“When you see a Russian, it’s an instinct, do or die.” The story of a storm trooper from the 128th Brigade

The sun is at its zenith and burning my head. I can hear the noise of wheeled vehicles in the distance, and the dust is slowly rising. Two armored personnel carriers with soldiers sitting on them are pulling into the forest plantation.

“Wow, there's a whole bunch of them,” I burst out.

“Yes, most of us are newly mobilized. The last assault was not easy for us,” says Karp, a soldier with the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade.

He is a tall, thin man with a black beard. He wears dark sunglasses and a cap with a tail hiding under it, like a Cossack. Karp has been at war for nine years. He was 19 when he went to war. Now Karp is preparing his fellow soldiers from the 128th Brigade for assault operations.

Here is his direct speech.

“My best friend died, so I decided to go to war”

I went to war after the Revolution of Dignity. I spent two weeks with my classmates on the Maidan, and then the invasion of the East began. My friends and acquaintances went to war, and I was working at a construction site doing renovations. A few months after the war started, I found out that my best friend had been killed. They brought his body, we buried him, and I decided to go to war as a volunteer.

They were just recruiting people for Azov, so I got there. Together with the guys, I liberated Mariupol. After 8 months of war, I returned home, but civilian life was not the same, so I decided to sign a contract. I studied at Desna for two months, and then I was left there as an instructor. In 2021, I resigned from Desna and joined the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade in the summer. I have been here for two years now.

“The distance between mines is 1-2 meters”

The Russians have now very densely mined this area. They mine the front line and their rear. The distance between the mines is a meter or two, so there is no way to get around them. They are working well in this regard.

We have a group of sapper infantrymen to counter these actions, who are clearing the front edges and forest plantations. While we are preparing for the assault, our people are clearing the territory along the routes so that we can enter.

As warfare practice shows, as soon as the first line of defense is broken through, the second and third fall apart. Then it should be easier. Here, in some places, we have already broken through the first line of defense, but there is a section where we have only come close to the first line.

“I killed up to 173 occupiers in 9 years”

The most difficult part of an assault is interaction because each unit and company works differently. It is also difficult when you are hit by enemy artillery, and you are going as fast as you can to your area because you need to get there. It happened that we were hit, but, thank God, we remained unharmed.

This makes the infantry confused, and it is psychologically difficult because not all of us are the military. Some people came as a result of mobilization. That's why we, sergeants and officers, are here to train people.

During the storming of Piatykhatki, we had four prisoners – two of them were captured in the trenches and surrendered, the others were captured near the houses and were wounded. We provided them with medical care, put on tourniquets, and reported to higher-ups that we had prisoners. They were all from Siberia. They were mobilized.

There, in Piatykhatki, we also captured their weapons – assault rifles. They don't keep a good eye on them. A Russian with an assault rifle came up to me near one of the houses and watched me. His assault rifle had the safety on, he wanted to take it off, but mine was ready, so I shot him.

We took the weapons, cleared a few huts, and then started to examine the assault rifle. It was very rusty, so the Russian could not take the safety off. I tried to do it with one finger, then two, until we hit the safety with a hammer.

During an assault, your adrenaline is pumping, because the shells are hitting somewhere, and somewhere the territory is being cleaned up. It's not easy to work like this, because in defense you stand in a trench and that's it, but here you have to move constantly.

And when you see a Russian, it’s an instinct: do or die, either you shoot him or he shoots you, whoever is first to do it. I saw a lot during the 9 years of war, so my head works in such a way that I act immediately, and my weapon is always ready. I counted that I killed about 172-173 occupiers in 9 years.

“I saw my friend die from machine gun fire”

War is impossible without losses – there are wounded and killed people. If you don't work with people in training, the losses will be high. We train till late because we are preparing for assaults.

If someone is wounded, we provide first aid right on the battlefield. It's unpleasant, because if a person is wounded, or even several of them, there are not enough people in the unit at once. But we have reserves.

After an assault, there are different emotions. Sometimes it happens that you have successfully taken the enemy's positions, without losses, all your men are safe, you have trophy vehicles, and you are cheerful. And when there are heavy battles and losses, you are depressed.

Even when there are wounded, it's still good, because the main thing is that they are alive. And when you lose a friend, your brother-in-arms, it's very hard. In the morning, you were drinking coffee and smoking together, and he died during the assault.

In the first days of the assault in the Kherson region, my friend died. We had known each other for 4 years, we were like brothers. We even had similar call signs, I am Karp and he was Kep. We were always together and were the first to go everywhere. No matter what the task was.

Machine gun fire started, I managed to fall, but he did not. I saw my friend die from machine gun fire. For the first few seconds, I was in a panic. I crossed the road, knelt, and remembered how much we had overcome together and tears started flowing.

I am holding on because I want to get home. My home is under occupation on the left bank of the Kherson region. I am fighting for Ukraine and our territory to liberate my home as soon as possible.

I was seriously wounded in the Kherson region, but I did not resign from the army. After four surgeries, I'm back in the ranks, training my men and participating in assaults. I will stay as long as I can. To the end.