By Information Opir [Resistance]
11.01.2014
Translated and edited by Voices of Ukraine
I still don’t know. Don’t want it to change me. The late Andrei Yurkevich, “Grizzly,” wrote about this in one of his posts. He always tried, when there was opportunity, to go online, to write some news, to communicate with the volunteers. He wrote that in his opinion war does not change a man, it simply sharpens what a man already is. If the man is despicable, he becomes more despicable, if he is kind, then the kindness sharpens in him. I have not acquired any sort of cruel features. I walk around, feeding the [stray] dogs. This part, however, looks funny – the broken buildings, everything destroyed. Medics brought three bags of dog food from somewhere, I have no idea where they found it, and so we walk around feeding dogs. Rich people kept them, then went away and left them behind. Huge wolfhounds roam there. Some shoot at them, and others go and feed them. Everything is very simple here, if someone did not like animals, he will shoot at them, and if he did [like animals], then even in war he will feed them.
The guys got hold of a parrot from somewhere, brought him to me, so half the regiment went searching what kind of parrot this is, what he eats, gathered some kind of seeds for him from the allotments. And then a mine exploded right when one of the guys sat in front of the parrot. The guy died, and the blast wave hit the cage, it opened and the parrot flew off. It sounds cynical, but human death was something that felt very muffled, while I worried for the parrot. Maybe it sounds obscene, but somehow that is how the psyche perceives it, so you do not lose your mind.
That’s why I hope that the war did not change me. When you drive in a car, you see a water tower and immediately look for a potential spotter who will open fire. You drive on a road, they are burning off the tops of potato plants, and you analyze what they were firing with and what was laying down there: “Grad” or mines? I think this will pass. But very many of the guys who came out of hell, from the airport, who got a concussion, when, God willing, they will be alive and well, they will have problems with their health. Because war is a terrible thing, it greatly aggravates many human things. Friendships become extremely strong. In civilian life a friend might be late to meet with you, or not come, or not do something, and after the war it is very acutely perceived. There [in war] you had such people, who dragged you from somewhere, risking their lives. There, Christian principles apply: “there is no greater love than to give your life for your friends,” and here you apparently consider someone a friend, and he promised to do some elementary things and did not do them. It is perceived painfully.
And also, if you think about some things there, mostly it is about what you did not have time to do. And some are really banal. Like I regret most of all that I did not have time to clean my garden. I did not clear it for five years, and now it seems like it is such a terrible thing, because I did not tidy the garden up.
Source: Constantine Izotov FB
Original: https://vk.com/infoopir
By Wings Phoenix (Iurii Biriukov), army volunteer and Assistant Minister to the Minister of Defense
Voices of Ukraine 