You're reading: Novaya Gazeta: Injured Russian soldier tells how he and his battalion fought in Ukraine’s Debaltseve

Editor's Note: The Russian online newspaper Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia's few remaining sources of independent journalism, on March 2 published an interview with a Russian soldier assigned to a tank unit sent with his battalion to regain Russian control of Debaltseve in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast. Ukrainian forces surrendered Debaltseve, a key railway hub with a pre-war population of 25,000 people, on Feb. 18.

The link to the original story is here

Dorji Batomukuev, 20, belongs to the Fifth Tank Brigade based in Ulan-Ude, Russia. He is a conscript who was mobilized on Nov. 25, 2013. In June 2014, Batomukuev signed a contract for three years. The interview with Novaya Gazeta was conducted in a Donetsk hospital.

Batomukuev is pictured in bed, his face and hands wrapped in bandages. He was injured on Feb. 19 in the village of Logvinovo, a key point on the Artemivsk-Debaltseve highway and part of the so-called “Debaltseve boiler.”

Batomukuev said that he came to Ukraine voluntarily.

In October, he was sent from Ulan-Ude to Rostov, a southern Russian city known to have training bases for Russian soldiers sent to Ukraine.

Although their commanders said they would be taking part in a training exercise and did not mention Ukraine, everyone knew where they would go, the soldier said. In Ulan-Ude, they painted over identifying symbols on the tanks. Later, they removed patches from the clothes that identified them as Russian soldiers.

“There were experienced guys. Someone was already more than a year on the contract, someone for 20 years. They said: ‘Do not listen to the command, we’re going to bomb the hohols’ (a derogatory term used to describe a Ukrainian). Even if they organize training, then anyway we will be sent to bomb hohols,” said Batamokuev.

According to the soldier, no one forced them to go to Ukraine, and he knows about two men who refused. The others had three months of training before they received a signal to go.

“It was around Feb. 8. The captain of our group just came out and said: that is all, guys, we are going, readiness number one. Readiness number one – we are sitting in the tank. Then the column hits the road,” explains the trooper.

While leaving the training camp, the soldiers were instructed to leave telephones and documents. The column moved from Russia to Ukraine’s border. They stopped in a woodland belt and thereafter they received the order to start the march. According to Batamokuev, the battalion consisted of 31 tanks and around 120 men. Together with the infantry, they numbered around 300 men, all from Ulan-Ude, a city of 350,000 people about 100 kilometers southeast of Lake Baikal in Russia.

The majority of them were ethnic Buryats sharing common ancestry with Mongolia. Every 10 tanks were accompanied by three BMPs (infantry fighting vehicles), a medical MT-LB (a light- armored tracked vehicle) and five “Urals” with ammunition.

“We all understood that we were crossing the border. What we could do? We could not stop. We received the order. And we all knew what we were going for and what could be. Nevertheless, only a few of us had fear. Our command are great, they do everything consistently, accurately and correctly,” he said.

According to Novaya Gazeta, early in the morning on Feb. 9, the special mission unit company (90 percent of which consisted of Russians) cleaned and closed Logvinovo – the “neck” of the Debaltseve boiler. The boiler was closed so quickly that Ukrainian soldiers in Debaltseve did not know about it, the newspaper informs. Batamokuev says they didn’t know that they were closing the boiler.

“No, they explained us nothing. Here is the position, here is the position of the fire closure, watch there, do not let no one to go out. Who goes out – kill. Fire,” he says.

The Donetsk separatists did not participate in that combat, he said. “They just… take one line, and when it is necessary to go further, to press the enemy, the militias refuse to go. They say: we will not go there, it is dangerous. But we have the order to advance further…” complained the Russian tanker.

He admits that he felt sadness in killing Ukrainian conscript soldiers because they were obliged to obey the order. On the opposite side, he claimed that the “mercenaries from Poland,” who came there just because of ideology, should be destroyed. The Russian soldier said that the never saw any Polish mercenaries: “No, but we were told they were there.”

According to Batamokuev, Russian servicemen were ordered not to communicate with the local population. When they were in Makiyivka in Donetsk Oblast, the command cautioned them that 70 percent of local citizens supported Ukrainian army. Thus soldiers didn’t eat food and tea that locals gave them for fear of being poisoned.

Now, laying in the hospital, Batamokuev doesn’t know whether his family would receive any payment. “In Russia it is so that when the question of money arises, no one knows anything. Maybe they will pay, or maybe at all will say that you have been dismissed long ago”.

In any case, the tanker admits he has no regrets, because he was fighting “for the right thing.”

“Usually you are constantly watching the news about Ukraine – elections, elections, elections, then was Orange Revolution, thereafter began Odessa, Mariupol… And there in Odessa people were burned. We all immediately felt bad. Because of the feeling that it shouldn’t be so. It is inhumane, unjust,” he said.

Batamokuev calls Russian President Vladimir Putin as “interesting” and tricky man, who, on the one hand, says to the world that there are no Russian soldiers in Ukraine while sending them to war.

“But on the other hand there is another thought. If Ukraine joins the European Union, the United Nations can deploy its missiles there, arms. And then we will be under the gun. They are already much closer to us, not through the oceans. Here, just through one land. And you realize that this is also the defense of our position, in order we were not hurt in case of something,” he said.

According to Novaya Gazeta, Batamokuev and two other wounded soldiers were transferred from Donetsk to Regional military hospital #1602 (Rostov-on-Don, Voenved region).