If this is not a war, then what?

A special report with an advanced - from Avdeevka, where continuous artillery shots have been going on for a month now

A special report with an advanced - from Avdeevka, where continuous artillery shots have been going on for a month now

- Clates, in what country I live in - in Ukraine or in Deanerovshchina? - the grandmother asks and suddenly goes astray. - And you are those, or ... those?

Somewhere behind the hills, it impressively hits, and so-under the ongoing accompaniment of close breaks of something significant-we find out that Baba Galya herself is from the village of Yasinovataya, she has children, but to get to know whether they are alive for a week-the connection is lousy. Our phone is still catching - we call: everyone will find out that everyone is alive.

-I can’t leave here-I feel sorry for the dog, and I don’t want to go to the DPR, and even if they wanted to-they will let them go, don’t let them go, I don’t know, there are some kind of pass ... maybe take a dog, then I will decide. - An old shepherd with wise sad eyes carefully and hopefully looks at strangers and eventually brings a stick. - She is very smart with me. But all the same, I don’t take her in the hut at night, suddenly it will get that, will kill me - I don’t want her to eat me later.

This is the village of Veseloye, next to the deserted highway Konstantinovka-Donetsk (the last block of the Ukrainian army is far behind)-the so-called "gray zone", on the country roads of which anyone can get caught. That is why the peasant, standing next to Baba Galya, quickly disappeared, only seeing the approaching car. But in a different way to Avdeevka, to the front line, you will not pass.

The closer to the city, the more impressive the disgusting symphony of the war sounds: you are already distinguishing - where is the volley and what: a single howitzer or "serial" from the installations of a volley fire. Due to the turn, the Makhin of the Avdeevsky Koksochemical Combine is shown-it also regularly arrives at it, but the plant smokes-tries to work, and the female voice on the loudspeaker asks someone to go somewhere. People hold on to a peaceful life to the last, are not able to realize that the war really happens to them, because in the morning they are wandered to the passing, on their jobs, in which they sometimes cover them with shells - here the locomotive driver was recently buried.

On the northern outskirts of Avdeevka, which is located only 6 kilometers from Donetsk, life is still warm: some shops are open, people drive bicycles and even walks public transport. But the city center with a once forty -thousandth population is destroyed, the skyscrapers are empty with disgusting holes in the walls due to repeated direct hits. The southern outskirts are advanced, and if you climb onto the top floor of some high-rise building, you can see the remains of the dispatch towers of the Donetsk airport.

Four cars and a minibus rush to leave the city at great speed. It is not clear: either a breakthrough, or something else. We call up-no, on the forefront, everything is unchanged, just on this road no one rides differently-Chapaeva Street is shot: along the edges there are ruins of houses, and on the asphalt-fresh trees, fragments of trees.

The tactics of the war on this section of the front are as follows: the two armies dug in the 700s meters from each other and beat, without ceasing, from all artillery systems, which are available. The Ukrainian army has less diversity: it is easy to determine by the sound of volleys - which comes from. For those who are considered to be separatists, the assortment will be wider. Namely, this: 82-mm corners “Vasilek”, 120-mm mortars, T-72 and T-64, self-propelled artillery installations (“cloves” and “non-Nona”), D-30 howitzers and volley installations (“hail”, “hurricane”, they say that they also shoot “pins”-also reactive installations, only reactive installations, only reactive installations, only flamethrower).

Without ceasing, it means - it is without ceasing, with rare half -hour breaks for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and sometimes - due to weather conditions (strong wind, for example), there is an artillery duel. They only faded somewhere, quarters from us, gaps of “grades” (they shoot uncontrollable reactive shells, the area of ​​the lesion is one square kilometer and more, in one salvo there can be 16 and 36 missiles, depending on the modification-simply speaking, this is “katyusha”: remember the frames from the film about the opponent running away in a panic), as in response), as in a response in a panic) “Because of the city, by the way,” the self-propelled guns answered. No, it happens that some bad commander of the Ukrainian army will deploy the battery within the village, but then their own deal with it. Therefore, there is no tactical meaning to compare the city with the ground. However, this is happening, with Avdeevka, for example, for almost a month-from January 8th.

I will say this: no one can ever prove to a person familiar with modern military equipment that all these devices spewing out can use exclusively volunteers, even if they had once served in the army. This is simply impossible. If, for example, a salvo even from the simplest - mortars - requires not just the presence of a competent fire adjustor, but also people who, having special shooting tables in their hands, calculate the amendments: the air temperature and the temperature of the charge, humidity, wind and terrain. The times when they were firing a direct fire, looking into the cannon barrel instead of the sight, have passed, now it is a complex thing that could not submit to the amateur in a month. And therefore, I who saw with my own eyes all this artillery lawlessness, in some voluntary self-taught I will never believe now.

... If the Donetsk airport in Ukraine is compared with the Brest Fortress, that is, in this war, its own “Pavlov’s house”, which has been defending 9 months now. It stands on the most advanced - to the positions of separatists eight hundred meters. Actually, in it I stopped at night.

Not a single whole glass, traces of direct hollows of shells, bags of sand at the porches, twisted pipes, a terrible cold. Here is a company of a psycho (this is a call sign) of the 20th motorized rifle battalion of the 93rd brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. They sleep when not on blocks, here-in the apartments of the once elite house, who, rejoicing, bought people who once lived here, lovingly made repairs and acquired small joys like showers, which are now meaningless.

If you walk along the porches, then in some places on the doors you can see leaves with the inscription "People live." But now - after January 8 - they no longer live. And as if in response to the question “why”-half shook, the remains of the glass rang-the tank shell got into the next entrance, or in a nearby store-I don’t know for sure, because it is somehow not a hunting sector to get into the sector of shelling. A neighboring high-rise building is also with traces of direct hits: three or four times it arrived here definitely-this is visible, but to go around the house to calculate more precisely, because, again, the line of fire. When massive shelling began in early January, at the substation, in the courtyard, the corpses of civilians were stored - soldiers say that there were thirteen of them - it was not possible to take them out immediately.

As for the tank, which “greeted me” with me, it has already become a weather. It stands in Kaponir on the combat positions of the separatists, somewhere a kilometer from here, and every morning, at 9 hours, it crawls out to shoot six times around the perimeter, sometimes-as now-and during the day.

A medical “loaf” is sweeping by, a wounded fighter is taken out on a stretcher, the hand hung limply and dragging on the asphalt, it is carefully raised - it means that it is not a “two hundred” (dead), but “three hundred” (seriously wounded).

Komrota crashes to the headquarters - this is the apartment in which the kitchen is still preserved (the preparation brine gurgles), there are a potbelly stove, clashes, mattresses on the floor, windows are filled with plywood. A company of a psycho has been here for more than a month (previously there were no less “hot” sands and Maryinka), when there will be a change, no one knows. On the walls-paper Orthodox icons and many, many children's drawings: there is no war on them, only peaceful landscapes and joyful people walking in the park; With clumsy children's handwriting, with mistakes, recognition of love to the warring soldiers, wishes to survive, return home and do what you want. Children write to the front constantly, just like their parents-volunteers, collect everything for the front: from clothes and products to military equipment.

I have not seen eighteen -year -old boys in the warring Ukrainian army. The youngest, Kiryuha, 22 - threw the institute, returned from Russia, went to fight. Now he sits on the cot, cuts into a computer gunner on the phone and monotonously tells, without looking up from the screen: well, they shoot and shoot, well, got used to it, well, war is like a war. The constant gaps accompanying our conversation does not even react - but what to react if you have to twitch every five minutes. “He had hard, maybe the psyche is already on the verge,” his senior colleagues tell me in a whisper.

The battalion was formed in Dnepropetrovsk. Here, mostly adult men over thirty, or even fifty-someone already has grandchildren. Very calm, judicious people who ask me - the Moscow journalist who appeared here - more questions than I am to them.

- Do the Russians really believe their TV? Why do they support all this? No, you explain why the Slavs kill each other, and the Russians rejoice in this? And many those who do not want this war?

I have no answers to these questions that have been sitting with a splinter in consciousness for a year now. Therefore, they answer themselves. Sasha, a fifty man, who worked for a long time at the factory somewhere in Siberia, says:

-My elder brother lives in Tomsk, two higher officers, an officer, for another 13th year, they met together in the Dnieper, and now he had a fight with me, she had a fight with my mother, does not call-he says that the Nazis and NATO are fighting. Brother, I say, what fascists: am I fascist? What NATO - come look, I am fighting, my neighbors are fighting ... And he drops the phone.

- And my brother serves in the Russian army, an officer, a year has remained until retirement. He calls, says to me: “I'm sorry - they throw me to Rostov, I can’t refuse: there will be no pension or apartment otherwise.” So, maybe we will meet soon - through the sight - the person who went to the kitchen connects to the conversation of a very intelligent appearance.

And none of those with whom I spoke, does not consider the Russians enemies, because many themselves are half, or even at all, are Russians, but everyone is asking the same thing: why it all happened and when it ends.

“The chief of the police is running around,” the psycho smokes the third cigarette in 10 minutes, “says:“ Something strange-it was so jerking off, I came to the place-there are no funnels, and the trees are left without branches and at home. ” So I tell him that the “hurricane” banged with a cassette filling: well, you know, in the air it is divided into independent parts, which then burst into fragments in the air.

About Captain Yura they told me even in Kramatorsk: how he and his fighters happily escaped captivity. Suddenly I drove to the post of "DPR", with chevrons, which depicts dill, and with the Ukrainian flag. Well, he said that they were Deanerian intelligence, and chevrons - so how they went to the rear to the enemy.

“So who was at that block,” I ask.

- Chechens, the Vostok battalion.

- Exactly?

- What am I a Chechen from a Ukrainian or Russian will not distinguish? Yes, and their stripes were “east”, and the Russian flag.

... By evening, we went closer to the sauna. The local brothers-businessmen that she belonged did not leave the city, and everything they have, they were provided to the military: they wash, feed, have for free. The floor shakes-something exploded nearby.

- This is a self -propelled gun. But this is a mine, ”Sasha comments.

- Not scary?

- Now, if from the ceiling that it spits, then it will be scary, then we will go.

On TV - a parallel life: Ukrainian "children's voice". Joyful and talented participants ... They meet a girl from under Donetsk standing. And in the head the question ripens in itself: how many such girls will not reach Kyiv from Semenovka, Slavyansk, Debaltseve, Donetsk, Lugansk, happiness, Uglegorsk? It makes no sense to list the names of all completely or partially destroyed settlements - just open the map of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

“I calmly perceived the Maidan, somehow it was parallel,” says the fighter under fifty, who did not appear. - But when it all started here, he went to the military registration and enlistment office. They say to me: go from here, old. And I say: go yourself. I feel sorry for the young boys. Here, Maxim served in our unit-just a human soul, about 25 years old. We were then removed from the front, they sent us to Mariupol to rest. We go back to the unit, we drive through the village, where Max lives, so the whole “Gazelle” was beaten with food - so they love him there. We come, but they say that Max was gone - shells, a direct hit, all into shreds. Already in the village they called, but, thank God, he was found: he was just shell-shocked, and he was lying in for a day in some hut ...

This night-after eleven in the evening-they did not shoot very much (about the time per hour): the downpour (which was bad for mortars) went, and the stormy wind began (which is bad for the rest). By the way, there would be untrained volunteers on that line of the front, they would have fired for a sweet soul, since they were not aware of such subtleties.

Behind the wall, a moan, almost a howl, then a sob, is suddenly heard, and so many, many times in a row. The fighters are sleeping there, and one of these forty-year-old men obviously dreamed of what happened to him yesterday, or what could happen tomorrow.

At exactly seven in the morning, Komrota Ssikh wakes up, calls on the phone to his son: “My sun, have you already woken up? Come on, come on - it's time to school. Well, sleep on Sunday. I'm fine. Of course I'll be back, the sun. "

... You need to leave Avdeevka in the morning to slip up to 12,-promise a massive boat. On the way, we wrap the battalion headquarters. Here is the pride of the fighters-the “squeezed” T-72 tank, abandoned by the crew, fighting on the side of the separatists. Now he is put in order.

Sedovite, similar to a university teacher, commander of a separate tank battalion - a personnel officer of the Soviet still army. Many of his colleagues and classmates are in Russia.

- With whom we call up and sigh, who does not pick up the phone. I was not immediately taken to the army - the age was still, because at first I went to the "right sector", then, finally, they transferred. What I want to say ... but I don’t want anything: I don’t understand all this. Yes, and I am not a fascist.

A tank leaves from the hangar, the numbers on the case are cut down by a grinder, but we stayed on the tower (let's try to find out where it is here).

- I am a professional tanker and I know perfectly well where it was produced and where it came from ...

For some reason, there is such a well-established sign in the warring regions of Ukraine: how does the Russian humanitarian convoy come to the Donetsk region-wait for the strengthening of artillery steering.

Behind the hill, “grades” lay down - it is time to go. On the way, we learn that in the Protestant Church in Slavyansk there are refugees from the hottest point of the last two weeks - Uglegorsk, where fights for the Debaltsevsky bridgehead, which are still unsuccessfully trying to surround.

Two men and the woman say that there was no evacuation, the city is almost taken into the ring, and the Ukrainian army is held at the height of the departure. What are scorched from Gorlovka and Enakievo, who are under the control of separatists.

- I ran, ran - from home to house, and “hails” - from all sides, and I pray to God and run, I am running ... Lord, you saved me, but how many children are there in the basements ...

I think enough to play in words. All this is a war, the most fierce, going without taking into account the lives of civilians in a densely populated territory. The war, which-launched by itself, will be consistent only with its own laws: a little more, a month or two, and it will be impossible to stop it. And we want it or not, directly or indirectly, directly or crookedly, recognizing it or not, approving or cursing - we participate in it. Only - why?

Kramatorsk - Avdeevka