“We are of the same age with the Fatherland, and we will uphold its freedom...”

This week marks the first anniversary of the most tragic page in the history of the undeclared Ukraine-Russian war, the Ilovaisk Tragedy. Its direct participants included hundreds of young Transcarpathians who had been called up to the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) in the first wave of mobilization in spring 2014. They had to endure perhaps the most difficult formative period of the new Ukrainian military, which saw them serving in a disorganized army, relying on food and personal equipment provided by volunteers, surviving the hellish cauldron of Ilovaisk and suffering the humiliation of Russian captivity, and then fighting with officials for their legally guaranteed rights as defenders of the Fatherland after demobilization. Mykola Marchyshak from Uzhhorod and Mykola Deiak from the suburban village of Onokivtsi went through all that.

Marchyshak received a mobilization summons on his birthday, April 10, and joined the army the next day (Den published an interview with the soldier in its No. 194, October 16, 2014). Deiak and another 62 recruits from Transcarpathia were mobilized on the same day, taken to Volodymyr-Volynsky, where the base camp of the 51st Mechanized Brigade is located, and after several weeks of training held in the Shyroky Lan training center in Mykolaiv region, were sent to the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) area.

Active hostilities near Ilovaisk began as early as August 10, when our forces tried to recapture the nearby villages from the separatists. “A few days before the cauldron formed, I somehow got sick with food poisoning and was sent to a field hospital in the village of Dzerkalne. We had daily shellings from Grad and Smerch rocket systems and grenade launchers there. Early on August 24, we saw a column of unmarked armored vehicles and trucks driving past the base at a distance of several kilometers,” IFV driver Marchyshak recalled.

His brother-in-arms IFV gunner Deiak added that his unit was stationed near the village of Dzerkalne, between a livestock farm and fishponds. About 50 Russian military vehicles moved into that area on August 25 and proceeded to surround and bombard the unit’s camp with various types of artillery and tanks. The bombardment lasted for three to four hours, virtually destroying the farm and Ukrainian army-built fortifications and claiming the lives of several dozen Ukrainian soldiers.

Ukrainian survivors of the Russian onslaught wandered through Donetsk steppes in small groups. “There were about 20 lads in my group, 2 of them wounded. We did not know where to go and tried to reach the railroad near the village of Dachne using GPS navigator on a mobile phone. We wandered through fields and forest plantations for three days, getting shelled by the enemy on a few occasions. Having got thirsty, we went to a village to ask for water. A local resident who gave us water said that Russian troops were everywhere and advised surrender,” Deiak told us.

The enemy gathered the prisoners in a shell crater near a destroyed building, took away their mobile phones, watches, valuable chains and rings as well all documents, and ordered them to kneel. After a 12-hour-long wait, they were transported by Ural trucks through Rostov region to the city of Snizhne and transferred to the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic’s officials. They housed the prisoners in police garages, placing them 50 men per box. They slept on bare boards and were offered soup or porridge twice a day. On the third day, they were brought out to perform “community service.” The Russian officer who ran this concentration camp of sorts warned the prisoners that every man found guilty of the slightest infraction would be shot in the stomach and left to die in agony. On the 21st day of their captivity, 73 soldiers were taken to a location outside Donetsk and exchanged for terrorists there. The army sent them to Volodymyr-Volynsky next day, where the freed prisoners were received as brave defenders of the Fatherland. From there, their local MP Valerii Patskan transported the four Transcarpathians – Marchyshak, Deiak, Anatolii Raikhel, and Vitali Furdela – to Transcarpathia. The lads said they were met by thousands of local people in Volyn, but only a few dozen in Uzhhorod. However, the sincerity of feelings of the few compatriots who came to the square in front of the regional music and drama theater on September 17 to honor them fully compensated for the lack of formal presence on the part of the indifferent...

After a brief treatment at the Mukacheve hospital, the young survivors of the dramatic events got transferred for continued service to military units stationed in Transcarpathia, and then discharged from the UAF on expiration of their terms of enlistment.

The 25-year-old veterans met some obstacles as they fought to overcome solidly built bureaucratic “checkpoints,” which tried to prevent them from getting the ATO veteran status and receiving lump sum financial assistance packages and land plots, to be allocated by local government authorities. There is no question of any decorations for the soldiers who suffered violent treatment in the hands of the Russian occupiers and only narrowly survived.

Postwar life paths of erstwhile brothers-in-arms could not be further apart. Deiak shares an old house, dilapidated and modest to the point of outright poverty, with his disabled father, postwoman mother, younger sister, and two young nephews; it is the only dwelling in Onokivtsi’s Holovna (Main) Street to fly a blue-and-yellow flag. He said he would like to enlist with the border guards, but was afraid that it could land him back in the ATO area, for he does not believe it will end any time soon... He is quite guarded in his communication with fellow villagers, receives no help, has no permanent job, earns what little money he has by doing odd jobs in the village, and looks likely to fail to achieve adequate self-fulfillment in this cynical, cruel world without the help of some caring people.

Marchyshak, on the contrary, is becoming well-rooted in civilian life. He has just entered the law school of Uzhhorod National University as a distance student and submitted an application for selection for the new Transcarpathian police unit. He has joined his brothers-in-arms in an effort to create an NGO devoted to assisting the development of the country and supporting fellow veterans, just as Soviet Afghanistan veterans have done. He not only radiates confidence, but also inspires others to believe that it is such young Ukrainians, who were destined to grow up early, went through hardest tests and, thank God, survived, who have the strength to build the future Ukraine. Analyzing the tragic events that occurred with his personal participation near Ilovaisk a year ago, he stated that this tragic page in the Ukrainian military history was a direct result of inadequate leadership on the part of the UAF’s senior commanders. While the first cauldron in Ilovaisk occurred more or less unexpectedly, the losses at Debaltseve came as a direct consequence of ineptitude of the Ukrainian high command combined with lack of punishment for those responsible for large-scale military disasters.

Indeed, the public has not heard the answer to the following questions: whose fault was it that the Ukrainian units got into the enemy’s cauldrons and suffered great losses? Who has been punished, administratively at least, for the deaths of Dnipropetrovsk paratroopers in the skies over Luhansk, the death of Colonel Serhii Kulchytsky and his brothers-in-arms, and the death of the defenders of the Donetsk airport, buried under the rubble of its buildings? What can one say, though, if the former minister of defense, despite being guilty of strategic failures, was appointed to lead the State Protective Service of Ukraine instead of being punished, and all the generals, from the chief of General Staff to the commanders of sectors, have kept their jobs?

Still, talking to the heroes of Ilovaisk inspires faith that for these young compatriots who were willing to sacrifice their lives for the Fatherland and whose civic qualities were forged in battles, such concepts as patriotism and nation came with a very specific price. “We are of the same age with the Fatherland. Having fought off the external aggressors, we will protect it from the internal enemy as well,” these lads say. I believe them far more than the official guarantors of our statehood...