“I am the Ukrainian fire adjuster”. 8 years of struggle under occupation of an underground fighter

Do you remember how in June 2022, Ukrainian Uragan MLRS destroyed 150 Wagner mercenaries at the stadium in The city has been occupied by Russian militants since May 2014. Until 2016, it was called Stakhanov.Kadiivka, Luhansk Oblast?

The hero of the hromadske text is involved in this and many other operations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the occupied Donbas. He was 17 when the then Stakhanov was occupied in 2014.

He first wrote about the life of the city on Twitter. Later, he posted a map of Stakhanov with the places where Russians and militants gathered. Then he posted about the movement of the occupation forces.

The account was anonymous, and the boy did not think about the danger at the time. He was reminded of it by people from the government-controlled territory of Ukraine, who found his account and asked him to send the information he had collected about the occupiers to certain recipients.

That's how he became an underground fighter.

He lived in occupation for almost 8 years. He did not trust a single person, and did not even allow himself to fall in love. He was hastily erasing information from his computer when the Russians were pushing at his door and his father said with graying lips: “Son, they will kill you.”

He received awards from the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhnyi and former Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov.

From a fan to an underground fighter

His mother was a mail carrier, and his father worked in a mine. A family with a Russian surname lived, like many, according to the principle that “nothing depends on us”.

The boy loved watching sports matches on TV, especially when the Ukrainian team won. He did not understand why everyone around him considered Russian teams to be “ours”.

Then he got together with the Shakhtar Donetsk ultras. He went to stadiums with the flags of Ukraine and the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army – ed.). And when, during the ultras' march to mark the 70th anniversary of the UPA, communists and Don Cossacks broke the shafts of the red and black flags, he first thought: why can't Ukrainians openly honor their heroes in their own country?

“It was simple for me: from supporting my team to supporting my country,” he says.

During the Revolution of Dignity, when people were hired in Stakhanov to go to Kyiv to participate in the Anti-Maidan protests, he and his friends put up stickers in support of the Maidan and wrote pro-Ukrainian messages on the walls of houses.

And then Russian and separatist flags flew over Stakhanov. His parents did not want to leave the city: “No one is waiting for us there, and we have our own home here.” They didn't let their son go either. The father said he had no money — his mine had just closed. My mother panicked at the thought of her son's departure.

“My parents and I were very close. My main fear was losing them,” he says.

The boy discussed everything with his parents, except for one thing: what he was actually doing when he was “taking a walk” or going somewhere “to visit friends”. However, after a few years, his father began to guess.

He knew nothing about the people he was sending information to. In response to his messages, he received emotionless “+” marks.

One day, when he transmitted the coordinates of an enemy unit, he saw that something had hit those coordinates. He rushed to text about it and saw a message: “Did it hit?”. It was a moment of happiness: the enemy was destroyed by his adjustment! But at that time it happened only once.

After the Minsk agreements, the recipients were more interested in economic issues and the political situation in the region. Counting coal cars was not as interesting as enemy tanks, but it was necessary.

“I really wanted to be useful. I wanted to do something to help the guys from the Armed Forces who are fighting on the front line.

There were times when I really wanted to hit some militia member on the head with a brick. Especially when one of them walked in front of me drunk. But this is irresponsible partisanship. It's the same as, for example, throwing a Molotov cocktail at an occupational institution. If you do, you're dead, and the result is insignificant.

Another thing is that when you pass on the coordinates of this institution, find out when there are as many enemies as possible, and the Ukrainian Armed Forces will destroy them with a single missile hit.”

Salutary loneliness

He was dying every time the militants took his phone: what if he hadn't deleted some previously filmed objects and “Banderite” pictures?

Once he was traveling with his best friend from Kharkiv back to the occupation. They stood out like sore thumbs on the bus among the elderly people who were “traveling” for their Ukrainian pensions. He had a well-thought-out legend about why he was going “to the Nazis”, but his friend began to answer the militants' questions incoherently. He was lucky that they were not too vigilant.

“I finally realized then that anyone around me, even my best friend, can complicate the situation. When you are alone, you control everything and do not depend on someone else's endurance.

But a girl you love is more than a friend. How can you predict that she will tell her other admirer about your biggest secret? And she did.

He was a pro-Russian activist. He came to me and said frankly: ‘She told me that you were an ‘ukrop’ adjuster. If I wanted to, my guys would just stab you to death. But I don't want that’.”

The boy realized that after that, it was better to run away from the city because someone might come for him tomorrow.

“But how do you tell your sick mother about your departure? I cleaned my laptop again, deleted Twitter, and went to school the next day. They thought that since I didn't run away, I wasn't an adjuster.”

After that, he didn't dare to have a serious relationship.

“It's hard to date a girl who has pro-Russian views. That's why I was alone during the last years of occupation. In principle, I did not know how to build relationships, or create a family, because it seemed that everyone around me was an enemy.”

He studied to be a lawyer and even did an internship with the occupying police. His double life sometimes gave him an adrenaline rush. It was a thrill to listen to the conversations of policemen in the smoking room and then pass the information on to the right people.

But it's hard not to support a classmate who tells a teacher at a propaganda event that the LPR is not a state. But the classmate has no secrets and will not talk about them during a possible interrogation. And he has to keep silent because during the interrogation he will “talk” enough to get a prison term.

The need to be discrete over the years has been evident. When he moved to Kyiv, people wondered how he could feel cars coming up slowly behind him, or why he was shying away from those who suddenly appeared in front of him.

“In the occupied territories, cars with the Russian Security Service officers come up like this when they are ‘packing’ you. I was always very afraid of this. I was afraid to enter the stairwells, especially my own. I always shone a flashlight on the upper floors, the areas near the garbage chute. Although I realized that if they wanted to detain me, the flashlight would not help.”

There was a moment when certain structures offered to come and be checked and return to work in the occupation as an “official underground fighter” with a salary. But he refused.

He realized that there were Russian agents in the secret structures, and that very soon the local Security Service officers would find out about him. Then the two “corridors” that he was instructed to use to get out “to the big land” in a threatening situation would not help.

If they shoot, they will come

He is very moved by the movie Buried Alive. An American soldier in Iraq was buried in a box in the ground by terrorists there, not deep enough for his cell phone to pick up a signal. They will dig him up if his relatives pay a ransom.

The American tries to negotiate a ransom, the command promises to repel him and even sends a group to get him. But in vain — the soldier is doomed to die.

“For me, this movie is about the events in Donbas. Many Ukrainian people in Donbas have been buried alive for ten years. They were promised to be rescued and still have not been. They are dying under occupation.

It became especially difficult when the negotiations in Minsk began. The militants began to get back on their feet: their own police, and government agencies. I realized that this horror would last for a long time, if not forever. That now my work for the Ukrainian Armed Forces is a crime that will have no statute of limitations under occupation, and that sooner or later they will come for me.

You know how it is: you hear a shot from the Ukrainian side, and you console yourself that Ukraine remembers us, that our guys will come back. But the less they shot, the more we thought: we are left alone with the enemy.

It was good that I worked for the Armed Forces of Ukraine and earned money by working remotely for a Ukrainian company. Otherwise, I could have gone crazy with despair and despondency. Over the years, my father had already begun to think about my leaving, but in 2020, my mother died, and he asked, ‘Will you leave me?’ I couldn't.”

He came to Kharkiv for the first time since the occupation of Donbas began in 2016. When he saw the Ukrainian flags, he felt that he was finally home.

He tried to come “to the big land” for football matches and Independence Day. But it was unbearable to see someone in Kharkiv carelessly dragging a Ukrainian flag from a parade on that day — in Stakhanov, they threw this flag into A vertical artificial depression in the ground used for ventilation of mines, mining, etc.pits.

“At the time, I was thinking: you need a war to make you appreciate this flag.”

He understands his fellow countrymen who have a great grudge against Ukraine: why has Ukraine not returned for so long and thus encourages a compromise with the occupiers? But he has a different opinion.

“After The Ilovaysk tragedy (“Ilovaysk Cauldron”) was an attack by the Russian army on Ukrainian soldiers on August 29, 2014, despite a previous agreement on a humanitarian corridor. Part of the battle for the city of Ilovaisk in Donetsk Oblast, which lasted from August 6 to 29, 2014.Ilovaisk, I realized what efforts were needed to de-occupy this territory. Because behind the separatists was the regular Russian army. And it is not easy to defeat it.”

Open war

At the end of 2021, his grandmother died, followed by his father, who was not yet 60 years old.

“Nothing kept me in the city anymore. I felt a kind of universal loneliness: I buried everyone, I was alone in the world, I didn't understand what to do next, how to exist. It was as if something was broken inside.”

In December 2021, he reached Kyiv via Russia. Before he could settle in, a full-scale war broke out.

“I was in Kyiv alone. I was confused. How could I go to the military registration and enlistment office if my place of residence was registered in Luhansk? Everyone was on the lookout for enemy saboteurs, they would have thought I was a separatist fire adjuster.”

A few days after the outbreak of full-scale war, he joined the men of the territorial defense. They tied a yellow armband on his sleeve and showed him how to shoot a machine gun. He was even warned to watch out for the separatists sent there. And they put him on duty.

Most of all, he was afraid that someone would look at his documents and see that he was also from the “separatist region”. He was officially enlisted in the territorial defense two weeks later. The commander turned out to be from the occupied Donetsk region, from Snizhne.

In the late summer of 2022, he was already in a combat unit near Bakhmut. At the same time, he was actively collecting information from the occupied territories.

Gathering such information is now part of his job description. Now, gunners and adjusters pass on data to him that can help the Armed Forces.

For many years in the occupied territory, he dreamed of one day revealing his face and writing on Twitter:“I am the Ukrainian fire adjuster who made it possible to…”

He revealed his face in February 2023, after 9 years of service in the Armed Forces. Now Artem Kariakin is waging an open war against the Russians.

“I traded personal safety for work efficiency. As soon as I opened my face, I had more contacts in the occupied territory, because now people know who they are working with.”

The man believes that nowadays it is many times harder for people to work than it used to be for him.

“The Russians have taken the occupied territories under strict control. There are video cameras everywhere, and constant checks of phones and computers. I give briefings to my informants and pass on to them the experience gained by people who were intimidated, maimed, and killed.

But it is impossible to predict all threats. Nowadays, Ukrainian patriots in the occupied Donbas are no longer thrown into mine pits. They are given long sentences. You can get 25 years. You have to be as careful as possible.”

…He once told journalists that he would write a book about his life under occupation. Today he adds: he will write it when there are no occupied territories left in Ukraine.