By Vasilisa Trofimovich, press-secretary at Dnipro-1 Battalion (volunteer)
12.16.2014
Translated and edited by Voices of Ukraine

Gentlemen Moralizers: Those who have been stewing about Valentin Manko [Deputy Commander, Dnipro-1] for three days and three nights for stopping a humanitarian convoy [from the Akhmetov foundation]. And those who are still undecided as to whether they should join the clever ones or the pretty ones.

I was silent for a long time, but let me throw in my two cents.

Now, I do not think about smuggling [operations]. Nor about the financing of terrorism. Nor about those unfortunate people who are not receiving humanitarian assistance.

I think that when you say the humanitarian aid the occupied territories failed to receive is a great sorrow – as a matter of fact, you do not know what grief is.

We have passed through the seven circles of hell, after the exit of our defenders from Illovaisk turned into a bloody massacre. And it seems that hell has many more circles [than we think it does].

When mothers don’t know for months what is happening to their children.

When you read reports by the head of the medical battalion responsible for identification and think that he’s talking about your family and the people dear to you. And that you never wanted to know this.

When you can’t say “goodbye” to a friend, because his remains are somewhere in the fields in Mnohopillya [Donetsk region].

When you bury your commander. Or rather his tibia.

When you can’t bury your friend, because the terrorists have crucified his body on a fence, and are now demanding a ransom from his sick mother.

When your friends are held prisoner. In the basement of the Donetsk SBU [former Security Service of Ukraine building]. And that they have not once taken a breath of fresh air in the past month. And that the guards practice their blows [on your friends]. And torture them. And there are no warm clothes. And the wounded didn’t get help. And those with heart issues don’t have medications. And that there are no shoes. And it keeps getting colder every day. And that [people] pass out from malnourishment and lose hope with every passing minute. And that your golden boys, your heroes, the vitality of this nation are being broken. While killing off the free spirit inside them.

And that children get born without fathers, and the fathers don’t even know that their children are born.

So of course, one day without canned meat and cream of wheat for the residents of the occupied territories who had asked, “Putin, enter [your troops]!” and excitedly went to the referendum – is hard. Especially when you realize that some of them probably picked up a grenade launcher after coming [home] from work and [used it to] kill your friends.

But, I think for the sake of the mothers to see their children again, for parents to come back to their children, for us to take back our brothers’ bodies, for the prisoners to see freedom again… For all this, we can forgive and understand halting the cargo. That’s exactly how I think about it.

Source: Vasilisa Trofimovich FB