Although Semenchenko gave contradictory answers when asked about his involvement in politics, in the end he took his chances in the elections. He claims that his people in Parliament will have an impact on the army’s structure and operations in eastern Ukraine. The main political objectives of Donbas are a little murky. They include fighting corruption, effecting modernization of the army, and providing support for “patriotic attitudes.”
Many Donbas residents were sold on Ukraine only when they realized what the separatists’ rule was like. Some decided to join volunteer battalions fighting for Ukraine, and most of those joined Donbas. Although the battalion was formed in April, it was given legal status only in May and was integrated into the National Guard of Ukraine.
In the battalion I meet many people connected to the region. One of them is fifty-year-old “Iron Man” from Slovyansk who had been fighting on the Maidan and had been shot by a sniper. He arrived in the unit from Vienna where he had received a titanium implant thanks to international aid. Others, like Pastor, didn’t go to the Maidan, nor did they consistently support it. But once they are in the battalion, they have no doubts which side to take. Another guardsman fled Donetsk after someone wrote his apartment number in the stairwell. He was harassed several times by people with guns. He sent his family away, left Donetsk, and joined the battalion. “I have no place to go back to,” he says quietly, ending the phone conversation. His house has just been shelled.
The difference between volunteer battalions and regular forces is that people are better motivated in the former. After all, it was their decision to reach for weapons. They were not forced to do so by draft boards. Very often their enthusiasm transcends their skills. They haven’t all had military experience, but many have had a spell in the army or police.
Apart from residents of Donbas, you can meet all of Ukraine in the battalion. Some men are from the west—for example, a twenty-something from Lviv. Some are from Crimea. They had to flee the areas occupied by the Russians.
When I sit on the steps in front of the dorm-turned-base, I am approached by “Asker,” which in the Crimean Tatar language simply means a soldier. He sits next to me and he wants to check his email. He plays for me his favorite music, songs of the Crimean Tatars. As I found out much later from another Donbaser from Crimea, Asker was wounded when his battalion was seizing Popasna, a town in the Luhansk region, several dozen kilometers away. He was taken to the hospital and then disappeared. He just vanished into thin air. Men in battalion Donbas suspect that he was kidnapped by separatists.
“I will never forgive them. I will avenge him,” says one of his Crimean buddies. He is a very young person. In his platoon, out of thirty-five men only five remain. He has started abusing alcohol, most probably due to the lack of both proper support and an adequate number of psychologists. Just like one of his five comrades.
“I feel pain here, in my heart. This is really horrible,” he tells me, swaying a little on his feet.
A desire to fight for the motherland is essentially the only motivation of the Donbasers. Their basic pay, promised by the Interior Ministry, amounts only to 1,248 hryvnas, or 47 dollars a month. If you consider rising prices and the declining value of money, every day they earn less and less. Anyway, their money exists only as an idea because nobody has ever received any wages. The guardsmen from the battalion joke that if one day they get all the overdue money, they will at least notice they have received something. So where does Donbas get its money from? In the beginning they were supported by the pro-Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoyskiy. Now they live off donations from people who can send them from 10 to 1,100 hryvnas. Other people provide food. Thanks to all of this Donbas has uniforms, equipment, and provisions.
Theoretically, each guardsman should be provided with proper weapons, but so far the government has not fulfilled its promise. They captured their first weapons in April when they attacked a checkpoint of pro-Russian insurgents. At that time they were a paramilitary organization and they were equipped with automatic rifles. They still don’t have enough weapons, not to mention heavy equipment. Donbas has at its disposal several armored personnel carriers and antiaircraft guns that can also be used to fight light armored divisions.
Although battalion Donbas has its own political aspirations, it was not created around any particular ideology. This is not true of two other volunteer battalions, Azov and Right Sector. Their roots are in the Maidan. That was where a coalition formed of diverse radical organizations. They wanted to separate themselves from other demonstrators: “liberals, lefties and anarchists.” The coalition included such organizations as Patriots of Ukraine, White Hammer, the Ukrainian National Assembly/Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense (UNA-UNSO) and the Social-National Assembly. The coalition of organizations became really well known in January 2014 when they stormed the Ukrainian Parliament, launching several days of clashes with police. From the very beginning violence was one of their means to achieve political goals. In the circumstances of the civil war, creating an independent battalion was a natural process. Battalion Azov is rooted in the Social-National Assembly and now is subordinate to the Interior Ministry. You can just look at their logo to realize that you are dealing with an extremely radical group. The logo shows a Wolfsangel and a black sun. Both symbols are used by neo-Nazi movements. After the Azov unit was created, one of my friends joked that, compared to them, Right Sector was almost liberal. It is worth noting however that Azov was also joined by people without any political views or even ideologically “hostile” to neo-Nazis. Even some anarchists fight in its ranks.
It is August 2014. We accompany the soldiers of battalion Donbas from Kurakhove near Donetsk to the base located a few dozen kilometers from Ilovaisk. In the “Ilovaisk encirclement,” Ukrainian volunteer battalions were surrounded by separatist forces backed by Russians in the form of Russian soldiers and Russian military equipment. After their initial victories and having captured at least half of Ilovaisk, Ukrainian units were suddenly isolated and encircled. Eight battalions got stranded in one of the schools on the city outskirts. There were four journalists with them, including Max Levin, a photographer from the Internet magazine Levyj Bereg (Left Bank). I rely on his report below.
They were constantly shelled by separatist artillery. They tried to break free from the encirclement many times but unsuccessfully, although the separatists promised them safe passage. Each time they would meet with fire, even when the promised corridor was used to carry wounded soldiers.
Four journalists traveling in such a column narrowly escaped with their lives. In the end they separated from the column, went off on their own, and managed to reach the areas controlled by Ukrainian forces. Their entire car was perforated with bullets and shrapnel.
According to the Ukrainians, at least two hundred Ukrainian guardsmen and soldiers were killed in the battle of Ilovaisk. However, according to unofficial sources this number may exceed one thousand. In October the separatists were still holding ninety-eight prisoners from battalion Donbas, the main fighting force in Ilovaisk. Many of them had been exchanged earlier for captive separatists.
I go with a group that will try to rescue the Ukrainians from the encirclement. In a supporting unit there is Ilya Bohdanov, a Russian. He is waiting for the Ukrainian passport that should come very soon. He used to be an agent of Russia’s intelligence service. When he realized that what Putin was doing was incomprehensible, he took time off and came to Ukraine. There, he was thoroughly checked by the Security Service of Ukraine and was allowed to join the battalion. In Russia a military court has taken charge of his case. This former agent of the FSB is a very calm, quiet person. He talks very little and remains in the background. Why did he take the Ukrainian side?