Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Ol'ga Borisova
[REGNUM] Two snipers, having worked on targets as part of a sabotage and reconnaissance group, were returning to their own. They went deep into the enemy's rear - they had to walk about five kilometers to their positions. The path lay along a narrow path, which the soldiers called "the run."
There is no way to turn left or right - everything around is mined. The path is covered by enemy mortars and machine guns. You can only run.
"I came up, crossed myself and ran - whether I would be lucky or not. I was unlucky. First, a mortar, a shot threw me back, and then a machine gun caught up with me," sniper Ivan Ivankov, call sign Django, tells IA Regnum.
The wound was serious, the bullet entered the abdominal cavity. But the man and his partner decided not to call an evacuation team - it would have to move along the same "run".
Ivankov knew that even two fighters would immediately become a target for Ukrainian drones, so he told his partner to go forward, letting him go twenty to thirty meters away from him. He himself went behind. Or rather, first he walked, and then simply crawled towards his own.
TO THE FRONT AFTER PRISON
Ivan Ivankov is 49 years old. He was born and raised in Irkutsk, and served in the border troops of the KGB of the USSR. He received an education as a psychologist, but never worked in his profession. He got a job as a security guard, then as a bodyguard.
And then, recalls the interlocutor of IA Regnum, “I met some comrades and decided to organize my own organized crime group.”
"We got involved in banditry. Of course, there's nothing good about it... We had episodes from 2012 to 2015. I was convicted of armed robbery of ATMs in Irkutsk," Ivankov says.
In 2015, he was arrested, spent two and a half years in a pretrial detention center, and in 2017, was sent to a penal colony — a prison for former employees of the internal affairs agencies. In the colony, especially in the pretrial detention center, it was harder than at the front, says Ivankov. Although, he admits, it is a “special experience.”
"Places of imprisonment teach you everything, it's a serious training, " says Ivankov. "For me, at least, it was quite comfortable later, both in the forest hole where I had to sleep, and in other situations."
In the pretrial detention center, the man's education as a psychologist came in handy. Firstly, to help himself - "with meditation and relaxation." Secondly, Ivankov was appointed senior in the cell, and had to resolve conflicts among aggressively minded men.
He was released from prison in March 2023 on parole.
" Many of my friends went to the front directly from the colony - both through Wagner and through the Ministry of Defense. Many friends left, and many stayed there: they died during the capture of Soledar, Bakhmut. I had a patriotic desire to punish that scum that was there..." - the man recalls.
After returning from the colony, he underwent basic military training at the Rokot organization in Irkutsk. There, they taught him fire training and tactical medicine. Then Ivankov signed a contract with the Redut PMC, where he "began to prepare more professionally."
The skills of handling weapons and marksmanship, developed during his military service, came in very handy. At the training ground, all recruits took a test: they had to hit a target, an A4 sheet of paper, from a distance of 100 meters to get a group of four even "holes". Ivankov passed the test successfully and received the sniper specialization.
When asked how his relatives reacted to his decision to go to the North Military District, the Regnum news agency’s interlocutor answered confidently:
"Nobody tried to talk me out of it, and it wouldn't have helped. My ex-wife said that I should think about it, but she is patriotic, and she understood that I was already determined to do it, and I couldn't be swayed. My mother also took it well. Of course, she was worried in her heart, but nevertheless... My friends and brother raised money for me, bought me equipment, helped with everything."
It took two months to prepare, then to the SVO zone. And three months later that same sortie into the enemy's rear, the wounding and the return on a "run" happened.
"When I crawled to my own people, they immediately sent me to the medical unit. There they found out that the wound was serious, they took me to Artemovsk for surgery. And a day later - to the hospital in St. Petersburg," recalls the interlocutor of IA Regnum.
Then began a long process of rehabilitation, returning to Irkutsk, and again trips to St. Petersburg for new operations. Ivankov himself admits that he was lucky: they allocated a quota to a military hospital, although by that time the contract had ended and the man was listed as a "civilian". Despite this, the doctors literally got Ivankov back on his feet: "they did everything perfectly, stitched everything up."
He was especially worried about his physical fitness because he had always been involved in sports and did not want to quit.
"Last April, when I had my last operation, I was forbidden to lift objects heavier than five kilograms. The restriction was for six months, it was April then, but in May I had already signed up for a gym and started lifting weights little by little. I started with five, then ten... Now I lift 140 kilograms - I have fully recovered," Ivankov says.
"THEY MUST UNDERSTAND THAT THEY ARE NEEDED IN PEACEFUL LIFE"
Already in the first days after the injury, the man realized what PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) was - he experienced an acute attack. In the hospital, the most ordinary sounds seemed unbearable.
"I remember it as if it were yesterday: someone turns on, for example, an electric razor, and you perceive it in your sleep as if a drone is flying over you. And such a burning, incredible desire to fall, hide under the bed. You perceive the slam of the door as an explosion or gunfire. Various methods of meditation and relaxation helped me, thanks to them I more or less coped with it," recalls the interlocutor of IA Regnum.
And just recently, when he went to Baikal with friends, he experienced similar feelings: someone decided to take pictures with drones, the man heard a characteristic buzzing - “it immediately gave me goosebumps.”
While still in the hospital in St. Petersburg, Ivankov realized that he wanted to help the soldiers who would return from the front - "they will experience the same thing as me." He began looking for courses to train military psychologists, and saw a program at the St. Petersburg training center "Kupol." In October, he left the hospital and immediately signed up for the course. He studied remotely from November 2023 to February 2024, and received a diploma in military psychology.
I posted an ad and started holding online consultations. I worked mainly with the wives and widows of fighters. Their main request was "help me cope with loss, bereavement."
MAY 9
And then Ivankov, as he says himself, "got into the flow." He saw a message from the Fatherland Defenders Fund that they were recruiting for training in entrepreneurship from the public organization "Business Russia." The man applied, talked to the organizers. He said that he wanted to help the fighters.
Through joint efforts, the concept of a non-profit Center for Psychological Rehabilitation of SVO Participants and Their Family Members was born. The Center has already been registered, and the start of work is scheduled for February 2025.
"It is very important that support is not only from family, but that there are organizations that help cope with everything. I would like our project to develop, to grow into an all-Russian network. I know this from my own experience: you can't drag a person who came from the front to a psychologist, he will twirl his finger at his temple and go drink some moonshine," Ivankov says.
All those who returned have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Ivan is convinced, but some people cope with it easier, while others have a really hard time. That is why, the man decided, the Center should become a real community - a club for veterans of the Fatherland.
"His activities will be aimed at maximum adaptation to peaceful life. Sooner or later, everything will end, the guys will come back - it will be hard for everyone. We all remember how the Afghan war ended, the Chechen wars: there were all sorts of organized crime groups, drug addiction, alcoholism, suicidal syndrome...
We need to be prepared and help the kids, involve them in social activities. They must understand that they are needed, that they are already in a peaceful life, the world is no longer divided into friends and foes, there are much more colors in it," Ivankov explains.
According to him, the Center will also employ child and family psychologists who will be able to help the children and wives of soldiers.
|
