Ilya Kiva during a demonstration near the Verkhovna Rada building, 2021. Photo: Irina Yakovleva/TASS
We were sitting in Donetsk, in a hotel, the restaurant was on the ground floor. According to the shape; waiting to leave. The SVO was already underway, but it started not long ago. Months ago.
The fighters say:
– Is that Kiva sitting there?
– It seems that he…
The Kazakh decided to joke and shout:
– Kiva!
The one we took to be Kiva immediately stood up from his seat and crossed the aisle to our table.
The Kazakh was sitting at that moment with an inscrutable face and pretending that not only had he not called anyone, but also that he did not understand Russian, so he could not carry on a conversation.
– How are you, Ilya? – I asked Kiva.
It seemed like it really was him.
He began to tell something mysteriously; The meaning was broadly like this:
– All this time I was following the Commander’s orders. The commander said: I worked. He worked in the rearguard. Now they have called me.
I tried to press him for some details, but he kept repeating the same thing:
– the commander ordered – I did it.
He hinted that he had the rank of a Russian officer.
I couldn’t determine if it was Kiva or not. Bald, athletic, he seems to be. Finally he answered. A stranger would not respond to the surname “Kiva” in Donetsk at the height of the war. But the Kazakh’s steppe eyes revealed a certain confusion.
“It’s okay, Ilya, stay healthy,” I said, and we said goodbye.
He headed to his table.
He didn’t recognize me either. I realized that I am from Russia and that I have the right to yell at him. His face looks familiar: that’s what he apparently thought of me.
The dialogue was funny: two people who don’t know each other, but pretend they do.
Before that, we only saw each other through the screen: I was one of Olya Skabeeva’s experts and Kiva went on the air from kyiv. It seems that we have not seen each other again; I visited kyiv often before 2014, but I don’t remember it.
Kiva of Kyiv…
Now they report that Ilya Kiva was shot dead. That he is dead.
It all happened in the village of Suponevo, Odintsovo district. I recently passed through this town. I didn’t know he lived there.
Ukrainian channels are already boasting that his murder was a special SBU operation. Very possible. They have their own lists, their own accounts. We are not always clear about it. So this will be the fourth successful terrorist attack on Russian territory since the creation of the Northern Military Region. Or the fifth.
But maybe this is another story.
Reality has layers. Everything is mixed.
– Kiva! – they shouted this time. And they went from white light to another record. Everything happens quickly. It seems like a long time, but it’s just a snap of your fingers.
BIOGRAPHY OF ILYA KIVA
So Kiva.
He was a confidant of presidential candidate Yarosh in 2014.
He was one of the speakers of the “Right Sector”* (banned in the Russian Federation – Ed.) who spoke on the Maidan at a protest rally against the murder of the star of the Maidan revolution, Sashko Bily, who at one time He fought against the Russians in Chechnya.
He was the head of the Poltava center of the Right Sector* and the regional head of the Right Sector* in Eastern Ukraine.
He was an advisor to Arsen Avakov.
He fought in the so-called ATO zone to have his criminal record expunged. He had awards.
Ilya Kiva at a meeting of the Ukrainian Parliament. Sergei Plachkov/TASS
One of the creators of “Peacemaker.”
In May 2015, he called for shooting buses traveling from kyiv to Donetsk and vice versa: “If it were my will, I would shoot these travelers in the DPR, lovers of referendums and parades of Ukrainian prisoners of war. Only a tough stance from society will sober up Donbass.”
On August 25, 2017, on the air of TV channel 112, he said: “We will simply erase all lovers of the Russian world from the face of the Ukrainian earth. And I tell you this for sure, and it will happen. Because it was necessary to destroy, cut and not be afraid, and not drool! That’s why I now think that all those who quietly sing the Russian anthem in the morning, or use rags as red ribbons in their kitchen, all of them need to be buried underground. “Our country needs the death penalty and the ruthless destruction of the enemy and traitors.”
Then, of course, he said many other things. About Russia, Stalin, Putin. In more than admiring tones. And she started doing it from kyiv. Several years before the start of the SVO.
The second part of his biography was believed to be a production of “Ukrainian political theater.”
But then, as you remember, Kiva was naturalized quite calmly in Russia.
And before that, I met him suddenly in Donetsk.
Although then I still didn’t understand: him or him.
Kiva in the Channel One studio in Moscow. Video frame
WHO IS ILYA KIVA?
A letter arrived today.
“I read your post about Kiva. Kiva was “one of us.” He worked, among other things, on military issues. I met him by chance at a meeting. I arrived and there was Kiva. I was introduced as Zakhar Prilepin’s man. Kiva smiled and said, “And we saw Zakhar.”
He spoke absolutely pure Russian, without the slightest hint of an accent. His real name was different.”
EPILOGUE
It turns out that he was the one in Donetsk after all. And he recognized me.
What follows is a completely complete picture, right?
We look at a person in one way, and either he was recruited a long time ago or from the beginning he was not what we thought.
Then you will die and you will not know anything about it. You will think badly of a person, but in reality he belongs to the same structure as you, only his length of service cannot be compared and his rank is higher.
Well, or vice versa: you die and discover something that, if you were alive, you would turn gray at the news.
*The “Right Sector” is an extremist organization banned in Russia.
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