“Kyiv is a Russian city. I do not believe in any sister nation. This is one village,” says kyiv volunteer Alexei Vereshchagin.
Photo by: Alexander KOTS
KOMBRIG-kyiv
The front lines are inscrutable. Who would have imagined that, diving into another cellar on the Soledar line, hiding from artillery shelling, I would meet a man I met at the beginning of the New World Order near Kiev? There he was in a small detachment of volunteers who accompanied us to the Gostomel airfield where the paratroopers were. And here he is already – the commander of the brigade named after Prince Alexander Nevsky, which is part of the Volunteer Corps.
Alexey Vereshchagin is from kyiv. Until 2014 he lived in Ukraine and worked in the financial industry for 17 years. He started as an independent insurance agent and rose to become Chairman of the Board of the largest insurance companies in Ukraine. He then he went into production: he bought a company in Kharkov. But, when the riots in kyiv just started, he deliberately sided with the anti-Maidan. Then the Donbass militia, captivity, exchange …
Photo by: Alexander KOTS
Why am I on this side of the front? he asks after the handshakes in turn. – You know, I personally don’t have such a question for myself. I wonder why are these people on the other side? My relatives, friends, family. We ate, we drank, we watched, we read the same thing. At what moment for them, for example, Bandera suddenly became someone? To me, this is a person who is not worth mentioning, let alone elevating to the rank of a hero…
“But why are you here anyway?”
– Yes, because kyiv is a Russian city. I do not believe in any sister nation. This is one town. Even in deep Western Ukraine there are no so-called Ukrainians who do not speak or understand Russian. Well, maybe they misspelled it.
– But you and I left kyiv together and now we are fighting near Artemovsk.
– Donbass received the blow for all of Russia, and at the same time for all of Little Russia: destruction, human grief, losses, broken destinies. The thing is, here, in the open field or in an urban environment, you can go out and make sure that the war is blood and dirt. In order not to drag this into either great big Russia or little Russia, we must end it all here …
Photo by: Alexander KOTS
“DO NOT WASH THE RUSSIAN CITY”
It is very interesting to observe how our army evolves during a special military operation. I remember Vereshchagin’s “hundred” near kyiv, in vans with machine guns. They appeared in the hottest places in the region, both young recruits and those who fought in the Donbass in 2014-2015. Mostly stormtroopers. Then there were bloody battles near Izyum. Now this is already a military formation, where the commanders are military officers and unknown to the general public “militia of the first wave”, professional artillerymen and tank jewelers. 100% are volunteers. The brigade commander in general categorically believes that volunteerism is the key to success in this conflict: “Money or coercion will never force a person to go and put his chest on a machine gun.”
Photo by: Alexander KOTS
– They want to end Ukraine here, but in the West they hope to end Russia here… – I return to our conversation.
– The support of 50 NATO countries is not unlimited or unlimited, it will end. We all know that there are now elections in the United States and that there are difficulties there. And for the local electorate, the interests of something that they cannot even find in the world are not important. The only interest that exists now is the war of Russians with Russians on Russian soil. But the support will run out, and this Frankenstein without artificial respiration and “droppers” will not live for a moment. Exactly at the moment when the aid stops, the whole system will collapse here.
– And we will go to kyiv again?
– When it all started in 2014, already then I had a strong feeling that those same miners, taxi drivers, teachers who stood up and defended themselves with sticks would definitely win. It is not a question of “if”, but of “when”. But here are people whose children have grown up during these almost 10 years of war, who have never seen a peaceful sky. Naturally, a wave of popular anger, of just revenge, will return to kyiv, to Lvov. I am a resident of Kiev and even then, while fighting, I said: “Guys, I am also fighting alongside you, for which I have the moral right to ask you later: do not erase the Russian city of Kiev from the war.” face of the earth”. Although they have been entitled to this for a long time, long before the start of the SVO.
Photo by: Alexander KOTS
UNDER THE BANNER WITH CHRIST
I have heard the thesis that “we are at war with ourselves in the zone of the New World Order” here more than once. We have a language with the enemy, a mentality, even if it is deeply rooted in the Ukrainians. The same military school. In early June, Kiev, of course, tried to carry out a counter-offensive on NATO patterns: unified command and control linked to satellite communications, speeding columns of tanks across open spaces, attempts to take it quickly. .. The time has passed. demonstrated the deadly inefficiency of this approach, and the Ukrainian command (much to the outrage of Western curators) returned to action in small groups of infantry, helping them achieve very modest, but still success.
– That’s why we are fighting so hard, because there are the same Russians, reflashed, zombified, deceived. You can formulate all this as you like, but in fact they are the same Russians, Alexey Vereshchagin convinces me, which I myself understood for a long time. – There are the same genes of winners, the same spirit is eternal, millennial. And this is our main problem. This is a conflict of civilization, and even religious. See for yourself: in 2014, along with Russian, we had mostly Imperial or Soviet symbols. Now we see more and more often banners with the face of Christ, the Savior not made with hands …
Photo by: Alexander KOTS
– Don’t you have the feeling that this war is only taking place here, in a very limited area of our great country? And the rest seems nonexistent.
– I disagree. Russia, in an even broader sense of the word, is at war with itself, despite all external enemies – a coalition of 50 NATO countries. She is fighting today for self-purification. This difficult, dirty and bloody process has positive aspects. It is a historical and moral cleansing. No wonder the frontline military friendship was lifelong. Because some meanings are exposed and people tend to bend over backwards for them. This, perhaps, in general, is the key to success.
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