Ukraine

Christopher Allen

Pisky, Ukraine

The soldiers sing in somber tones as they drive through the grey night.  Beneath a full moon, dull and yellow behind the clouds, the five men speed eastward along straight highways, across the flat Ukrainian countryside towards the Donbas region, the front line in this ongoing war.  They are from Right Sector, one of the pro-Ukrainian militia groups fighting against separatist and Russian forces.  The driver with the nom de guerre Nightengale (for his singing voice) sings along with a CD that plays on repeat – songs of killing separatists, of lost love.  Panaz, the group’s commander, sits in the passenger seat next to him.  They sing together.  Soon, this small reconnaissance group will fight together behind enemy lines near Shaktersk, between Donetsk and Luhansk.  Two members won’t make the journey back to Kyiv; the others will flee 50 kilometers on foot back to the Ukrainian lines.  But now, together, they sing and drink whiskey and smoke.  “We are patriots,” Denya says. 

We drive first to the Right Sector base located in an old Soviet summer camp built for the sons and daughters of miners in the Donbas region.  It has been re-purposed for the war effort now but youth hasn’t been completely eradicated from this place – one wall is covered with colorful drawings sent by children to the soldiers, a collage of bright images of soldiers fighting, of tanks, of guns, of flowers, of Ukrainian flags.  Soldiers sleep in the camp’s dormitories, their silhouettes cover the floor and stage of the old auditorium.  I join them.  Early the next morning, we depart for the front line.

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In August I had embedded with Donbas Battalion, one of the primary pro-Ukrainian militia groups.  I returned to eastern Ukraine in November to see how the war had evolved.  I also wanted to spend time with another pro-Ukrainian battalion on the front line in order to explore the multi-dimensional nature of this ad hoc Ukrainian military effort.  Most media has failed to explain the complexity of the war and articulate the variety of perspectives within the fragmented pro-Ukrainian military effort.  On the front line, the war is anything but two-sided.  It is both a civil and an international conflict.  The war cannot be reduced to ‘Russia versus the West,’ nor ‘Ukraine versus Separatists.’  Instead, it is a complex amalgamation of government military units, militia groups and ad-hoc battalions fighting for various (and often competing) agendas. I wanted to explore the perspectives of one of these militia groups, and so chose ‘Right Sector,’ a group that has been largely overlooked in the western media but also one that has been playing an important role in Ukraine.

After the major defeat of pro-Ukrainian forces by separatists and Russians in Ilovaysk in late August, the nature of the conflict had changed.  Donbas Battalion had suffered casualties of “50 percent or maybe even more,” one of their officers claimed, “In some other groups it’s about this… some much worse.”  The relationship pro-Ukrainian militia groups have with the government in Kyiv and the Ukrainian army has been problematic, but became particularly strained after the groups were forced to retreat from the town.  Russian and separatist troops had violated the ‘humanitarian corridor’ agreed upon by authorities in Kyiv and Moscow, and pro-Ukrainian militia groups suffered massive casualties during their fight to escape.  Officers and soldiers accused the Ukrainian government of active betrayal and gross mismanagement.  “It’s obvious we were betrayed,” one officer said, “there were traitors in the Ukrainian government, it is obvious there are those who collaborated with the Russian government.”

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Late autumn has taken away the bright colors of summer and left the fields pallid and dull.  Wan light is diffused by grey clouds, which lie heavily over broken homes.  Artillery fire echoes over barren fields and ruined buildings draped in fog.  Smoke rises from the corner of the horizon as birds flee the sounds of war: the crack of small arms fire, the pop pop pop of machine guns, the heavy blasts of artillery traded by both sides.  The small building converted to a forward operating base by Right Sector soldiers shakes, reverberating from the outgoing artillery fire.  Barse, the tall, lean officer in charge here, climbs through the damaged brick building adjacent to the artillery, light filtering through the roof perforated by separatist shelling, and shows us the Maxim machine gun from the Second World War.  His soldiers are still using it to defend this place.  Men step around discarded ammunition boxes and over the trenches of the artillery position moving shells, loading the gun, readying the artillery for the night.  A soldier uses Google Maps on his iPhone to coordinate the shelling of separatists dug in at a nearby church.

Together with the Ukrainian Army, Right Sector has occupied Pisky, a strategically important village protruding into separatist territory just a few kilometers from the center of Donetsk.  Facing separatists on three sides, the pro-Ukrainian forces are in a perpetual struggle to maintain their strategic position.  “If you come with peace, welcome,” a commander on the front line declares, “but if you come with war, we’re gonna screw you.”

The nature of combat has changed since the summer.  Now, “it’s position war,” one young soldier says, and troops hold lightly fortified positions along clearly drawn lines, trade fire with separatists, and send small reconnaissance and attack units behind enemy lines.  The lines are not as fluid as they had been in August – cities and towns are no longer traded so quickly.   But the soldiers in Pisky have already been surrounded and cut off from the Ukrainian rear-guard multiple times and fought to re-establish supply lines and transport links between this section of the front line and the Western part of the country.  The position is an important one and the soldiers and officers are conscious of their vulnerability here.  They talk of being surrounded.  Attacks by separatist forces are routine and incoming shell fire is common – its absence seems to provoke more insecurity than its presence.  “Good morning Vietnam?” one soldier exclaims, echoing Robin Williams’ famous refrain during a lull in the shelling, “No, good morning Pisky!”

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Like many other pro-Ukrainian militia groups fighting in the east of the country, Right Sector is made up of a wide cross-section of the population, “We are not professional [soldiers],” says Student, a 20 year old university student fighting with the group.  “You would never think this programmer, student, or office worker could be good storm troopers or rangers,” but “it’s an amazing thing, people united” and together in their fight for Ukraine these men have become a tightly knit bloc of soldiers.  “Everyone who fights with us, he becomes like a brother,” says Circo, a commander in Pisky, “Anyone can fight with us for freedom.  If you fight for freedom, that’s enough.  Live free or die.”  “This is our surrender,” says Rosland, a Ukrainian national who had previously lived in England and Ireland, holding up a grenade.

Although Right Sector has a military arm, its aims are also political.  Its leader, Dymtro Yarosh, has a seat in the Ukrainian parliament, as does one of its spokesmen, Boryslav Bereza.  But popular revolution and the defense of the nation are foremost in the minds of the soldiers here.  The implications of this agenda are two-fold: the territorial defense of Ukraine and a change in political leadership in order to make politics more representative and rid the state of the corrupt political elite.  Most of the soldiers on the front are nationalists who want to fight not only the separatist insurrection and Russian invasion, but also the entrenched political establishment in Ukraine.  We’re fighting not for Ukraine now, but for Ukraine in the future,” Philosopher, a 26 year old philosophy Ph.D. student now working as a spokesman for Right Sector, declares.  “But first we have to kick out the Russian aggressors and then we can change the country.”  

As they fight Russian and separatist forces in eastern Ukraine, the soldiers continue to think ahead to the future, “All people die, but he died a hero,” Student says, describing one of the Right Sector soldiers who had fought at the Donetsk Airport, but “I don’t want to be a dead hero, I don’t want our guys to be dead heroes, our commanders don’t want their guys to be dead heroes.  Because we will go back to change the country…”

Though the group played an important role in the events on the Maidan - eventually leading to the removal of Yanukovych from power - most here believe that the revolution is incomplete.  “Even though Maidan removed Yanukovych, it didn’t destroy this internal regime,” argues Philosopher, “The problem with our politicians is that they live for one day, but the Ukrainian oligarchy should work for the Ukrainian people.”  Rather than simply attaching Ukraine to the E.U. and NATO, the agenda here is radically nationalist.  The men of Right Sector think primarily of reforming Ukraine, reinforcing its sovereignty, re-establishing its pre-war borders, eliminating corruption, and having a more representative political establishment.

According to the soldiers here, the Ukrainian government gives little support to the militia group.  “Government don’t help Right Sector… The Government don’t give us nothing,” says Student, “but the people help.”  Just as inadequate as the group’s access is to weapons - and its resulting reliance on donations of bulletproof vests, helmets, and thermal vision devices from Ukrainian citizens and the diaspora community - is the inadequate military support the group receives from the Ukrainian army.  As the men from Right Sector wait to be attacked at one of the most exposed positions on the front line, one soldier says, “The people that are fighting don’t understand the ceasefire at all… Sometimes we ask the army to fend off some attack with artillery, but they say they can’t because Poroshenko ordered a ceasefire,” leaving the soldiers here vulnerable. 

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Dusk comes early, even at the beginning of November.  As the light fades, the soldiers here settle into the rhythm of the evening.  They move quickly, shuttling materials and supplies, carrying wood for the stoves, and heading towards their defensive positions throughout the suburban village.  The comfort of the day has been replaced by the expectancy of being attacked and the obligation to protect this post.  “Russia will be in Kyiv tomorrow if we leave these positions,” Barse says, “If we leave these front line zones, it just means that the army will retreat.”

The moon rises, sickly and sallow, in a sky bright with stars.  The walls shake, the chandelier quivers, and the floors reverberate.  The shells go back and forth above us, fall around us.  Men come and go hastily, radios crackle, information is received, orders given.  A few hundred meters away separatist shelling hits an ammunition cache.  It burns bright orange in this black night; shells explode as fire lights up the night sky. 

The soldiers’ quarters here used to be civilian homes.  But now the windows of these houses are sandbagged or boarded up or covered with heavy carpets to prevent light from revealing their position and shards of glass coming in.  Many are already broken though, and shrapnel has peppered the brick walls.  On one bedroom door a young soldier had written a message to his compatriots: Quiet Time.  Do Not Enter.  Here lives a kind ghost and his friends.  The ghost likes to sleep and shoot.  Its young author is dead now.

But there are still echoes of civilian life in this suburb of Donetsk: in the half-built house of a local judge, crystal chandeliers still hang from the ceiling, gilt-covered chairs surround an empty dining room table, cartoon racing cars cover the walls of a child’s room.  But the mattresses have been dragged to the basement by soldiers seeking refuge from shelling

Nearby, in the small home in which I am staying for the night, traces of civilian life are also present: the worn sofas, the landscape painting hanging in the sitting room, the plates and bowls from which the men eat, the books that sit on the crowded bookcase.  But now Kalashnikovs lie on the sofa next to men wearing bullet proof vests who sit and talk anxiously during the night’s heavy shelling. 

The majority of homes in Pisky have been abandoned, but some civilians still remain despite most of the buildings having been either destroyed by separatist shelling or appropriated by pro-Ukrainian forces.  In front of one house a rusting green gate is marked with the words “People still live here.”

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The next evening separatists and pro-Ukrainian forces trade fire in a syncopated choreography of light and noise.  “Separatist soldiers come in the evening because they are harder to spot,” Tatushka says as the sun slips beneath the horizon.  He has a soft round face free of facial hair but carries himself with a commanding energy.  The building shakes from artillery fire and the heavy crashes of exploding shells.

At the forward operating base called ‘Tourist’ - a half-finished and now half-destroyed grey brick building - Tatushka, Monk and Dolphin, amongst others, are on guard.  Monk is 41, his dark eyes gaze strongly from beneath heavy brows.  He has a young daughter at home in Mariupol and has only recently told her that he’s fighting for Right Sector.  Before, he had hidden this part of his life from her out of concern but now, he says, she is proud of him. Coming to the front is like joining a monastery, he says – you come, you live for an idea, there’s brotherhood here.  Dolphin had served with the Soviet army in the Baltic.  His old Russian brigade is in Crimea now.  “I’m protecting my land,” he says.  “If it wasn’t for the Right Sector, Pisky and the Donetsk airport would have been lost long ago.”

In a small corner of the rectangular building, which faces separatist lines, the soldiers have assembled a small living quarters and installed an automatic grenade launcher and Soviet-era machine guns, one of which has been repurposed from an old Russian BTR.  Behind a thick curtain draped over the doorway sits is a small wood burning stove, two improvised beds, and a table made from discarded ammunition crates.  Canned food and cigarettes are stacked on a shelf by the wall.

Tourist is attacked by separatists on an almost nightly basis.  The evening before, incoming shells had hit the trees a few meters away from the front entrance, leaving them broken and splintered.  But this site is not only targeted by artillery: the soldiers here are often attacked by small teams of separatists who are able to sneak up to the building through the long grass, bushes, and broken trees near the bank of the small lake nearby.  The position has ammunition enough for a week’s worth of incessant combat should the building get cut off from the main Ukrainian positions.  Monk tells me of a night recently during which, while Right Sector soldiers were fending off an attack from outside the base, they heard movement on the floor below.  Separatists had managed to sneak into the building before being noticed by the Right Sector soldiers who threw grenades down the steps, killing the men below.  The soldiers intentionally leave trash and debris throughout the building in order to hear the movements of enemies who might try to sneak up on them.  The situation is so dire that one of the soldiers has to continually look for enemy movement outside of the ad-hoc base, while another has an automatic rifle set up facing into the building in order to defend their small corner from potential intruders. 

Tatushka calls his girlfriend.  He lies by the stove, Kalashnikov next to him.  His usually heavy countenance breaks and he smiles easily in these moments when he can extricate himself from the war.  The radio crackles.  The men talk lightly now to friends and family while they wait to be attacked.  The soldiers shed some of their seriousness and for those on the other end of the line, the situation must lose some of its gravity.  There is little in their voices that reveals the heavy expectancy that permeates this place.  Danger and anticipation pervades the small room as the sound of shelling and machine gun fire finds its way through these broken walls and exposed corridors. 

We hear the whoosh and ricochet of incoming fire; bright red tracer bullets speed towards us in a confusing, twisting rush of energy.  Tatushka runs, shouts, throws the heavy machine gun up on the windowsill – they have spotted soldiers in the underbrush by the bank of the lake.  Dolphin leans over Tatushka’s shoulder, directing his fire through the thermal vision monocular.  Tatushka fires in rapid bursts – brass casings fly from the gun as it pounds heavily, rhythmically.  The sound echoes throughout the drafty brick room, the heavy smell of gunpowder fills our lungs.  Artillery flies over our position.  Then there is a call over the radio: sniper.  One of the soldiers picks up the machine gun again and starts firing at the designated position. 

Meanwhile tracer bullets drop gracefully through the night sky a few hundred meters away.  The two sides continue to trade fire: the chorus of war.

Eventually the night turns quiet.  There is only the occasional flash of artillery, the solitary single crack of a rifle or a short burst of machine gun fire.  As the noise of combat dissipates it is replaced by expectancy.  George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone” plays over a cell phone speaker: I broke a thousand hearts before I met you / I’ll break a thousand more, baby before I’m through.  Between cigarettes and changes of guard, we drift in and out of sleep around the stove.

The men watch for separatists through the thermal vision device, but now only dogs move through the brush.  “The diaspora sent these thermal vision devices,” crucial for the war effort, Tatushka had said earlier.  But there is no money to pay for thermal vision scopes for the guns and American law prevents the export of lethal aid, so gunners here are forced to coordinate their fire with a spotter.  The separatists have drones, Tatushka says, but as for Right Sector, “we don’t have a drone because to operate one you have to learn and they cost a lot and break easily.  But there are people who have been doing it as a hobby so they launch their drones and film the vicinity and show us the footage.” 

Because Right Sector is not directly affiliated with the Ukrainian government, weapons and ammunition are in short supply.  In Right Sector’s training camp, the group has access to so few guns that much of the weapons training happens ad hoc on the front line.  Though Tourist is regularly attacked (and we were expecting to be attacked that night) Tatushka must teach his compatriots how to load and operate the automatic grenade launcher.  “Not everybody even has a rifle here in the Battalion,” Tatushka says.  But Right Sector is able to exchange gifts donated by the Ukrainian diaspora and Ukrainian nationals to local army soldiers in Pisky for ammunition and materials.  “There was a time when Right Sector didn’t have enough weapons and people were just given a grenade,” Dolphin says, “so I was running after these separatists with just a grenade to try to get their weapons.”

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In the morning the sky is blue and pink over separatist lines.  Dogs bark.  Roosters crow.  Artillery fires in concert with bursts from machine guns.  The house, called ‘Pool’ by the soldiers for the billiard table in the drawing room, is now used as a defensive position; the living room across the hallway, its window now converted to a sandbagged gun placement, faces the separatist front.  We have spent the night here: the men took turns on guard, sitting and sleeping by the fireplace, fixed the heavy machine gun, calibrated their fire, watched the dead fields in front of them.  Beneath the picture hanging over the fireplace in the living room soldiers have scrawled the schedule of guard shifts onto the wall.  From the kitchen window we look back towards Ukrainian lines and the village of Pisky with its long dirt streets and straight rows of houses now damaged by shelling.  How different this scene must have looked only a few months ago.  The kitchen would have had the odor of freshly cooked food – maybe borscht or varenyky or holubtsi – but now shelling has torn the room apart.  The fences, gardens, and homes behind us would be tidy and neat but at present they are a mess of splintered wood, torn ground, battered walls, and destroyed buildings.  But some things remain the same: the sense of community (albeit a different one now), the crows of the roosters early in the morning, the frost covered fields, nights around the fireplace in the living room with friends. 

The day before steam had filled the small sauna next to a destroyed house.  Shelling and machine gun fire echoed in the background, but there, together with Student and two other soldiers, we sat in what was almost a peaceful sanctuary.  “I’m relaxing,” Student told me, “I don’t care if the Russians come with tanks.”  But the threat of attack was real and even during this momentary respite the sounds of war permeated the thin walls as the fighting continued only a few hundred meters away.    

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We prepare ourselves in a small room lit by an incandescent light bulb and the cool glow from an old television showing the local DNR TV channel.  The commander crosses himself as he sends me on my way.  We move in a column, me and a few soldiers from Right Sector headed for ‘Sky’ and ‘Ground,’ two positions on the very front line of the conflict.  Sky is based in an abandoned tower originally used as part of a mining operation; now it’s used as a high point from which snipers, machine gunners, guards, and artillery spotters work.  Beneath it is Ground, a network of trenches, bunkers, and gun placements at its base.  The two positions sit across from separatist lines on the edge of Pisky, past ruined homes and amidst dead fields, brown and dull green, pockmarked with black holes left by separatist shelling.  The exposure of Sky, a beacon amongst the low homes behind us and amidst these open fields around us, is a liability and an asset.  From this high point the soldiers have a clear view of separatist positions.  Their artillery sits on the other side of the field, just beyond the tree line, one of the men claims, and separatist snipers, gunners, and artillery routinely fire on this exposed high point and the position below it, targeting the men serving as the first line of Ukrainian defense.

We walk through the quiet, the darkness so complete now that only the men's silhouettes are visible in the light of the waning moon.  We go single file, leaving gaps between us in order to ensure that should we be attacked we won’t all be killed by a single separatist grenade or artillery strike.  Down the dirt road potholed by shelling, quick past the carcasses of quiet tanks dug in by damaged homes, and then delicately across uneven ground and under the branches of broken trees towards the long straight street that runs from Ukrainian to separatist territory. Only 800 meters to the south-east in the direction of central Donetsk the separatists have their first block post.  Our small column pauses in the knee high grass by the road before the two lead men run halfway across and kneel, guns up, just shadows in the moonlight, providing cover for the rest of the group.  One by one, we sprint across the road and then through the long grass and duck through the hole in the concrete wall on the other side.  Here, by an old power station, we pause to regroup, catch our breath, thank God. 

A shot cuts through the quiet.  The bullet hits the tarmac by our feet. We jump, look around, realize that it was just an accidental shot from one of the Right Sector soldiers heading to Ground, and we grin uncomfortably.  Now, at the base of the old mining tower, the men embrace and then separate – a group of soldiers head to Ground, while I follow the others to Sky.

We ascend the rusting staircase towards the top of Sky.  Separatist snipers often fire at this exposed position and we are vulnerable as we climb the stairs, aided by thermal and night vision scopes.  Nighttime is more dangerous than the day.  We run up the metal stairs that spiral around the outside of the old iron tower.  We pause to catch our breath on the side facing the Ukrainian lines then sprint one by one around the corner and up the exposed sets of stairs hoping not to hear that single crack, hoping the man in front or behind doesn’t get hit.  Hoping I don’t get hit.  Pause again.  Hope.  And sprint again.  We ascend the 300 feet to our position at the top, crawl beneath the tarp used as a blind, and out of breath, we smoke cigarettes as Angel, one of the two Right Sector soldiers on guard at Sky, makes coffee.

But even here we aren't safe from attack.  Gagarin, a wiry young man who moves easily under the low rusting roof of the structure, points out the large bullet from a separatist sniper which had torn through layers of metal before embedding itself in a heavy iron I-beam. It will pierce the front plate of a bulletproof vest, tear through your body, out the back plate and into the guy standing behind you, he tells me.  Angel and Gagarin both have stories of having avoided death by mere inches at Sky.  Indeed, it seems a little closer to heaven up here…

The sky is black, lit only by a dull white moon and the orange stain of light shining meekly from Donetsk.  Tracer bullets bounce off the field below as one of the soldiers fires round after round from Sky.  He pauses, waiting for the direction of his partner manning the thermal vision scope next to him, then fires again.  And again.  Tracers draw red lines in the blackness as the flare from the gun barrel lights up dark faces and casts a glare across the rusting iron framework of this place.  Brass casings fly hot from the machine gun as the heavy banging reverberates throughout the tower and out across the fields.  The soldiers pause.  Sometimes there is the deep boom of artillery.  Rifles and machine guns fire intermittently and flash bright white in the darkness below, beating a syncopated staccato rhythm that tears the night apart.  On the edge of Pisky a Ukrainian position still burns from separatist artillery fire earlier that afternoon, a barrage that left one dead and three injured.  The night turns quiet, almost peaceful.  Over broken homes and burning fields, above these soldiers on guard, a brightly lit red sky-lantern drifts upwards from Pisky into the dark – an homage to the Ukrainian dead.

cjkallen@outlook.com