Bondo Dorovskikh - Confessions of a fighter. Revelations of a Volunteer

The Ossetians came over to me.

“Bondo, are you really going with Mosgovoy?”

“Yes.”

“Watch out, they say he doesn’t care about people, he sends them off under fire.”

“No worries, bro, if anything like that happens I’ll retreat.”

We arrived in Donetsk in Rostov Province, which borders onto the territory of Ukraine, and spent about an hour there. People in passing cars stuck their heads out, looking at us with interest – we were almost all dressed in camouflage cloaks. The recruits arrived in a minibus painted a spotty green color. The senior man was called “Mechanic”. It was his job to take volunteers across the border, and also humanitarian goods, which were addressed to the Phantom battalion.

I was still wondering, “Where the hell am I going?” But my legs carried me of their own accord, not allowing the head to think…

We crossed the border in a field, went on for a hundred meters so that the minibus would not get stuck, and found ourselves in Belenkoye village, Krasnodon district of Lugansk Province, a thousand meters from the Russian border.

The recruits were housed in the local club. There were about thirty of us.

We unloaded, and the first thing we saw was a fight between two of the militiamen, heroes of the defense of Slavyansk. A week later, one of these two stole a Makarov pistol from a retired GRU captain 7 7 The GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate) is a special service for external intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, the central control body for military intelligence on the Russian Federation Armed Forces. . The retired GRU group consisted of three men, and was going to Russia. They did not conceal who they were, although they did not draw attention to themselves. One of them was from Moscow, one from Nizhni Novgorod and I don’t recall where the third one was from. But I remember the senior of the group. It was obvious he was an officer. Five foot nine, well built, commanding voice and military bearing. He had fought in the First Chechen War and stormed Grozny. He knew how to handle guns and knives, and had basic medical knowledge, including about what kinds of wound there might be and what medicines to use. He was 100% prepared: a real professional. I didn’t meet many of those in the Donbass.

From a few snatches of conversation over ten days, I’d formed a picture of these officers, although they didn’t tell us everything. They had already been in Ukraine three months. They went in armed only with knives. Two attempts were unsuccessful because they encountered large numbers of the enemy. As one of them said: “You would never have known about us if we hadn’t lost contact with Russia, They thought we’d already been killed, so we didn’t get any help.” After a month wandering about, they came to the militia and attached themselves to the humanitarian column.

There had been four in the group at first, but their commander was shot by the militia. They were taking his body to be buried in Russia – or to be precise, the body was somewhere else and they were waiting at the border to escort it.

“Why did they kill your commander?” I asked.

“For no reason at all”, one of them replied. “They just shot him, that was it.”

It seemed out of place to inquire any further.

Two hours later, a column from Alcheyevsk 8 8 Alchevsk: A town of provincial status in Lugansk Province of Ukraine, de facto from 2014, a city of republican status in the Lugansk People’s Republic. joined us. They all looked really impressive. Some wore bulletproof vests, anti-shrapnel goggles and Kevlar helmets. Nikolayich, the deputy commander of the battalion, got out of his Land Cruiser with a pistol in his hand.

“Why haven’t the two fuel tankers gone where they should?” he shouted.

“We had no such orders, we were only told to wait here”, replied one of the drivers.

“I could have you shot on the spot! The tanks are stuck, they can’t move! Where’s the other driver?”

“I don’t know”, replied the bewildered man.

“Arrest both of them! Take them to battalion headquarters”, ordered Nikolayich.

One of the guys I had just arrived with came up to me.

“Something here sets my heart pounding, though I fought in Chechnya”, he said.

Another one came up and agreed.

“Yes, it’s no joke any more.”

I was also concerned. Up to now, I’d had no idea that you could simply be killed by your own side here. We had rapidly found ourselves in a different reality, and I started looking towards the Russian border.

It was already dark, and this column was supposed to take us to Alcheyevsk, where the Phantom battalion was deployed. Some of those we had arrived with were tank troops, and this was where they were formed into tank crews (engineer-drivers, gunners, gunlayers and tank commanders)

Fougasse, who had come with me from Rostov, suggested:

Stay behind, Bondo, we’ll teach you to be a gunner or gunlayer, you’ll be a tank man then!»

I was in an apprehensive mood, and I didn’t want to travel any farther, not that day anyway, so I decided to stay where I was. When the column had gone, we all sat at the table with the commander. They started interrogating us, asking who had served where, what specialty and so on. I hadn’t served anywhere, but my comrades said that I was a hunter and could shoot a squirrel in the eye from three hundred meters. The commander gave me the callsign “Hunter”. and promised: “When we get back from Rostov, you’ll be our sniper.” I had no objection, in fact that was the very position I had been hoping for.

After we’d been allocated to crews, we decided to have a bite to eat. Although we’d been offered food as soon as we arrived, somehow we felt it would have choked us. We took what we had from our bags, ate something, and I went out to the street. It was night time, quiet, there were bats about. The only light came from the open door. I was calm. “Fucking hell!” I thought.

About one in the morning, Fougasse called me.

“The column, Bondo! Look, our guys have arrived.”

About a hundred meters away, a column of military vehicles was moving along the road: Grads 9 9 9K51 “Grad”: The 9K51 is a Soviet multiple 122mm rocket launcher. It is intended to hit personnel in the open or under cover, non-armored equipment and APCs (see next note) deployed in concentrations, artillery and grenade launcher batteries, command posts and other targets, and for other tasks in a variety of combat situations. , APCs 10 10 APC: armored personnel carrier. An armored combat vehicle, a troop transporter, intended to transport personnel (riflemen), motorized units, infantry, motorised infantry, airborne and other units and materiel to required positions for combat missions and to evacuated wounded and injured from the combat zone. and loaded tank transporters were proceeding from the Russian border towards Krasnodon 11 11 Krasnodon: a provincial status city in Lugansk Province of Ukraine. Since April 7 th 2014 it has been under the control of the Lugansk People’s Republic. .

“Here they are at long last”, said one of the militiamen.

We would see this picture every night right up to our August advance.

We were staying in the club building, sleeping on the floor. We just threw the mattresses down and slept as we were, in our clothes. With the exception of the new arrivals, everyone had combat experience – they were almost all locals, from the Donbass. They were all about the same age, from forty to sixty-five. Their faces were coarse, not always pleasant, not like those we were used to seeing in peacetime.