Russian armored personnel carrier crushed a car in the DPR

The passengers died. Eyewitnesses are afraid to blame the military and admit that they were drunk

In the rear of the Russian troops - in the city of Shakhtersk, which is located about 50 kilometers from Donetsk - an armored personnel carrier ran over a car, both passengers - Ruslan Ibatullin and Yulia Shchukina - died. On that day, they were driving together to work in the Glubokaya mine. Eyewitnesses claim that the armored personnel carrier raced "at breakneck speed" and cut off the roof of the car. Local residents doubt that the military could carry out any task, and admit that they "rushed for beer." They are afraid to lay responsibility on the military and refuse to talk about the details. "Cold" tells how Ruslan and Yulia died and how they lived.

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For the safety of the heroes, "Cold" changed their names and does not indicate their last names. Information about the interlocutors is known to the editors.

"A Tragic Circumstance"

“If you want to discredit the Russian army with my help, it won’t work! This is a terrible tragedy, in which only a terrible combination of circumstances and technology are to blame. Everyone was absolutely sober and adequate,” a Kholod correspondent received such a message, trying to find out details from local residents of Shakhtersk, a small city in the self-proclaimed DPR. It was written by 49-year-old Nadezhda, who lives literally 20 meters from the accident site and was on the street in the courtyard of her house at the time of the collision.

She did not see the APC hitting the passenger car. “Some kind of impact was heard, but there was no screech of brakes. All the neighbors, including me, immediately ran out into the street,” says Nadezhda. “The armored personnel carrier was standing in the direction of the city, it was driving from the side of the mine, I can tell you that for sure!” Nadezhda's emphasis on the direction in which the armored personnel carrier was moving is not accidental: a dispute broke out among local residents about who was to blame for the accident; opinions were divided.

Some residents consider soldiers to be guilty , who often drink and drive drunken military vehicles. They say that the APC was driving from the side of the mine into the city, and Ruslan's car was parked on the side of the road when the APC ran over it. In the video , which was filmed after the accident, only the crushed fragments of the car are visible: it is literally flattened. The other part of the residents, on the contrary, believes that the military is not to blame for anything. According to their version, the armored personnel carrier, on the contrary, was driving from the city towards the mine, and Ruslan's car was allegedly driving towards them with excess speed.

“The fact that the military is driving at high speed and drinking alcohol is, alas, I observe with my own eyes,” says Svetlana, a resident of Shakhtyorsk. She was passing by the scene of the accident some time after the collision. Svetlana says that she saw a “soft-boiled car” and an already covered corpse - as it turned out later, it was the body of the deceased Yulia Shchukina.

“To my surprise, many sided with the military, and there is a lot of debate about this,” Svetlana notes. She says that recently her husband met on the street “a well-drunk warrior who stabbed him, and then pulled out a knife and started attacking him.” Her husband fought back, but it could have been different, she says.

"Kholod" also managed to talk to a resident of the city named Vladimir, who was passing by the scene of the accident just a few seconds after it. “I was descending from a hillock, I saw only dust, I don’t know the details. I was driving in the direction of Shakhtersk, the broken car was on the left of me on the side of the road, ”says Vladimir. According to him, the passenger car was “soft-boiled”. Vladimir said that when he saw the colliding cars, he slowed down to a minimum, at that moment one of the soldiers from the armored personnel carrier shouted: “Call an ambulance,” and he called.

The passenger car, according to Vladimir's recollections, was standing in the direction from the city, and the armored personnel carrier was directed from the direction of the mine. “I understand that the car was moved in front, because a woman was lying in the passenger seat in front, her head was thrown back. The APC just cut off the roof of the car,” Vladimir says. He did not see Ruslan, who was injured in the accident.

Another resident of Shakhtyorsk, 20-year-old Maria, said that she was driving with her husband near the accident site about 10 minutes after the incident. “We were shocked by what we saw: the car was very badly dented, it literally collapsed. The main blow was from the driver's side.

What kind of armored personnel carrier it was, what soldiers were in it and where they were coming from, the residents of Shakhtyorsk could not answer. “I’m not a military man, I don’t understand. But logically, I can assume that they probably won’t ride far in an armored personnel carrier: maximum to the store for beer, ”Vladimir suggests.

Nikolai, a 52-year-old colleague of the dead Ruslan and Yulia from the mine, calls the incident "a tragic coincidence." About the dead, he says this: “Ruslan is our village guy, not a drug addict, not an alcoholic. Good family man. Julia is a simple, kind girl.

"49 minutes before the start of the work shift"

All interlocutors of Kholod speak of Ruslan and Yulia very warmly and with great regret. Mine workers, who had cars, constantly helped their colleagues who were walking. Ruslan was no exception: on the way to work, he stopped to give Julia a lift.

A resident of Shakhtersk, Ekaterina, studied with Ruslan at the same school. “We were friends from early childhood, ran to discos, gathered in a huge company in the yard,” she recalls. - Ruslan was a very friendly and open person, sympathetic, kind. He worked at the mine, like all our guys. He loved his family, wife, children.

Ruslan's attitude towards children is especially emphasized in their stories by everyone who knew him. Ruslan's colleague from the mine, Nikolai, emphasizes that Ruslan's son constantly went everywhere with his father by the hand and "doted on him." Another colleague from the mine, Yulia, says that Ruslan always helped the guys in the team where he worked as an electrician.

Yulia, whom Ruslan decided to drop off to work by car, according to the stories of Kholod's interlocutors, worked as a mining foreman at the VTB site (ventilation and safety equipment at the mine). In her profile on VKontakte there are photos from the dungeon. Yulia has two daughters, Ruslan has a daughter and a little son. Close relatives of the victims either refused to talk to Kholod, or replied: “For the time being, no comments, not before that.”

According to Kholod's interlocutors, Ruslan and Yulia were on their way to work on the second shift on June 3, which was supposed to start at 13:00. Vladimir, who called an ambulance after the accident, told Kholod that he made the call at 12:11, 49 minutes before the start of the work shift. “The guys were wonderful, they all had wonderful families, children,” says a resident of Shakhtyorsk, who lives 20 meters from the accident site. “A tragic accident, no one is to blame for this situation, providence, the Lord God decided so.”