Elena Romanenko, the Kovalev family and the staff of the “Rus” rehabilitation center.
Photo: Dina KARPITSKAYA
CHI ARE NOT ALL YET
Moscow region. Ruza region. It is buried in the greenery, chamomile fields stretch to the horizon. It’s calm, cool, calm here. Once this building of the Center for Restorative Therapy (CVT) for soldiers-internationalists was a sanatorium for the Soviet elite. Members of the Central Committee of the CPSU and other “coups” rested here. The interiors of the interior are still kept from those years, but the “stuffing” has changed.
“Here we have combat veterans, widows and mothers,” CEO Sergei Ivleev tells me. – For 37 years, our specialists have gained extensive experience in rehabilitation after military professional stress and various combat injuries.
Elena Romanenko hands over the museum exhibits to the director of the “Rus” sanatorium Sergey Ivleev.
Photo: Dina KARPITSKAYA
– You can come here with the whole family and it’s great. In other words, a veteran of a special operation or a disabled person is no longer alone in a hospital ward, but with his wife, with children, if he wants. – adds the head of the volunteer group “Moscow-Donbass” Elena Romanenko. – This may be somewhere else in Russia, but I have not heard of this.
Elena Mikhailovna has long been a Muscovite, but she was born and lived most of her life in the Donbass. Since 2014, she has been helping the region engulfed in flames. For nine years she sent one and a half million kilograms of humanitarian aid to her homeland. Of these, half a million only during the special operation. But not only the cargo is handled by her volunteers, but also by people. In the last month alone, several wounded soldiers, wards of Elena Romanenko, have been rehabilitated at the Likhodey Central Exhibition Center.
– Yes, the republics have already become part of Russia, people have received passports. But not everyone has a CHI policy. Also, not all of mine are members of the NWO directly. Yes, and there was no Russian army in the Donbass before the start of the special operation. And there were local guys from Donetsk and Luhansk who became militias. And they, the wounded, need rehabilitation! And how! Here in “Rus” our disabled people are accepted absolutely free. For which a deep bow to the entire team of specialists working here and personally to General Director Ivleev.
– And who are your people from Donbass? Tell me.
– Vitya from Khartsyzsk, call sign “Volchek”. In the battle, he lost his right arm and right leg. Musa – callsign “Falcon”, a volunteer from Makhachkala. After a combat wound, he paralyzed his legs. Andrey Kovalev from Konstantinovka, call sign Zheka. He went on a combat mission and lost his leg. Together with him, his wife Vladislava also came to rehabilitation. She was a passenger in a minibus that was blown up by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the very center of Donetsk in the summer of 2022 and received serious injuries.
DPR army soldier Andrey Kovalev.
Photo: Dina KARPITSKAYA
“MOSKAL YO IS NOT A COUNTRY”
The Kovalev family in full force: the father of the family, his wife Vladislava and two children were having lunch together when I found them. Barely caught between procedures: acupuncture, swimming pool, rehab PE.
– The fact that the water from the tap flows is already a fairy tale for us, – Andrey smiles. – And here it is both cold and hot. And the pool! And the atmosphere is not hospitable at all. And in general … Dust particles escape us here on “Rus” …
– Donetsk guys do not know what hot water is. The cold is already a party. There is a full bathroom in the room. And there you can swim with toys… Can you imagine? I went into his room. Before going to bed, the children splash in the bathtub and sing at the top of their lungs: “Donbass is behind us, and God is with us,” says Romanenko.
Elena Romanenko hands over the museum exhibits to the director of the “Rus” sanatorium Sergei Ivleev.
Photo: Dina KARPITSKAYA
Andrei joined the militia in 2014. I signed up almost immediately after the Maidan, when the Slavyansk attack began. He says that he urgently served with the Westerners and even then, long before 2014, he heard “I hate you Russians.”
– I told them: “Hello guys, I am from Donetsk. Donetsk is Ukraine. But there was no point in trying, – says Andrey. – History textbooks in Ukraine began to be rewritten in the 2000s, apart from Bandera’s grandparents who hid in the USSR. Do you remember in “Brother-2” the phrase: “Moskal is not my compatriot”? So he didn’t suddenly fall out of the sky.
IT’S TERRIBLE HERE TO WORRY ABOUT YOUR PEOPLE THERE
Andrei can endlessly talk about the Donbass and everything that happened there. In addition, he lived everything, as they say, in his own skin. In June 2022, he lost his leg during fighting.
And then there is my wife. A simple woman, coming home in a minibus…
“I was still so happy then that I quickly ran my business, ran home,” Vladislava sighs. – And I didn’t get there. I remember an explosion, then someone drags me along the asphalt, my legs are covered in blood. And I thought, too bad jeans, I just bought some new ones.
– In Donetsk traumatology they were simply stunned. As soon as I was lying there, Vladislava dragged all the thermoses with food for me, but I also got there. And then I already dragged the food from her.
Vladislav managed to save his leg. And here at the TsVT they worked a lot with her, even her limp is almost gone. But Andrei has a stump instead of his right leg.
– At the request of Elena Mikhailovna Romanenko, the prosthesis was made for me free of charge in the prosthetic center in Kursk. For which many thanks to the creator of the center and director Roman Alekhin. And then the Moscow-Donbass group agreed at the Likhodei Central Exhibition Center on the rehabilitation of our entire family. Everything is free for us. We do not believe in such happiness! But soon home.
– Are you afraid to come back?
– It’s scary to worry about your people there.
Yury Pogorelov, specialist of the prosthetics workshop.
Photo: Dina KARPITSKAYA
“TWO MONTHS AGO I WOUNDED, AND I HAVE ALREADY GOT ON MY FEET”
A prosthetics workshop has been operating at the TsVT since Soviet times. It was here that the first in the USSR began to make prostheses using German technology. And since 1990, Yury Pogorelov has been prosthetics for the disabled.
“In total, over the years we have probably raised at least 3,000 people to their feet, no less,” he says.
– How much are you personally?
– YO? Well, somewhere around 600-700.
While we were talking to Yury, Vladislav Yefremov, a journalist and volunteer from Donbass with the call sign “Hussar”, was sitting in the prosthetics workshop, importantly, crossing his legs. One of them was amputated above his ankle. A fresh crimson scar was visible under the cast.
Journalist Vladislav Efremov with his wife Alina.
Photo: Dina KARPITSKAYA
– Ugledar, April this year. An antipersonnel mine, he explains.
Volunteer “Hussar” went immediately after the start of the NWO. Then there were three business trips, the last one ended with an injury.
– It was the second time he stepped on a mine. The first time the leg remained, and the second – here … But in the fall of 2022 I got married. All TV channels showed our wedding with Alina in Lugansk.
Alina, a small and smiling girl, was there. They are with Slava all the time next to each other, not leaving each other for a minute, like pigeons, cooing about something all the time.
– Yesterday I got up for the first time after being injured. And immediately he lifted his wife into his arms,” Vladislav laughs.
On his telegram channel, he announced a fee for a prosthesis (by the way, pleasure is not cheap – from 500,000 rubles). And here in “Rus”, where Vlad came just to relax, he got a new leg for free. For this, he says thanks to the leadership of the CVT and the project “Time of yours.”
– Nature here is so pure and virgin that I have grown a new leg. While plastic, – jokes Hussar.
And on his Telegram channel, he wrote: “In the basements of the secret Soviet laboratories, hidden under the floors of the Central Exhibition Center of Internationalist Warriors. Likhodeya’s arms, legs, hooks and measuring instruments are next to each other … One of the legs suddenly reached out to her favorite military microblogger.
Efremov promised to even publish a mini-film about this event. Subscribers are waiting. And Elena Romanenko, who never puts anything in the background, promised to donate part of her personal collection from the military Donbass to the CVT Museum and brought it immediately.
– I have many people who requested these relics. Even the Victory Museum on Poklonnaya Hill. Now I have decided to donate valuables from my native land dear to me here, to the museum of the MA Likhodey Central Exhibition Center. Because?! Yes, because here they will be seen by people who shed blood for the Donbass.
