And the gold of the leaves overshadowed them: About hardship and male happiness...

By Marat Khairullin

I knew Seryozha Kuban from the very beginning. His beginning was at the airport near Kiev, and mine was in Marika (Mariupol). Then, in the scorching summer of 2022, he sat with a small detachment of military veterans in the village of Stary Karavan near Krasny Liman in the middle of an endless coniferous forest and told me:

“Yes, we’re just pretending to be present here...” and he smiled affectionately. He has always been like this. Wherever we cross paths, he was always filled with good humor. At that time, it still seemed unthinkable that we would leave Liman, and forests swarming with Ukrops would be a temporary phenomenon.

After the first push, we thought that we had already won, and the coming calm would be a prelude to a long peace. Two PoWs who were digging trenches on the outskirts of Liman were then nicknamed Maksimka and Vanyatka by our soldiers, as if they were finally baptized into their own by the coming peace.

Along the front that was then going along the Oskol, artillery fire was raging like a severe thunderstorm. The Stary Caravan where Kuban stayed was constantly shelled with mines along the edges, Ukrainians launched them without counting, as if they were playing Chapaev [Chapaev - participant of WWI and Civil War of 1918-1922, was Red Army division commander. He's a famous protagonist in a book by Furmanov, has a movie named after him, and a popular children's game is named after him]. Sometimes, they launched mines in dozens - being guided by some kind of internal clock that ticked in their heads in a somewhat epileptic manner. When I reached him between these attacks, Seryozha gave me a bear hug:

"Let’s go, we will talk about your business and have the borscht... Sanya has made such a nice borscht... With lard, Katsap’s [ref. to Russian] lard, that one, sent from the Motherland... Now, now I’ll take the armor and let’s go..."

A small crowd of us was sneaking through former pioneer camps, in transparent coniferous forests of extraordinary beauty, away from the AFU mortars.. Somewhere behind the trees the estate of the big boss was hidden, and there the large enemy headquarters seemed to have been completely abandoned. It was not at all clear whose territory was behind the camps, but we were already living in hopes of peace, we thought that we had won, and we were strolling...

Well, in what manner were we strolling? We were obnoxiously going straight through the former pioneer camps, we really wanted to feast on what the Ukrainians had left lying around at the command headquarters ...

“Oh, it’s hot,” Seryozha sat down to rest under the peeling silver statue of the Soviet Pioneer Leader [some statues in USSR were painted in "serebryanka" paint - consisting of bitumen varnish with the addition of aluminum powder, used for wooden and metal constructions]

Dark-faced in his worn-out armor and an ancient helmet, he immediately consoled himself..

"It’s okay, there’s still not much left. It seems we finished off the Germans (Ukrainians)... Of course, it should have been possible to put the squeeze on them in Kyiv... In vain, oh in vain, we retreated..."

Then this Kyiv was constantly on his tongue, he still could not accept that we had retreated.

And the summer of the twenty-second kept flowing and we were so exhausted by the heat and the illusion of the peace that we did not notice how by autumn Liman had turned into the island of Rus' in the middle of the forests. A Ukrop mortar crew was crawling along the perimeter almost without hiding. Polish mines whistled above us when we went for a swim in the clear forest lake on the outskirts. The enemy was shelling so desperately that even Vorkuta, whose task was to catch them [the Ukrainian mortar crew], got tired and started drinking desperately. He dragged his girlfriend from Lugansk and hid with her in the forest along the edges of the lake.

I sunbathed, listening to the AFU shelling us, and waited for him to sober up. We could get to Kuban [Seryozha]. Vorkuta was from the North, he knew how to walk through the forests, and no one else could take me to Seryozha, to whom, by chance, I had the opportunity to drag two terribly deficit pieces of body armor.
This is where it all started: the swollen Vorkuta suddenly burst out of the bushes and briefly said: “We’re leaving.” As i filled my Niva with my military stuff, the city was already empty. In the torn up square, the Russian flag fluttered at the administration building. The flag looked so lonely that my heart sank.

On a long drive, a familiar commandant, soldier Solovushkin, stopped me and pleaded:

"Your friend Ramil is furious again, he’s the only one still left there, let’s go back, eh? There the Barsiki (BARS volunteers) still seem to be holding the defense on the side of the station, maybe we’ll have time (to retrieve him), maybe he’ll listen to you..."

I knew Ramil since the 2014, now the temporary commandant of Liman. In general, he was from such type of transverse righteous people, who always cling to their own truth and are ready to fight with anyone about it. And to hell with that, he is so terribly strong that, if he resists, Solovushkin and I definitely will not be able to drag him away. I had to return in the dark to the commandant’s office in the police building, we saw Ramil sitting and gloomily looking at the laptop screen.

Solovushkin was explaining something to him, and then suddenly knelt down:

"What are you doing, you bastard, have pity on us, we can’t leave without you..."

“I didn’t call for you,” Ramil snapped, “We can’t give Liman away, what will happen to people, who thought...”

Vorkuta, who entered the room, saved the situation:

"I saw your car, are you done? Come on, the Germans [Ukrainians] are already at the station...:

And Ramil stood up. This was probably my strangest retreat. Me and Ramil in my Niva, Solovushkin, Vorkuta, and his girlfriend in a loaded jalopy van. I’ll probably write about this someday. Now about something else.

We no longer dared to get out through the city and went circling around the neighborhood - the forest-bourne Vorkuta nevertheless led us through, and after couple of nights, we were at a large burned-out road fork near Popasnaya.
My Seryozha [Kuban] was sitting on the side of the road among the charred tree stumps. A fire was burning, the remnants of his detachment were sleeping in the ruins. Sanya treated us to canned meat, Vorkuta’s girlfriend Kira Zorka changed the bandages of military veterans, and we drank vodka.

“And here I am, Maratka [ref. to Marat], leaving again,” Kuban said and smiled affectionately. “In Kyiv, I covered the retreat with my old men, and here we were were shelled like hell for three days. There are five of us left, Maratik, so that’s how it is. And I knew some of them from Afghanistan times." [ref. to Soviet mission in Afghanistan] ...

"What kind of war is this, my friend, that we retreat and retreat?" - And Kuban suddenly began to cry...

We sat in a circle in the ruins in the middle of a burnt forest and our grief silently poured out into the shining starry sky, so bright, as if all the stars had gathered at that moment around our fire.

And then I remembered:
-"Serezh [ref.to Sergey] , I brought you body armor, actually, I gave one to Vorkuta, and this one is yours..."

- "Are you for real!" - Kuban was immediately illuminated by his kind smile, - "Thank you friend," well, he was so happy, as this was difficult as hell without armor...

Three months later I came to him near Ugledar, where Seryozha commanded a battalion of “Barsiks” [Barsik - a typical name for male cat in Russia, and "Bars" - snow leopard. Barsik can also mean small snow leopard, but not a cub, sufficix "ik" used to make dimunitive form of the word].

“You can’t imagine what kind of vigor that I have now!” he said happily, excitedly, hugging me.

In the first platoon, everyone is as if they were specially selected, they've been through Syria, they've been through Chechnya... A week later we took a position at the Zveroferma [Fur Farm] ...

"Let's go, let's go," Alexashka made such a shurpa, you'll rock [to rock from excitement - "zakachayesya" [a way to say you'll be very happy] "let's go..."

Sanek finished his contract and now the Uzbek Aleksashka worked for Seryozha.

Gasconec [Gascone] also came - a strong, serious veteran over 35.

The paratroopers gave him to me, and he came with his guys... Oh, and he really helps. These are not like my veterans. The second, third assault platoons I have are either in their fifties or without any experience, Gasconec and his guys would train them.

"You know, the commander is hurrying us, we need to get in the position no matter what," said Gasconec.

"For now, he and his men will go, and I will non hurriedly prepare the rest ..."

Then he showed his camp in the golden autumn forest and pride and joy overwhelmed him. I went into the dugout of the second platoon and felt like I plunged into a bathhouse: the warm, damp spirit fogged my glasses so much that I didn’t immediately see two older men doing something on the cramped two-tier trestle beds. That’s how I remember them, the second squad of Kuban - in a dark, steamy dugout, their eyes sternly sparkling at the idle visitor.

A week later, Gasconec's detachment loaded into the Urals to move to the front line. The truck didn't yet start to move, as several shells flew in, killing 37 people in one fell swoop. This often happened in the fall of 2022, when the AFU received Western ultra-precise artillery. Either someone gave us away, or they saw us easily. Kuban was walking dark - faced.

But the command screamed non-stop, and he sent his second squad into position - those very older men. And in the evening he called to me:

"Come on over, eh?"

He sat at the dining table in the middle of a golden autumn forest, with his head turned gray by autumn in sight, and with his hands on his head, he smoked, smoking cigarettes one after another, with watery eyes.

"Listen" - and he turned on the speaker on the phone:

"Commander, we got severely hit... Oh, and it hit really hard, Lyokha was cut, I covered him, but I was wounded in the ass... Commander, thank you, commander, batya [dad, reference to a highly respected person, who might be either in higher position or older. Such reference is hard to earn], if it weren’t for you, if you didn’t teach us, we’d die... Once I have my ass patched, we’ll go back..."

There was a lot more said there, how the men lay under fire, how they crawled out...

“Here these are the guys from the hospital that were sent to us,” said Seryozha, “And we took and held our position! These are the kind of men I have! So, our retreating is over. Remember this day!"

Kuban’s face again lit up with a kind smile... And I remembered everything, the sunset evening, the gold of the leaves, the special spirit of a forest touched by autumn, a wounded solder, and the simple, male happiness of the commander Kuban...

And how long we have been striving towards this!

We are no longer retreating!