Taking this opportunity to share these accounts from Serhiy Bolotnikov, a football journalist, famous on Ukrainian YouTube. In July he signed a contract to join the press service of the 63rd Mechanized Brigade. As with anyone else joining the UAF, regardless of role, he went through basic training in a Training Center. He has reported, in several interesting posts, on his experience during basic training. In recent days he has finally reached his unit, in Lyman. The original posts can be found on his channel’s Facebook page. Translation via DeepL.
(July 16)
One day I will have grandchildren and they will ask me: “Grandpa, how did you get to the war?” I will answer: “Well, one day I wanted Senka’s shawarma…” 😆
But seriously, I didn’t play this lottery with the calls - I found a job and went voluntarily. I told the patrons and sponsors of the CCC in more detail. I will tell you more about it later. We are not closing the channel, we will try to make content, just give us some time to think about everything. Let’s go!
(July 31)
I am sharing my first impressions of our army after a week in the school.
✅ I can’t tell you exactly where I’m studying for security reasons. There is a UPL team in this city. But it is unrealistic to get to a match. No one is allowed out of here and no one is allowed in.
✅ The training has just started, so far I’m coping with physical training (daily exercises with jogging, outfits, etc.) even with my sore back, and in the evening we run with the guys in armor and do some pull-ups.
✅ Most of the people here are positive, open-minded, and proactive, which helps a lot with teamwork. And it often creates the atmosphere of a children’s camp 😆 The contingent is very different - there are many uncles 50+, but there are also enough guys under 30. Almost all regions are represented, but for some reason, Kharkiv is the most represented. Interestingly, women also study in our platoon - absolutely everyone, even future accountants of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, passes the BZVP.
✅ Provisioning is very decent, they gave us everything we needed, even slippers and dishes. A lot of things that I brought with me, I didn’t have to pack. Of course, not everything is of the best quality or the perfect size, so you can buy an alternative and have it delivered through Nova Poshta.
✅ The food is… tolerable, let’s just say. Those who remember the school meals of the 90s will not die of hunger. But why we have to endure the most basic thing in the army is a mystery to me. Is it really so difficult to cook at least at the level of Puzata Khata?
✅ The command is as adequate as possible - I didn’t even expect everything to be so human. No scoop, no one bothering with literalism, no humiliation, no mockery, whenever possible, they allow us to relax and enjoy ourselves with niceties. After the oath, for example, we set up a sweet table, and the other day one of our guys showed off watermelons. Of course, when some asshole shit all over the parachute, we took all the cunts 😆 Being human doesn’t mean there is no discipline at all. The worst thing is sleeping in the company of dozens of men. Everyone is talking, farting, coughing and, of course, snoring. Sometimes it seems that you live in a second-class train to Solotvyno 😆
✅ As for football, I still manage to watch all the most important things - Dynamo, Polissia, all the matches of the Olympic team. But I’m almost the only one in the whole company here - people don’t care about football. It’s very revealing and brings you down to earth a bit. To be continued…
(August 13)
While Senkiv and Matskevich are making up issues, I don’t have time for football right now - it’s been a rough go at the BZVP. Last week they took a psycho test. In short, it’s a c*nt. In a little more detail, it’s when you run, jump, crawl, climb walls with an assault rifle, wearing armor, RPS and a helmet, and everything around you is burning, smoking, shooting, exploding, being cursed and beaten on the ass with a stick 😁
At the finish line, you want to die, your legs carry you only by inertia, and in the evening even those muscles that you did not know existed before hurt. It is forbidden to film the psycho strip. But there is a video of a tank passing over us a few hours before 😲.
In fact, the process itself is not as scary as it looks from the outside - even 50 meters from the tank, the ground shakes as if you were standing above a metro station 😲 But crawling under the tank is really difficult. I thought it had a little more ground clearance, so I hit my helmet several times ☺️
We have already started firing live ammunition. From 100 meters, I even managed to hit 7 tens out of 30 😎 Although I am not a sniper in general 😄. In short, keep calm and work hard 💪
(September 6)
As promised, I’m talking about the Basic General Military Training (BZVP).
1️⃣ First and foremost, this is a really useful thing that has recently been made mandatory for all military personnel. In a month, we were taught almost everything: shooting (more than 500 rounds), tactics, trenches, medicine, sapper, communications, aerial reconnaissance, survival in nature, topography, the charter, and so on. Of course, something is superficial, but the basics were repeated so much that I now know them better than the current Dynamo and Shakhtar squads😆.
2️⃣ This is how the BZVP looks like in practice. At 5:30 we get up and go, we are off at 22:00. Every day - 4-5 classes. Sunday is the only day off. Heat, rain, snow - it doesn’t matter, you have to go. The weight of a full outfit with a backpack is about 17 kg. In the end, my back could not take it anymore. But if there are no serious health problems, the body quickly gets used to it - when the classes were over, we laughed that something was missing on our backs💪.
3️⃣ A few words about the CTL (control and tactical training). These are the last 3 days of training. Everyone is taken to the forest and the fun begins. You dig an espeshka (an observation post) and a bed (a kind of personal grave for the night). You patrol the territory around the clock, waiting for the instructors to attack. Food - dry rations. Shower - napkins. Toilet - a hole in the bushes. In short, everything is as close to real conditions as possible, except for the main thing - you will not be fucked by f*gs (except for millions of mosquitoes). The maximum that comes is training grenades with peas. At the end of the CTL, there was a kind of exam - a 5 km march with mined fields, tripwires, shelling, evacuation, drone chasing, ambush and storming of the trench at the final point. I was in the team that defended the trench from every unit of our company - we set a record in the history of the training, 7:1😎
4️⃣ My main conclusion after the BZVP is that war is not just a dangerous thing, it is first and foremost a hard, very hard job. Not only physically, but also mentally. We had been away from home for only a month, but we were happy to have a hot shower, like a victory for the Ukrainian national team, got high from taking off our boots, like after sex, and dreamed of sitting not in an expensive restaurant, but on the toilet😊 In fact, studying can be even harder and worse if you are unlucky with your studies. I was lucky, the attitude of my team helped. There was adequate leadership (special greetings to Mykolayovych and Olehovych!), knowledgeable instructors (all with combat experience), and normal living conditions. And, of course, a great team - many, like me, joined the army on their own after finding a vacancy. That’s why there was no massive whining, betrayal, or cursing in private conversations. I even had to raise my fighting spirit to the level of the guys (and girls!) to get myself together and keep working hard. Thanks, guys, you’re the best! ❤️
5️⃣ But there are also disappointments… For the first time in a long time, I found myself outside my social bubble. And I saw how much people are totally Russified. 80% of my platoon spoke Russian. I kept reminding them that the occupier’s language does not have the word “lie” and that you can “dress” someone, not an armor. In the end, they were already planning how to accidentally shoot me at the range 😆 But seriously, the problem is different - almost everyone, even Ukrainian speakers, watched some kind of cheesy Russian movies, listened to Russian music and Russian tiktokers, some were even nostalgic for the Soviet Union. In short, we will definitely win the war, but we will have to suffer with people’s minds for a long time 😕
6️⃣ And finally, do you know what push-ups are called in the army? Pushing the Earth 😆
(September 15)
✌ That’s it, I underwent additional training on the spot and finally started working at the press service of the 63rd Brigade. In short, subscribe to our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/63ombr, or better yet, our telegram channel https://t.me/ombr_63. There is already a lot of interesting content there, and there will be even more 😊
Reporting the comment on this by Russian milblogger and military instructor Svyatoslav Golikov.
In the light of the instruction from the Minister of Defence (I quote), issued by the press service of the Ministry of Defence, to deal as soon as possible with the situation related to the information about the deaths of two servicemen with the call signs “Ernest” and “Goodwin” of the 87th Separate Rifle Regiment [of the 51st CAA], I should like to make the following points.
As we all understand, the case managed to give such a high-profile resonance due to the fact that Ernest and Goodwin were quite well-known experts in professional circles, many people knew them personally (I met Goodwin and Hedgehog in June of this year).
Meanwhile, the assault group sent to Lesovka [Pokrovsk sector] in the early morning of September 11 included five specialists from the same long-range air reconnaissance unit: Ernest, Goodwin, Socrates, Shok and Reef. In addition, the commander wanted to send Zhenya Yozhik (now, he is, thank God, already in relative safety).
At the same time, the assault group itself consisted of at least 12 people (this figure I know as of the day the group received the combat mission). In the channel “North Wind”, which was led by Goodwin, it is now indicated that 14 people were killed on the task.
That is, in addition to purposefully sending Ernest’s squad to slaughter, we have another example of an unsupported meat assault, in this case as a result of a false report on the capture of Lesovka.
Further, based on the available data, including the certificate prepared by Ernest himself and reports from other soldiers (see, for example, here and here), Kompolka [regiment commander] Puzik (Evil) in general was noted for criminal abuse of office and unfit organization of combat work.
To understand the state of the regiment (quote): “This sending (Ernest’s calculation to the assault) is a personal score. But guys are dying. The losses are huge. He drained the regiment. There is no one. The kombat [battalion commander] was wounded in Lesovka, the deputy kombats are five hundred. Disabled men are chased away and all that. There’s no regiment. It is not capable of accomplishing this task.
However, the matter is not limited to this particular regiment. The 1st Slavyansk OMSBr, which has the 87th OSP under its operational command, has similar reports of blatantly irresponsible treatment of specialists, including the disbanding of the 268th Rifle Battalion’s UAV operator group and the transfer of engineers from the brigade’s 1st Reserve Battalion to the infantry. On top of that, combat work in the brigade during the SMO turned out to be basically put in such a way that the once glorious 1st Slavyansk OMSBr was completely turned (literally) into a meat factory.
Moreover, at the level of the entire 51st Donetsk Combined Armed Forces Army (former 1st Donetsk Army Corps), which includes the 1st Slavyansk OMSBr, there is a very eloquent message: “We don’t need smart people, we are smart ourselves. We need assaults, we need meat” (quotes of great military leaders).
In general, the frankly criminal practice of sending valuable specialists to the assault infantry (both due to shortage of personnel and personal dislike on the part of commanders) is in principle systemic in the active army.
Unsupported meat assaults, conducted in an emergency mode, including as a result of false reports on the capture of certain positions and settlements, are also a systemic problem, as well as the sending of untreated wounded, sick, disabled and simply untrained soldiers to such assaults due to the shortage of personnel.
This case, as I said above, has highlighted virtually the entire set of problems in and around our active army. With a proper approach to the investigation (taking into account the reaction of the Minister of Defense), it could become a precedent for the systematic cleaning up of all these Avgiyah stables.