Andrii Bukin (call sign Baton)
Andrii Bukin introduces himself simply: “I’m a senior soldier.” In conversation, he avoids boasting, talks about himself succinctly. His answers only become long-winded when he talks about his comrades or about the future of Ukraine in this war and after it.
In his hometown of Sumy, Bukin is known as a patriot and activist, in 2014 – as a dedicated volunteer, and later – as a fighter of the Special Forces battalion of NGU named after Serhiy Kulchytskyi.
“A reliable person with an analytical mindset and a strong pro-Ukrainian worldview,” said one of Andrii’s friends.
These words proved true once again in our conversation.
Everyone who watches your life path knows that you are fighting in Sviati Hory (Donetsk region). Nothing else, because your Facebook page updates are quite laconic. Tell me the details you can share.
Which unit are you fighting in, how far are the enemy positions and whom do you have to resist? In fact, it’s all very simple: when the war started, I stopped actively updating the Facebook page because of various circumstances. One of the main reasons is the lack of time. I used to write large analytical texts, but for now I have much other work to do. This work takes up 24/7, so I only post some pictures on Facebook. And it rarely happens. I fight in the battalion named after Kulchytskyi. This is my battalion. I was stationed here in 2015 and 2016. And now, when a full-scale war began, I went to serve in the battalion. So, in the first ten days of spring, I found myself in the Sviati Hory, and I’m still there. Our unit performs various specific tasks. We help the “gods of war” to liquidate Muscovites (russian militaries). So, we have enough work every day.
—What about casualties in your unit? There are both dead and wounded ones. Enemy positions are very close, sometimes less than a hundred meters to the orcs’ positions. It all depends on the section of the front. This tension of the war is on the closest frontline – how long can an ordinary person endure it? Does a person get used to everything? Well, for us it all started not in Donbas, but in Kyiv. We were initially in the village of Kazarovychi and only later, after the rotation, we were sent to fight in the Donbas. As for endurance, it varies, depending on which unit it is and what conditions are created for you to be on the first front line. If you’re accompanied by highly qualified people and a good commander, then you can be on the first front line for quite a long time, performing specific or simple tasks. It all depends on the unit and your motivation. This is the second time you use the term “specific tasks”. Without giving away any secrets, give me some information, please? There is simply a soldier’s work. For example, digging, shooting, staying on guard shifts. And there is a specific job. For example, people who do long-range shooting or perform functions that aren’t typical for a soldier or guard unit. These people happen everywhere, take, for example, intelligence, artillery fire adjusters, eavesdropping, acquiring specific information, which then helps to work with an agent network that remains on the other side of the front line. That isn’t a stereotypical “soldier – trench” kind of thing (sitting in the trenches and going to bayonet charge), but work that allows us to be more effective in our actions. I will put it like this: most of the positive videos about Ukraine’s war against russia are precisely the work of specific units.
You know,your Facebook page is really strict these days. It only has rare photos of you and photos of your comrades who died in this war. With phrises like: “A friend, call sign Kytaiets, won eternal life in battle. We’ll take revenge!” This “We’ll take revenge” thing – how important is this thirst for revenge to move on for those who remain alive? Of course, this is my personal motivation. The war took my close comrades much earlier. Such as Roman Otamaniuk, my student, who went to war and died. And I promised all these 8 years that I would return to the war and take revenge. I returned and now I am engaged in revenge for the death of my friends. For me, this is a linear problem. Roman was killed with a 120mm mine. This means I have to find and eliminate mortar men. A friend with the call sign Kytaiets died from a direct hit by a GRAD rocket. So, I have to help those people who destroy these MLRS. The memory of the fallen is very important. Please tell us about your close relatives who are no longer with us. My friend with the call sign Ultras and I served back in 2015-2016. He died when we were in the village of Kazarovychi. And that was the first loss among the people of our unit. My friend with the call sign Lys went to Sviatohirsk a week earlier than we did, because he was engaged in aerial reconnaissance. And all we know today are the skills we learned from him, because he was the most experienced pilot among us all. He died during a combat mission. My friend with the call sign Kytaiets died while defending Sviatohirsk. It happened during the assault of Sviatohirsk by Muscovites. These are the people I mentioned on my Facebook page. In general, the battalion has more casualties, but these are the guys whom I knew directly and communicated with. We shared the territory we fought and lived on together. And the memory of them and the thirst for revenge is one of the main factors why I continue to do my work here.
Tell us about the conditions under which Andrii Bukin lives – where does he sleep, what does he eat, is there a place to wash on the front line? What is your typical day like? I already make jokes: it’s been our fourth month, without exaggeration, of us living like hobos (laughs. – E.K.). You know, before being sent to Donbas, my fellow and I were walking on Podil and met a person without a permanent place of residence. He was eating a salad out of some plastic thing from some tavern. And then, in a couple of weeks, my fellow and I were joking that the guy we met lived and looked better than all of us. There is another fun comparison – think of any apocalypse movie about a nuclear disaster. Those people who survived there, according to the plot, live in all kinds of underground tunnels there. This is just about what life is like on the front line. Why so? Because enemy artillery is working a lot – and we are either in trenches or in basements. We have generators and other similar equipment that helps us charge batteries, walkie-talkies, and so on. We live wherever we can; it’s all about being safe. So, you have to choose between sleeping bags, sleeping mats and some pallets. There are also basements in residential buildings where we are able to find any beds. We get what we get… What do you eat?We have a good supply of food. We eat what the state provides and what we cook ourselves. There is no issue with food. If a person is skillful, he’ll have good food.
What material things do you and your fellows lack in this war? We have everything we need. If we have a lack of something or the state does not provide it, we try to get it through volunteers. Drones, tablets, flash drives, bluetooths, walkie-talkies, repeaters… Everything that the state should provide during the 9th year of the war – we all understand that if the state does not have it, we will get it through people who are ready to donate and support. The same is the case with cars; our entire unit is on wheels. And all of this was not provided by the state, but by the diaspora, other people. Do you get to communicate with family and friends? I consider Elon Musk to be the best ally of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (smiles. – E.K.). We can catch the Internet in the most unexpected places. In some basement, barn, forest, where everything around is broken, and then hop! – and we suddenly have an Internet point. For this, I give a low bow to Elon Musk and his Starlink. Even a month ago, many Ukrainians in the rear, and not only, were pleasantly convinced that the newest weapons, primarily artillery, would soon reach the front line – and a turning point would be reached in the war. Now such optimism has decreased. What do you think about this? In fact, you get to see artillery more often indeed – and here we hit the muscovites’ teeth so strongly that things get dynamic really quickly . But the victory won’t be quick. They still have a lot of artillery and they are simply bombarding us with lead. Because of my work, my fellows and I saw their attack on Lyman. It was simply erasing the settlement from the earth. They simply destroyed the infrastructure square by square. Just square by square! They have a bunch of stocks of Soviet weapons. Hundreds of tons. And when their artillery fire comes, it’s just tons of metal pouring down around us. If they need to get our infantry out of the forest, they use cluster “Hurricanes”, which simply cut down the forest, leaving only sticks. And yesterday they dropped something similar to napalm. This thing burns all living things wherever it hits. So, there can be no quick victory; we have to crush them with the forces we have. But in the last month and a half, the situation, at least on our part of the front, has changed radically. Our artillery is working, and quite effectively, destroying a large number of their manpower and equipment. On this sector of the front line, we began to fight back decently.
And don’t you have the feeling that the russians, with their domination of the state over man and contempt for the human, will endlessly pelt you with their cannon fodder? I will try to formulate what I think about this. This is not just a war, but a historic war for the survival of the Ukrainian ethnic group. If we do not stand up in Donbas, then this situation will repeat in Dnipro, Kyiv, Ternopil and further – Lviv and Uzhhorod. Until they get all the way along the border of Ukraine. Because their task is not the territory, they want to destroy Ukrainians as a nation. This is genocide. If you speak Ukrainian, you are automatically their enemy. And if, God forbid, we lose this war, then everything that happened 100 years ago, when our great-grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers lost, will happen again. There will be concentration camps, Holodomor famines… Therefore, it makes no sense to think about how much “cannon fodder” or military equipment they have. You have to think about how to grind them so that they simply do not go on. And the ultimate task of a soldier is simply to do his job. And to be effective in the part of the frontline where he is. And not to think about how many enemies are standing in front of him – ten or two million. No matter! You cannot roll back here, this is not the ATO (anti-terrorist operation) of 2014-2018. You can’t go on vacation and go home. Because peaceful cities are shelled every day. So is my native Sumy region, where cities and villages, especially the border ones, get hit every day… So, no matter how many people they have and what their plans for the future are. We need to build our own plans, our own strategy – and move to the victorious end. And thanks to our partners, I hope that it will work out for us.
The question I ask everyone: everything is clear with our motivation: we protect families, houses, land, and ethnicity. And what is the enemy’s motivation? One has to separate here. There is a political component – it is formulated by those who sit in warm offices and good armchairs. These people have geopolitical plans, and not only for Ukraine, but also for part of Europe. And with their motivation, everything is clear: they are “collectors of land”. And what is the motivation of the soldiers? They are simply suppressed by the repressive state machine. They are driven here, they cannot refuse to perform certain tasks – because this is an iron prison, with a sentence and transfers (and in Russia, a huge number of prisons have been built, where anyone who disagrees is quickly broken). That is why people are frightened and go to war, hoping that it will be possible to at least somehow “get away with it” here. Do one or two rotations, catch some light shell shock or a shrapnel wound – and go home. So, their people go to war, die and return home in zinc. If they do return at all – because mostly they do not take their own men. I am often reminded of Petliura’s “Only Ukrainian nits can be worse than Muscovite lice.” Do you often worry about corruption and meanness in the rear? And do you and your comrades talk about politics at all? Or do you not even mention it? You won’t believe it – during these 4 months there was not a single political conversation. And not because no one understands politics, but simply because there is no need for it. Is it because winning the war is the most important thing now, and the rest are secondary things? Exactly so. And you know, in those 4 months, I probably never opened the news to read about politics. We have our own area of responsibility here, there is a lot of hard work to be done. And you are focused on doing this work. This is the truth of life, everyone who is there understands: if you mess it up – you get killed. That’s why you always have to be in good shape. In order not to mess it up.
Andrii, tell me: will we win? 100% surely. – Why will we win? – Because our victory does not depend on politicians, high-ranking officers or certain officials. Because our war is based on temper. You know, once upon a time the Soviet authorities installed this myth in our heads that one is not a warrior in the field, and our house is on the outskirts (it’s not my headache nor my piece of cake). And in fact, it is people who decide everything. People like me are fighting here, ordinary soldiers. But such soldiers have serious motivation and enormous potential, primarily intellectual. These people are consistent, namely, getting into military structures, they establish many linear connections between units. And no matter what the chain of command is, these people in place establish effective work in order, first of all, not just to survive, but to win. And we will win precisely because this is happening in all areas of the front line. When smart people get into war, they start building chains. Strategic and communication ones. And this affects the hostilities very effectively. We are a non-standard army, not the same as in russia, the USA or Europe. We do not have a very rigid command vertical, but our motivation and intellectual potential allow us to get through much hardship thanks to our character. And with such a construction of the army, with such heroism and character, we are doomed to victory. Yevhen Kuzmenko,
Evgeny Kuzmenko, “Censor.NET” Source: