Over the years of the war, many wonderful war correspondents have appeared in Novorossia, through whose eyes we see what is happening there as a chronicle-warning, as something that, in the event of the defeat of the Russians in Donbass, could become the future of the entire Russian Federation. One of the most famous and beloved by the people military correspondents is the Owl, Anastasia, who is capable of filming reports that cause the "effect of presence" in the audience. Like all gifted people, the highest joy comes from an impeccable job. And she is capable of working in the most extreme conditions - at the risk of being cut off by a sniper's bullet in reconnaissance and in frontline positions under heavy MLRS fire. The combination of intelligence and beauty, talent and courage, adventurousness and sacrifice is an exceptional phenomenon, before which even muses humbly bow their heads. But what is unimaginable and unattainable for others is the norm for her. This is how her style should be formulated - the norm of exclusivity. Anastasia's motto: Stirb und werde! How did she - the winner of a beauty contest, not the last in the modeling business, an entrepreneur successful in all respects - end up in the war and why did she become a military commander?
Stirb und werde
“This is not my first war, but such a shelling - when literally every meter is plowed, all living and inanimate are picked out from the ground - I have never experienced anything like that.: and the girl-military commander, we left her in a trench ten meters from our trench to spend the night, safe?: someone's hand is sticking out of the ground, crawling. Picture: An owl in a trench, covered with clay, is hiding in a trench, and pulls his hand with the camera, shoots explosions. I have been forgotten. "Forget this one … She often came to us, she is always welcome, she brings good luck," - this is how one of the soldiers of the Somali assault battalion told about his acquaintance with military commander Sova.
She was told many times that she is the most risky, courageous and therefore lucky among the girls who come to the front lines. That while she is next to the soldiers - even in situations that threaten imminent death - there are no killed, and injuries are extremely rare.
“This is all the inventions of the fighters,” says Owl, “legends are often born at the front as one of the methods of psychological protection. In fact, everyone who has no fear brings good luck. that it seemed that from the graves all the ever buried murderers, whipped up by demons, were rushing back to life to kill again … I was terrified. I prayed so! As in a parable, - the angels clutched their ears with their palms. - angels - tired that they took pity, took away my ability to be afraid. At some point I, internally, died. This is the eternal and only way to get rid of fear - to die and be born again. There is no merit of man, it is given or not given from above."
I will note. To get such an experience, to undergo initiation - is capable only of those who experienced inner death even before the war. Owl knows this. She recovered from the war, because she could no longer remain in the crowd of managers-businessmen-club majors-showmen and others cherishing hopelessly useless fantasies about career growth and the philistine well-being of sexually mature organisms, misunderstandingly called men. At some point, her view of most of those whom she considered friends and girlfriends changed dramatically. The questions did not recede: swallowed and chewed by the three-headed mongrel of consumerism-hedonism-eudemonism "creative clerks" - this is the crown of evolution? Dissolving the virtual financial juice of the gastric bottomlessness Systems crawling along the segregated twists of the psi-informational intestine are the products of social processing - are they thinkers and creators? Who proclaimed the only meaning of life to be the maintenance of the conveyor belt in the abortion of meanings and consider everyone to be losers, who loathes this existential abortion, transhumanists - bearers of the image and likeness of God?
“Once I turned on the TV and saw …“Horlivka Madonna.”A beauty mutilated by the explosion of a Ukrainian shell with a child in her arms. I am crowned with the crown of the winner, applause, tortured smiles on the faces of rivals, a wormy gay showman slobbering a microphone … and behind all this, a mutilated Madonna is displayed, clutching a lifeless child to her chest … At that moment, a friend called, a model, mournfully screamed her " terrible misfortune ": I was not among those invited to the" super-duper show, the whole Moscow party will be there ", and not getting there means being kicked out of the modeling business. While she was sobbing into the phone, I wondered: what am I doing here, why am I not there where do children die? Can't I help anything? he was not really born, did not live, and no one will notice his disappearance. On the same day I left my native Kursk …"
In the transshipment camp near Rostov, where volunteers from the CIS and far abroad gathered, she grew up to a political officer and, although everyone around exhorted: "There is no place for beauties in war, go home to give birth to children", - Owl (received the call sign for observation and wisdom in permission conflicts) in August 2014 crossed the border of past and present life. On the very first trip to the front line for a report (she was not allowed to fight), she was under fire of Ukrainian snipers.
On the other side
On the line of fire, it always seems that they are shooting at you. You understand that this feeling is a psychological twist, and nothing more. But it is very difficult to cope with it, every time you have to overcome yourself, as for the first time to take a step into the unknown, waiting: the next shot will be at you.
Since Owl always strives for the most dangerous sectors of the front, she is lucky to meet with Ukrainian snipers. Three such meetings were especially memorable. Near the airport last fall, when a GoPro was blown off her helmet while running from cover to cover. Near Shyrokyne, when the scouts of the Slavic brigade had to crawl for ages under the dry branches falling on them, cut off by SVD and PC bullets, and the commander, noting another splash of soil, scolded: "Past! They won't take you, ukry, to NATO, you cross-eyed Asians …", and the Owl was sad that it was dark and, in a position crawling on his belly, you couldn't really take off anything. And at the cemetery plowed by Ukrainian mines near the broken Iversky convent near the airport, when Iron Givi, the commander of the famous Somali battalion, saved her life.
At the monastery she was preparing another author's program "On the other side". In the moments of calm I decided to remove the split tombstones nearby, got carried away and … click! - that very whiplash sound of a sniper rifle - unforgettable for anyone who had to be a target … Sat down and, again - click! - the bullet gnawed at the gravestone, spattered on the helmet with stone chips in the GoPro. From the holes in the walls of the monastery church, our machine gun fired in response, the AGS rattled. A pause … The owl chose the moment to dash for cover, shouting: "Sit still!" Behind - Givi: "I told you, not a step away from me!" Click! - did not calm down the Ukrainian sniper, once again biting a bullet on the tombstone with a crack in the portrait of the angel-like deceased. Givi barked into the radio: "Everyone - fire!" and, under the cover of a veil of machine-gun bursts, with his back to the enemy, taking the military commander by the shoulders and shielding him, calmly led her through the space under fire. In the temple, looking inquisitively eye-to-eye, he asked sympathetically: "Are you very frightened?"
She could not disappoint the one who risked his life for her, nodded yes. Although I felt not fright, but growing anger: both video cameras were out of order, I had to leave, and here so many "fat frames" disappear! “I never think about what can be killed,” she explains. “You need to think about how to do your job better.” I confirm. This is exactly how a real war correspondent is arranged: he will shoot even after his death - and let Bosch himself envy the visions captured on camera …
“I didn’t set myself any super task, it’s ridiculous. I just wanted people to see the situation from the inside with my eyes, at least a little bit in the shoes of those who could disappear at any moment., I was convinced - all the heroes. When I look at them in battle, I absolutely do not care what will happen to me, I want one thing - to tell about them, conquering fear and death. They know that death is not the worst thing that can happen to On short visits home, they ask me: are you directly on the front line, you communicate with fighters, politicians, civilians - explain why Novorossia was not created? I answer: the reasons are not in Russia's economic weakness, sanctions, political configurations and international tension, fraught with World War. The verbiage of experts on these topics is just a cover for an unsightly fact: the concentration of people obsessed with fear is too high in our country. Oligarchs, politicians, middle class, ra Botyagi are panicky afraid of losing their relative well-being, refuse to understand that tomorrow they can lose everything - the state, freedom, life. They are sick with defeatist carelessness. Thanks to the volunteers, they are heroes, but there are too few of them. If there were tens and hundreds of thousands of them, and great Russia could provide so many volunteers, the Kremlin would have to reckon with this, this could become the factor that could radically change the balance of power. If the residents of the occupied territories who were screaming in social networks about when Mariupol, Slavyansk and Kharkiv would be liberated en masse would join the militia - their cities would have long been part of Novorossiya. They preferred to wait, they were afraid to lose their imaginary well-being. At the heart of any disease - spiritual, psychological, somatic and social (when nations get sick) - is fear, as a deep source of war. By and large, war is a collective session of radical psychotherapy. All of us in this "world" are sick, and the one who is not afraid to be treated - survives, the one who avoids treatment - dies. And the recipe for victory is simple: the fewer people among the people who are afraid to die, the more powerless death is …"
… If someday they decide to erect a monument to all fallen and living military men, wherever they work - in Abkhazia, Chechnya, Transnistria, Ossetia, Novorossia, Syria, in any other "hot spot" of the planet - I am sure it will look like this: a girl half-buried in a trench with a stern face facing the sky and a raised hand. There is a camera in his hand and on the monitor non-stop chronicles of past wars alternate with live broadcasts of the battles of the current war, and each period ends with the Victory Parade on Red Square: at the foot of the Mausoleum, Russian soldiers are throwing the stars and stripes of the defeated superpower.
