Portraits of men and women in the circumstances set by the war

Portraits of men and women in the circumstances set by the war

Photo by the author

I enter my number, put the bag, and here - a siren. The howl from the street is growing in a wave -like, low notes, you can’t confuse either with the ambulance, or with the police, or with the sound of the alarm on the parking lot under the window. Here would be a voice behind the scenes: “Citizens, air anxiety! Air anxiety! " - And a complete hit in the "Cinema and the Germans."

Doors clap on the floor. In people who have experienced shelling, the reaction is normal. This is me slowing down.

In Opherovtovo Artyomovsk, a system of emergency warning of the population was presented. A truce, of course, is in full swing. But it is better to be on the alert.

White robes

I met him at the end of January 2015, in the evening, on the steps of the reception of the central district hospital. The military doctor, retired colonel Igor Petrovich Ilkiv, went down in the lumen between operations to smoke and give orders. Patients and staff of the hospital of the neighboring town of Svetlodarsk were urgently evacuated to the Central District Hospital: Grad hit next to the building. The wounded from Debaltsev was previously carried to Svetlodarsk. Now the load was entirely on Artyomovsk.

Ilkiv muttered: "No photo!" - He confirmed that he was the commander and Dokhtur, and the medical company in the National Guard of Ukraine appeared recently, since the structure was not provided, it was necessary to break through "upstairs." Of course, in the company there are only volunteers, there - a swing into the darkness - a base, a hospital in the process of arrangement, where you can look for more interlocutors, but in general it is better for journalists not to hang out in such a time and in such an environment.

There are not enough cars, diesel fuel is not enough, medicines, hands, tools, dressing material, censorship vocabulary are not enough. Kyiv makes it clear that we must endure and hold on. At night, automatic queues are cracking in the city.

Before the so -called exit of the Ukrainian military from the Debaltsevsky “boiler” there was very little. Medrota managed to turn around. Ilkiv, who passed Afghan, Syria and other “hot spots”, for sure, unlike the General Staff, determined the time and place where it is necessary to be with the help. But the scale of the drama could not predict.

After the "boiler"

Oleg Voitsakhovsky. Photo by the author

- Zero three? - the radio is interested in the table. (The numbers are changed. - O.M.)

“Seven six,” sounds through cracking.

“Seven six, seven six, seven six,” they confirm on different voices.

Oleg listens and transfers me the next roll call of VOPs, platoon strongholds:

- "How are you?" - "Everything is fine".

At the signal, the “Alarm” should immediately leave the support group and the ambulance car. Behind the company, in order not to go into the details, dozens of wax in the “C” and “A” sectors, on the second and third line of defense are assigned. This is a lot. But the skills of paramedics have long acquired everything, regardless of the main specialty. Treating, burning, tamponing on the limbs. The shelling of positions, as a rule, occurs at night.

While the duty is calm. We drink tea, discuss the news. Oleg Voitskhovsky - deputy commander for working with personnel, an engineer from Lviv, a convinced nationalist, “twenty years in the public sector, veteran of street policy”, lieutenant. Sergey Ilchuk - Zapustotech, a military personnel, originally from the Vinnitsa region, is suitable for the collective image of the Ukrainian: wit, goodness, habits "all into the house." Alexander Lavrenko is an foreman, but actually a teacher of the Youth Sports School, worked as a school military commissar, still in the anamnesis, the position of the head of the educational part of the city prison. Therefore, Sasha knows better than others the situation in Artyomovsk and in the occupied territories. Voitskhovsky, Ilchuk and Lavrenko have been kept together from the first days.

Approximately in the same proportions, equal shares-the western part of Ukraine, the central part and the Donbass-the first medical company named after Nikolai Pirogov, the founder of military field surgery, also developed. No one specially selected footage with political subtext. Life itself arranged that one could not do without each other. Since spring, volunteer battalions, as well as doctors, serve in the system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as mobilized.

“Not in Artyomovsk, but in Bakhmut,” Oleg Voitskhovsky corrects. He is noticeably proud of the event and even finds Lviv's features in the architecture of Bakhmut: of course, he missed the year of separation.

He says: the deputies of the City Council have already voted for the return of the historical name. Moreover, they recently removed from the regulations, without a hint of protests by residents, monuments to Lenin and Bolshevik, comrade Artyom: only the pin stuck. True, Artyom crushed the cabin of the tractor in a granite fist, goodbye.

Inside, the company hospital, once the departmental clinic of railway workers, is simultaneously similar to the district house of culture during the exhibition of children's drawings, the museum of combat glory and a hotel for the military with an arms room and piles of body armor. There are no non -ferrous "armor", since Debaltsev, with blood spots ...

Those who are treating and those who are being treated live here. The hospital does not smell, pathos - even more so. The backdrop of the scene of the assembly hall was hung with flags: state, self -defense of the Maidan (many came to the National Guard directly from the revolutionary tents) and the standard of the Pirogov company. Nearby, on armchairs, subscesses are dried with natured shirts: batteries are best warmed in the hall.

At the entrance to the headquarters - a table with stacks of books, for the most part a school curriculum in literature. On the wall is the reproduction of Perov’s painting “The arrival of governess in the merchant house”. It symbolizes, based on the signatures, by the “Petrovich”, that is, Colonel Ilkiv, and the “nobility” of the casting company among candidates for nurses.

Nastya, a strong blond girl of about 18 years old, a third -year student of the medical school, which I intercepted to duty, was accepted without a competition. Nastya is from Debaltsev. In February, she helped to raise in her arms, without an elevator, to the operating, to the fourth floor, the wounded fighters. I made injections, put the droppers. Parents remained "under the separatists." The girl does not want to remember anything.

And Oleg would prefer to forget, both Sergey and Alexander. How KamAZs went, and drove, drove, drove ... Nobody still knows the exact number of dead and missing people.

-There is no strength, I crouched a little bit, the civilian doctor pushes: Faster! A guy on a stretcher, in a semi -conscious state. On the finger is a ring with a grenade, already the antennae is bent, if only not captured. I am: “Fear, so that I don’t pull my elbow ...” I carefully take off, turn, but there is no doctor.

- The last one who was pulled out is not releasing his boots. All in the blood, there is a tourniquet, there is a tourniquet, the anti -shock was injected. "Throw the Berets, new will give!" - “I can’t quit, there is my foot, let them sew,” - in a whisper.

- Here, on the floor, on sleeping bags, on blankets, exactly 234 people fit. They can’t sleep, sit, swing: “And where is he? And the one? Killed? Missing? " You walk between them and calm down. All shell -shocked, with barotraumas, this is when it hit an explosive wave. Then the “turntables” went, sat right on the stadium field, they took the heaviest to Kharkov. And buses too.

The first company and its own irrevocable losses suffered. If you apply statistics, then almost 10% of the personnel lost - four people. In the spring, God will give, everything will be without exacerbations at the “front line”, and Medrot is reformatted into a rehabilitation center. Such a plan “b” Colonel Ilkiva.

After Debaltsev, and especially after the sharp appeal of Voitskhovsky to President Poroshenko on the air of the Presidential Channel 5, they gave almost so many cars and the rest of the good as they asked. Volunteers added even more on top.

- We went to checkpoints - they drove medicines and products with bags!

Outside the window, a dull knock is suddenly heard and, it seems, a scream.

- Oh, the "loaf" with the avatars is guting. Again they drag us to us, and not in the commandant’s office ...

I look inquiringly.

- The costs of a truce. Now 90% of losses and injuries are non -fiber. Drink.

What they fought for

- There are nowhere to take other shots! - says Voitskhovsky. - None of us are a saint. In the best case, the struggle goes between professionalism and motivation.

For discharge, Ilchuk tells why the Gorlovka -Arrtemovsk highway, divided by checkpoints, was recently called the "expensive life". Copies a lady from Gorlovka, who loads a full trolley of products in the store and is interested in breathing out: “Bender has not yet been tortured? And in the DPR is good! Only scary. And terribly expensive ... all for rubles. "

“The relations of the parties are gradually moving into the cooling and crystallization phase,” Oleg states. - What are at least one argument who needs an offensive? Russian specialsur and regulators who were sent to control drunks, drug addicts and other antisocial elements that remained in the militia on earnings? Any hint of the wrong actions of Russia in Ukraine will lead to twisting of the nuts. Moscow said: you will twitch, only crush the sanctions more. Russia has not yet forgiven Debaltsevo. Therefore, I can present the armed sortie of drunken "quilted jackets" or saboteurs. And an organized, professional performance is not.

Sergey: We need to inform people better so that conspiracyology does not suffer. Special television channel open, where the president, Prime Minister, progressive deputies officially report: where we went, why went ...

Oleg: ... or why didn't you go. But there is a nuance. The potted the pot, the more to stink. For the first time in the history of the country, the president became a billionaire. What is the function of the oligarch? Make further money, not the state. I admit that gunpowder is the right, European businessman, because the IMF gives us loans. But the agitprop is failed. And the big question is whether the president will sit the deadline.

Sergey: They would have thrown off - the son -in -law of Kuchma, Akhmetov, Poroshenko, and gave the external debt of Ukraine, which we promise to write off. The rich in the world, at the expense of the state, is right? Well, give it when the war. And everything will go differently.

Oleg: wrong. Nothing will change so. If you pay debts, and leave the old rules in the country ... Corruption must be cut at the highest and middle level! At the lower level, the people themselves will trample. Corruption - how to pour sand to the engine. Pistons, liners, crankshafts do not slip, everything creaks, knocks, but there is no movement.

Sergey: Oh, for sure! The revolution of dignity passed. The young surgeon addresses the head physician of the Lviv hospital: "I want work in the specialty." They send him for coordination to the head of the regional department for medicine. And he draws on the sheet: "$ 5 thousand." - These are the documents, they say, are needed! And the surgeon leaves, because not to collect the amount. It’s good that I was not present personally ... (He pats the holster.) I would shoot and sat down.

Oleg: At the moment when the military threat to Ukraine will disappear, such people will have to urgently look for charters. I have been waiting for this for 20 years, I will suffer a little more. You can’t call with corruption to Europe.

Sergey: Do you think all this will be interesting to the Russian reader?

... We take the ambulance, to the second infectious diseases hospital, dinner for the National Guard. Trenches in the cold - continuous flu and bronchitis, one boy generally chickenpox. Lies in boxing, coated with green, and when he goes out to smoke, friends tease him with a “green man”.

At the wheel of Imran, the head of the guard guard, the driver and the orderly unit. Next to me, with pots in an embrace, Galya from the volunteer organization "Bakhmut Ukrainian". Imran is a Pakistani, in Ukraine for more than 20 years: wife, sons, business. He argues:

- Muslims have a manner: where you live, you consider that country a native. The country has trouble, it was attacked, it must be defended. It is not considered beautiful for us - not to help, to sleep at home. In my family, I am fighting, the brother of Zhinka is fighting, the cousin of Zhinka is fighting ... It seems to me that Europe is better. There is education, development. But if Europe will command Ukraine, Russia will be offended that it is lower.

And I will also tell the Russian reader about this.

I am warm in a cold dugout ...

Signing point of the author, photo of the author

In the morning, the authorities allowed to visit the “gray zone”, the area of ​​the village of Kurdyumovka, the platoon support point - I suspect, the most advanced.

The accompanying, anesthetist Stepan Osadchuk recharge the machine, we joke on the topic of universal painkillers. Alexander Lavrenko is also in uniform and with weapons. Kurdyumovka is a small homeland, he knows the way there as his five fingers.

We pass the plantings where the tops of the trees are cut off with fragments, and on the side of the road there are crosses from boards with the inscription: “mines”. We pass the two checkpoints on which the former Berkuts are on duty. They do not stop, on the contrary, welcome the sanitary machine. We turn to a primer closed for civilian transport. On a fresh, uncertain snowfield - black prints of tracts. It seems that in front of us a tank moved out of the bushes. Alexander conducts an excursion along the way:

- The pipe of the Donbass - Seversky Donets channel. It’s good that it was not possible to blow up. On the left - the remains of a pioneer camp. The Chechen militants were based, ours shot them from the plane. And that area is considered the most unpleasant because of snipers.

From Gorlovka, which is visible behind the terrikons, diversion-reconnaissance groups come. In the beams, and often in the settlements of the "gray zone", cache with weapons and explosives arrange. Subushniki, of course, try to conduct preventive conversations with a few natives, as well as searches and raids. But the "gray" villages, turning into ruins, are afraid to refuse their own and hate strangers.

The advanced GP looks bravo. The hemp, similar to the one on which Yanukovych jumped in the Mezhigorye, leads to an army tent. The “bourgeois” is burning, the telly and even the Internet works, on the racks - pasta and pickles, on the table - indicative tea mugs, two kitten and dog spin at the feet.

- But the bathhouse! - Show the closet with a towel. It is allowed to inspect the dugout-scrap, curtained for comfort with canopy of burlap. There are lying down in two tiers. The sheet "Daddy!" Funny little men with sticks run around the field.

I don’t know what to ask men from 20 and a small to 40 years - a student from Kharkov, a former farmer, the rest, whom I did not have time to meet. They are strictly prohibited to open fire. Leave the tablets from the cold, click our hands. I am rushing. It turns out, while it descended into the dugout, the village of Majorsk, which was nearby, they were fired from the side of Gorlovka with 82th caliber.

On the way back we meet an OSCE car with an escort. Their share is to deal with hopeless questions.

Alexander is silent and looks towards Kurdyumovka. It is impossible there, especially in camouflage - fellow countrymen will hand over Gorlovsky. He has not been on the grave of his parents for a year and a half.

Donetsk

Near the city of Druzhkovka I meet with Marina Ryazantseva, a native of Debaltseva, a family doctor of general practice, now the younger lieutenant of the National Guard, the senior resident of the hospital department of the medical company. She has a braid, impeccable Ukrainian language and a whole “bush” of sponsored wax in the surrounding fields, so the time for a conversation in a tip.

Marina remained in fact the only health worker during the “boiler” and even a few days after him.

- There were severe patients - diabetics, paralyzed old people. I was responsible for them. I did not go down in the bomb shelter. If possible, I washed on the "mainland" for medicines, bread and water. And I did not hide that I helped as a volunteer of the Ukrainian army.

Lonely grandmothers cried and tried to kiss their hand. Then Marina was warned: she is in the top positions of the resource "Tribunal" as an accomplice of the "punishers". Grandmothers correctly indicated: phone, home address ...

A similar story among the owners of the private dental office, Vladimir and Galina Goloveevs. A solid patient who treated their teeth from an imminent pore, attacked with fists, and not in a figurative - in the literal sense. Thus ended the dispute based on the referendum of the separatists.

- I could not stand it: you stole little with your party of regions?! We are Donetsk citizens of Ukraine, we pay taxes, we help the army, not the bandits in the balaclavas who rob jewelry! In general, Volodya was sent to Kyiv, she did not spend the night at home, hid in her neighbors - the small, especially against her husband, Galina honestly tries not to cry.

- In the office, the door was knocked out with butt. But the janitor, thanks to her, convinced her that the heads left forever. Then we said to each other: enough to be afraid! Probably, there are partisans? We must look for them. Something to do. And we mobilized in the first company. And the tankers from our part already knew that again you could contact for free help. They were refused a hospital. Even with fluxes! - Galina's voice begins to tremble again.

- Drink coffee. You can’t tell everything yet: not time. You know, on the one hand - war, grief. And on the other hand, we met such people ... "Lyu-Dy-they." Ukrainian word. You can not replace anything.