Ukraine War Day #820: Better Call Volga

Dear Readers:

A lot of attention has been paid to the Kharkov Front of the war. But there is also a lot of carnage going on at the Chasov Yar front. I have two related stories by reporter Alyona Zhilina. Her source is a military correspondent of the RT TV channel, who calls himself Vlad Andritsa. He tells a harrowing tale about the storming of a town called Krasnoe, which is near Chasov Yar, from the Avdeevka direction. During the storming, Russian soldiers had to literally step over the bodies of dead Ukrainians. Stuck in the “grey zone”, a group of Russian soldiers was forced to spend one and half days hunkering down in a trench full of decaying Ukrainian corpses.

The commander of the storm group goes by the call sign Khakas. He recounts how his men had to sleep in shifts, keeping watch for overhead drones. At a certain point the soldiers entered into a state of what he called a “battle trance” in which they even forgot to eat. The trench they were stuck in, was only 40-50 meters away from the nearest Ukrainian soldiers. His second-in-command “Zheka” adds the horrible detail that his men had to lie next to rotting bodies of Ukrainian soldiers. “You can imagine the stench of the corpses…” Khakas confirms. “We couldn’t bring ourselves to eat anything. Even without the bodies, it was like something from a nightmare. We entered into a kind of trance. However, by the second day, we were able to eat some chocolate. The night was cold, extremely cold.”

Chasov Yar, as seen from a Ukrainian drone.

One positive thing: In the course of this nightmare, the Russian soldiers were able to rescue a Ukrainian soldier. Zhilina continues the saga in this related piece:

Our two new friends, Khakas and Zheka, were busy attacking the Ukrainian trench, when they came upon one Ukrainian soldier who had decided to surrender. The Ukrainian later told his story in a tearful interview on the internet. He recounted that he had successfully evaded conscription 10 times, but they finally got him on the 11th try. This happened on March 8. He had been in hiding, but he risked sneaking back to his childhood home to see his mother, grandmother, and girlfriend on International Women’s Day. Recruiters somehow found out where he was and nabbed him from his home.

He says he took the first available chance to surrender to Russians, and it just happened to be Khakas and Zheka. As they were retreating with their prize, Ukrainian artillery opened fire on them, trying to kill both them and the POW. Happily, they survived. In his interview, the Ukrainian literally burst into tears at the memory of his beloved mother: “I want to live. Mama is waiting for me at home, she is very ill and lives on her pension. And Grandma is also an invalid. Fighting – is just not my thing.”

A Syntactical Sidebar

Before moving on, I just wanted to do a quick sidebar on Russian syntax. Let’s break down the pathos-filled utterance of the Ukrainian POW: “Я хочу жить. Меня мама дома ждет, очень больная на пенсии. И бабка тоже инвалид. Воевать — это не мое.” TRANSLATION: “I want to live. Mama is waiting for me at home, she is very sick and lives on a pension. And Grandma is also an invalid. Fighting – is just not my thing.”

I want to focus on that second phrase in particular: “Mama is waiting for me at home.” This phrase is a perfect illustration, why inflected languages (for example, Russian, Latin) are so wonderful. Because one can tell from the grammatical endings of each word, what is the subject, what is the object, etc. And so word order is a lot freer than in non-inflected languages such as English. Which means that one is allowed to play around with the word order in order to create subtle semantic nuances. In a 4-word phrase like this (Меня мама дома ждет) there are, as mathematicians can figure out, 24 possible combinations of word order (4x3x2x1 = 24). I hasten to say that not all 24 combinations would be used in real life, but theoretically they are all grammatically correct. One only has to recall one’s struggles in the classroom with Latin syntax! Interpreting your typical Latin phrase or proverb is akin to piecing together a jigsaw puzzle!

Dear old mum has been waiting so long, she decided she might as well do something useful. Like spinning yarn to knit some stockings for the troops!

Anyhow, given the word-order that the POW chose: “Minya mama doma zhdot.” Four words. If translated into English literally, word for word: “Me [object of sentence] mama [subject of sentence] at home waits [3rd person singular present tense].

How to break this down semantically. Well, I am not a syntax nor semantics expert. I just know sort of intuitively what each combination might be trying to say. But what I have read is that, in Russian, the general rule of thumb: The final word of each sentence is like the punchline to that utterance, it’s the most important thing that you are trying to say: “Waits.” What is Mama doing? She is waiting. Grammarians call this the major focus of the phrase.

in my opinion, the first word of the phrase is like the lead: Меня (“minya”) – ME. I think that’s like the secondary focus. In a literary translation (like, if this were a novel or poem), one might try to capture these nuances by moving some words around in English, for example, “I personally have somebody at home, my Mama, who is waiting for me.” It’s still not the same thing, but a little closer than a straight translation of “Mama is waiting for me at home,” which would be the normal English word order: Subject Verb Object Adverbial phrase. Boring! If you want to learn more about Russian syntax and the semantics of it, there are sources out there. Just doing a brief skim, for example, I saw this note on reddit, of all places. Okay, moving on…

Calling Volga

This related story, by reporter Ivan Petrov, talks about the “Volga” hotline radio frequency which the Russians implemented in July of 2023. It broadcasts at a frequency of 149.2 MHz through the vastness of the Ukrainian steppe. Ukrainian soldiers can use this frequency to request surrender and evacuation from Russian forces. Zelensky accuses such men of cowardice. However, not all of them are cowards. Some of them simply don’t want to fight for that very same Nazi/Bandera regime which their grandfathers fought against.

It has been almost two and half years since the start of the SMO. Everybody has seen the videos of the Ukrainian recruiters snatching men in broad daylight and forcibly drafting them into the army. The situation gets worse with every day, especially after the new laws went into effect a couple of days ago. The room for maneuver gets tighter and tighter, until it becomes almost impossible for a Ukrainian male to avoid being sent to the front. One of their few recourses left is to call for help on the Volga frequency.

Already by autumn of 2023, around 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers have availed themselves of this utility, according to Russian operational sources. They add that the soldiers who give themselves up in this manner are treated well, they are well fed and have access to any medical services they need. The only downside is that they can’t go home just yet, they have to spend the rest of the war in a prison camp.

The reporter stresses that there is no shame in doing this; on the contrary, soldiers of honor should avail themselves of this opportunity to not shame the memory of their forefathers, who gave their lives to end the Nazi plague in Europe. It’s not too late, the reporter stresses: Better call Volga at 149.200.