No future

How conscripts die. Kalash without cartridges, stupid orders and empty heads

“The coffins are coming in a stream”, “How many more on this date?”, “So many corpses and not a word.” Such comments began to appear on the website of the Volgograd publication v1.ru from the end of October. Over the course of a week, according to official data, 19 mobilized people were buried in the city, with a total date of death of October 24. The regional authorities stubbornly remained silent, and the chairman of the veterans’ council answered journalists’ questions like this: “We know what happened there. No details." In the chat of the Volgograd conscripts, their relatives found out the details and looked for eyewitnesses. Nobody answered them. We talked with the families of the victims - they talked about how and why their loved ones voluntarily went to war, where they were taught to kill civilians. About dirt, hunger, drunkenness, fear and why they consider their husbands and sons “heroes.” We also found survivors - those who simply saw what happened and those who returned from Ukraine disabled. They talked about the terrible, ridiculous, senseless death in the war and why they wanted to return to the front. Below is the story of what happened to the Volgograd mobilized on October 24th.

"Scary? Very"

In the farewell room, the wall is hung with heavy draperies and black tulle. Along it, a guard stands in a row - military men in gray greatcoats and square earflaps silently look ahead, with their arms stretched out at their sides. Along another wall there are wreaths on supports - synthetic flowers painted in the colors of the Russian flag. Relatives and friends slump on black plastic chairs. There are speeches. “He was a man who reached for the light. He was very religious and kind,” says the widow. “Son of the fatherland, son of Russia. We will always remember him,” says the chairman of the city council of veterans. On the screen in the corner is a photo of the deceased. A short-haired man in a white shirt, with his hands in his jeans pockets, smiles against the backdrop of lush summer greenery. A guy with a backpack poses near St. Isaac's Cathedral. A young blond man holds a hedgehog in his open palms. In the corner opposite is a coffin lid covered with crimson fabric. On top - in the part that covers the face - a green cap is glued to the fabric. Not everyone has an open coffin; some are buried directly in sealed zinc. Zinc is not opened in two cases - if the body has been there for a long time and is covered with spots and smells. Or if instead of a body there are remains. There is a small window in the zinc - you can’t see much. Husbands and sons were identified by tattoos, by what was left of their faces. Death reports contain codes from ICD-10. Widows and mothers try to translate from medical into Russian, but the result is “torn apart.”

“It seemed to me that there was something wrong with the body. He was lying out of shape, white, covered up to the neck. The death certificate shows a large loss of blood. I understand - it tore him apart,” says Marina Guzeva. Her husband, Alexander Guzev, was last in touch on October 23 at around 6 pm. He warned that they were ordered to remove the SIM cards from their phones and bury their things - the company was being transferred to another point. In the background they shouted: “Get in line!” Three days later, Marina received a call from the military registration and enlistment office and was told that her husband had died under fire on the bridge over the Dnieper in the Kherson region.

“They don’t tell us anything. I don't know why they were taken. Why did they treat them so bestially? I know that they ruined our lives. It turned out to be meat. Ordinary workers went and they are meat. My life was simply dismantled into all parts, I was simply killed. We lived with him for 26 years - at the very least, but we lived with him all our lives,” says Marina, “He was in Chechnya at the age of 19, and now the man is 45 years old. He worked as a shift worker, an electrician, an ordinary guy. I was renovating the house and went for a walk with the dog. I didn’t play sports anymore. Some illnesses, blood pressure. He had problems with the baby's vision. We wear glasses."

Marina did not believe until recently that her husband was being mobilized - they said on TV that they were taking away men under 35 years of age. When rumors spread throughout the city that people were being grabbed on the streets, Guzev himself went to the military registration and enlistment office to report a change of address, but came out with a summons. The next day he was in the military unit. “I said: “You’re not normal at all, right? What's the agenda? You are doing repairs, you have to go on shift, what is the agenda? You are 45 years old." He says: “Marin, what should we do? It’s better for us to go than for the youth to go. Our son died [in August 2022 from cancer]. I feel sorry for the young people,” recalls Marina.

Alexander was indeed the oldest on the official list of dead. His colleague, Volgograd welder Gennady Tarbushin, was buried the day before his 26th birthday. Before the war, he graduated from vocational school and served in the military. He had no children; he had goddaughters - the daughters of his brother, Valery. “When he found out that he would be a godfather, he [bought] such a bear and a beautiful bouquet. I was looking for personalized icons, a golden cross. There was happiness there. He is a very kind and sentimental boy,” says Valery’s wife, Irina. Before being sent to the front, Irina and Tarbushin met, took her daughter from kindergarten and went for a walk. Sitting on a bench, they discussed the war. Irina relays their dialogue:

- Scary?

- Very.

- Let's break your leg?

- No. I'd rather be there than go to jail.

“Here are drunks, gypsies, who breed, they have ten children, they don’t take care of them, they create riots - they don’t take them away. What did you do?

- Ir, well, let’s send the gypsies and drunks there. Do you understand that the next day they will come to bomb us? I have a sister, mother, and goddaughters here. I'm going to protect you first.

Irina says that Tarbushin was happy when, after mobilization, he was assigned to senior snipers: “He went with a boy there [to Ukraine], this boy is a war veteran, when he fought, he was a sniper. So he was simply appointed as a sniper, and Gena was appointed as a senior sniper. Although he just had “conscription” in the railway troops, he had no experience as a sniper at all. He was so proud of it, he said: “Look, I’m a senior sniper!”

“If he didn’t raise his hand, he was wasted”

Tarbushin was enlisted in the 3rd company of the 4th battalion of the 255th regiment - almost all those mobilized who died on October 24 served in it. And almost all were shooters. The military registration and enlistment office wanted to register car service worker Alexey Kopanev as a driver, but he refused - he believed that they are killed most often and quickly in war. "He said: 'If you write, I'll kill you. I'll personally come and kill you. I won't get on the transport, they bomb the most. Write me as a pedestrian.' Well, he was enrolled in the motorized rifle. Pedestrian. But it didn’t save anyone,” Alexei’s wife, Svetlana, gets angry. She is also annoyed that the mobilized were not given anything - only a uniform 3-4 sizes larger.

The Kopanevs sold the car and spent 75 thousand to prepare Alexey for the war: they bought him ankle boots, underwear, a hat, and an “unloader” - a vest with many pockets for stores - which was never used. From the military registration and enlistment office, the mobilized were taken to “Maksimka” - to the military unit , the 20th separate motorized rifle brigade. There, according to Irina Tarbushina, they “played on their phones” for two weeks and once went to the training ground to shoot ten blank cartridges each from a sniper rifle.

Relatives say that the mobilized rebelled and demanded to be taken to exercises more often, to which one of the commanders in the unit replied: “You are meat.” Irina Tarbushina says that the case ended in a fight. “Don’t believe anything they say in the news,” Kopanev explained to his wife, “they’re bullshit, not a single word of truth, a complete lie.”

At the “unloading” Kopanev had a large Z sewn on in the colors of the St. George’s ribbon - in it, smiling broadly, he poses by the bus on which those mobilized on October 12 were brought to the station. There they were loaded into 13 wagons and taken to Dzhankoy - they said that they would conduct exercises because the Volgograd training ground was overcrowded and there was not enough ammunition for everyone. Pro-government media wrote about sending Volgograd conscripts to “places of combat coordination” in early November - an article in Komsomolskaya Pravda said that after the training course at the training center of the Ministry of Defense, the soldiers would continue training “at the training grounds.” The obituaries of those killed on October 24 did not indicate the date of dispatch. Some Volgograd residents were sent to war a week after the announcement of mobilization - in the material of the local publication 102.ru, the mother of a mobilized man from Volgograd claims that her son ended up at the front on September 29, 2022.

The briefing began on the train - the commanders walked around the cars and told the personnel what to do with the locals if they “don’t give up.”

“You can’t trust anyone there at all—neither the grandmother, nor the child, nor anyone. There are civilians there who treat Russian soldiers almost like their own children, and there are residents who promote Bandera, who are for Ukraine, they are called occupiers there, and hate them. They were told that if a civilian didn’t give up, didn’t lie down, didn’t raise his hands, he was expendable,” says Irina Tarbushina. “He can even surrender, and then rise up and get a weapon from somewhere—the civilians have weapons there.” In this regard, it is very difficult there. Many boys die out of stupidity. Because peaceful people are people, [they] feel sorry for them, and they are here.

— Could he kill an unarmed person?

- I don't know. I probably could. If you understand that this person is a murderer, and so on. In any case, he is a man, he could stand up for himself. It's not clogged.

Irina says that among the soldiers there were volunteers with military experience who “raised morale” and “explained everything” to the mobilized. One of them is former criminal investigation operative Alexey Mikhalev. His girlfriend, Daria, says that in 2008 he served in Georgia and, when mobilization was announced, he immediately quit because he wanted to go to war. “He had former colleagues there and in general this is all his theme, he is a very patriotic person, all this military theme is close in spirit. That’s probably why he went to the police,” she says. From the first days, Alexey was eager to go to the front and was angry that he had to sit on the Maximka. "He said: 'I didn't quit to sit here. What can they teach me?'" Daria quotes, "As I understand it, people who don't see a machine gun for the first time don't really teach them anything. They just refresh their memory and go there.”

“Let him not rock the boat here at all”

There really was no training in Dzhankoy - neither for those with combat experience, nor for everyone else. Those mobilized were given uniforms and bulletproof vests and sent to Kherson. They say that on the way they were fired upon while crossing the Dnieper - then no one died, because the air defense system worked. It was not possible to find confirmation of this in open sources, but the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) report for October 13-16, citing Russian military officers and satellite images of fires, speaks of Ukrainian attacks and intensification of fighting in the Kherson direction.

On October 16, they were scattered in small groups across a forest belt 30 kilometers from Kherson and ordered to dig trenches. When asked which towns and villages were nearby, the mobilized answered differently - Daryevka, Ponyatovka, Nikolskoye. Daryevka and Ponyatovka - in the Berislavsky district of the Kherson region on the right bank of the Dnieper. Since the beginning of the counter-offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in August 2022, the Berislava direction has appeared in military reports almost every day. On October 4, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote that the Ukrainian Armed Forces had taken an important bridgehead 50 kilometers from Berislav. The head of the joint coordination press center of the South Defense Forces, Natalya Gumenyuk, said that Russian forces are sandwiched between Ukrainian units and the right bank of the Dnieper. CIT expert Kirill Mikhailov told Mediazona that holding Kherson is becoming too costly - they are trying to balance the imbalance of forces with mobilized ones, but this does not give any results. According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, on October 21, there were 2,000 Russian mobilized in the Kherson region. Mikhailov noted that Kherson should have been surrendered back in April, but “Putin drove himself into a political trap” by repeating too many times that Kherson is Russia.

The first two days there was a lull at the front - showers began. There was liquid mud in the trenches, the annoying cough and drunken swearing did not subside. The only thing that helped against the terrible night cold was drinking. Tanks of hot food are a celebration, not a given. Sometimes the supply truck did not arrive and there was nothing to eat. Those who received their salaries went to the store, but not everyone managed to receive the money. The soldiers called home and asked to “send something to eat.” Marina Guzeva remembers that her husband rejoiced like a child when juice was brought to the trenches in boxes. “He was shocked, well, by his voice. They were bombed by these Hymers of some kind. It was, yes. He said it was heavily bombed. As I understand it, they were bombed there every day.” The artillery really worked constantly. By October 14, the Armed Forces of Ukraine had liberated 75 villages in the Kherson region; on the 15th, a post about “heaviest battles” in the Kherson region appeared in the pro-Russian telegram channel ZAPISKI VETERAN. According to the Rybar map of October 16, the front line was 55 km from the trenches. HIMARS destroyed Russian artillery, assault groups of the Ukrainian Armed Forces advanced in the Berislavsky direction, Russian crossings across the Dnieper were blown up .

Irina Tarbushina confirms that they fired. Gena bought a Ukrainian SIM card and called almost every day. She recalls a dialogue with him:

- Oh, quadcopter.

- What are you talking about!

“Calm down, hitting me alone is not an option.” They are always flying here, you can’t hide from them.

— What’s banging in the background?

- It's not near us. They don't shut up for a minute. I'm already used to sleeping with this. Tell Valera not to come here at all.

In the boiler

The Volgograd regiment sat in the trenches for eight days. To the question “what were you doing there?” everyone answers the same way - nothing, they just dug in and sat. “We were also interested in this - why are we sitting here? What tasks, where the enemy is - no, they didn’t say, this is probably a military secret, it’s not disclosed,” says mobilized Vladimir (he did not give ROMB’s last name).

The relatives did not know where the soldiers actually were. The widow of Sergei Shmelev, who died on October 24, Natalya, was sure until recently that her husband was in Novaya Kakhovka on the left bank of the Dnieper. The city was occupied on the first day of the war, but there was no active hostilities there. Natalya says that they were in touch all the time - Sergei called and sent photos. She compiled a video from them and posted it on her VKontakte page.

“Let's get up! The heroes of Russia will remain in our hearts,” draws Z-singer Shaman. Natalya chose it as the soundtrack. In the footage, unshaven men in “unloaders” and helmets pose against the backdrop of withered autumn vegetation, with their hands on each other’s shoulders. They clench their fists in victory, some raise their thumbs, others show the “peace” sign. Each one has a Kalashnikov with a tricolor on the butt. The machine gun magazines were empty—not a single cartridge was given to the mobilized.

“After my question about why they didn’t give us cartridges, they told us: ‘You’re not going to fight, you’ll be on guard,’” says Kirill Burda, who was mobilized from the 3rd company [real name is not known, probably “Burda” is his call sign], “We were enrolled in a mobile assault unit. When a mortar attack occurs, we are obliged to run towards the enemy, shouting “For victory!” and go into battle. But, as you understand, you won’t run far without ammo. Where should I run with an empty machine gun? Should I take it to the pawnshop?

There were rumors about the positions - they were surrounded, in a cauldron. The soldiers tried to get their bearings and took turns doing reconnaissance. “We ourselves didn’t know what to expect from them [the Ukrainian Armed Forces]. Maybe they could somehow sneak into our deployment with their cars. We would have to fight with people—to put it bluntly, we would have nothing,” says 19-year-old Yuri Bedov. His fears are real - on October 22, the Ukrainian military published a photo of Russian positions captured near Kherson with the caption “someone didn’t even have time to eat” - ladles sticking out of a 10-liter pot with a layer of earth covered with lunch, cans of stewed meat and garbage are scattered around. Ukrainian sources wrote about a “cauldron for 15 thousand occupiers” near Kherson on October 18. General Surovikin spoke about “difficult decisions” regarding Kherson. On the 20th, Rybar in his report called the situation near Berislav “a fiery hell” - “tens of thousands of people and hundreds of armored vehicles from NATO countries” were rushing towards the city. During the night, 3 barges of the pontoon bridge across the Dnieper were destroyed .

Those mobilized remember that on October 23 they were ordered to pack their things and were being transferred to another position. At about 11 pm, cars arrived - two military KamAZs and a Ural with an awning instead of a roof. There wasn't enough space. Half of the bodies were filled with things, they were loaded jam-packed, on top of each other, with their heads resting against the awning. The swearing began - the mobilized were indignant, the officers urged them on. They reenact the exchanges:

- The cars are full! We won't go like that!

- If there is shelling, attack, close combat, we simply won’t get out of here!

- There is no time, no, no! Hurry up and sit down!

What to do, where to run and where to gather in the event of shelling was not explained. They only told us to take off our bulletproof vests so as not to drown if there was shelling on the bridge. They did not reach the bridge - at about three in the morning, at the entrance to the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station, the path of the convoy was cut off by a civilian vehicle. The battalion commander ordered to stop. A minute later - a terrible whistle, explosion, flash. Then again and again. The military says that the missile cannot be seen or heard—you will know that it is nearby five seconds before it arrives. Дальше — ударная волна, от которой рвутся барабанные перепонки и внутренние органы. Осколки сквозь бронежилеты врезаются в мясо, дробят на куски кости. Шрапнель разлетается во все стороны и прошивает животы, легкие, руки, ноги и головы.

«Я сначала думал — это просто розыгрыш, фейерверк. Есть такие хлопушки, которые просто кидают, чтобы солдаты не скучали. Типа петарды. Чтобы бдительность не теряли», — рассказывает мобилизованный Олег Машков. Он ехал в одном из «Камазов», — «А когда я уже увидел что Бурда валяется „трехсотым“ и кровь с него течет, и рядом со мной лежит „трехсотый“ с подбитым брюхом — в него тоже залетел шарик — я уже понял, что это достаточно все серьезно».

В «Камазах» были раненые — ракета упала в нескольких сотнях метров от машины. Другая взорвалась прямо над «Уралом», где, по официальной версии, никто не выжил. Оказалось, что это не так.

«У меня просто полчерепа нет»

«Взрыв, хлопок и через секунд 15 ударили в мой „Урал“. Зеленая вспышка, у меня каска вылетает просто, падает на землю. Я не пойму, что происходит в этом „Урале“, пацаны все склонили головы, я спрашиваю: „Все живы? Все живы? Все живы?“. И у меня начинает с головы течь кровь. Я начинаю выкидывать своих пацанов, которые начали стонать, с „Урала“. Остальные были полностью молчаливые, их просто убило. У меня просто полчерепа нету, я начинаю закидывать в первой же попавшейся канаве с лужи землю в голову. У нас даже не было аптечек, нам никто их не давал. Пацаны все врассыпную бегут. Потом я лег, просто забил на всех хрен, потому что я уже начал вырубаться. That's all. Четвертого ноября я вышел с комы», — рассказывает мобилизованный Дмитрий Лобачев.

У него парализованы два пальца, галлюцинации и провалы в памяти. Дырку, которую в черепе сделал осколок, закрыли титановой пластиной. Сейчас он собирается оформлять инвалидность. До войны Лобачев работал в волгоградской полиции. Когда объявили мобилизацию, он уволился и пошел добровольцем на войну.

- Why?

— Потому что я не стал ждать повестку. Я больше всего боюсь, что мне поставят А1 на ВВК [категория годности, которую присваивают призывникам, не имеющим никаких заболеваний и годным к военной службе].

На момент выхода материала Лобачев обратился в прокуратуру, потому что получил «А1» от пяти врачей. Они сочли, что он может воевать дальше, несмотря на пластину в голове. При этом варианты не идти на фронт у него и других подпадающих под мобилизацию есть. «Несмотря на принятые поправки в УК, которые усиливают ответственность за самовольное оставление части, за дезертирство, добровольную сдачу в плен, есть пункт, где говорится, что лицо, совершившее такое преступление впервые, освобождается от уголовной ответственности, если оно было совершено в силу стечения тяжелых обстоятельств. К ним относится в том числе и нарушение порядка несения военной службы со стороны командования, болезни близких родственников, ухудшение состояния здоровья, в случае если не оказывается медицинская помощь. Целый перечень обстоятельств дает основание человеку оставлять воинскую часть в качестве крайней меры. В этом случае он имеет возможность избежать привлечения к уголовной ответственности», — говорит адвокат Андрей Федорков. Чтобы не отправиться на войну, нужно только приложить усилия и смекалку, а главное — не хотеть убивать. «Гражданин РФ имеет право на жизнь. Он может обращаться с заявлениями в адрес вышестоящих командиров, в органы прокуратуры, но надо понимать, что обращения, если вообще уйдут из части, то идти будут долго. Важно оформить доверенность на кого-то из близких родственников или заключить соглашение с адвокатом. Чтобы можно было оперативно направлять соответствующие обращения в случае возникновения проблем».

«Если бы родственники мобилизованных из этой колонны создали неформальную общественную структуру, которая представляла бы их интересы, то было бы больше шансов на то, что государство как-то отреагировало на их жалобы. Так в ряде случаев благодаря огласке удавалось добиться отмены решения призывной комиссии и возвращения человека на волю».

«Если человек откажется садиться в этот транспорт и попытается скрыться, то он может занять позицию и говорить, что испугался и это угрожало его жизни. Есть, по крайней мере потенциальная возможность добиться освобождения от уголовной ответственности». «Если мы говорим о том, когда они располагаются в чистом поле в палатках и не обеспечиваются никакими предметами первой необходимости — очевидно, что эта ситуация угрожает их здоровью и это является ненадлежащим исполнением обязанностей со стороны командования. В данном случае имеют место тяжелые обстоятельства, которые препятствуют несению службы. На этом основании человек может заявить о том, что это тяжелые обстоятельства и он был вынужден покинуть воинскую часть».

«Ответственность наступает только по факту получения повестки. Если будут введены законодательные новеллы, связанные с получением повесток через госуслуги — не открывать это письмо. Повестка, брошенная в почтовый ящик без подписи призывника никаких обязательств не порождает».