Ukraine War Day #437: Meet Grigory Kubatian [concluded]

Dear Readers:

Today continuing (and concluding) my translation of this piece; recall that Ivan Pankin, the Director of Radio Komsomolskaya Pravda, is interviewing one of KP’s new correspondents, Grigory Kubatian, previously famous for writing travelogues. I think this story is interesting and worth translating, not just because Grigory himself is an interesting person; but also he has a lot of insight about the daily grind of the war, from the front-line soldier’s point of view.

Grigory Kubatian

Where we left off: Grigory was seriously wounded in battle near Soledar, and it was necessary to evacuate him from the trench with the fighting still going on.

Grigory: It wasn’t possible to carry me out on a stretcher, we would have all been killed. So I had to crawl out, leaning on my automatic rifle as if it were a crutch. Slowly we were able to get out, but it was hard.

Pankin: Then they fixed you?

Grigory: I spent a month in the hospital. They evacuated me to Rostov, and then, by plane, to Moscow. At first I was confined to the bed, then I graduated to a wheelchair, to crutches, then just a cane, and finally no cane. To this day it is tough for me to climb stairs, but aside from that, everything is normal.

I Paid For the Sanatorium Myself

Pankin: Do you plan to return to the battlefield?

Grigory: If they need me there. But currently I am serving as a war correspondent, that’s my battlefield. It makes more sense for me to do what I am best at. Where I can be most useful.

Pankin: Many people would be interested to know, if it’s not a secret, how much pay you received as a participant in the Special Military Operation. And do you also receive any preferences as a veteran? Or for having been wounded?

Grigory: When we joined “Akhmat” we were told that we would be paid 150,000 [rubles] per month. And that, in principle, is true. But there is a complicated system of accounting, I don’t really understand it very well. As for the bonus for my wound, yes, I received that.

Pankin: Plus, the rehab, it’s all included, right?

Grigory: For the sanatorium I paid myself, out of my own pocket. Using the money I received for the wound. But in the hospital itself they healed me for free, on the government’s dime.

We Thought The Enemy Had Broken Through

Pankin: How would you judge the quality of the commanders? The equipment?

Grigory: In my company, we had pretty good commanders. But, as you know, it is necessary to really train and raise up officers. We don’t have enough commanders [in the army]. My comrades told me that things have gotten better [recently] in terms of communication, there is more coordination with air support, and with neighboring units. This is good to know, because earlier we had chaos.

Kadyrov (“Akhmat”) and Prigozhin (“Wagner”)

I’ll give you a concrete example: We hear some shooting. It sounds serious: explosions, machine guns chattering away. We come to the conclusion that the enemy has broken through. We rush off to form a circular defense. We almost even start shooting back. And then come to found out, that it’s just our neighboring “Wagnerites” training their reinforcements. And they never bothered to warn us. And here we are, we “Akhmatovites”, we’re standing right alongside, and we have no idea who is over there shooting!

These things should never happen, which is why we need more coordination.

The Smell Of Peaceful Life

Pankin: Your first impressions [in your new role] as a war correspondent.

Grigory: In spite of the continued shelling, Donetsk has really come alive again. Even though we have yet to push the enemy farther away from the city, he is already unable to reach everywhere, like he used to. It is becoming rarer for rockets to land right in the city center.

Compare with last year, when you had to make short hops from wall to wall. You look around to see where the shell is coming from, and you try to find appropriate cover. It’s guesswork, where it’s going to land. If it lands on the asphalt, then you’re screwed. Better if it lands on the grass. If it lands close to the wall, then you’ll be cut by flying window glass. This is how you cautiously make your way through the city, while you are doing all these calculations in your head.

Nowadays I notice more cars in the center of Donetsk, there are more people, there is more traffic. People really want to return to a peaceful life. You know how, when winter is coming to an end but hasn’t quiet ended yet, but people want it to be spring already, they want it to be warm already, so they start wearing lighter, summer clothes; as if to will it to be spring sooner. That’s how it is here.

The Bandera – Are Serious People

Pankin: How would you rate the enemy? Is there something that we have not understood correctly?

Grigory: As human beings, it is hard for us to comprehend, that the majority of the current Ukrainian society feels no mercy for Russians at all. And this is why they conduct the war using such cruel and base methods. They have no compunctions about shelling cities. Which they claim to be theirs, by the way, but they still destroy them, hiding behind the backs of the residents.

I recall once, sitting with other guys from “Akhmat”, we were discussing an incident that we heard about. A truck filled with some of our soldiers accidentally ended up in enemy territory. It’s easy to make a mistake and wander off track in the darkness, with your headlights off. So they got shot up, and they figured they were going to be taken prisoner. But in the end they were all killed. Our enemies hung their bodies on the trees. And my comrades — these are men who have seen a lot, who have fought a long time, these are not softies — just couldn’t believe their eyes. They said, “The Ukrainians could not possibly have done that, they are the same people as we are. No doubt this was done by foreign mercenaries, maybe Africans, people from a completely different culture. Ukrainians could not have done this, they are our relatives, they could not have become such beasts.” However, if you recall the Great Patriotic War, the customs of the Banderites, they were just like that.

Bandera insurgents from WWII: Tough, ruthless, stubborn, and merciless.

They are serious people, they fight ferociously and they show no mercy. Our enemy is also known for his stubbornness.

Pankin: You mentioned Africans. Did you see any Negroes there [at the front]?

Grigory: I didn’t, but some of my friends did.

Pankin: Could they have been dark-skinned Europeans?

Grigory: Possibly. Or possibly from the French Foreign Legion. Or maybe American instructors. Or maybe ISIS militants? I won’t say that there are a lot of them, but there are a certain percentage of them.

Will They Or Won’t They?

Pankin: Are you worried about the Ukrainian counter-offensive that everyone is talking about? Should we be worried?

Grigory: Why should we be worried? Vladimir Vladimirovich said, after all, that he hasn’t even started fighting. And if you look at the way our society conducts itself, sometimes you get the impression that we actually haven’t done anything, or started anything yet. It’s not like we are going all out. We still have a lot of resources in reserve.

Pankin: Does this surprise you, that we haven’t even started yet?

Grigory: It seems to me that our country always tries peace first. Has always tried to solve the problem in a peaceful manner. And only beat its fist on the table, when the rest of the world refused to go along. And that’s exactly what happened before the Special Operation. After all, we proposed a peace plan to the West. And even once the Operation started, we didn’t bomb, say, the enemy barracks. And to this day we spare their cities, we spare the lives of peaceful civilians. We would like, if at all possible, to solve this thing peacefully.

Pankin: Do you agree with that?

Grigory: Well, when I was there at the front, and fighting as a soldier, my thoughts were, of course: Let’s hit them harder! But I understand that it’s one thing to want to hit them, and a different thing to understand all the consequences. Maybe we are still trying to give the enemy a chance to re-think what he is doing.

Magical Thinking Won’t Help Us Win

[yalensis: A pre-footnote to explain the actual subtitle of this section: “By Command of the Pike“. In the course of the dialogue that follows below, Grigory employs a common Russian phrase, по щучьему велению (“by command of the pike”), with a pike being a species of fish. The semantic meaning is similar to: “By snapping your fingers and making a wish”, or uttering a magic phrase like “Abracadabra”, etc. I myself have heard this Russian phrase many times but never really thought about where it came from, so I looked up its origins. Which is a Russian fairy tale, one of those numerous ones involving a magic talking fish!

Long story short: a lazy good-for-nothing Russian peasant boy named Yemelya spares the life of a magic pike. In return he receives almost god-like powers, all he has to do whenever he wants anything, is to utter the magic words, “By command of the pike, and according to my own wish…” which rhymes in Russian — and he never again has to work a day in his life. After many chaotic adventures, he ends up marrying the Tsar’s daughter and living out the rest of his life in an opulent castle. Although the introduction to this popular fantasy story recommends it to parents, on the grounds that it “teaches good morals and work ethic”, it actually does quite the opposite – LOL!] — end of pre-footnote.

Pankin: How long do you think the Special Operation will go on? Have we gotten stuck?

Grigory: It’s difficult to say. But I can see how we are building fortifications along the entire front line; to me that says that we are preparing for the variant, whereby the conflict could go on for a long time still.

And if you look at the dimensions of this country, with whom we are butting horns, Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe, after Russia. I don’t think such things get resolved by snapping your fingers. The whole of NATO has put itself in the harness there: weapons, money, surveillance, men. This is not something that can be resolved “by command of the pike“. We need to lock ourselves in, get our act together, make it so that everybody gets involved at some level. We can’t just go around thinking, “Ah, Vladimir Vladimirovich will solve everything on his own.” How is he supposed to solve this problem? We need to solve it, all together. And then we will win.

[THE END]