Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
By Aleksandr Kots
[KP] - Is your phone turned off? - ask the gunners at the positions of self-propelled artillery mounts.
- You offend, - I show the airplane icon on the screen - airplane mode.
- We even pulled out sim cards just in case. The Americans stuffed them with all sorts of fashionable devices. Calculate at a time.
Nearby, the fighters are puffing at the KamAZ - they are changing a punctured tire. Recently, a Hurricane cluster munition flew into position, slightly shaking the trucks. This roving multiple launch rocket launcher has been rattling nerves for days now.
Either Izyum will cover, then they will “throw” on the positions. Constantly moves and manages to get away from return fire. Of course, one "Hurricane" cannot undermine the combat capability of the Russian troops. Moreover, judging by the single launches, there is not much ammunition on the other side.
- To the trench! Fast! - cluster munitions begin to burst in the sky, we pour ourselves into a prudently dug shelter in advance. – Again he!
It subsides. We get to the surface. Long-range artillery changes location. "Saushki" (self-propelled artillery mounts) begin to hit the positions of Ukrainian troops, which slowly roll back to the south, along the Kharkiv-Slavyansk highway. The main efforts of the Russian troops in this direction are now focused on moving towards the city - a symbol of Russian resistance in Donbass in 2014. And there will definitely not be an easy walk here.
- They work smart. If they see that it is pointless to defend themselves, they roll back to previously prepared positions, the scouts of the Vistula division tell me.
- If the next echelon of defense is not yet ready, then they will resist to the last, as here, in Kamenka. They have these Javelins and NLAWs (anti-tank missile systems) here, like a grandmother of pickles in the cellar. At each hut, at each crossroads, they were simply piled up. They ran up, pulnuli - and into the basement. Moreover, Javelins in most cases do not penetrate the armor of our tanks. So they hit the guns and rollers. And snipers - on sights. And what is a tank without an aiming system?
HERO WARRIORS
Kamenka itself today differs little from Nikishino in the Donetsk region, or Khryashchevaty in the Luhansk region in 2014. All the villages, through which the war swept in full force, are similar to each other. When almost every house has been turned into a firing point, there is no time for sentimentality.
Both sides are thinking about how to complete the task and survive, and not about the safety of the civilian sector. Although the Russian side is still trying to maintain a peaceful infrastructure. But the Ukrainians, as if in retaliation, retreating, burns all the bridges behind her. Both literally and figuratively. After all, we got here by a pontoon ferry, built instead of a blown-up bridge.
- You are talking about doctors, write about our heroes! - the soldiers of the Vistula division, operating in this direction, meet us. How many people have they saved?
The commander of the second medical platoon, as befits a real hero, modestly reports:
- The fighting here was heavy, the number of sanitary losses was greater - mine-blast injuries, shrapnel wounds, penetrating, blind, through. They provided assistance, evacuated to a helipad and then to hospitals in Russia.
- This is your first war, what hooked you the most? I ask the young paramedic standing next to me.
- A lot of comrades were killed. And so ... Well, it was not in vain that I was taught medical science, I was prepared for everything. I calculated everything, understood what I was doing point by point.
TROPHY TANK
For many of these young guys, Kamenka has become a baptism of fire. Here they looked death in the eyes for the first time in their lives. They were able to survive and even show ingenuity in battle. The scouts are calling to show their main trophy - the T-72B tank, which they took without a single shot. It already flaunts tactical signs "Z".
- They went to us, - says a young Caucasian officer. - At first they wanted to “blow it out” with an RPG. But I took off my Russian equipment, I went up to the tank, the commander was riding in the hatch.
I start to improvise: “Sanya, hello! Where is Leha? He relaxed, completely crawls out, the gunner too. I jump on a tank with a peam (Makarov pistol): everyone, come on, guys, get out. We arrived. "Don't shoot!" they shout. Threw them out of the tank, the mechanic had to be smoked out. So they took the car.
HOW "ANTI RUSSIA" HAS BEEN TEMPERED
The fighters lay out other trophies - grenade launchers, a machine gun and ... books.
- Look what they read - "Invasion of Ukraine: a chronicle of Russian aggression." Edition 2016. Did you know beforehand?
- Where did you get it? I ask the guy.
- In the club, let's go and take you.
We get to know each other along the way. Lekha is a 19-year-old mobilized from the LPR, a resident of Lugansk. In 2014-15, during active battles in the Donbass, he did not leave the city anywhere and imagines what artillery shelling is. Studied in the second year of a local ped. I decided not to run from mobilization. Lyokha leads me to the second floor - to the library. To find a book in Russian, you have to work hard.
The bulk of the reading is on the move. And what's not here. "Airport" - about the Ukrainian "cyborgs" who fought at the Donetsk airport. "Anexia" - about the Crimea. There are more exotic options - here is a thick volume “Ukraine. Chronology of development - from ancient times to late antiquity. Or, for example, "The Wars of Russia against Ukraine in the XII-XXI centuries."
Here you have the "expansion" of Muscovy to the lands of Kievan Rus, and "special military operations" against the Hetmanate, and the struggle with Bolshevik Russia for independence in 1917-1921, and the struggle for the independence of Ukraine in 1941-mid-1950s ... And this pseudo-scientific slag filled half the library. If suddenly someone else had questions about how the Anti-Russia project was formed. And these books were published not somewhere in Poland, but in Kyiv, in Lvov, in the Poltava region ... True, judging by the empty library insert, such works were not very popular in Kamenka.
- But they are driven in all this at school, - Lech complains. “Something had to be done about it sooner or later.
We say goodbye to the peasants, they go further, to where the front rumbles continuously, continuing to approach Slavyansk.
Aleksandr Kots is prior service Russian airborne and a writer for Komsomol Pravda 
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