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ZOV
56
’s been a month and a half since I returned from the war in Ukraine, yes, yes, I know that you can’t say this word “war”, it was banned, but still I will say exactly “war”, understand correctly, I’m already 33 For years and all my life I’ve been telling only the truth, even if it’s to my own detriment, I’m so “wrong” and I can’t do anything about it. So this is a war, our Russian army is shooting at the Ukrainian one, and she is shooting back, shells and rockets are exploding there, have you ever heard the sound of a shell approaching you? If not, then it’s a pity, it’s an unforgettable feeling from the vibration and whistle of air when all the insides turn over, it’s just breathtaking, then if you’re lucky, you hear an explosion and think that this is definitely your day, of course, if you understand that nothing has been torn off by the blast wave and your body is not took some kind of fragment, but if not, then the day didn’t work out and this time you were unlucky, in short, the job is still ...
At the same time, the military on both sides are dying, as well as civilians who were lucky enough to live where they decided to start a war, calling her special operation.
Oh, yes, we must also not forget about the accompanying war hunger, illness, sleepless nights, unsanitary conditions and life with constantly off-scale adrenaline that consumes the resources of your body giving strength, speed and reaction, but then when you return from the war zone, you feel like a survivor lemon and you realize that your health is not at all the same.
Then there is also the morally painful pressure of your conscience on your heart and soul, if they are, of course, because you do not freely ask yourself the question of why you are doing this and for the good of what. Why are you risking your life and leaving your health. Why are you polluting your and so perhaps not the most cloudless karma.

Now I will tell you how I had to see this war and how I got into it in general. I am aware of the responsibility for spreading the word about my service, but to hide it, for me, means to continue to increase the losses.
I was evacuated from the front line near Nikolaevsk because keratoconjunctivitis of the eye began, after another shelling on us, the earth flew into the trench and got into my eyes, it’s not pleasant, but consider bullshit, I was lucky, my eyes began to inflame and one of them began to close, after a few days, the paramedic said that I needed to be evacuated. without treatment, you can be left without an eye, I was taken to the Med Detachment in Kherson, occupied by us, from where I was evacuated to Sevastopol.
The feeling that you experience when you leave the war zone is indescribable ...
Two months of dirt, hunger, cold, sweat and the feeling of the presence of death nearby. It’s a pity that they don’t let reporters to our front lines, which is why the whole country cannot admire the paratroopers overgrown, not washed, dirty, thin and embittered, it’s not clear what else, stubborn Ukrainians who do not want to be denazified, or their mediocre command , unable to equip them even during hostilities. Half of my guys changed clothes and went in Ukrainian uniforms because it was of better quality and more comfortable, or their own was worn out, and our great country is not able to dress, equip and feed its own army. For example, from the very beginning I didn’t have a Ratnik kit and crossed the border without even having a sleeping bag. A week later, the guys brought the old one, not the commanders, please note, with a broken lock, to say that I was glad to say nothing to him. Sleeping on the ground in a torn sleeping bag in winter, on the front line, and in Ukraine and in March there were frosts, this is another trip. In short, somewhere in the middle of March, my legs and back began to hurt, I thought for a long time that it was muscles or ligaments and stupidly endured limping and attributing everything to the fact that we hardly took off armor and helmets, but later I learned that from sleep on frozen ground, lack of water and food, combined with stress, I developed osteochondrosis of all

parts of the spine, protrusions, a hernia in the neck, a sequestered hernia in the lower back, and incomprehensible pain in the joints of the legs.
So about the evacuation, and then bam, and they take you out of there and you simultaneously experience the joy of leaving this asshole and a feeling of annoyance, from the fact that your comrades remain there and it is not known what will happen to them next, the feeling of happiness for yourself is mixed with a sense of guilt in front of colleagues who are there, and you leave them.
We drove in a PAZik, the driver, and in the cabin there were 20 people wounded, dirty, exhausted, uniforms in the blood, pain and longing were read on the faces of those who were seriously injured, those who were easily joyful that they were finally leaving there, tk. I was not injured, I was taken to the evacuation as a patient, so I sat on the step in front of the exit door (there weren’t enough seats for everyone) and many were less fortunate than me, I had to drive five or six hours, I don’t remember exactly at that moment I finally relaxed and thought about the last two months of my life, about what it was, why I needed it, did I do something good or vice versa bad, why did I participate in this and how did I end up there. At that moment and until now, an internal dialogue from a cocktail of conscience, patriotism and common sense does not stop inside me. If we turn to the templates, the answer will be that I am a military man, a paratrooper, I am obliged to follow orders and do not have the right to chicken out and not go to war when it starts, I am obliged to serve for the good of my country and protect the people of Russia, but then common sense begins argue and ask questions.

“And how did Ukraine threaten Russia?”

Everyone around is talking about the fact that Ukraine wanted to join NATO. But do we attack all the countries that want to join NATO?
Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland are already in NATO. Finland is now joining NATO. Turkey shot down our plane not so long ago, but we quickly forgot it, Japan claims our islands.

Damn it, the United States borders on us in the East, but for some reason all this is not a reason to start a war.
We're not attacking them, or is it just for now? It turns out that this is not the reason.
“If we had not attacked Ukraine, would it have attacked us?” Many echo the TV that we launched a preemptive strike, but how can you believe that Ukraine would have attacked Russia, Crimea, if the Armed Forces of Ukraine could not even hold their borders, they are waging a defensive war suffering huge losses, anyone knows that the war in defense is easier than attacking. How could this country, which defends itself with difficulty, slowly but losing its territories, attack? And wouldn’t it be easier for our army to strengthen the borders and defenses around Ukraine and, in the event of their attack, meet the enemy on the defensive, break their offensive potential and go on the counterattack, after all, in this case, our losses would be much less, and the world community would not be able to accuse Russia of an aggressor and glorify our country as an occupier and invader. It turns out that Ukraine was going to attack Russia is also not true?
“Ukraine was enslaved by Nazism and they infringe on the Russian population?”
But strange as it may seem, when communicating with people who were in Ukraine before the war, no one could remember a specific case that someone somehow infringed or offended him for having a Russian surname or not being able to speak Ukrainian. And some isolated cases of domestic conflicts on ethnic grounds can be found in any country in the world.
“We attacked to save the DNR and LNR”
What are the DNR and LNR? Indeed, in fact and legally, these are two regions that were part of Ukraine, which rebelled and decided to become independent. Wouldn't it be the same if Karelia wanted to go to Finland, Smolensk region to Lithuania, Rostov to Ukraine, Yakutia to the USA or Khabarovsk to China, isn't it the same? Why are we defending the LDNR?
Did ordinary people in Donbas feel better? After all, in the Russian Federation we

would not have tolerated this, just as we once did not give Chechnya independence, paying for it with thousands of lives. Why did we do the same with our neighbors? But at the same time, the top of the LPR and DPR, despite the support of the Russian government, could not provide their people with social security and give them security, which is why people fled en masse to Russia, Crimea and Ukraine. Communicating with people who fled the war in Donetsk and Lugansk, I did not hear cases of Nazism that are shouted about from our media. But all as one talked about the fact that they fled from the war and that they just want to live and work in peace. If we tried in every possible way to help the people of Donetsk and Luhansk, then why didn’t we limit ourselves to providing everyone with Russian passports, we have a lot of empty land that a human hand has not touched, please let them come, live and work with us, why do we need territories in fact foreign state? What for? Are we short on land? Really all those who wanted to live in Russia have not yet received Russian passports and moved to us?

First, they decided to motivate us with money, and on February 23, our divisional commander announced that we would receive $ 69 per day, which at that rate was about 7000₽, (although here we were thrown and in the end we received 3500₽ per day) from the very first day when we realized that this was not the Crimean operation “Polite People” and not an exercise, but a full-fledged war began and crossing the border of Ukraine under volleys of MLRS missiles, accompanied by combat helicopters and aircraft, even then they began to say that such work was not worth any money. But we are the defenders of the fatherland, the paratroopers, the pride of the fatherland and money are not the main thing, and if you have to get the order “Forward!” to the War, then something serious must have happened, maybe the Armed Forces of Ukraine are already capturing Rostov or the Americans have landed on Kamchatka! Without laughing, I'm serious, at first I assumed that something like this happened, since we went to break through the border of Ukraine and received an order to capture Kherson, I did not see another logical explanation.
Oh, sorry, I didn't introduce myself...

Guards ml.s-t. Filatiev 6 DSHR, 2 DSHB, 56 DSHP, 7 VDD.
Yes, yes, exactly that 56 DShB, which our MO S.K. Shoigu decided to disband right on the eve of this war. Probably in order to level the chances of Ukraine against Russia, last year the Brigade was disbanded, equipped, well-organized and equipped Brigade of 3,000 paratroopers, consisting of three assault battalions, a parachute battalion, a reconnaissance battalion, a tank battalion, which has its own artillery and air defense, is being disbanded, in the brigade there were almost no vacancies, a brigade that was created over 20 years in the city of Kamyshin! They disband the destinies of families and scatter them all over Russia.
They create a regiment from the brigade, well, like a regiment, from the regiment one name, leaving only one parachute battalion on a regular basis and transfer it to the Crimea in the city of Feodosia, combining it with the separate 171 assault battalion already located there, and from these two battalions they form a “regiment”, a regiment consisting of an airborne battalion, an airborne assault and a reconnaissance company (whose number is equal to a platoon). Not only is this not a regiment! Also, the airborne assault battalion was not fully staffed in terms of numbers. Moreover, our great reformers decided to create, as we were told, the Night-Experimental-Airborne Assault Battalion by putting the entire battalion on ordinary UAZ vehicles, not armored! So that's exactly how my 2DShB was sent to war, I also forgot to mention that the battalion consists of three companies, my company went to war with about 45 people, and the other two 60 people each, and that airborne assault battalion consisting of 165 attack aircraft, brilliant , well, in principle, that it’s me, everything looks better on the reports, because the battalion is about 500 people, the number of troops around Ukraine was about 200x thousand in the same way.
In my opinion, given the corruption and the system of photo reports that are now so bred in the army, when the command hides problems, about 100,000 Russian servicemen crossed the border of Ukraine on the first day, and this is against 200,000

servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Thanks to endless ridiculous experiments and a lack of common sense, the army has finally ceased to be an attractive and promising place for the “best youth”, a situation when there was a shortage in military universities, and contract service (which we have been going to since 2003) has finally become a place where people from the lower social circles (to which, unfortunately, I also belong), because the less educated and law-savvy you are, the easier it is to manipulate you. In addition to all this, the institute of military service was destroyed, turning it into a mixture of a kindergarten with a colony settlement, when the soldiers of military service, having rewound their term, go to civilian life without learning anything, then telling their friends about it and anyone who had the opportunity prefers to simply avoid such a useless waste own life. But once upon a time, it was the conscript soldiers who successfully fought in Afghanistan and Chechnya, successfully in terms of the fact that they carried out the tasks assigned to them and did not suffer such losses as the current “professional army of the Russian Federation” has already suffered in Ukraine.
Yes, I forgot to tell you that I have been in the 56th Children's Ballet School since 1993 and have been observing its collapse for 30 years.
I remember 1999, the beginning of the war in Chechnya, then, as a teenager, I accompanied my father there to go to war. At about three in the morning, the 1DShB lined up on the parade ground near the headquarters and the regiment commander brought the combat order to the battalion that it was necessary to make a forced march, that it was necessary to engage in battle with the bandit formations of the self-proclaimed Ichkeria (doesn’t it remind you of anything? Didn’t Ukraine also react to LDNR?), that it is dangerous and if one of the soldiers for some reason does not want or cannot do this, then it is necessary to get out of order, that the reasons may be different, one in the family, religious or a sick mother, but then no one went out of action, not one, although apart from the officers, the battalion (about 500 people) consisted of conscript soldiers aged mainly from 18 to 20 years. It was a qualitatively and fundamentally different army. This is the army that they had in

1999. Yes, it was not ideal, it needed order and reforms, but the army of that time was head and shoulders above the one that had been
“reformed” over the past 23 years.
As for the current one, a huge number of contract soldiers refused to go to the war with Ukraine.
Which also played a role in the failure of the "special operation".
I remember that all the two months that I was on the front line, we daily hoped that they would change us and let us go to the second line to rest, wash, wash, but this never happened, because as it turned out there was no one to change for ...

First I was taken to the city of Sevastopol, to the hospital
"Orion", our pazik, which I spoke about above, arrived there at one o'clock in the morning ... Before that, there was a stop somewhere in Krasny Perekop, where a medical tent camp was set up on the territory of a civilian hospital, where we were met by a medical detachment from Buynaksk, it mainly consisted of Dagestan women who greeted us with warmth.
We unloaded like wildlings from the pazik, we were immediately surrounded by military doctors from Buynaksk, we were wild because there was no shooting around, silence and other people, a feeling of calm and security appeared, this is an indescribable feeling. The doctors began to quickly find out who needed a dressing, painkillers or other help, while escorting them to a cozy tent where a dining room was organized, very bright and comfortable, at that moment it seemed to me a corner of paradise ...
There we were very tasty fed with stew and barley soup, it was impossibly delicious at the moment. I felt care and compassion from these women, it was a very strange and already forgotten feeling. A very strange feeling due to the fact that up to this moment it seemed to us that something was happening everywhere, everywhere everyone tightened their belts, such as “everything for the front, everything for victory”, but then it became finally clear that everyday life is everywhere, people work, rest, hang out in clubs, and the Internet is not blocked. Do not be surprised, for the first two months we had practically no connection with the outside world and we lived in our little world, in a

war, where in addition to inhuman conditions of lack of food, water, sleep, warm clothes and normal human life, we experienced information hunger, when you feed on rumors from a driver who went to the rear for dry rations and heard that the Internet was blocked, planes did not fly over Crimea, the price of sugar jumped ten times, and the dollar exceeded 120, being in the isolation of hostilities you cannot evaluate the picture objectively and begin to think for yourself. It was because of this that I began to interrogate these women about what is happening in the world and what they write in the news.
I remember that they seemed upset to me, but they tried not to show it, perhaps due to the fact that several such buses pass through them a day because of a ribbon like ours and they understand that the special operation is not going according to plan, (or someone was there such a plan?) perhaps due to the fact that they themselves do not understand why this is all. I remember one of them who began to talk upset about the high prices, but at the same time joyful from the fact that "celebrities and traitors are pouring out of the country", while for some reason she happily spoke about the fact that Sobchak was arrested, which surprised me then ( still a former presidential candidate), but then, as expected, it turned out that this was not the case, like many other rumors.
After a half-hour stop there, when we were fed and bandaged and anesthetized the wounded. We were taken further to Sevastopol, as mentioned above, to the Orion hospital, having arrived there at one o'clock in the morning, we wandered around and shouted in the yard for another half an hour, because no one met us stupidly. The guys who were already lying there, mostly our colleagues from the Airborne Forces, from the 11th Airborne Brigade, as we called them “Fighting Buryats”, who were with us on the front lines from the first days, came out, they warmly welcomed us, helped to unload and pounced with questions about how successes on the front line, there were no particular successes, we still stood on the demarcation line of the Kherson and Nikolaev regions, the artillery of the Armed Forces of Ukraine fired at our positions, ours hammered at them, and between them we were waiting for reinforcements for a further offensive.
