Translated material
Interbrida-2015
The war in the Donbass gathered a variety of people on this tormented land.
On the side of both separatists and Ukrainian battalions, people from different countries are fighting: the Communists - for the pro -Russian Donbass, the right - for Kyiv. The New Times correspondent met with the Spanish Communists who fight in the Donetsk Battalion of Vostok: they believe that they are fighting with rotten Europe and repay the USSR debt, which in the 30s of the last century sent volunteers to combat dictatorship Franco 
Yo No Tengo Futuro “Call me Toro,” says a tightened Spaniard with big black eyes and courteous manners, sitting on the ground floor of a motel. “You see, there are Russians here, there are Ukrainians, both from the east and from the west, but we are all volunteers, we are not here for rubles, not for money at all, we are here for the idea, for the conviction that it is in the east of Ukraine that we must repel the attack.” He is ready for everything. “I won’t leave here, as some have done, I will stand to the end: Yo No Tengo Futuro, Yo No Tengo Medo (“ I do not think about the future, I am not scared, ”says Toro. He is 59 years old, he knows English, German and Spanish, only with the Russian problem.
Explaining what he does in the Donbass, Toro emphasizes that he is primarily an anti -fascist. “Yes, when there was a Vietnamese war, I threw bottles with Molotov cocktail to American embassies in Germany and Spain, I always fought with imperialism, now Europe feels the political and economic expansion of America.” Toro lived in different countries, spent three years in Costa Rica: “I lived not on beautiful beaches, but in the mountains, among local Indians. Yes, it was, as we say, Peligroso, it is dangerous, but I know what it is to look in the face of death: over the years spent in the jungle, I have never bitten the snake, and I can sleep next to the cobras. "
In the fight against the rotten Europe “we are not fighting against Kiev: there, in the capital, only a puppet government, a doll, planted by Western politicians from America and Europe, to strangle Russia, drive it into strict borders.” If you ask Toro why he fights liberalism here in the east of Ukraine, and not in Spain, he replies: “In Spain, like everywhere in Europe, the left has few adherents and no unity: there are new communists, Marxist communists, communist-Leninists, they are not enough, they gnaw out with each other instead of unit against the right ones, as here.”
Toro was a worker, his last place of work was a guard in Mallorca. “Previously, the workers had rights, fought for every working hour, was there a struggle for the rights of workers, but now? Now in Spain they are working for food and housing. I lived well until liberalism took away all my rights from me: they cut off my salary from € 1400 to 630 and stopped covering expenses. Is this what can be called life? In my opinion, this is called survival. ”
Tortured by “rotten by Europe”, Toro followed the path of other foreigners who see in the Russian Federation “Outpost of the fight against imperialism and liberalism” - in the era of the general crisis of values and the market, when “Europe is ready to lie under anyone else, who Merkel will indicate.”
The sniper from Sweden Michael Skillt is fighting for the forces of the ATO ... *Donbass, February 2015 *Under the canopy of the tricolor, the number of fighters of the Vostok battalion is growing: “We must strive to unite with the army in Lugansk and local small formations, we have taken the Debaltsev ledge, but this liner cannot continue forever, all took a break to reorganize forces. In the Donbass, everyone wants to end this war as soon as possible, the next battle will be even more cruel than what happened before, and I am ready to stand to the end. And if I survive, then work on. ” Toro says that about a hundred mercenaries from the United States are fighting against Donbass: "It will be necessary to get their passports."
The chair in which Toro settled was an old car seat, followed by two bags of sand, so that it would not be seen what is happening inside, and to protect against a possible attack. “Well, yes, this is Russian uniform,” he says, demonstrating a military uniform with a patch with the Russian tricolor. “Yes, everything here is Russian: both the food that we eat, both medicines and building materials for a bombed house - everything from Russia, but Kyiv does not send anything, hoping to destroy everything and everything here.”
This American, who is fighting in the Vostok battalion for the separatists, the nickname "Hunter", Donbass, 2014
While we are saying, as if in confirmation of the Words of Toro, the Russian humanitarian convoy goes through the city: food in stores from Russia, medicines in pharmacies from Russia, even cigarettes in stalls - and those from Russia. Foreign drugs only at the points of the organization “Doctors without Borders”, whose specialists nurse the victims of Debaltseve and Uglegorsk.
“We are the Communists” of Novorossius trembled by their overseas defenders, and the Spaniards were only the first swallow: after them the Italians, French, Croats and Germans came, but volunteers from the Scandinavian countries are more likely to join the government forces. The young Spaniard adds: “Having arrived here, we are returning our historical duty: when the Spaniards fought with Franco, volunteers from around the world joined international brigades, and we are here because we are the Communists and want to defeat the Kyiv fascists.”
The remaining volunteers are much younger than Toro, they are 20-30 years old, and they represent ultral associations from European countries. The flags of Novorossia cut not only here, near the Russian-Ukrainian border: when 8 Spanish volunteers returning from Donetsk were detained by the Spanish police, people with flags decorated with symbols of DPR and a sickle and a hammer entered the Puerto del Sol Square in Madrid. During the Operation Dango in all regions of Spain, from Madrid to Asturia, people were arrested. They were arrested that, like Toro, they declared themselves anti -fascists - they were accused of violating the neutrality of Spain abroad. “I am ashamed of our government,” Toro admits.
This was the first operation in Europe, directed against volunteers who returned home from Donbass. Nothing of the kind happens in Italy, from where most of the fighters go for Kyiv, where the right ones almost took up the Azov battalion, where the 53-year-old Francesco Fontan, from the first days of fought on the Maidan and the wounded near Donetsk, thundered. Kara did not suffer a 46-year-old war veteran in Bosnia, Frenchman Gaston Besson, who is recruiting fighters to a foreign battalion of the Right Sector. They are part of the huge world fighting in Ukraine, they can be found in both warring camps, they are fighting for freedom. They are united only by the belief that in “sleepy, bureaucratic and decaying” Europe it is impossible to fight for its ideals.
Translation from English by Sergey Afonina Photo: Michela Yakkarino, Air Force, SO.UK, MSTISLAV Shernov/Reuters, Marco Djurica/Reuters