Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 36 - Volunteering to Fight in the Donbass Ft. Russianwithoutbs

Episode Date: January 28, 2019

On this episode Joe talks to @russiawithoutbs a writer, army veteran, and the closest thing to an expert on the Donbas War that would come and hang out with us. He tells us the story about the truth of volunteering to fight in Ukraine, the inefficiency of the Ukrainian Army, and the impact of propaganda in a regional conflict. Follow him at @russiawithoutthebs Donate to his patreon so he can create more content: https://www.patreon.com/russiawithoutbs Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Buy some merch: https://teespring.com/stores/lions-led-by-donkeys-store follow us on twitter @lions_by

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Lions Love My Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me today is Jim Kolfpack. He is known on Twitter as Russia without bullshit or without BS. U.S. Army veteran and the closest thing to an expert on the Donbass War in Ukraine that would talk to me. So that's nice. Jim, how are you doing? I'm doing all right. So that's nice. Jim, how are you doing?

I'm doing all right. So a little background on this episode and why we're doing it is I originally thought of like a beginner's primer for Western ears on the Donbass War. And I guess we could still do that. But then Jim told me that he was one of, I don't know, probably hundreds or thousands of people who planned to go and volunteer to fight for Ukraine. And I decided that was a significantly more interesting story. How many people do you think like expats or diaspora ran back to Ukraine to fight? Oh, I could tell you. I mean, the numbers he gave there are way too high. to fight? Oh, I could tell you, I mean, the numbers you gave there are way too high.

In terms of people that actually volunteered and got in, got a contract and did not get out under, let's say, you know, not so not so great circumstances. It's very, very small. And actually, a lot of this I learned after my attempt to join. I learned from people who are sort of connected and are familiar with these stories. It's really only a handful of people. We're talking about Westerners. And if you hear I can say this, I'm not going to single anyone out. But if you hear stories online about some Westerner volunteering to fight in Ukraine and you hear some kind of stories about frontline activities and heroics or whatever, I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that's most likely bullshit. The people who have gone there and actually succeeded and contributed and helped, for one

thing, you're not going to hear their names typically because these are people that weren't trying to build a career, trying to promote themselves. And second, these people generally did not work in frontline areas. They were training and people who go there to train and help instruct the Ukrainian military and the National Guard. They have contributed a lot and they certainly help. On the other hand, you do have people who go there and sort of bullshit their way through. And that can be a problem as well when you have different Ukrainian units hearing different things from different guys, some of whom may not be qualified. So it's not I'll put it this way. It's not the Spanish Civil War of our time.

I certainly wish it were. It's also not like Rojava, although I have been informed, I have read somewhere that one instructor they have is a man who previously volunteered for the YPG, YPJ. So he kind of brought his experience to them. But again, this is a guy who is training them, training them in TCCC. and tccc so uh yeah most of the people who are actually doing something are few and far between and are not it's not an international brigade let me put it that way right i i know i said there's like a netflix documentary i think i think it's a netflix may sound amazon prime where it follows uh a couple nordic volunteers i think it is But I also think that they're fighting for, I think it's Donetsk. They volunteered for the other side. I don't know how real it was.

I mean, it looked like it was a pretty low-budget film for the most part. I can tell you that if anything is being filmed, especially on the Russian side, you can't really trust it at all. mean they constantly falsify stuff but even on the ukrainian side i have seen for example you know we talked about people volunteering for the ukrainian side i've seen on ukrainian tv i believe it was state funded uh story of an individual uh american westerner supposedly volunteered had a contract

and was serving in the army there. And that turned out to be, you know, highly distorted. So what was the story? It was like just kind of a propaganda tool or? It was actually, you know, when you when you ask about volunteers for the Ukrainian government, a big part of the propaganda, this is what they kind of use. These people who actually got a contract actually appear. They're kind of used for the propaganda value. And it's funny because I'm a person who typically I mean, my job is kind of dealing with propaganda and disinformation. And yet, you know, some of this some of this was actually effective on me because they did sign in 2016.

They did sign into law a bill that allows foreigners and stateless people to serve in Ukraine armed forces by contract. And that information was up there on the Ministry of Defense site. It's probably still up there today. Theoretically, there's nothing that says that you can't do that. What really happens is you encounter this massive incompetence in bureaucracy, particularly because they don't really want to deal with you. And this is a key thing. Many of the people who volunteer or got some kind of contract or whatever, they did this because there were connections. You know, they had connections, basically. And the reason why things didn't work out for many of these people is because they didn't speak Russian or Ukrainian. In my case, I do. And I was able to navigate a lot of this bureaucracy on my own. But at the end of the day, uh, if, you know, they don't give you your orders or your contract or you're not going anywhere, uh, the only thing left open to you is to basically steal a weapon and go on some Rambo mission, Donbass, which I would advise against. Yeah, that probably doesn't have a happy ending. So tell us a little about yourself and why you ended up jumping on a plane to Ukraine.

I know you just said that propaganda worked a little bit on you, and that's from one veteran to another. We've both fallen for that before. Yeah, yeah. little bit on you and that's from one veteran to another we've both fallen for that before uh yeah yeah you're not a veteran if you haven't fallen for stupid propaganda in the u.s right right i mean that marine commercial in the door that fucking marine commercial is fighting the dragon with the sword got so many people uh oh yeah i think in my case i joined that peacetime army so everything was about jobs and college. And the idea, yeah, it's just, you know, basically, like, we'll teach you to use computers, we'll give you $40,000 for college, that kind of stuff. Yeah. So I mean, you yeah, falling for government propaganda is kind of

a prerequisite, I think. But yeah, so my, my background is kind of ridiculously complicated to the point, like we were talking earlier, I said, like, I look back on this and I'm like, how the fuck did I get here? I mean, I'm an American who lived mostly in Russia. And in fact, I mean, I lived overseas about 13 years, about 12 of those in Russia, far more than I lived in Ukraine. I was in Russia far more than I lived in Ukraine. And at the time I was I mean, at the time that I moved to Ukraine, I was working as a freelance journalist. I had done some full time journalist work and a lot of freelance stuff in like 2014, 2015. Most of the time I was abroad, though, like a lot of foreigners who live abroad, I was just an English teacher and you quickly become a sort of jack of all trades. So, you know, you're just teaching English,

but then someone says, oh, we need someone to do a voice for, you know, in English for this movie. So you do a dubbing job and then sometimes they might need an onscreen actor. So you do that. And there's like translations, there's proofreading, stuff like that. So you already kind of get used to just bouncing from one thing to another. But politically, politics has a lot to do with this. And early on, you know, I'm obviously left leaning. I call myself a socialist because I don't like really complicated titles. So I just leave it at socialist and then, you know,

let them figure it out or explain it if they have the time. And years ago, I first visited Ukraine in 2007. And looking at the situation, then around, I would say it was about a year later, 2008, I kind of came to this odd conclusion about socialism in Russia and the former Soviet space. And in my mind, I just kind of saw two key points that Ukraine at some point would have some kind of revolution. And after that revolution, there would be some kind of war conflict with Russia. Oh, you nailed that one. Yeah. The details, the details were off. I didn't necessarily like prepare myself for that the way I should have.

It's kind of weird when you're so sure of this prediction and then you don't actually do what you should do. Unlike the preppers, for example, who are predicting economic collapse so they actually get ready for it, right? In my case, it was just like, well, yeah, I'll probably be right about that. And I basically turned out to be right, and for a couple of years, I can't really do anything about it, you know? And so that is, yeah, in terms of Ukraine, I think it drew my focus just because I believed that there was some kind of revolutionary potential there. I thought it would influence the situation in Russia. And actually, this is not a belief that I'm alone in. The idea that Ukraine has such a can have or has such a big influence on Russia.

A lot of people with politics, very different from mine you know sort of liberal centrist types uh for years i mean even like ukrainian politicians for example have said that you know ukraine's the one country that can actually change russia and the reasons for this theory if you want to call it that are very complicated really beyond the scope of this uh but it's something that I agreed with. And also, you know, another determining factor, I mean, when I actually made the decision to leave, which was in 2016, I needed a way out of Russia, I had to get, you know, myself and my wife out of Russia, and other jobs, you know, I just wasn't working out. So the question was, do I just run out of time and money in that situation? Or, you know, do I basically put my money where my mouth is and literally do something for Ukraine?

And that's not only the only motivation. Part of it was simply part of the experience. It's what I saw when I started going back to Ukraine in 2015, especially when I started to work in the war zone there in places like Avdiivka, you know, when you go there and you see the effects of the battle, and you actually hear, you hear the war going on down the street, it just, I don't know, it's difficult to describe the feeling, but it's like, I just felt like, uh, like I was a part of that and like, I wanted to be a part of that. And it was a stronger, uh, you know, one of the strongest feelings I can ever describe, uh, you know, my life. And, uh, and you know, I really do miss it. If I could get back there, I would, but, uh, you know, my last attempt didn't work out too well. So, uh, you know,

I've got to, uh, regroup so to speak. work out too well. So, uh, you know, I've got to, uh, regroup so to speak. Right. And so it's interesting. You said you had to like get out of Russia. Was that like a, a career thing where you're starting to become worried about, um, just being there during that time period? It was career. It was the fact that I didn't have any future there and and I really don't. So, yeah, it's just I was I was kind of spinning my wheels for a while. There was from 2014 things started to get very complicated and not just because of the political situation, but just because of the economic situation. And what I noticed what would happen very frequently is an opportunity would open up and then it would kind of go nowhere. So, you know, things would start to get good and know

now we can sort of plan, you know, we can sort of plan for a future or whatever. And then that opportunity would just sort of turn into shit. Right. So it was sort of, it was sort of a rollercoaster. And the funny thing is, especially in 2015 when I was a freelancer, you know, every month that would go by, there was never a problem making the rent or anything like that. It was all based on a lot of freelance work typically. But the problem is when you live that way, you don't know how much money you can spend. end. So that means, for example, if you want to invest in, let's say, some software for doing a YouTube channel or anything that might actually allow you to just kind of work more on your own, you don't know how much money you could put aside for that because you might not have the same amount of clients next month. It's very unstable. And yeah. And so I was dealing with that

situation. You get ghosted by a lot of employers. I'm sure a lot of your listeners who are looking for jobs now are used to being ghosted by people they apply to, companies they apply to. And it just started to get really nerve wracking. And I'm thinking, like, you know, I see this story about the new conditions for contract soldiers in Ukraine. And I think, why not? You know, this is something I actually kind of missed out on in the U.S. Army. So, you know, why not? It's the one thing in my life that I could say I'm really interested in doing. So you bounced over to Ukraine with your family. And I know, I mean, joining the military in the U.S. is pretty goddamn straightforward. You walk into an office and you get lied to and you pick some job you don't want. And so it apparently is not the case in Ukraine.

You said you got dragged through mountains of bureaucracy and corruption. What exactly, how did this process start? Okay, well, this is the really fun part, OK, because we're going to talk about the difference between the recruitment cultures in both countries. Right. So first of all, I should say I did not just like drop in there. I didn't pack up everything I own and just drop in there with with no plan. Right. I mean, I do recon, right? So before I go, I actually went to one of the recruitment centers. And just so I can use this term, because recruitment center doesn't really, it'll confuse people, especially American veterans who, you know, we, you have the,

what now is called like the Armed Forces Career Center or something. It's office, right? Okay. So what they have, in Russian, it's a voinkamat, or viskokamat in Ukrainian, and it basically means like military commissariat. And it's not, it's not strictly a recruitment center. It's also kind of like MEPS, in the sense that they do some tests and things there. And it's important to understand why this is different, because these are countries that still have conscription and they have often, you know, they've pretty much always had conscription. So they have had a conscription. Right. So people, you know, young people have to report there and that's where they'll check them. I mean, I obviously, since I'm not required

to do military service in these countries, I'm not familiar with every detail of the process. But they're kind of the young men, I think probably before they're 18, are taken there and they're kind of evaluated and stuff like that. And hopefully they have the money to buy their way out of being conscripted. This is something, for example, in Russia that is very popular. I mean, my brother, one brother-in-law did it. The other decided to serve as two years. It was two years at the time. So that's that's the way the system works. So so voyn kamat, visco kamat, these are going to be important words for this story. So we talked about the American way, right? Recruiter sees you

as a young person. They zero in on you. Now, I've heard this has changed in the past decade or so. For me, I was encountering this in the late 90s when I was told that they were having trouble filling their quotas. And there's no war going on at the time. It's all about jobs, money for college, right? Loan repayment. all about jobs, money for college, right? Loan repayment. Okay. So the way the Army, my experience in the recruiter's office, you go in there asking for information and they're like, oh, come on, sit down and go take the ASVAB. Here, have some free stuff. Let me tell you about the GI Bill. Let me tell you about cash bonuses. Oh, by the way, you've actually already joined

the Army and you've been in for two weeks. Get basic training right so yeah so it's it's hard sell right and anyone who's who's signed a contract i mean even if it has changed i mean you you understand that uh that they really want to get you and they're going to bend over backwards to get you in there and sign on that down in line um it's very different in this other culture so i talked to this guy the first time i went to this, one of these Visco Camats. And I talked to the guy, and obviously this was kind of an unusual thing for them to have, you know, a foreigner, especially an American walking in there, asking about a contract. But this guy was very understanding. He was very helpful. And, you know, I figured he told me what I needed to do when I was able to come down there. And, uh, so I go back and, uh, I make some plans. I ended up kind of getting delayed a couple months

because of an operation I had to have. And so by the time I get down there, that guy is gone from that office, right? Um, maybe he just wasn't in on that day. I don't know what the schedule's like or how it works. Uh, but I go in there and I have the paperwork that that guy said I needed. And they say, okay, come back the next day for a medical check. Right. So I'm going through this medical check and, uh, like any medical check at some point, you know, you're in your underwear. Right. And, uh, what happened was a, um, one of the doctors, I remember one of the doctors, uh, he seemed very skeptical of America trying to fight there.

He said, you know, you're going to get paid like $250 a month. And I said to him in Russian, of course, well, it's important to do what you love. Yeah, so but he says, so the guy says, you got flat feet. And I'm like, yes, I, I know that because the U S army doctor told you the person at MAPS told me that. And, uh, you know, in the U S military, that hasn't been a bar to recruitment since like world war two. Right. But apparently to them it, it, it was right. So I, you know, I come out of there, I'm thinking I'm kind of fucked because I've sort of gone all in on this. What do I do? Well, luckily I have a lot of Ukrainian friends who some of them already knew about my plan.

Many of them are journalists. So we start talking and they start calling around, getting information. And they say, well, the best thing you can do is to, first of all, get a letter from a commander basically demanding you it's the term for it in in ukrainian the term for is like letter of agreement in russian it would it would basically translate the letter of relationship and it's just a letter saying i want this guy in my unit to do this job and so i eventually get one of these letters. I get it from the commander of the Donbass Ukraina Battalion, which is officially it's like the 46th separate special purpose battalion. It's part of the 54th Mechanized Brigade, but everyone just knows it by Donbass Ukraina. And in case anyone's wondering, no, this is not some kind of right wing nationalist organization. If it were, and I certainly have ways of finding out if it were, then, you know, I would never be asking them.

And so I got that. I actually met the commander. It's kind of funny. I met the commander is on a volunteer day in 2017. It's a day like for the volunteer battalions. Right. And I meet this guy and this is the most laid back like exchange I've ever had on joining somebody's infantry unit as a rifleman. He's just like, well, why do you want to join? I give him the quick, you know, boilerplate beliefs, blah, blah, blah. And then he asked me about like how I'm staying in the country. I tell him and he's like, yeah, OK, give up my assistant here and he'll get you whatever you need. And so I get this letter and then I go for a boink to electric boogaloo. I go into a different one. And this one's funny because here we start the same way.

I have to have a medical check. Right. So we're going through the medical check, and there's different tests this time. Everything is different. And they give me a quest for these pieces of paper. And in Russia, you have this term, sprovky, sprovka is the singular. And these are like notes from a doctor that are stamped and signed. And you have to get them for all kinds of things. For example, when I had to, when I joined a, like a public pool, swimming pool, living in Russia, like you have to get one of these little Spravka things from a doctor saying it's okay for you to swim. It's really annoying. But in this case, like I, they gave me a literal straight up fetch quest, one that took about a week and a half and literally had me going from one part of Kiev to another to various doctors.

There was a there was a psychological health check. And it is pretty good that when you sit down for a psych check, if I was sitting down with like an American to do some job, I would feel very confident. But when you sit down as an American trying to join the Ukrainian military to go and fight in Donbass, I'm sitting there thinking like, you know, I'm really going to have to work to convince her that I'm sane because I, you know, when you say that out loud, it doesn't really sound entirely on the level. But I got it. You know, the you say that out loud, it doesn't sound entirely on the level. But I got it. You know, the these Ukrainian doctors certified me as sane. So suck on that. And so there was that. There was a chest X-rays, all this, you know, just all this stuff.

And over the course of like a week, the blood test took a long time to get back and everything. week. The blood test took a long time to get back and everything. I got a tour of various hospitals and medical facilities around Kyiv, which is good because I think a lot of tourists don't see that. I think the most interesting one was the drug test because at one point there was an interview where the woman was asking me about whether I use drugs or not. And my favorite one after she asked me if I abuse alcohol, she asked me if I abuse something else. And I didn't quite catch it because I wasn't, I wasn't expecting this. And I asked her to repeat herself. And she was asking if I like abuse surrogate alcohol product, like, you know, if I, if I do, I drink aftershave. And that's the thing, you know, this is the thing that happens in that part of the world. So,

I mean, it's, you know, it's understandable. Um, for the record, I don't, um, yeah. And I put that down. Uh, so I get all the Sprovky, I go back to the Visco Kamat and I've completed the quest. So I got a shit ton of experience. I leveled up. And, uh, the funniest part about this is because I've actually passed their, uh, medical check at this point right now. I remembered up. And the funniest part about this is because I've actually passed their medical check at this point right now. I remember in the first one, they said they looked at, you know, they looked at my feed. They said, yeah, flat feed. Also, I had a bit of a breakout of psoriasis. You're familiar with that. It's a genetic autoimmune thing. So you get a little red rash on parts of your skin. And the funniest thing is in the second medical check,

the one I passed at no point was I required to even take off my shirt or shoes. So if psoriasis or flat feet are such a, uh, horrendous thing, clearly, you know, clearly it wasn't in this case. They weren't even checking for that. Um, Oh, and I should point out, I also had to pass like a personality test in Ukraine. I'm quite proud of this because, you know, my Ukrainian language skill is entirely self-taught compared to Russian. And I had to pass their personality test and an intelligence test. I guess it would be their equivalent to the ASVAB. And it makes the ASVAB seem like, I don't know, GMAT or whatever, by comparison. whatever uh by comparison um i mean the test the only part the only point where the test gets difficult is where you're thinking okay are you are you fucking with me now it's kind of because because it's kind of like one of these like what's the next thing in the pattern test right but it goes on and on and on there's only one set of patterns right so about halfway through you're like it can't be this easy like there must be something, there must be a change or something. And no, it's just, just do this like 60 times. Right. So I pass all that and they just say, okay, we'll call you in

a few weeks to tell you what's going on. And there's some holidays coming up. So I'm like, okay. You know, I go on vacation to Odessa with my wife and I come back after holidays. They say, I'm still getting documents. Uh, you know, it'd be another week. And you know, this, this is kind of normal. Things move slowly in this part of the world. And basically, yeah, this kind of stretching things out, them saying, we'll call you,

we'll call you. This was going on for a long time. And I actually called that assistant from the Donbass Battalion. He told me, he said, it's probably just a background check. He said, don't worry because he was actually a Russian himself. And he said that his background check took a long time. So we were well within that window. But after a while, my money is starting to run down. Obviously, you can't take a full-time job when you're expecting to be called away to go to basic training at some point. And beyond that, you know, I didn't have a like a long term visa there. Right. I had already exceeded my 90 days.

And the reason for that is, you know, it's bureaucratic minutia. But the point is, like, I just realized, OK, this is not going to work out. And I made an attempt actually to hook up with a, an unofficial militia for a while. Um, I, you know, I was going to tell him, look, I can give you as much time as I can, you know, just to say I did something, um, you know, kind of pay your dues. You know what I mean? But that, um, you know, they were a bit, uh, the guy was a bit skittish and unreliable. And I don't blame him because I mean, if you're unofficial, you don't want a foreigner, especially American, hanging around with you and possibly getting injured or killed. And it's more attention than you would want to draw to yourself. So I don't really blame them much for that.

But, yeah, that's basically the sad story. But yeah, that's basically the sad story. I keep telling friends, I say, every time people ask me about it, I say it pisses me off to recall it sometimes. But yeah, it's an experience. And also, it's like, you do what you can. You try to do things their way on the level and everything like that. And at the end of the day, I mean, if they're going to fuck up and then not do their job, then, you know, you can't you can't blame yourself for that. You know what I mean? Right. And I want to say there's a lot of things in hindsight that I learned that could have got me that contract or whatever. But again, you know, that's hindsight. You don't you don't know at the time. And you talked about kind of being incompetent and corrupt at the government level.

Is that still the case? Well, the Ukrainian armed services have certainly rapidly evolved since the war started. I mean, you've got to remember that when the war started, this country pretty much had a sort of token military because, you know, if you're a country, you got to have an army, right? And they, the military had degenerated a lot under, I remember it started around the mid 2000s, and there was, it was very rapid degeneration. At the time of the war, they had some estimates, I've seen are about 6,000 effective, you know, combat effective troops in the country. And yeah, so they had to rapidly learn. And thanks to some Western support, they have made a very big strides, especially at the, um, especially when it comes to like special forces and frontline units, they have certainly, uh, made very big improvements although i have heard and even in recent times i've heard from people who have trained them that you will still see things like

guys doing moves that they learn from call of duty uh or i'm serious like someone was telling me about this this reload he saw these guys doing and on the course and i said that really sounds like call of duty and there was another guy whose instructor said that uh early on the war like there were guys uh running backwards while firing their weapons you know instead of doing like proper break contact right yeah and and when you know he stopped them obviously and So why are you doing that? And they told him, well, we saw this in a movie. So nice. Right. So this stuff, they're working through that. But one thing that I learned and I learned this, I should point out that what happened to me has actually happened to Ukrainian citizens. I have met Ukrainian citizens or I met veterans who knew other people. met veterans who knew other people, you know, when I say people, I mean, you know, Ukrainian citizens who attempted to get contracts and actually had a much better case for it because

some of them had already served before. And even they either were just, you know, were sort of stonewalled and couldn't get the contract. Or in one case, a guy had to go all the way to like the top of the general staff to actually get his orders. They gave him the contract and they weren't giving him any orders. This is a guy who was an officer, apparently. So the lesson of this, and I've confirmed this with a lot of sources, is that while there have been big changes and advances in the Ukrainian military, when it comes to the rear area people and administrative stuff, there's still a lot of this sort of like backward Soviet system that that sort of thinking that's going on there. And that that has a lot to do with it. And that's why anybody like any foreigners actually like

managed to get into something. It's because they have some kind of contacts and connections. I just didn't have the right connections at the time, unfortunately. So you think it's more of like everything's out of date rather than they just don't care or they just don't want foreigners? They just don't. I mean, but you said Ukrainian citizens are running into the same problem. And it sounds incredibly incompetent. Well, it's incompetent, but it's also corruption because you got to remember that when you're

trying to conscript somebody, they don't want to go. So if someone doesn't want to go now, you have you have something you can offer them. You know, if you pay money, then you get this. This is an industry. This is long before the war. I mean, when I first arrived in Russia, this is when I learned about how this happens constantly in Russia. When I arrived there, the conscription was for two years. And later on, it changed to one year. And the Russian military and I can't compare the hazing situation with the Ukrainian military, but the Russian military is famous for hazing.

Oh, it's brutal. Yes, they have made improvements. I've talked to people who serve like their one year and it kind of depends on the unit where they're serving. But in general, nobody nobody wants to be a conscript because conscripts get paid absolute shit. head on life or anything like that. Right. So so what people do is they pay money to basically say that you're medically unfit for your service. Right. And in Russia, I know, for example, one payment I knew was about it was thirty thousand rubles, I think, to get out of it. And at that time, that was maybe like a thousand dollars. So it gives you an idea how much you pay. I don't know how much they would pay in Ukraine. What I do know is that they are incredibly aggressive about hunting down young people and sometimes even old people who are supposedly possibly eligible for conscription.

Now, if you're going there for a contract, this is very different here. They have to pay, you know, there's benefits and stuff like this and you want to go. So they have nothing. They don't have they don't really have any leverage to get that bribe out of you. Right. And so that's why you often if you follow the news you'll hear you'll read stories about um you know very aggressive tactics and getting young males to the visco come up for example to see if they're on conscription roles uh whereas with contracts like you do some digging and you find ukrainian citizens are perfectly qualified and having to like fight to get that contract so uh yeah it's just a very different culture in this country in this country i mean you know we don't

have conscription so right it's it's very difficult and we don't even you know we've never really had conscription the way they have conscription over there either we usually have a draft that we activate in wartime uh whereas they're used to conscription just kind of being around all the time. Right. And, you know, it's really strange when, I mean, you see how the war started, where it seemed like most of the Ukrainian forces that were being shown on TV, maybe this is just a part of propaganda i don't know uh were volunteers like uh volunteer formations and parts of the ukrainian military the militias that they seem to have under control now um what's your take on those yeah the the when you talk about volunteers uh the war effort, and even to this day, this is kind of true in some cases, when we speak about volunteers, it's not so much people fighting. It's people who just kind of handle logistics and take care of the people fighting.

This kind of volunteer, these sort of volunteers still exist today. There's one, probably one of the biggest organizations called Army SOS, and that actually has a page in English. If anyone wants to check it out. One of the you know, one of the hardest things is obviously to support someone at the front. There's a lot of logistics that goes into that. I mean, you know, there's the old saying. I can't remember who said it, but amateurs discuss strategy. Professionals discuss logistics. Right. logistics, right? And this is something like today, from what I've heard and read, in some cases, these civilian volunteers, these civil society organizations actually better equip some soldiers at the front than the actual army itself. Just partially, I have a feeling a lot of that has to do with just a lack of bureaucracy and hierarchy, because if people get together specifically just to deliver the stuff to the front, then you don't get all these bottlenecks.

Right. But one thing they've done is, for example, they will crowdfund getting some Western equipment. One thing is if you go to military stores now in Kiev, like it's not difficult at all to find Western gear. There's a lot of gear that probably just as good as you could find in the West. Although one thing you'll see, you know, there's a big difference when you see these, for example, the Independence Day parade in Kyiv, that's August 24th. You will see soldiers decked out just like Western Army. They look very well equipped at the front.

It still doesn't necessarily look that way. You have guys using the best equipment they have is usually something crowdfunded provided by volunteers. There's a lot of mixed and match uniforms, gear, stuff like that, kind of stuff know just flies in the face of ar 670-1 heartbreaking really uh how can they fight a war without a crowdfunded pt belt yeah i mean well yeah and you know let's talk sometime we have to talk about blousing boots i actually brought this up with a reservist there uh last time i was there and uh this is after new year january this year um and we and apparently this is insane they have a rule it says something like in garrison you don't

have to have you don't even have to have your pants tucked into your boots like they should be out just hanging there this is this is insane those last those monsters yeah yeah Those monsters. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead. I was going to say the questions that were applying to me about this topic was what is your take on the nationalists or in some cases neo-Nazi militias who kind of got pushed to the forefront. Now, that can be because Russia is trying to discredit the Ukrainians. Or is it true? I mean, I know that they obviously exist. There's no disputing that. But the importance or the size and scope of these militias? Well, when we talk about militias, like, for example, Russia loves to talk about two in particular, though the one they like to talk about the most at first was probably sector. That

means right, right sector and probably sector that was cobbled together from some various far right organizations. And a lot of people like to believe that like these people did Maidan, like they were controlling Maidan, which is absolutely ridiculous. They had something like 300 people in the entire country at that point. And they ballooned, obviously, in numbers, thanks to, you know, the war and the Crimean annexation. That's one thing people got to keep in mind is that these far right organizations prior to Maidan, many of them were funded or supported by the Party of Regions. That's Yanukovych's party. In other words, the pro-Russian side. When people describe Party of Regions as pro-Russian, it's a little bit simplistic,

but we'll go with it. And actually, to be fair, the militia that's associated with Pravi Sector and still is, is called the Volunteer Ukrainian Corps. And it's called a corps, but it's not nearly corps size. I think probably the largest it is is maybe a battalion. They are unofficial. It means they refuse to integrate, which is something that all the other battalions had to do, that is integrated into the command of the Ministry of Defense or the National Guard. They refused to do that, and they have some militia people still at the front. I cannot say anything about their specific activities right now. I believe they are near Avdivka and near Marinka. These are two places

very close to the front near Donetsk. And the thing about their volunteer corps, as I've been told by people who know better, the people in that volunteer corps are not necessarily like probably sector members or supporters. A lot of people don't even know what that group is about you have to understand that people in ukraine are very deep political depoliticized it's from you know 25 years well first of all we start with the you know the soviet uh system and what that did to people's mentality and then after it collapsed, you have an environment where politics is all kind of bullshit and everything is determined by these so-called political technologies, kind of the same thing in Russia. And so what you have is you have a lot of people who in 2014,

their country's being invaded. Part of it gets annexed. And people want to stop that in some way. And so suddenly you have these volunteer battalions popping up. There are dozens of them. And a few of them are very good at self-promotion. One of them being the Azov battalion, for example. Very, very good at self-promotion. They're also helped very much by the Russian propaganda. This is an interesting symbiotic relationship between those two. It's also interesting that the Russian propaganda hasists kind of lost interest in the Pravi sector volunteers. I guess they were not in more recent years. I guess they're not as interesting to the Russian propagandists.

But Azov battalion certainly is. And these two sort of feed off each other. Azov loves to promote itself, and the Russians love to get footage of them marching around and saying that, you know, so they can say that Russia is, or sorry, they can say that Ukraine is ruled by Nazis. None of this is true, obviously. I can say, actually, I was quite pleased the last time I was in Kiev recently. I was there over the New Year's. I was in Kiev and Lviv, and I was pleased to see that i did not notice the presence of any of these people this time um any other trip i've been there 2015 2016 2017 uh i'll see someone walking around with the logo you see a lot of stickers see their recruitment offices and stuff like that this time uh i didn't notice anything i can't say why that is um probably a lot of people are just kind of getting tired of their bullshit.

Electorally, these the parties associated with these organizations have dismal poll numbers. I was even aware that the Azov and Privy sector had political wings. I thought, see, that's an interesting part. They definitely do, because here's the thing is that an interesting thing happened when these battalions all integrated. For some of the more famous ones, you know, they when they became integrated, it means basically that the they came under command of the actual Ukrainian military, the Ministry of Defense or National Guard. And that means that they were given new commanders, for example, Donbass, Ukraine. But they used to be called Donbass Battalion. And it was renamed Donbass, Ukraine Battalion. And it was given a new commander and the old commander, just like the old commander of Azov or the old commander of a primary sector.

They became deputies in the Rada, the parliament. Right. And so then they create their political movements. And all these are vehicles for self-promotion and careerism because being in the state in ukraine is a great way to to have a racket right and you need a racket because well the average wage in ukraine is about 300 bucks a month okay so if you're going to make money honestly well that's the life you're going to end up with generally, right? And this is another reason why people look at this stuff from the outside and they see this

Assault Battalion and it's like, well, they're not even fighting. They haven't been deployed to the front since like 2015 as a unit. And this is really just, I mean, if you were in Ukraine, you ask Ukrainians about that, they know that these organizations, these things, for one thing, they know that they may have ties to Russia. And the other thing is that they know that these things exist mainly as political vehicles and vehicles for organized crime and stuff like this.

So for people like me who have been on the inside, I look at these problems as part of the larger problem in Ukraine, which is corruption and organized crime. And when it comes to organized crime in Ukraine, you will have the gangsters who's thugs dress like skinheads and pretend to have an ideology. And then you have the gangsters who got the guys in track suits, right? And this is the different mix. Right, exactly. I mean, that's the other stereotypical gangster is a dude in the track suit to rust people up, right? Well, you know, there's another type of gangster who poses as a nationalist, you know, these, these types of groups exist in Russia as well. It's just the big difference. And what the big difference between Russia and Ukraine, in a sense that people got to understand is that

in Russia, what you have is you have a monolithic dictatorship where the dictator Putin sort of consolidated and took control of everything and ordered everything, sort of. And in Ukraine, you don't have that. You have competition. You have kind of what you had in the 90s in Russia, where you have competition between different oligarchs and clans and things like this. And so it's a bit more wild. The advantage, however, is that nobody's too powerful. Nobody can control the whole thing. And as a result, what you do have in Ukraine, they've had this consistently, is they actually have fair competitive elections, which is a very good thing. And that's, you know, something worth supporting because I've seen what happens when you don't have that and it's not good.

Right. So, you know, there's obviously a lot of issues. There's a lot of problems with these far right groups that have this impunity because some of them will have very important patrons in the Ukrainian government. But for one thing, if those patrons go, that support ends and they'll be fair game. And furthermore, those patrons, you know, their positions are not secure because it's not Russia. It's not something where you have that rigid power vertical or you have the entire security apparatus, you know, designed to sort of preserve that. Right. It's basically the best way to describe Ukraine is that it's in flux. You know, the wheel's still spinning, basically, and who knows

who will actually win in the end. So as bad as it looks, there's always that opportunity for some kind of radical change. That doesn't exist in Russia right now and probably will not exist. I can't see it existing in the foreseeable future. And that's a very bad situation. I can tell you that much. You're talking about all these criminals, thugs, mafia, mafia state type individuals. Do they also have I mean, they're obviously have their hands in the various volunteer groups, but are they also involved in the actual Ukrainian army? There have been, you know, there are concerns about this. I've read stories about situations on the front lines involving the SBU, which is a security service and the military in connection with smuggling. See, this is one thing.

I mean, there's all kinds of contraband smuggling all across Ukraine. And thanks to the war, you have a lot of this smuggling via the line of contact. And that is basically usually like arms smuggling, for example. And the SBU does bust these people. They love tweeting pictures of, you know, arms caches. They found like RPG 22s and grenades and stacks of cash and everything. It really looks like after a while, I wanted someone to make kind of like a hip hop collage of all their bust videos.

Stacks of money, AKs, um, RPG 22s. They love moving those. And a lot of times, uh, you will often see,

some kind of rare antiques like i'm talking like world war ii german uh you know like walter p38s and mouthers and stuff like that it reminds me of uh totally off topic but they found a um a cache of sturmgewehr 44s and i think in in syria or yemen i can't remember which one, but it completely fucking blew my mind. Oh, yeah. That's a lot of money there. Yeah. And they're still working.

I don't get it. So these nationalist groups aren't being deployed to the front, but they still exist. Did they just march around? Is it kind of a Ukrainian version of the three percenters where they just hang out together and act really cool? I don't get it. That seems to be the main thing. I mean, you got to understand there's the Azov regiment, which is about 1100 guys, and they are basically just training in their base. As I understand, some of them go to the front on an individual basis, which you can hook up if you know the right people. I have seen probably a couple

guys sporting an Azov patch in a frontline area near Donetsk, but they, you know, but they, I don't remember them, you know, they weren't like in full battle rattle or anything. So they could just be observing or doing volunteer work, but certainly not there as a unit. There's no, you know, just individuals. The thing to be more concerned about are the political movements, because these parties, the Azov party is called, sometimes they call it Azov movement, but it's called the National Corps. And then they have the National Militia, which is their guys walking around in gray jackets. And most of these people are teenagers. They're teenage hooligans. In fact, I was going to say on my last trip, there was one person I tweeted about that said there's one guy I saw sporting National Corps logo.

And it was like a 13 year old kid with his buddies. And I'm sure he's the coolest in a school for that. But mainly what they do is, you know, they they have workout gyms. They train dudes in MMA. They try to make liaisons with European far right parties, which is the dumbest thing they could be doing because those far right parties have very deep ties to Russian intelligence. Yeah, there is a dream. The right wing, when you talk about the politically, I'll say the politically ambitious part of the right wing in Ukraine, they have these idiotic dreams of building the so-called intermarium, which is this interwar idea about this sort of Central European alliance against Russia. And then I guess against the liberal decadent West, too. It's an absolute joke and a pipe dream. It didn't work out too well in the interwar era, and it is impossible. Now, the funny thing about nationalists in Europe, especially Ukrainian nationalists, is that they don't get that when you're a nationalist and you say my country first, and then you try to make friends with your neighbors and the nationalists in your neighboring countries, it's not going to work because the Polish nationalists say Poland first. And guess what? Polish nationalist heroes are national villains

for Ukraine and vice versa. So the only headway these groups can kind of make is they tend to find allies among those few countries that kind of have a historical beef with Russia. But it doesn't really go that far because many of these countries understand that Russia doesn't have any territorial claims on them. And many of these countries, especially the EU ones, the nationalists there hate Brussels more than Moscow. And you've seen a situation with Hungary particularly. And you've seen a situation with Hungary particularly. Hungary is a country where, you know, they have this reputation of being very anti-communist. There was a 1956 uprising, which gets distorted into a right wing uprising when, in fact, it wasn't.

And so you would think that Hungary, you know, Hungary would be a natural ally of an anti-Russian nationalist movement in Ukraine. But no, it's actually not. We've seen how the Orban government is very Russia friendly. They are also antagonistic towards Ukraine because of the situation in Transcarpathia, or Zakarpattia, where you have a Hungarian minority. And the problem with Ukraine right now is that the mainstream government is by no means nationalistic or right wing. They're sort of these milquetoast liberal centrists. I mean, the people who actually call the shots, I should say, in the government. So they're sort of innocuous. In fact, the president, Poroshenko, actually apologized for the killings of Poles in Bolin during the Second World War by the Ukrainian insurgent army. And that's, you know, kind of a big deal. But on the other hand, they are kind of bad at managing relations with some of these national minorities.

And so the Kremlin and Kremlin's allies in places like Hungary kind of take advantage of this. And so, yeah, the nationalists, they reach out to, they reach out to neo-Nazis in the U.S. as well. They've had some alt-right people come there. And, of course, alt-right chuds love coming to Ukraine because here they can have a beautiful white woman actually listen to them. And, you know, they feel big because, oh, I'm going and making bonds with our European brothers around the world, right? But the fact is that the American far right has been so far off Russia's ass for decades. I know this very well. And ideologically, they're not going to get anywhere with this. It's just a joke, right? So it doesn't mean that these movements aren't harmful.

They certainly are. They have attacked LGBT activists very often. They they punched a friend of mine, a reporter who was just covering a trans rights march, punched him and broke his glasses, actually. And of course, there are the attacks on Roma camps throughout the country, one of which was fatal. And there is a general problem with impunity for these groups where they don say, why don't they, why don't they do something about this attack? Right. Well, in 2014, you know, they had this investigation of the snipers killing people at Maidan and that hasn't gotten anywhere at all this time. Uh, there was the killing. That still hasn't gotten anywhere? No, I believe, I think they may have detained a suspect that really hasn't gone anywhere. And it just helps feel these conspiracy theories about it. There was another killing.

It was a car bomb that killed a famous journalist named Pavel Sheremet. I do remember hearing about that. Yes. And the so far, the government and their official investigation has gotten nowhere on this in years. And yet, uh, an independent investigation found footage of people who were apparently ex SBU employees tinkering with this guy's car the day before he died. You know, I would, I would think that that's a pretty good lead right there. I mean, you know, especially it's a car bomb under his car, right? That's, that's what we call a fucking clue. Yeah, exactly. And so what you got to understand, what everyone has to understand is

that it's a very incompetent system. So when you wonder why can't they track that, you know, one thing is when there's a lot of talk about graffiti, you know, like hateful graffiti and stuff. And Kiev and Ukraine by no means have any monopoly on this. It's certainly not the worst place. That same friend of mine I told you who got punched in the face, he kind of tracks afar, right, wherever he goes in Eastern Europe. And he says Bulgaria, Sofia is the capital swastikas painted on stuff. I mean, he counts them where he finds them. And he's nothing against Bulgaria, but apparently like Sofia's got a lot of swastika graffiti. But the thing is, anyone who has been to like Kiev or knows Ukraine knows that the police, they can't solve these major crimes. The police are often corrupt themselves. So to imagine that they're going to somehow like stop teenagers from painting graffiti on something is just insane. Right. Yeah. They have enough shit to worry about if they were going to do

their jobs. Yeah. Now, that being said, people got to understand that, you know, these mentalities, there is certainly a lack of, let's say, you know, liberal values in Ukraine. This is sort of a legacy of the Soviet period. It's it's exist in Russia as well. Russia, you know, has promotes a lot of this far right ideology. but the government is very smart in the sense that they keep the nationalists in line, they keep them managed, and they manage the optics. So people with connections there, they're typically like said, they're liberals. They want nothing to do with neo-Nazism. They don't like this stuff at all. But when you're trying to convince them that they need to take it seriously, they just do not get it because they just don't understand the concept of like optics or they don't understand how these things are connected to the war for example uh when you bring up a lot of things and and other like long-term expats will tell you this as well when you bring up certain things to the government you say you got to do this then they say well there's a war on and there's russian aggression and then you say yes but you see these things are connected and they just they do not get that uh when you try

the idea that you know if you talk about this thing, that's not the war, but you're trying to say, well, this is this is connected to your war effort. They they just do not understand. So it's it's it's like banging your head against the wall. But the fact is that, you know, overall, the cause of Ukraine is is righteous. I mean, this is an anti imperialist war. This is an anti colonialist war because Ukraine was this is a anti-colonialist war because ukraine was colonized by muscovy basically um and this this has to be won uh and and you know there are a lot of idiots getting in the way of winning that war is a lot of chest-pounding patriots like those nationalists who claim to be you know the vanguard the war, but they're clearly more interested in self-promotion. But they got sweet stickers, man.

Oh, they got tons of stickers. They're killing it in the PR department. Oh, well, I'll tell you one thing they love doing a lot is they love attacking, like, the Russian spare bank or alpha bank offices, and they paint graffiti. Every time I see this, I'm just imagining in the Kremlin this getting reported to putin and he's saying okay well shit i was all tagged up another one of our spare box let's let's just draw up our

surrender uh you know initial surrenders the only thing we can do is get back to crimea because i mean we can't we can't afford to lose another spare a spare bank office in uh in kiev right so um you've you've said that the Ukrainian military, I mean, Ukrainian generals, has undergone a lot of evolution since the beginning of the war. But at the same time, looking from a very outsider's point of view, I read history, this is still going on, so that's why I brought you and talked about it. How does this end? still going on. So that's why I brought you on to talk about it.

How does this end? I mean, I guess that's a good way we could close this episode. Donetsk and the quote-unquote People's Republic or whatever the fuck they're calling themselves now. Those still exist. Russia's definitely dug into the area. I know someone's talking about it. I saw you talk about it. Someone said they're going to be flagged as terrorist organizations, but doesn't fucking matter. Ukraine doesn't seem to have the power to just like snuff them out. I mean, does this end up in like a transnistria, like abacabazia type situation? What happens now? What happens now?

Well, it seems what's going to happen is obviously the West and Ukraine don't want this to become a frozen conflict like Transnistria or Kosovo or South Ossetia. But it's kind of going that way anyway. And one thing I've noticed, as far as I know, Russia has not started giving out Russian passports to the people there. The closest they've done is they have started recognizing the passports of the fake states they have. This is a very key issue because when Russia gives out its passports to people in other countries, even if they're claiming to be in a separate country, this is an issue because Russia can claim to be, they can intervene militarily claiming to be defending Russian citizens, right? So that's a big deal. So they haven't reached that point yet, but Russia definitely wants to freeze the conflict. It seems what they want to do, the one thing they're constantly pushing for is they want Kyiv's authorities to communicate directly with the puppet leaders that they've set up in these two so-called republics,

right? The idea of that is if they do that, then they will get something akin to like a Transnistria or something akin to, you know, South Ossetia or whatever, where you'll have this frozen conflict where they wanted to be strictly Ukraine's problem, basically. And right now, because of the way things are, Russia has to basically pay to sustain these things, not just militarily. They pay everything. They're paying the salaries. They're paying. They're paying pensions. A lot of people, they can't they they can't receive their pensions unless they cross the line of contact, and that's not possible. So Russia's kind of on the hook for these two little statelets in the same way they are for Crimea at the moment.

It's not like they have any infrastructure, real economy. I mean, what they did have is completely destroyed. And from what I see, it's pretty much like mafia states. They basically are, but they have coal. There's been coal trading. And also Russia seems to be compensating things by carting off some of the infrastructure, especially like parts of factories and stuff like this. And this is interesting because it's sort of reminiscent of what they did at the end of World War Two,

where in some cases the Soviet Union took as reparations factories from places like eastern Germany. They took them from the Korean Peninsula, for example. And so you had this. You have a situation where they're trying to kind of recoup their losses, but they don't I don't really think they can get much out of this. But right now, I always try to describe the way the Putin the Putin regime works is that it's a regime based on bullshit. It's based on a narrative. OK. And right now, if Russia were to retreat from the Donbass and overnight, the Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republic just disappear, and they certainly would because no one really wants this, what would happen? It would be too much of a humiliation. The Russians would understand that Putin backed down and he blinked, right? And this is a government that cares a lot for some bizarre reason.

It cares a lot about polls and how it's perceived. They are concerned about approval ratings the same way they were concerned the last election when Putin was surprised reelected. They cared a lot about turnout. They wanted 70 percent. And they actually, depending on who you ask, they kind of got close to that, didn't quite reach it. But they care about the image and the narrative, basically. And so far, Ukraine and the West haven't done anything that would convince Russia that the damage they would suffer from pulling out would be, you know, less than what they would get if they stayed there. You know what I mean?

They're not losing. I don't think they're losing many casualties. They typically don't report casualties the way the Ukrainian military does, where if you follow on Twitter and you follow the right people, you can see every day how many Ukrainian KIA, how many wounded in action. We don't really have reliable sources for how many people Russia's losing there. But you also got to remember that many of those people they lose on their side are locals that they conscripted or who had to join because their

jobs are gone. So obviously, Putin doesn't care about losing those people. That's like just more dead Ukrainians for him, right? Yeah. got the the russian mercenaries who are people again they don't really care about because these are people that would just be a burden to them if they stayed in their you know little towns in russia uh the ideological volunteers are definitely a concern for the kremlin so it's much better if they die over there yeah they're not losing i'm sorry they're i want to say they're not losing valuable people that are difficult for them to replace is what i'm saying yeah and it seems like the the servicemen who are uh quote unquote on vacation uh to donetsk and lehans it's like uh almost uh during

this the soviet war where they just shipped the the bodies home in boxes labeled like cargo 200 just dropped them on their parents doorstep without saying anything or saying what happened yes yes cargo 200 is the code the code number they have for bodies basically uh they still use it today and they the tradition was is sealed in a zinc casket, I believe. Why is that? Because I'm currently researching a forever long series about the Afghan-Soviet War. And everybody make sure to point out it's a zinc-lined coffin. I don't understand the importance. I think it has something to do with probably preservation of the body.

But I will tell you this. If you want to learn how bleak this is, if you're reading about the Soviet Afghan war, it's very similar. But definitely read the English translation of Arkady Bobchenko's wars of the Chechen War. It's called One Soldier's War by Arkady Bobchenko. I'll warn you, if you're already depressed, you might not want to read it because it if you've ever read the short timers by gustav hossforth you know it's the book that full metal jacket is based on yeah now that is a really fucking depressing book it the the movie is like the pg version of that right and i will say that bob chanko's memoir which is more real than the hossforth's book uh it makes hossforth's book look like

harry potter in terms of when you talk about bleakness, when you talk about the the the unconcerned, the lack of concern for human dignity and life that he describes, not just at the front, not just with the soldiers that get drunk and beaten, threatened to rape other soldiers. But when he talks about delivering the bodies home, he was on this detail, you know, going around Moscow, sitting on coffins, these sealed coffins. And yeah, it is quite a book. And it's a real eye-opening look on post-Soviet Russia. And it'll help explain a lot about things. It'll help explain why you could have these Russians who volunteer to go into Ukraine and, you know, turn this country into a war zone,

start a war that kills 10,000 people and displaces 2 million people for literally nothing. I mean, the Iraq war sounds more justified than what happened in Ukraine by comparison. And I'm a, you know, diehard anti-Iraq war guy. So when you when you read that book, it'll really tell you the mentality. And then you'll understand when you hear about some of these Russian militia leaders in Ukraine and what the hell they abused prisoners of war and things like that. These guys come from that sort of society, you know, and it's, and it's, it's really a tragedy because Russia had, you know, produces a lot of people who are creative and modern and intelligent and things like that, but they are dangerous to the powers that be there. So they are suppressed in favor of people, you know the the worst elements of society basically yeah that

i can't remember when i first read arkady bevchenko's book but it is you you described it perfectly as it being like the fucking bleakest book i think i've ever uh read in my life and it's like i i somehow wonder like how has this not been made into like a documentary or a movie? But it'll be like the most depressing fucking movie of all time. It could not be made. I tell you, you know, if I had the people who were interested in the money, I would definitely back that for a movie. Yeah, yeah. And Star-Cottie Babchenko has one of the strangest life stories of all, especially recently when he faked his own death for the Ukrainian. Was it the Ukrainian police or something like that?

The SBU, yes. Security services. Yes. That I was initially for that. You got to understand that I, you know, I met Bobchenko face to face. And, you know, we're not close. We didn't speak a lot, but we have mutual friends that are much closer to. Right.

So they, you know, we're all like friends on Facebook and stuff. And so when someone you actually know is one of these targets of an assassination, first of all, when you think they're dead, it's, you know, it's an interesting thing. I remember for about, you know, it was about 12 hours before we found out what happened. You know, when we believed he was dead, I was thinking, like, who's next? You know, who else do I know who could, you know, be next on the list, basically? And then the reports, I remember how the reports trickled in. I was on Twitter and I saw Rio Novo State first.

It said in the Russian service, it said, Bobchenko is alive. And I thought, OK, this is a new direction for Kremlin disinformation, where you're just going to say, no, the guy didn't die at all. He's a crisis actor. Yeah. This is a bold new technique you guys are using now. And then someone tells me they're on their computer and they see it reported on a Ukrainian channel. I go over there and they say he's going to give a press conference. And I said, you know, I've seen some bad work from that Ukrainian channel before. I'm not going to trust them entirely. And then finally someone says BBC Russian Service is reporting that they're about to show him alive. I was like, OK, something's going on here.

And, yeah, that was quite a, I i would say like a whole 24 hour period it was quite a roller coaster and um and i would say that uh you know it was interesting that happened at time because right around the time i was uh getting into it again with the the team patriot you know the mensheviks the louise mensch and these are people who believe that they're like fighting in the front lines against vlad putin and his kremlin and it's like you guys sit in your living room and you have no idea what any of this is like you you they talk about this like they're in a straight up war. Right. And, and, you know, I'm like, this is the ultimate in stolen valor, you know, like when you actually like you haven't even been over there, you've never, you know, you, you've never been harassed by the FSB. Um, you know,

I, I, I have a friend who was interrogated for nine hours straight by FSB people and basically tortured. And so when you have this experience, you know, people like this and then, you know, in my case, you know, going to the front and Don Boss and, you know, seeing the damage, hearing the battle and everything like that. And then you got these people back in the States who are basically playing like a role playing game online. And it's like you want to and then they attack you and say that you're some kind of like Kremlin troll or whatever. It kind of pisses you off. And when in that same context, something like this assassination or, you know, suppose assassination happens, like, you know, it's a reminder. It's like, look, this is what it's really like, you know, but then, then he comes back to life and it's like, okay, yeah, it's also like this is what it's really like you know but then then he comes back to life and it's like okay yeah it's also like this it's fucking weird yeah yeah that was probably one of my

favorite but terrifying stories of that year because like uh is it um as someone i follow on twitter post like arkady bevchenko's dead and i was like it'd been so long since i read his book and i'm not familiar with you know anti-putin dissident or dissidents or anything like that but um like yeah i wonder if that's the same mark how Antony Babchenko and I googled it like oh fuck he got murdered by the Kremlin I had no idea why like I didn't understand why they even be a thing and uh then within the same day he's alive again and I was really fucking confused but yeah I think people gotta understand like what I would what I try to point out to people because I when I came back to the states I had a lot.

I still do have a lot of trouble sort of connecting with people because my for most of my adult life, my world has been over there. And over there is a very unusual place. And I can give you an example of you probably. I mean, I did some freelance stuff at crack dot com and I like the crack podcast a lot. I remember once they were doing one of these ones about, you know, cognitive biases that you have. And they're saying many people, they see these dash cam videos from Russia and all this crazy stuff happening. And they think that it must be really crazy in Russia. And really, it's just because people there have dash cams because of insurance issues and corruption. And so they just catch more weird things on video because they're recording everything.

And I was like, oh, yeah, that's that's true. That's true. But on the other hand, it really is fucking weird over there. I mean, weird stuff happens. The surrogate alcohol question itself, like you talked about during your health checkup, the surrogate alcohol question itself. It shows how weird it is. I mean, I understand it's like deeply seen in alcoholism and everything. I covered a story in late 2016, just before I was going.

It was around the New Year's time. And people had been drinking this hand lotion called Bajorishnik. It's actually called Hawthorne Berry, Hawthorne Berry Tincture. And they drink it because it's extremely cheap. You see, there's a minimum price on vodka in various amounts in Russia, and this is to try to fight alcoholism, right? So you can't sell vodka in certain amounts below a certain amount of money, right? However, cleaning products and cologne and stuff like this can be sold very cheaply. cleaning products and cologne and stuff like this can be sold very cheaply. And Boirishnik, the Hawthorne Berry stuff, it comes in a bottle.

It's extremely cheap, and it's about 75% medical alcohol. Jesus Christ. Yeah, so if you want to get messed up, this is a great way to do it, right? Well, apparently a batch of this stuff got tainted with methanol. I guess it's the wood alcohol. And a lot of people were partying because holiday season suddenly, in the end, I'll just tell you in the end about well over 100 people, about 100 people were killed and a few more like survived in hospital and basically a company sized element of people were taken out because they were drinking hand lotion that got tainted. Um, and yeah, and that's just,

that's just one, you know, one story. And, um, uh, yeah, so like weird stuff happens. And I realized, you know, when people are asking me about like this Ukrainian story and the things I've seen there, um, it's like, yeah, it sounds odd, but it's like, yeah, of course you, you, it's a weird place. And this stuff kind of rubs off on you after a while. But in a way, it kind of gives you a sort of connection to reality that I think a lot of us in the West kind of have lost because we've had the luxury in this country. We've had the luxury of predictability, basically. And over there, they don't have that. So it leads to all kinds of strange phenomena we could

say well um thank you so much for stopping by and talking with me and i know you are currently uh trying to produce more content and uh do you have anything you would like to uh pump out like pimp your patreon pimp your website whatever it may be i would basically just say uh you know the the website um nobsrussia.com i do have a patreon if you look for russia without bs on patreon i do want to put out more content i'm trying to work on a project i'm hoping to launch by the summer um in the past all the projects fall flat because there's not enough funding. Hint, hint. But I'm also I'm often available for for podcasts and I do voiceover. I do lots of different things. So, you know, I can probably help someone out if they need help with some project or just some advice. on how to properly join the Ukrainian army and might actually be able to get you that contract. Not personally, but I could tell you, I could tell you what to do and what not to do. But step one, please make sure you actually speak Russian or Ukrainian because I was floored to find out that

some people who made it further than me don't, didn't speak either of the languages. So that's why it's a good thing they never actually got into combat. Otherwise, it could have been disastrous. Yeah. Well, thank you again. Glad to have you on in any other time. Everybody else, thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next week.

Hi, this is Nate Bethea, and I'm the producer of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. This show is brought to you by Audible. And as it just so happens, Audible is offering our listeners a free audio book with a 30-day trial membership. Just go to audibletrial.com forward slash donkeys and browse the selection of audio programs. Download its title for free and start listening. Once again, that's www.audibletrial.com forward slash donkeys to get started.