The latter turns the piece of metal in his hands in amazement: “Wow! A nail like that. It could have crushed my knee. Well, it’s okay, I was lucky. It means we will fight some more.”

“Musician”, Photo of the 93rd Brigade Kholodnyi Yar

Roman with the call sign “Musician” says that the Russians dropped an explosive ordnance from a drone right in front of their position. Both he and his comrade got hit.

“I got hit more, but he also got a piece of shrapnel in his neck. But he still dragged me for about an hour to the evacuation point,” Roman says.

Next to him, another soldier with a small taped-up neck wound is smiling. This is Slava with the call sign ” Khimera”.

“Next time, don’t shout like that when I’m tightening the turnstile for you,” the fighter jokingly says.

“Khimera”

He is the fellow soldier who was next to him during the strike and later pulled out “Musician” on his own.

“You did everything perfectly, now you are my brother, my family. You pulled me through. So let’s go to my place in Kyiv one day. My dad is building a bathhouse,” says “Musician”.

“THEY TALK ABOUT UNITY, BUT THERE IS NO UNITY”

While waiting to be evacuated to the hospital, Musician reflects on the “unity” that is so much talked about in the media and popular culture. According to the soldier, true unity exists only among the military in the trenches. “Musician” is from the capital and recently went home on holiday. What he saw there, he says, was very upsetting: “It’s just offensive to me that someone is sitting in the trenches and running under the rubble, under the explosive remnants, seeing this horror, this hell, while someone is walking around and pouring beer down their throat, listening to music, dancing and rejoicing as if the war doesn’t concern them. They talk about unity, but there is no unity in reality.”

“Musician”

He is convinced that after the victory, society will be divided into “friends” and “foes”, i.e. those who fought and helped the army and those who ignored the war.

Instead, his fellow soldier Khimera does not condemn anyone and is convinced that the decision to go to war is a personal matter.

“I know I did everything I could, everything that depended on me. Let others think about what they will tell their children when they are asked: ‘What did you do during the war?

“Khimera” is from Kherson. He and his family spent six months under occupation. At the time, he tried to collect information about Russian equipment and concentrations in the city and pass it on to the Security Service of Ukraine, and after the liberation, both he and his brother joined the army.

“We had lived with them (Russians — ed.). We know very well what they are,” the soldier says.

Both soldiers will return to the front after their recovery. “The Musician” says he no longer sees himself in civilian life and is convinced that he will be able to be useful to the army, no matter what the consequences of his knee injury:  “If not as an attack fighter, there are many other interesting and useful things to do. After all, you can fly a drone. As they say, once you’ve taken the sword, you have to go all the way.”

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