Face in the window

Well, the situation with Ukrainians is clear! There is no way out for them: either their country and all of them will be destroyed, or they will be “entrusted” the third-rate role of an auxiliary nation in the Russian Empire – to pump oil in the north or die far away in a war, defending the “borders of the homeland.” This is quite a choice, as they say! Our ideological fascist, Lev Vershinin, simply explained everything: a war to kill as many Ukrainians of reproductive age as possible and destroy the Ukrainian core – love of freedom and willfulness. They, scoundrels, always tried to wriggle out of obedience – of serfdom, of collective farms, of the “soviets”. They resisted, they schemed, they ran away, they struggled… As Eduard Bagritsky wrote, “Previously we became Cossacks, and now we become bandits!” This is what he wrote about the 20s years of the last century, characterizing the resistance of the “Khokhols” (Ukrainians) to the Bolshevik occupation.

In short, the Ukrops (Ukrainian) are “saving” their skin—their lives and freedom. They die, suffer, turn around as if under a pitchfork, but they endure and do not want to go “under the hand of the Moscow king,” as almost 400 years ago. They have losses and sacrifices. They themselves hardly believe the words of their president about 31,000 dead, they suspect that there are more… But they do not give up. They meet their dead by kneeling.

Things are a little different in our place. It is somehow official and patriotic, according to orders from above, which is felt and manifested at every step.

The war has been going on for the third year now; according to various estimates, Russian losses range from 150,000 to more than 400,000. There is probably no contradiction in this, the first figure is most likely the killed, and the second one is the total losses: killed, wounded, crippled… When building a cause-and-effect chain, one can easily agree with this order of numbers. Russian military science, strategy and tactics have not changed much over the past hundred years. Just remember our military slogans:

· “No step back!” – well, yes, what kind of “back” is there, when there are if not the NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs), then the Chechens;

· “Take it at any cost!”, “We will not be influenced by the cost!” — the cost is little people that no one is going to count;

· “For God, the king and the fatherland!”, “For the motherland, for Stalin!” “For Orthodox Russia, against NATO and Gayrope!” – in short, “for the Empire.” For the cold, indifferent and cruel stepmother that sends its deceived and fooled stepchildren to death. To preserve itself, its greatness and brilliance.

Under such flags and banners, our soldiers go to storm Ukrainian positions head-on. First come those who are “larger in number and cheaper in price” – prisoners and mobilized people, various penalized people, they are called “enemy detection units.” Then, when they find Ukrops` (Ukrainians`) firing points with their bodies and cause artillery fire on the enemy’s trenches, “specialists” are sent. But this inequality between the first and the second is conditional and cannot ensure the reliable continuation of the “specialists`s” lives, the specialists also die. You are lucky today, but tomorrow there will be a new attack, and then another and another ones… Over there, a handful of “Ukronazis” marines have sat down on the bank of the Dnieper opposite to Kherson and our soldiers have not been able to do anything for several months. We already attacked them with superbombs from airplanes, and with artillery, and with gases, and with continuous attacks, Shoigu already reported to Putin that they had cleared the bridgehead… And then the Ukrops (Ukrainians) crawl out of all the cracks and kill our soldiers. There is a group of 40,000 our people there, and the Ukrainian bridgehead is like a pain in our ass, but you cannot just dig it out. Continuous attacks result in only a constant stream of Russian dead and wounded people.

And there are also foolish commanders who line up their subordinates on the drill ground for some purpose: moralizing, pumping, distributing instructions or something else… But then Ukrop’s HIMARS arrives and takes the lives of several dozen of our fellow countrymen at once! And after a couple of days this tragicomic situation repeats itself. Yes, yes, it is so, believe me.

In different ways, in the war you can turn from a murderer into a killed one, into a dead body, which, hopefully they will pick it up and send it home, otherwise it will rot among the trees or on the Ukrainian field that has not been plowed already for two years.

February 2024 was a record year for the number of Russian soldiers killed: approximately 983 per day. And no wonder! And what did you think, “they took” Avdiivka, rushing to report for the presidential elections? And so they stormed, rolling in wave after wave and regardless of losses.

And what then? What after this? How do the bodies of the Russian Armed Forces who died in the war get home?

The mournful path begins like this… First, the body is taken to the Rostov center for identifying the dead, located in the morgue of a military hospital. This is a sorting center; representatives of all units participating in military actions work there. The mentioned morgue is not a refrigerator room in a military hospital, it is a huge hangar with numerous rows of mortal remains on the floor. It is necessary to identify and prepare the body for shipment, then contact the military unit and notify them so that accompanying persons can be allocated.

Preparation of the body includes dressing in a clean military uniform, “marafet” of the face so that the deceased does not look so terrible and so that relatives can recognize him by looking through the little window. After these procedures, the remains are sealed in a zinc box, the zinc box is placed in a wooden box, signed and prepared for loading.

An officer or contract soldier sent from the unit will arrive, he will receive documents and personal belongings of the deceased, the “Order of Courage”, documents for burial and he will wait for the flight to be scheduled. Before loading – instructions from the head of the center. Then the actual loading into the IL and sending to the regional center, where the body will be met by a military commissar, he will help with transport to the native village/town/city of the deceased, with the organization and conduct of the funeral ritual.

IL flights depart from Rostov regularly; each one is loaded with dozens of zinc coffins, filling the “board” to capacity. There are also 60-80 accompanying people, the plane flies east all the way to Vladivostok, with landings in regional centers.

At the arrival, in a conversation with relatives, after the usual phrases, they will be told that their son/brother/father was killed by a sniper shot in the head and he did not suffer before his death. Not everyone believes this… At such moments, the value of pretentious formulations is greatly devalued, the falsity and cheapness of propaganda and the cynicism of the authorities come to light. Sometimes there are hysterics and distrust of the military who delivered the body and opening the coffin is the result. They saw the zinc box with an angle grinder to make sure there is no forgery. Sometimes they open it in order to put the body in another coffin or to say goodbye to the deceased and touch him. It happens that they demand to observe the custom and display an open coffin for farewell. Although the condition of the body can vary, sometimes it is simply terrible.

The end to all this is not yet in sight, but it is time for everyone to think: for mothers in a poor village, where there is not even asphalt, where money for the funeral is collected by the entire community, and the coffin is put out for farewell in a local school or canteen because of poverty; and for the fellow countrymen of the deceased, if they have not yet understood the meaninglessness of the ongoing war; and for the authorities – military commissars, civil authorities, and senior management in Moscow… well, these are the least of our hopes!

War is not always an order on the chest, sometimes it is an obelisk or a cross on the grave.