ROMAN DONIK: Stop judging and trust the professionals

By Roman Donik, army volunteer
07.07.2014
Translated and edited by Voices of Ukraine

Only the laziest haven’t already kicked at the military, National Guard and ATO leadership these days.

And those who tend to kick at them are theorists as a rule, who don’t do shit themselves. Or they might do [something] but are not independent thinkers and do everything on someone’s pointers / orders / request.

Those who are active and independent keep silent or rejoice. Even if you have any questions [regarding the events], this is not yet an occasion to ask them out loud.

War is a bitch, not like a game of chess or a route laid out by an iPhone.

In war, there are so many circumstances and variables that need to be taken into account, one could never have dreamed of. Take my word for it.

And every mistake, it’s not a lousy comment or too-few likes. These are the lives of our guys. Or deaths. As you like.

And the greater the blunder, the greater the losses. Our losses.

And Sloviansk… The moral and ideological victory achieved by its liberation is so brilliant that it’s even hard to explain.

Just too many little things, unknown to civilian residents, are intertwined there.

We have traveled and walked around practically all of Donetsk Oblast. We have travelled across the part of it, and walked around the territory occupied by, the enemy.

We regularly talk with the locals. With different locals. Sloviansk was a key figure in their minds.

And even traders at the Kharkiv market believed that the war had been unleashed to destroy Donbas in order to pump shale gas.

And according to the Kremlin’s propaganda, Sloviansk was supposed to be wiped off the face of the earth, and the locals [were supposed to be] shot and destroyed with a bombing.

Since they prevent the State Department from pumping shale gas.

Donbas feeds everyone, remember? Now, so as not to lose the foundation underfoot of the Soviet ideology about coal, which nobody fucking wants, people of Donbas were thrown a new gum–shale gas for the State Department.

You can laugh or just smile. But they are fighting for it. They are dying for it. They are protecting their families, which by order of the State Department junta, will be destroyed by artillery fire.

That is why the separatists are shelling peaceful neighborhoods. For this lie to work. For the natives to know: Banderites came to erase them from the face of the earth on orders from the State Department.

And in their fairy tales Sloviansk was the richest [gas] deposit.

And now they don’t blow it up. They don’t shell it and do nothing at all [with it].

This is a colossal crack in the entire ideological monolith of the separatists.

And as for the fact that [Ukrainians] let them leave quietly…

You should tell this to the paratroopers who cleaved the convoy and fought off the buses with kids that separatists drove for cover. Tell [this] to residents of the villages the convoy went past, when the gunfire died down on their outskirts and resumed after the villages [were passed]. Or tell [this] to those guys at the checkpoints where the separatist tanks broke through.

For the third day now, everyone is wishing RIP regarding the death of Volodya [colloquial for Volodymyr] Mamadaliyev. I slept next to him in a tent.

So, he was killed at a checkpoint during the attempted invasion. Ripped apart by a direct hit. They managed to hold back this attack.

Seven 200s [military code for dead] and seven 300s [mil. code for the wounded]. And you keep on further saying that traitors allowed the convoy to freely pass by.

I don’t know all the circumstances and considerations. I don’t know why and for what reason such a decision was made.

But I’m sure this was the only correct [decision], under the circumstances at that time.

And every unit of the enemy’s armored transport broken on the way is dozens, hundreds of our guys’ saved lives.

I’m not trying to persuade anybody.

I’m just asking those who don’t have all the information to shut up, not to distribute the influx of information from the enemy side, not to help the enemies but to trust the professionals and wait for results.

And to support our guys with whatever possible. Even prayer. Even faith in them.
………………

This is some of the separatist equipment that remained on the road from Sloviansk.