“THEY CONSTANTLY WANT TO KILL YOU” – how border guards met the full-scale invasion

Speaker 1

I started, probably as everyone did, most of the infantry; I saw there that war has no rules or anything, they just constantly try to kill.

Speaker 1

Hit in such a way that it was just some kind of chaos, constant booming, explosions, things constantly flying apart. For me, it was such a shocking action, well, the first time I've been in something like this. I served at home, well, on the border, at an outpost. Well, at my outpost, a regular Belarusian border post, I went on patrols. And then I transferred to Novotroitske on February 3rd. I served for three weeks, and the war began. And then, well, I experienced such a dissonance. I was, like, a snot who just lived a peaceful life, I essentially had no relation to the war at all. And I went, along with two of my guys, also border guards, to the position of the Armed Forces, the 54th brigade. Well, that's where the madness really started. I was in shock again. I knew, in principle, what war was, basically from movies. But when I saw this action in real life, it hit me really hard, to be honest. For about a day, I couldn't wrap my head around what was happening. There, well, one guy had his arm badly torn, and his jaw—I mean, his face was torn open, like, the jaw was clearly visible. And he was like something in the moment, there was a commotion, things were going south, they were storming the neighboring position. And he says, like, whoever can, like, provide help. And I'm sitting there, like, well, they've entered, and suddenly it just hit me. Like, bam, I say, yeah I can, like. And I, in fact, in medicine, well, knew what they showed on the course, like, well, standard pre-war first aid. I started, like, I saw that I could treat people normally, like, wow, I think, this is for me. And in the end, in literally a couple of days, I don't know, for about 15 minutes per person, I was really, well, like, I was providing help. They were going to the pit, there were some severe injuries. I even patched up some holes in one guy, and they brought him into the basement to us. He says, well, look, he's, like, practically green. He sat calmly, like, well, like, suddenly he lit a cigarette. You wouldn't say that he's wounded anywhere. I started, like, examining him, taking the body armor off him, like, I lift his arm, and right here, right under the armpit there's a shrapnel piece, bam, I was taking off the flask, and bam, this loose shrapnel piece falls into my hand, some huge piece of metal. And it was a machine-gun shelling. It was a tank shell, most likely, and it flew right in, just like that, under his arm. He's sitting there, like, totally, well, apparently, he was very badly concussed. Like, not reacting, not feeling pain, nothing, like. I, like, quickly took off his T-shirt, I look, there's, like, such a hole, and it's cauterized. He was lucky that it, well, cauterized, like, up to the loose shrapnel. There was no bleeding. Well, I slapped on a bandage, slapped it, slapped it, the guy, bam, most importantly, they evacuated him normally, like. And there were many such people. And the wounds were of various types. And, by the way, the first drop from a drone, specifically a small one, on that position I already experienced, specifically a VOG. Then I was sitting there in the dugout, and then, like, there was an entry. And there was another soldier standing there, I've already forgotten his name now. A guy, about 27 years old, probably. And, simply, in that moment, there was such a minute of silence. And, simply, slap, exactly such a, you know, a bit of ringing in the ears. I realize that, well, like, and I scream, like, VOG! That was the first drop. It hit the guy in the shoulder, you can see that there are two tiny shrapnel pieces that make little holes. And then I bandaged him again, yes. The arm started, it's swelling, quite a bit. See, a small hole, but the injuries are so unpleasant.

Speaker 1

I remember, good positions, Alekseichna, everyone kept saying. Such a big guy, specifically with a beard. And he walked with a cap. I like that guy, like. So Alekseich, it seems, that's who recently gave me a nickname, they were mocking me as a sand doctor. Because, well, like, some 300s, well, both light and heavier, like, the wounded. I was already over there wrapping something, patching something. Back and forth. Then we retreated from that position, we were essentially pinned down. They demolished the house with a tank, from the basement. Because we were already gradually pulling back into the basement. Because things were hitting the house, we saw we didn't have a roof anymore. And the command is given, like, the guys say, we need to bolt. We already shift back a bit, like, we take positions at the Egypt one, as I remember. It was the second position, our neighboring one. And

Speaker 2

then there is also dekhiri

Speaker 1

There were also three-hundreds, I remember, and my group had to be evacuated. And then we reached such a point where a Beka could drive up. And there they gave a chance to warm up the guy. Now I entered there, a guy could even drink some coffee. And I came out of that position after six days, I was in such a bad state, that there was basically nothing to eat there, and there was nothing to smoke. And there the guy had a cigarette, and such a dirty cup of coffee, it was just so sweet to me, really good. I sat down on a small sofa, lit a cigarette, sipping coffee. Then suddenly, probably into the next room, into the wall. The front wall was facing the rear, it looked towards the fifth. And a tank just drove out on the wood, straight into the house, bam. Like, oh, everything is in a fog, you understand. I hear screams, they're carrying a guy into the house. A serious piece of shrapnel flew into his thigh, it flew in here, near the kidney area. Start wrapping him up. The guy wasn't just lying there outside. He was just covered in blood, his uniform turned straight red. Just chaos with this shelling. Now the mortar starts hitting. The tank is blasting this house. Our Beka flies in, the driver is completely crazy, well, respect to him. Good driver. He flies in here, like, faster-faster, they start loading the wounded. Into the Beka, like, a kopek, like, the doors open. First of all, they loaded the wounded, like.

Speaker 2

I, like, open the back door.

Speaker 1

They say, brother says, stop, close up, he says. Don't fucking jump onto the armor. He says, what the fuck? The tank is blasting, you get it? So, like, well, it's already landing nearby. The mortar starts shelling. And, like, I cross myself, jump onto the kopeyka, then… I sat right by the turret, grabbed this hook, pressed myself against it. I hear this tank blasting somewhere behind us, well, like, landing nearby. So I'm riding, just crossing myself. The driver was maybe going a hundred, yeah, in this kopeyka. Through Marinka. Gassing it. Well, it was quite something. The whole way I thought, well, here, it's going to hit now. If only a tour or some other dikukha would fly into us. Thank God, we made it out to Koltseva, and there they started earlier. And I was there, like, completely bandaging. There, a guy had a serious head wound. And I was bandaging him there too,

Speaker 1

War forced me to be baptized, so to speak. And more than once. I realized then that I could, like, help people. Help them for real. That was my thing. The dick-doctor. Alekseich had some things too. He had some bones broken. So he went to Avak. The AGS, by the way, in Velna. Our AGS was hit. The AGS is a scary thing. I've been straight-up afraid of it since that moment. No gun is as scary as the AGS for me, like. I realized it's a brutal thing. Very. Some guy just simply had his heel torn off, like. Damn. I didn't know it could do that. After that, Dushman gave me this. Dushman is this kind of guy. Well, not just a guy. A real man, I'd say. And I also saw, well, who transferred on February 3rd to Novodroitske. And I was already there; he served in fire support. Well, and he talked to me so brazenly, like. I saw that he was some, well, guy with a good, good history in life, like. A scary little man. I'm, like, looking, and some guy—just crazy—starts poking fun at me, like, harshly, like, those kinds of jokes. And I'm young, like, I thought he was some scary uncle, like, in reality, I was afraid. The war started. And, well, he's riding in the capsule. He starts roasting everyone, saying that you, he says, are ready, he says, to cut the Russians, he says, kill them. Ears, he says, you'll cut off, like, that's how he talks.

Speaker 2

I think, damn today, what ears,

Speaker 1

says,

Speaker 3

A one-and-a-half kilometer little dash, slipped into a trench line at their command post somewhere around 4-5 in the morning. Well, and I went around with a knife. That's it. Opened them up, calmly and returned to the hut. To the guy.

Speaker 1

Someone was picking on me for some reason, because I'm such a softie, he saw something interesting in me. He says, right then and there, he says, you'll be uha. I say, why, well, he says, you'll be uha, like. And that's it, everyone picked it up, and to this day I'm uha. Well, that's thanks to Dushman.

Speaker 4

State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, everyone is needed. And we will train you here, mold you, and you will be the shield of the country.

Speaker 1

It was a blessing, yes. We were there almost in full, I would say, encirclement. We were at fishka, fishka 4, and I was there exactly with Dushman. He was an AGS gunner, a top AGS gunner, I'd say. Well, he really did things with the AGS. Later, yes, on the same day, in about three hours, we had just eaten, had a little lunch. Well, reports were coming in, counting BTRs. They counted 15 BTRs or BMPs. They just came in like that, attacking the village and just started shelling houses blindly. They were just tearing apart houses and the infantry started disembarking. Maybe 15 people were getting out of each AFV, paratroopers or someone, I don't remember, or maybe they were marines. Maybe stinking deners. And Vasya understands everything, that I have an AGS, and we had some belts, quite a lot of them, and ammo. Like, he probably brought 6-7 belts. He loaded those packs there, and it was brutal. He really mowed them down properly. And not just that, like, killed them. I think that putting them in the 300s is even cooler than in BULAD, where they were crawling. Well, like, he blasted them there properly. And then at that moment, that was it. He fired off the last belt, and something hit our roof. Vasya says that's it, like, we're withdrawing, because they're already pinning us down. One BTR had already approached, maybe 50 meters from the house. Also Vanya, I remember, Vanya from Mariupol—I've already forgotten the last name. He

Speaker 2

and an RPG hit the thigh,

Speaker 1

he says. Ricochet. He says it's knocking down, some shitty thing, no more fairy tales now. That RPG was suppressing him. He says, ricochet. And Vasya says, that's it, we're pulling back, like. They're going through fences, in pairs, like. Well, Vasya probably even taught him some kind of tactics. That's when I saw that you could work like that.

Speaker 2

Ready? Then no. They are shooting, shooting.

Speaker 1

And we start, sort of randomly, to pull back a bit. They are still pouring it on our backs in the BTR. We just went into a ravine. And he already, only saw us on the horizon, just a bit, that we were already bolting. And he starts pouring it on. It's whistling, and such terrifying PVT. You run, and you've even caught a fly. Along with that, Rodionov's machine gun or a PKM, or an RPK. And my Kalashnikov. I was like a snot, maybe 55 kilograms. And go, we had a 3-kilometer forced march. We already met [our own], as we were already running back to our own. Everything was already on the roads. Our ATGMs were deployed. And the machine gunners are sitting at their points. I saw it and thought, just please don't shoot at us. We are coming out already in this state, in fact. And I myself was a machine gunner. I would have wondered whether to shoot or not. A bunch of guys are running. Who the fuck knows who. Such a fact, like scotch tape. It was already there. It was already there. Colors blue, green. At that moment, something was weak like that. And it was hard to understand who was who. Especially when they are running from the side they are storming from. And it was a frantic run. They barely recognized us. And we'll take [it], and we seep through. And that's it, we ran into one house. There we already take cover. At the very edge of the village, at the top. At the entrance. There was the entrance to Volodymyrivka. This road, by the way, saved us later. And already at night the order came that we would be withdrawing. We were, in fact, already encircled. Basically, we were already at the bottom, encircled.

Speaker 2

Bosya, what is this?

Speaker 2

Idiot, fuck. That was aviation.

Speaker 1

Well, as we were leaving, we also burned our car. It was already damaged. Evacuating the car now was… it was a wreck, a little armored car. Actually a jeep, but it was armored a bit. We set it on fire in the garage. I think I watched from the capsule how beautifully it burned. That was the last thing we did. We crowded into the capsule. And then we started rushing through the night.

Speaker 5

It went. Rovno,

Speaker 2

Crooked.

Speaker 1

I think that I am traveling in this capsule. Men, I don't know, probably 40 crammed into it. On me—like this, I was sitting in the capsule. On me, one, two, they sat down like this. Four men in armor, they were even sitting on me. They squeezed me like this. They broke it only on the even day. They

Speaker 2

Literally screaming.

Speaker 1

And, long story short, I'm leaving. Well, if it drops here for us, if we are against these little jars. I mean, I prayed, no need to wish. Where are you making us drive out?

Speaker 2

We rule, and we, brothers, in our own little land.

Speaker 1

Well, maybe about an hour and a half, probably two, through fields, back roads, things were unclear, it was already night. We broke out and already left for regrouping near Kurakhove. We had a deployment to Serebranka. Essentially, it was already positional warfare at that moment. It was the winter of '23 to '24. There, in fact… Well, they were already raining KABs normally then. Not mostly, but they were burying us in KABs then. In four days, Vanya and I counted 120 KAB strikes. Plus or minus in one area. It was really brutal. In short, there was positional warfare. Work on the "forbidden zone," as they probably say. Well, for example, the roosters see us crossing somewhere. We start shelling with mortars, maybe they targeted us with a polimet, with an RPG. They came at us via SP, piling on with RPGs. Well, either we spot them, as it were, at night, or we start raining it down on them primarily. They rain it down on our branch. That was the kind of action. And it was cool there in the forest. I liked this deployment more in terms of being with my good buddy. We lived in the same hole constantly, we took shifts here in the city. We got along well there. It was just somehow atmospheric there. That's the kind of war it was. Not like I saw on TV; you're, like, fighting, but it's also cool. Like, there wasn't that kind of absolute chaos, like it was at the start.

Speaker 2

Fuck, what the fuck are you doing here? Are you fucking crazy? So, basically, uh, I moved with a half yesterday. Put it, put it on the step. Roka. Put it on the step, I'm hammering. Fuck my life. This is boots, cheeks, shins, fuck. Well,

Speaker 1

and silence, fuck.

Speaker 2

But

Speaker 1

it's a plus, fuck. 120 thousand times a

Speaker 2

month. Well, maybe a hit to the face landed too.

Speaker 1

It was interesting that we sailed on boats. We sailed into our positions; we didn't drive in. We sailed along the Siverskyi Donets River for about an hour, plus or minus. We unloaded there, and then we trudged through the forest to our positions. And we had two or three boats there, and that's how we went back and forth. The delivery of ammo, provisions, and everything else was done by boat. In that sense, well, it was cool. It was some kind of new experience. Not just an infantryman who just walks through a grove and blasts away with a mortar, but here you sail and blast away with that mortar. Sometimes they would strike the banks; they shelled the boats properly because they realized we were moving by boat. Back then, things with drones weren't so developed yet. Well, their FPVs were already monitoring the river and the zone where we landed. There were already FPV intercepts then; that's when I first got acquainted, so to speak, and understood what FPV was. Well, mainly, it was settlement shelling, and if a mortar or a [something] hit, well, that was a normal thing at that moment, since artillery really decided everything then.

This is our MNRK "Sirko S1". It is probably positioned as logistic, but due to its size and range, in this situation, it is no longer suitable for that. It is more like a "Kamikaze" now. So I think it should perform its mission once, so to speak, like a "Kamikaze". We had dreamed of such movements for a long time, for something like this to already exist. In fact, to put it crudely, it's essentially an FPV that just drives. One of the first machines that, so to speak, broke down; there were communication problems, quite close to the LBZ. "Tarhan" MNRK "Tarhan". This is one of the first MNRKs; I personally liked it more. No, now it would lose to most MNRKs in terms of range, probably, and in terms of price and quality, it's just right. I really like it. We have such MNRKs working now. It can easily perform 30-40 missions.

We went into that grove, walked to our MNRK, opened it up, looked, looked at what exactly had broken. There was a power issue. Specifically, the power supply for communication burned out. I say to Vitia, "What should we do?" We take the MNRK and I say, "We wait for bad weather." We sat there for about half a day, waited until it rained; a wet snow with rain started, and it began to get dark, already night. I say to Vitia, "Time to move, it's time to send it out." We take the machine, drive it out of the grove, drive it a bit away from us using the controllers. Vitia is a bit behind me, and we check the sky, and slowly move forward. The drone saturation at that moment was already quite significant. The rain helped us a lot.

Speaker 1

We sped through the metro 200 along the boarding area, and then we had to cross from the canopy. Metro 400, probably, plus or minus 400 meters. Also from a very bad road, there were such ruts straight ahead.

Speaker 2

We went out on that roof, and at one moment I hear that something is buzzing.

Speaker 1

I'm thinking to myself, that's it, looks like it. Rukallashyk stepped away from the car, turned off the red flashlight, yeah, sat down, and I'm sitting, and what can you do? Show a demo of what kind of drone it is in general. The drone already flew past us from behind, just flew right by us, thank God. The situation itself at night, in the middle of a field, was unpleasant. Turned on the flashlight on the remote, at full blast, it's a swamp, mud up to the knees, we trudged through this big hole, and then started climbing up the hill. I say, "Greetings, I'm sort of a bit tired of walking." I say, "Let's get in the car, let's go." Like, "Yeah, let's go." Greetings, then he sat in the car in the back, the sky is flashing, and I'm driving first with the remote and the red flashlight, and the rain is pouring right into the cabin.

Speaker 2

Modern war requires modern solutions. In short, let's go. Hello, are you seated? Yes. And

Speaker 1

So, with the remote, we just blindly traversed 10 km through the fields at night. And that's how we escorted it and stopped along the way at our adjacent positions to recharge it. It had already been out for 2 days, so the battery had drained quite a bit. We stopped to charge for an hour, the boys had some tea, we charged it, moved to another position, moving in dashes, recharging. And then there was the last dash, probably about 6 kilometers. I just floored it, messed up, on autopilot, my hand was cold, and I just kept clicking on that remote. And that's how we were getting out, for maybe 1 hour, or 3. 10 km/h maximum. And 2 bodies on the American. If someone else had seen this, if I hadn't been involved, I would have just laughed. But I looked great in this. It was funny,

Speaker 2

Pavlo

Speaker 4

Bitch, and into a wet bag too.

Speaker 1

I don't give a fuck. Ready?

Speaker 1

We've already arrived at the point of our ground group. I agree, I realize that my face was already distorted, it had frozen. I was driving like that and looking with one eye. My hand on the remote had gone stiff and everything was frozen. Everything was soaked. We saved the machine, hauled away the remains, repaired it over a couple of days, and the machine literally kept working for us. It was a cool story. If the war ends and I survive, I will leave the service. But while there is war, I am here. I have an idea to develop specifically these kinds of activities,

Speaker 2

which are already civilian.

Speaker 1

For peaceful life, for agriculture, make those same energy-machines for spraying fields. There are already some like that. To process the fields. Now this equipment, it will replace the labor of today. Those same tractors and so on. Likewise flying drones, agro-drones. They have basically existed for a long time, but there will be very great development there, I am sure. Floating drones. I don't know. One could think of something other than floating drones already. Whether to do deliveries, or oversight work. I don't know. Set up a sentinel, take out a poacher. Fine.