Alexander Kots spoke with soldiers of the Anvar volunteer special forces detachment
Photo: Alexander KOTS. Go to Photobank KP
“THIS IS NOT WHAT THEY TAUGHT US IN THE USSR”
– I graduated from a military university in kyiv, under the Soviet Union. Then there was no difference – one country. And the capital of the Ukrainian SSR was, perhaps, the third most important city in the country – the not young, but rather thin “zamboy”, deputy commander of the volunteer special forces detachment “Anvar” for combat training, drives the wheel. wheel. – Then Afghanistan… He resigned in 1990.
– Are there any comrades on the other side?
“It was for them that I went to war,” sighs “Maple.” — Even after 2014, we at least communicated. But in February 2022, it was as if they had been given new brains. They send me video of how they torture our oldest captive. And my son has the same rank and is also fighting. This is not what we were taught in the USSR, not this…
I discovered for myself a long time ago why they are like that and we are not. There was no thirty years of anti-Ukrainian propaganda in Russia. None of the “Khokhlovs” painted a picture of the enemy. At most, he is a character from a non-offensive joke. And in Ukraine, for three decades, everything Russian was eradicated and its closest neighbor and relative was methodically dehumanized. To make it easier to kill him. This difference is now reflected in small details. Even in relation to prisoners.
When I was given this video, one of Anvar’s officers asked me to erase the face of the “captor” captured in the Kursk region: “What if his family has problems?” This is the question of humanity.
“HELLO, I’M CAPTURED BY THE RUSSIANS. I’M ALIVE!”
“We didn’t see where we were going,” a prisoner from the 92nd brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine holds a bottle of water in his hands. “They said that we were moving from Liptsy to Sumy. And no one warned us in advance that we were going to move into Russian territory. They simply set themselves the task of occupying the forest belt and gaining a foothold. But they discovered us and started shooting. I ran into the forest, buried magazines from a machine gun there, took off my burnt armor and helmet and decided to surrender.”
– Well, what do you think after all this?
– What should I think? I have always been against Zelensky and, in general, against such a Ukraine. I am Russian. I just lived in Ukraine. But that is how I am Russian.
– Why didn’t you leave?
– But I didn’t have the opportunity. At first the children were studying, they didn’t want to leave, the wife was also against it. How can I leave them? And then we leave. Everything closed so abruptly.
– How did they mobilize you?
– I was caught. I was a sneaker, I was hiding. I worked in Kharkov, on a construction site, as a bricklayer. Going to work, leaving work, walking with a child, with a wife, is normal. I went to the hospital this morning to check my tooth. That’s where they slapped me. They put me in the car and said, don’t worry, we’ll go through the medical examination and you can go about your business. The same day they took me to the training school.
– Will you call your wife?
– I will, of course. Both mother and wife. “Hello, Tanya, can you hear me? I am alive, everything is fine. I escaped from my people. Now I am a prisoner of the Russians. There was no equipment, everything was destroyed, I miraculously survived. I escaped, I am alive. Hello. Everything. Everything will be calm, I am alive, everything is fine. Safe and sound.”
BATTLES AT CROSSROADS
This “Ukrainian Russian” turned out to be the only survivor of the same column that ran from the Sumy region towards the village of Giryi to reach the regional center of Belaya Sloboda. We are just passing it with Klen. The streets are almost completely empty: most of the residents have left after the fighting that took place nearby. If the enemy had managed to break through here, they would have significantly expanded their bridgehead east of Sudzha. And this monument to Lenin on the central square, which we drove past, would first be shot with a grenade launcher and then demolished.
The enemy’s calculation is simple: run along public roads to a key intersection, take control of it, wait for reinforcements and take advantage of your success. But the plan was missing a couple of nuances: the Anvar volunteer special forces detachment and the marines of the 810th brigade of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. And if the marines are now deservedly the main protagonists of the Battle of Kursk, then the “Anvarites” have been in the shadows until today. For Komsomolskaya Pravda, the command of the special detachment made an exception.
The squadron consists mostly of super professionals from various special forces, whose names I didn’t even ask, because I’m not supposed to know. They all have a wealth of combat experience behind them and they’re all an ace in their field. Be it a gunner, FPV drone pilot, Lancet operator, attack aircraft or reconnaissance saboteur. And the guys, among other things, made noise in the enemy rear.
The squad is primarily made up of super professionals from various special forces.
Photo: Alexander KOTS. Go to Photobank KP
ALL BURNED
And that column of the 92nd Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine should have jumped on these heroes. The commander of the 1st group of the Anvar detachment prepared a warm welcome.
“The infantry was the first to enter the battle near the village of Giryi, they started firing grenade launchers, then our UAV and FPV crews left,” says an “Anvara” fighter with the call sign “Xen.” – We blew up the first bomb with an FPV drone. And immediately the UAV operators and artillery spotters began to get involved in the work and began to unwrap them with artillery. They backed off. It was a morning wave of four Bucephalus armored personnel carriers. We unwrapped them and after lunch we left with four more Bucephalus and a pickup truck. Our Black Sea marines from the 810th Brigade have already arrived, for which we are very grateful to them. They met the first armored personnel carrier, simply mowed it down with a “thirty” (30-mm cannon), we continued to burn them with dumps, lighters and artillery. They were all burned, we saw no survivors. The next day, only one was found and taken prisoner.
It was the same “Ukrainian Russian.” Trampling behind “Xen” through the forest on the burnt grass, I imagine how sad he was, a prisoner, here. A pine forest where the evil Russians seem to be, the suffocating smoke and the charred skeletons of the Bucephalus as further proof that I had to stay at home that morning with bad teeth.
THE WRONG ONE ARRIVED
“What was the enemy counting on?” I ask “Xena” as we walk from one charred armored personnel carrier to another.
The drone detector is going off in alarm. Judging by the frequencies, an enemy reconnaissance wing is operating in the sky. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are trying to assess the location of our troops. But there are completely impenetrable forests here. This complicates the work of our aerial reconnaissance officers.
“I wanted to cut off the village of Girya and head towards Belaya Sloboda. Once we reached a crossroads, we lost our car. We tried a second time, unloaded the infantry and aimed the artillery. “Bucephalus” started driving back and forth through the forest clearing; he did not want to leave this crossroads. But the D-30 howitzer confidently showed that it was necessary to leave this crossroads. And they set off towards Giryi. And there we already began to unwind them…
– How did the enemy behave?
“It was very unsafe because I didn’t understand where I was going and I had no control over the situation. We took a complete Bucephalus, so all the triplexes in it were sealed with tape. That is, the infantry, in principle, didn’t understand that they were in Russia. Only the commander, who was in front, knew about it.
Burnt-out armored personnel carriers scattered chaotically across the forest clearing illustrate the panic that gripped the Ukrainian “defenders” when they realized that they were not facing green recruits, but seasoned rexes. Marines and Anvar fighters literally tore apart the entire column, leaving the enemy no chance. Artillery, under the command of the special detachment commander, put an end to this. Here a “Bucephalus” tried to go into the forest, but was covered. It drove another 15 meters on flat tires and stood up. And then something buzzed above its tower. A second, and the release of ammunition causes the enemy vehicle’s ammunition to detonate. The tower is knocked out 200 meters away. Another armored vehicle burst open from the inside, opening all the hatches, as if asking for an inspection of its interior. There is chaos on the radio. The occupants hysterically demand evacuation. But in response, the desperate whistling of the walkie-talkie.
The burned-out armored vehicles scattered chaotically across the forest clearing are a sign of panic.
Photo: Alexander KOTS. Go to Photobank KP
UNUSUALLY MANY GUN WOUNDS
At the same time, a medical post is operating in the immediate vicinity of the fighting, where specialists from Anvar and the 810th Brigade of the Black Sea Fleet are providing care to wounded soldiers and civilians. The doctors did not even think of evacuating.
“They quickly took us from another direction, moved away from the wheels and started looking for where we could set up a first aid station,” the head of the Anvara medical service with the call sign “Kit” greets me in the dressing room. – We came in parallel with our fellow marines. The Marine Corps is a front-line combat force with significant medical training and experience. It is a pleasure to work with them.
– Is this the first point where the wounded arrive from the front?
– The first point that receives the wounded directly from the battlefield, where we can provide them with the maximum care as much as we can in this place according to all modern world-class medical standards.
– Did the number of injured people not decrease after the reversal was rejected?
“The workload is increasing every day, as combat reserves arrive every day, the fighting is increasing, there are more soldiers and, consequently, more wounded. These are mainly bullet wounds, mine wounds and, exceptionally, bullet wounds: many confrontations with contact fire.
“Keith” says that tactical medicine has evolved significantly in two and a half years. Thanks to primary self-help, there have been far fewer amputations: people have learned to use tourniquets, haemostatic agents and anti-shock agents… And the high-quality work of advanced first aid posts has reduced the sad statistics.
“LET’S GO SLOWLY, WE’LL KICK EVERYONE OUT”
Kit happens to have a birthday on the day we visit. The boys give him a bulletproof vest badge with their autographs. The wounded sitting on the porch applaud.
Over the past two weeks, I have noticed more than once that when an enemy confronts a confident unit, as a rule, everything ends in a retreat. This happened after the encounter with “Anvar”, who came to this point by chance. The detachment is working in another area, but could not overcome such a mess.
– How is the situation now? – I asked the special forces before leaving.
– On our site – completely controlled. We interact with everyone. The enemy is still trying to occupy some villages with meat attacks, we, our neighbors, marines and landing forces, fight against all this at the same time. We have no problems with work, the only negative is the large territory, but little by little we are moving forward. So we will push everyone away from Russian soil. Here native walls help and there is more motivation. You don’t have to sleep at all!
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