Medics are listening part 3
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Medics are listening part 4
Arkadii and Vasilii had a bad habit of telling me things that were useful for Russian intelligence. Even if I didn't pass the information to my Russian contact, it was still dangerous for me because, in theory, I might be responsible for the leak.

One evening I went to bed in the house, but couldn't go to sleep. I couldn't shake the feeling that we were in danger, that I should sleep in the cellar instead. I grabbed my pillow and headed for the cellar, but not without telling Arkadii about my feeling of foreboding. Vasilii was on his way out too. He had guard duty at the checkpoint down and across the bridge from the theater.

I was jolted awake sometime after midnight, and a couple minutes later Arkadii tumbled down the cellar stairs. A few minutes later everything shook again. It sounded like a train had slammed into the theater at full speed, but there is no railroad in Bogoyavlenka.

Vasilii came back in the morning unharmed but still shaking. He expressed his thanks for the warning, saying that he had seen one explosion with his own eyes. A few days earlier he had told me where their command and control center was located. Under the grocery store. That night it took a direct hit. Up to 20 soldiers were killed and went missing.

The command and control center was actually about 10 meters away from being under the grocery store. It was under the bar next door, the bar and grocery store all being part of one long building. Making the situation worse was the fact that the day before, Vasilii had taken me to the grocery store to buy catfood. I had bought all the catfood that they had as if I had known they there wouldn't be any more.

Later I could hear Vasilii and Arkadii arguing. It wasn't the first time that Vasilii stood up for me, but thankfully it was the last. A few days later the command came for their unit to leave the village. Arkadii left with a stiff handshake, but Vasilii with a hug and misty eyes. I haven't heard from them since. That was in late August, early September 2022.

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By December of 2022 I had become heavily involved in village life by helping my neighbors, helping unload and pass out humanitarian aid. The need for firewood had already begun to be felt, and the locals organized to cut and truck in logs from a nearby forest. My part was to help deliver the logs around the village.

This was my first chance to get familiar with the village as a whole, to see where people lived. I did my best to memorize every place where civilians lived and make sure that the Russian army was informed accordingly.

I rode on a two-wheeled tractor with a young local guy to make the deliveries. As we were riding together one day he couldn't help but satisfy his curiosity. His question shocked me. He asked If I had come to the area in 2014. There must be a misunderstanding, I thought. I reminded him that I was American. He confirmed that he remembered that I was American, and asked if I was former military. At first I didn't know what to say, but finally when I found my tongue, I couldn't help but make sure that I had heard him correctly, "You mean that American troops have been here since 2014"? "Sure", he said, "some of them stayed on after the fighting calmed down in 2015, found girlfriends, started families". Even if it hadn't been so cold outside, the smoke coming from my ears would have been visible. If I had been eager to get rid of my U.S. passport before, now it was burning a hole in my pocket.

Как обещал, Дэн Мартиндейл продолжает делиться своей историей об обретении России. Он написал очень искренний текст о том, как ему жилось в Богоявленке - одному, вынужденному все время притворяться кем-то другим, и при этом не терять надежды и не оставлять попыток добиться справедливости.

Читайте на сайте Реверса.

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As promised, Dan Martindale continues to share his story about finding Russia as his new homeland. He has written a heartfelt piece about his life in Bogoyavlenka — living alone, constantly forced to pretend to be someone else, yet never losing hope or giving up on his fight for justice.

Read it on the Revers website.

War isn't fair, never has been, never will be, and the good guys often lose. Washington is pushing every button it can to make the Russian people angry. They want internal pressure in Russia to force Putin's hand. Russia has already been shooting down these ATACAMS missiles for many months with relatively good success.

Russia's military is ready, but is the everyday Ivan ready to follow Putin's lead? If Russia hadn't stood up for Donbass in 2022, Putin would have faced a very harsh backlash from his own voters. It may very well have ended up toppling Russia from within. Today political stability in Russia faces a new challenge.

Believe me, the fact that a man as cool and collected as Putin has control of Russia's nuclear arsenal is a very good thing for the U.S. and for Europe. If Russia falls into chaos, somebody like Prigozhin(deceased head of the Wagner group) could smash that red button. Even if none of Putin's rivals did try to gain popularity in Russia by satisfying the people's need for revenge, the world's financial markets would be reeling with uncertainty if not collapse entirely. Nobody is ready for that! Just look at the tremors that were felt on Wall Street when Putin re-wrote a couple lines in his published guidelines for nuclear determent!

World war 3 is not the logical conclusion to Russians standing up for their friends and relatives in Donbass! It IS the logical ending of senseless escalation on the part of Washington D.C.!

A couple days after I learned about American soldiers being in the area since 2014, I mentioned it to another neighbor, expressing my disgust at the double standard that it revealed to me. It would seem logical to me that if Kiev allowed American soldiers to fight on their side, what business did they have criticizing Russia for giving similar support to the Donetsk People's Republic. All the more since the so called separatists were actually trying to preserve what was left of the Ukraine that they knew and loved, while Kiev had been overrun by a bellicose minority.

My neighbor seemed to think I had missed the headline, focusing instead on some trivial detail. She explained that she and her relatives in a nearby city had been witnesses to how Ukrainian troops had bombarded their own territory, a suburb of Donetsk, using GRAD rockets. They witnessed that same Ukrainian army then proceed to haul away truckload after truckload of loot from that suburb after its residents began to flee. She couldn't understand how Ukrainians could commit such crimes against their fellow countrymen.

Then she revealed to me the most heinous crime perpetrated by Ukrainian news media. They had provided the pretext, the justification for their army's shooting and looting. They had labeled all Ukrainians in this region as separatists, and Moscow lovers, the people who supposedly were to blame for all alleged Ukrainian suffering during the Soviet Union and up until the current day.

In that way many people in eastern Ukraine who would have gone along with life in the new Ukraine post-2014 realized that they weren't welcome, that they were hated by their own, condemned to be oppressed and destroyed for imagined crimes, for having the wrong heritage. Many of them likely changed their loyalty from Ukraine to Russia because of this betrayal.

Fresh troops in our village seemed to become more and more numerous through January 2023 until practically every vacant house was filled with them. I commented to my neighbors that our village had disappeared, and in its place now stood a military base. I also made the point to them that these Ukrainian troops were running a big risk. They were running the risk of being struck by Russian artillery.

In the end of January when Russian troops attempted to storm Ugledar, my apprehensions proved justified. For about four or five days the village was regularly hit with GRAD missiles. Until about mid-March Bogoyavlenka was hit fairly regularly with artillery. By the end of February almost all of the 68th brigade that had moved in, in January, had moved back out or had been killed or wounded. A portion of my neighbors also left, some for other cities in the Ukraine, others traveled the long journey through Poland to Russia.

Some of the 68th brigade's casualties happened in Bogoyavlenka. A few rounds landed around my house too, but I always happened to be away from home when it was dangerous. I was quite active helping neighbors around the village.

One day, probably in February, I went to a friend's house to help them run an errand and it probably saved my life. I had just left my friend's house to go fetch them milk, when a soldier they knew drove up and jumped out acting rather agitated. He jumped out of his car with his rifle demanding to know, "Where is Dan?!" He had been trying to find me for five days with no success, even though he knew where I lived. My friends calmed him down and convinced him to put his rifle back in his car. A couple minutes later I ride up with the milk, and this guy starts questioning me. His first words were that "We've been getting hit a lot, we have dead and wounded". He didn't like my answers, and bolted for his car. I thought he had finished questioning me, but my friend stood between the soldier and his car, holding the door shut. I didn't have any idea what was going on. My friend succeeded in keeping the car door shut, saving my life.

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Antonov Family part 1
During the springtime of 2023, I became friends with another family, the Antonov family(surname changed). They invited me over for holidays, for tea and conversation, supplied me with bread that they baked themselves. On my first visit to their place they showed me where tanks had parked and stored their ammunition near their home. When May came, we began to make preparations to celebrate Victory day.

The 9th of May came and went, but we didn't get to gather to celebrate because of heavy weather. We got together on the 13th instead. Bad idea. The table was set, we were all enjoying our hostess's cooking, the first two or three toasts had already been made. I suggested that we remember our relatives that lived during World War 2; that we re-tell their stories. We didn't get to reminisce very long before a deafening crash shook everything.

I could see that we hadn't been wounded, so I began picking debris out of my food that had fallen from the tree above us. Everybody else seemed to think that we needed to hide in the cellar, and I followed them downstairs. There weren't anymore hits near us, but we heard a few explosions a few kilometers away over the next 20 minutes or so.

After a half hour we ventured out to find that a Hurricane rocket had hit just across the street from us. It was the first in a series of rockets. The first rocket almost always misses its target. This time it had missed its target by a very big distance. The rest of the rockets hit a group of Ukrainian tanks.

The neighbor who was hit lost his house and barns. I can't go into detail, but from what I heard about this man, God's justice would have required an even harsher punishment for him. He lost everything, but was only slightly injured. If he had stepped out of his house just a few seconds later, he would have been killed.

The first goat and cat that I adopted were from his farm. Eventually I would adopt a total of eleven goats, three cows, four dogs and many many cats from around the village.
 
To be continued...

Antonov Family part 1

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Antonov Family part 2
Our rather exciting Victory day celebration turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The Antonov family had been very generous to me, supplying me with bread and other savory food, but wouldn't take anything in return, not even money. Now I had a chance to help them fix their roofs, and garage door.

The Ukrainian army continued to put this family in danger up until the very end of their occupation. It was common to see a SAM battery, tank or APC parked within a stone's throw of their property.

Slowly but surely both the Antonovs and I began to trust each other. We never did reveal everything to each other, but before long we all were convinced that we shared a common support for Russia. I went so far as to tell them that I want to live in Russia, and that I believe that the Lord promised me that I will get my wish. I could see that they were encouraged to hear this.

To be continued...

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Antonov Family part 2

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Antonov Family part 3
Not long before the end of Ukrainian occupation, everyone's nerves seemed to be on edge. The danger from airstrikes and drones became prohibitive. This combination of stress and danger made the Antonovs decide to split up. Part of the family left to live with relatives in the Ukraine.

Their level of stress was visible in conversation as well. As we sat in the cellar one day an argument started about why Ukrainian artillery was still able to function. If their nerves hadn't been so strained, they would have remembered all of the strikes that had recently been made on Ukrainian artillery positions, but no every blast made us want to curse those guns.

I tried to convince everyone in the village to leave, including the Antonovs. About a week before liberation, the remaining Antonovs thought seriously about leaving, but at last they told me, "if we do leave, we might regret it for the rest of our lives". They also asked me if I had any further word from the Lord?

I answered with a question, "What if I say that you won't survive if you stay here?"
"We wouldn't believe you", they replied somewhat uncertainly.
"And if I say that everything will be fine? Would it really change anything?"
"At least it would be some kind of encouragement", they seemed to plead.
I wished them the best and continued praying for them every day.

I had been visiting the Antonovs with messages from their relatives for some time, but a couple days later I wrote to their relatives that I wouldn't be able to carry their messages for a few days because it was too dangerous. I promised to get in touch after the "heavy weather" passed over. I didn't risk telling them that I was expecting liberation within a few days.

To be continued...

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Howitzer Nuggets part 1
My time farming in the Donetsk region could be characterized as a practical course in homesteading across the fence from a busy football stadium. You might be hoeing your patch of corn, or milking the goat, but your emotions are all tied up in the football game. You cheer when your team makes a good pass or tackle. You get angry when the other team scores. Only for me, the football game was more like cops and robbers, good versus evil, a matter of life and death for the players. And instead of throwing a football several yards, they were throwing high explosive fragmentation shells several miles.

What didn't seem fair was that the enemy team would get to do a lot of throwing before my team got possession. When my team got to throw, sometimes they seemed to think that I might want to catch too! But that was okay, I was still in a good mood because at least they were doing the throwing. When the other team had the ball I could get mad enough to bust.

To be continued...

Howitzer Nuggets part 1

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Howitzer Nuggets part 2
One time the enemy team got a bit careless and dropped the ball where I could go and fetch it. I really wanted to throw it back at them and hit their quarterback, but it didn't work out so well. Those of you who are familiar with war probably know what I'm taking about, but for those of you who have been blessed not to see war up close, let me explain. The quarterback I refer to is a self-propelled howitzer. It looks mostly like a tank but instead of so much armor, it has a bigger gun that shoots farther more accurately. For most of this war, it has been the most deadly weapon in Ukraine's arsenal in terms of casualties inflicted on Russian troops.

A large portion of Ukraine's self-propelled howitzers are M109's, made in the USA(frown). For many months, one of these M109 guns drove back and forth through our village, and fired from positions just outside the village limits. For a time they even made a habit of parking it for a half-hour or so in the village center.

One evening while walking my dog, I noticed some kind of dark blue nuggets strewn on the sidewalk where the howitzer had been parked. I had a feeling I knew what it was, and grabbed a couple pieces to take home and test burn. They burned like weak gunpowder! This was the explosive that they use to shoot their deadly payload at my friends! What could be more perfect but for that howitzer to get blown up by its own TNT?

I went back that night and gathered up enough to make a small bomb, at least enough to knock the howitzer out of service temporarily.

To be continued...