“They say in the unit that Baron should be honoured with a monument while still alive, because no matter how many scoundrels there are around — he still holds the position,” — this is how a comrade-in-arms responds about one of the fighters of the 93rd brigade with the call sign “Baron”.
And there are hundreds of thousands of such people in Ukraine at the moment who should be “honoured with a monument while still alive”. And many of them can only be honoured with a monument, unfortunately, at their grave. Therefore, the least that society can do to honour the memory of those who resist Russia at the cost of their lives is to spread information about the price of freedom and support the Ukrainian army.
So, continuing our column “Notes from the front”, we talked with a soldier of the 93rd brigade “Cold Yar”, which is defending Ukraine on the eastern front. From the story, you will learn about how, despite the lack of weapons and a sufficient number of personnel, the fighters held the defence of the city of Soledar.
“There are many stories when the invaders outnumbered us several times and life was hanging by a thread. And in such moments, not so much knowledge and skills help, as how you will behave in such a stressful situation and how you will use what you have. For example, they tell on TV how they are currently teaching fighters to shoot, run, etc. But in practice, everything is completely different. I would say that in most cases a shovel is your friend, and sometimes only a knife. With my knife, I dug both trenches and dugouts. I really lay on my stomach and dug under myself. Because, even if there was a shovel, it is impossible to stand up, and if you stand up, you will immediately lie down, as they say. And another important rule — you always need to listen to the sky, because if you miss something, that something will not miss you.
One of the bright examples of the enemy’s prevailing power was the story when I asked the drone operator to break the fence in front of me, and he replied that a whole platoon of occupiers had arrived behind that fence. At that moment I was in horror, because there were only three or four of us, and they were a full-fledged platoon with grenade launchers.
The news reports that the Armed Forces of Ukraine hold territories, they do hold territories, but the question is – how? At the end of summer – the beginning of autumn last year in Soledar there were very many of us because the positions were broken “in one-two”. I pulled someone out wounded and informed the leadership that we were being shot at, but they didn’t react in any way. Then I pulled out another one, with the same trench injuring a fighter twice in two hours. That is, this position was so shot through that the occupiers were throwing shells directly into the trenches. After that, we still moved to the side, where we stayed for another two weeks until we were finally killed off there.
Also, when my comrade-in-arms was wounded, I passed on from where the Russians were shooting, but the more precisely I named the place of their location, the more accurately they hit us. Because before that, the Russians had killed our soldiers and taken the radio, which they used to eavesdrop on us.
On September 4th, there were only seven of us left, four of whom were wounded and concussed. We retreated from the position because it was smashed by a tank, and our machine gun was also destroyed, so we even had nothing to fight back with. And then the guys were dragging the wounded, and I could barely walk with my comrade-in-arms. We had to leave everything because they were shooting from the front and from the side. It was truly a miracle that we reached the third position.
But even there we were surrounded from all sides. I hoped there would be 20 of us. But they were all destroyed too, so there were only nine of us left. In the end, I was thrown from a great height by an explosive wave. I plunged head-first into the water with tens of kilograms of ammunition. I hurt my back so much that when I was laid on something soft a few days later, I thought I would die that night from the pain. Now, roughly speaking, my vertebrae are disassembling, I have many hernias and myomas.