There were a million of them. Different. Good and bad, poor and middle-class, educated and dark as the polar night. Orthodox and Muslims, Buddhists and atheists. Residents of dull Buryatia, icy Yakutia, dusty Dagestan, Yaroslavl, Volgograd, Perm, Tver, arrogant Muscovites (the percentage was small, but they were there) and St. Petersburgers who claimed to be intelligent. Yesterday’s miners, peasants, engineers, even teachers. And also alcoholics and drug addicts. Prisoners, after all. Well, and the cadre – counter-revolutionaries and graduates of schools and academies with multi-story and pompous names like “Federal State Treasury Military Educational Institution of Higher Education “Ryazan Guards Higher Airborne Order of Suvorov Twice Red Banner Command School named after General V.F. Margelov” of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.
Privates, sergeants, lieutenants, captains, majors, colonels and generals. Infantry, tankers, artillerymen, marines, scouts, pilots, sailors…
11 years ago, many of them would hardly have pointed to Ukraine on a map, many never had friends and relatives in our steppes, forest-steppes and forests. Ukraine was not some kind of magnet, they did not particularly dream about it. And really, where is Chelyabinsk, and where is Kropyvnytskyi? A Muscovite will go on vacation to Egypt and Turkey, Odessa and Zatoka did not attract him, even Yalta before the occupation was hardly luxurious in this regard. And as for cozy Bucha, hidden in a pine forest not far from Kyiv, I am sure that all 100% have never heard of it.
There were a million of them. Strong, self-confident, planning for the future, wanting money and a new life. Thinking that they were individuals. Some even decided that they were defending the interests of their people, their nation, their state. They were proud of their uniform.
But then their dictator went mad, the nation fell into the abyss of militaristic schizophrenia, the state became completely criminal. And this million moved to Ukraine…
They decided that they were allowed to do anything, that they were already winners without having fired a single shot. That they would succeed.
It didn’t work.
A million – no, not all perished, not all rotted in the fertile Ukrainian black soil or decorated cemeteries across their vast homeland. A million – these are the total losses. There are those who became cripples, and prisoners, and deserters.
Before that, they became conquerors, child killers, rapists, marauders. Beasts in human form, although I’m wrong about beasts. Better this way – inhuman. Even the best of them became.
There were a million of them. There will certainly be new thousands, even hundreds of thousands, perhaps even a new million. Which will perish in exactly the same way – ingloriously, dishonorably, cursed by the once brotherly people.
Cursed and forgotten! Ukraine is also suffering terrible losses, and many thousands of our soldiers have fallen. Unfortunately, tens and hundreds of thousands. But these are the people who defended their land from the inhumans who decided that everything is allowed to them. From the occupiers who forgot the words attributed to their saint that “he who comes with a sword will perish by the sword.”
There were a million of them.
Author: Viktor Bosnyak, columnist for Dumskaya
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