Dedicated to all the glorious warriors of the Russian Spring!

Image: The First Slavic Guards Brigade hung a flag in the center of the village of Tonenkoye.

Friends, as I wrote yesterday, the First “Bat” [Battalion] of my native “Slavyanka” hoisted the Victory Banner in the center of the village of Tonenkoye. There are no enemies in the village anymore. But in order to understand how bright this event is for our hearts—the hearts of all the soldiers of the Russian Spring, we need to talk about it properly. Slowly. Pour a glass, light a cigarette, lean back tiredly and remember…remember.

It seems that just two weeks ago “Slavyanka” entered Avdeevka and took the damned Military Base [one of the strong points in Avdeevka, that was very hard to seize control of] . And they moved on, through fields plowed by shells, soaked with our blood through all these years so that the crops that will be grown there will forever sing in the wind about our nameless ones lost here.

And here we are in Severny and, through our own wheezing, stretching out the last veins, we crawl into Tonenkoye. No, we don’t crawl—we walk with a limp, tiredly, brushing away blood and sweat, but always… “Enemy, can you hear that?”—always, proudly smiling in the face of death, great soldiers walk, worthy of the glory of the great ancestors of the Russian army.

Just two weeks, and the Supreme Commander suddenly spoke about the Russian Spring. And indeed, it’s not that we forgot, but you really can’t talk about these two weeks without at least for a minute flying ten years back. And ten years ago, it was like this:

In the shady courtyard of a building in the center of Donetsk there is a crowd of people, tired Krym rubs his face, the Monakh smiles and says softly,

“Guys, don’t push, don’t push, I’ll write everyone down,” and he carefully writes in calligraphic handwriting on paper lined with a pen. Enrolls the first volunteers of “Vostok” and “Slavyanka”. And the men keep pushing, and Skif, with a wry smile on his nervous, intelligent face, shouts to them:

“If you came for awards, then don’t hope—everyone will soon forget you... We are not here for glory; we are for the Motherland…"

And the people cheerfully shout in response...

Yes, that’s how it was—“Vostok”, “Slavyanka”, “Kalmius”, “Oplot”…

The first warriors of the Russian Spring, who came here not for glory, not for honors and medals, rejoicing at no-one-knows-what.

That’s how I remembered all of them—under the endless blue sky of Donbass, drowned in the fragrant haze of blooming chestnuts. And it’s not clear what made us more drunk then—spring or freedom... Even Skif sometimes smiled back then.

And now ten years have passed, and “Slavyanka” (my dear Slavyanka), with whom it all began, moves forward across these enemy mortified fields, making this land free again.

Two weeks ago, Battalion Commander Yug personally led his battalion through the pipe to “Vinogradniki 2”, the dachas [holiday homes] where the Nazis were entrenched. Straight to their rear.

And the storm company of Slavyanka simultaneously took the Cheburashka overpass. “Vinogradniki 2” [Vineyards 2] and “Cheburashka” are two well-covered enemy positions through which they brought supplies and reinforcements to the air defense military base. You know, they did that so imposingly, a bit impudently.

In general, this enemy 110th brigade of “Zapadentsy” [Western Ukrainians who collaborated with Nazi Germany], who held this frontier all these months, did not fight boldly, they were not really great fighters, but their tongues and souls there were very vile. We had a special score to settle with this brigade, friends.

I will never forget how throughout 2022 the same voice regularly came on air and said with such a typical Baltic accent:

“Well, ‘katsaps’ [Russians, reference to us — means billy goat], we’ll come to you soon, we’ll gut you all...

And they gutted ours live—they took prisoners and gutted them... A 21-year-old boy, Seryozhka, from the Marlboro company of our Third Battalion shouted:

“By Christ God, please stop,” and he fell silent, and a calm voice with a Western Ukrainian accent inquired:

“Have you heard, katsaps?— this will happen to all of you…"

We, friends, had special scores to settle with this 110th brigade. Special.

And therefore, the air defense military base, where that brigade was settled, was always a particularly cursed place for us. And with this special feeling, our Battalion “Sever” [North] surrounded the perimeter of this military unit.

“Kombat" [Battalion Commander] Sever looked at the screen all these days with a heavy gaze and repeated:

“Wait, I’ll come soon…”—as soon as his Bat overtook the next enemy position around the military base. Because Sever is also one of those who 10 years ago swore allegiance to Spring under the blooming chestnut trees.

And he looks exactly like a bear —he sits, big and good-natured, in a smoky room and repeats, squinting his leaden eyes at the screen:

“Wait, I'll come soon…"

And enemy from the 110th brigade fled when the Severny Battalion arrived. Throwing all their wounded directly to the responsibility of commander of our assaults, who by that time had already personally settled on Cheburashka.

And then those who remained tried to knock on Vinogradniki 2 to the South. And only a few remnants perished on their own mines when they fled across the fields to Severnoe.

This is how we—dear friends—settled accounts with two companies of the 110^th Ukrainian brigade. But not really, someone was still left. We need to settle scores with everyone of them, because the voice of the boy Seryozhka will always tell us:

“Please, for Christ’s sake, don’t forget…"

But the 110th ran for a reason: at Vinogradniki 2 they tried to lay a path through the Southern Bat before that. Assault company of the third Ukrainian brigade. This is Zelensky’s personal brigade—such a particularly elite special forces of the Gestapo and the Death’s Head in one bottle. Moreover, with Delta Force certificates—the latter is no joke. They were the ones who trained them.

It wasn’t just anyone who came to visit the Southerners at Vinogradniki 2, but a special assault company of these elite ones. And our Yuzhny Battalion commander looks like an ordinary guy in his thirties, but in his soul he is especially bloodthirsty and cunning. And somehow he has a grudge against the enemy elite—don’t feed him bread, let him kill some Nazi special forces.

So in September, on election day, he simply laid down half a battalion of selected Marines from the Ukrainian 36th brigade. And was even joking doing that.

And now, as soon as the 110th brigade of the enemy left the air defense military base, assault units of the third brigade showed up to visit them at Vinogradniki 2 and that’s it. They disappeared. At first, for the sake of order, the guys from the South drove them around the dachas, and then that was it. They became silent, as if they were not there. They went to meet the 110th.

This is how the Russian infantry dealt with the Nazis—not special forces, not “Delta”, just simple Russian infantry.

And then, without a single break, across 4 kilometers of fields, clicking through enemy fortifications one after another, we entered Severnoye. Two infantry battalions went around (West and South) along a field open to all winds, which was in full view of the enemy.

And the Vostok Battalion took this Severnoye one head-on. Today they took it, and at night they already began to break into Tonenkoye. And now the Vostok Battalion hangs a flag right in the center of Tonenkoye.

And I want to say that the Severnoye-Tonenkoye line is not just a fortified area, it is a fortification on which hung the entire part of the enemy front from Avdeevka to Pervomaisky. And even if the enemy are still hiding on the outskirts of the village, they are already doomed.

And here too, it must be especially emphasized that the Severnoye and Tonenkoye are the last desperate hope of the Ukrainians, that is why it is deadly important for them to stop us at this point. And that’s why they throw here the best they have left.

In Severnoye, our First Bat crushed another enemy elite—the 79th airmobile brigade and the 5th mechanized brigade. Well, what to say— “ground them up” —two days and that was it, the road to Tonenkoye was open. And this was the best enemy paratroopers trained by NATO standards. It seems they couldn't do better.

That’s how much, my dears, we got through in these two weeks.

10 years since the beginning of the Russian Spring, and my native Slavyanka, who stood at its origins, is moving forward. Simple Russian men who came not for glory, but for the Motherland.

Therefore, today it’s probably worth pouring a glass and raising a toast to those who, together with my “Slavyanka,” stood at the origins of the Russian Spring. And the second one is obligatory for all Russian men and Russian commanders liberating our land. Well, we all know what we should drink to for the third... We haven’t forgotten anyone...

P.S. Dear fellow soldiers, you will forgive me for not calling our battalions by name - this is the situation, the enemy is watching. The time will come, and I will definitely call everyone by name.