The story that I here want to tell the Ukrainian readers has already caused a flurry of comments in Belarus, among which mistrust dominated and, in general, accusations against the author that he composed all this, in other words, lied.
First of all, a few words why I decided to tell about it. In Belarus, the controversy around the scandal of the Belarusian state-owned enterprise "Belaruskali", the Russian enterprise "Uralkali" and the arrest by the Belarusian authorities of the director general of this enterprise, Russian citizen Baumgertner, does not subside in Belarus. One Belarusian woman published the article "The Potash Business". The main message of the author: all Belarusian analysts, comparing the behavior of the Belarusian authorities, "the Baumgertner case", from the standpoint "as analysts do in the West" make a monstrous mistake. Because Belarus Lukashenko is not the West, but the main principle of Western civilization is the Rule of Law!
“Yes, it does not always and obviously does not work everywhere, but at least it exists and they are trying to strive for it. … Even not the most professional lawyer today will responsibly say that the grounds for the criminal prosecution of this Russian are not just far-fetched, but they, most likely, simply do not exist, they simply did not exist, that is why he is a hostage!"
That is, in the West, Civilization with a Capital Letter. And in Belarus there is a dictatorship with a capital letter. And therefore the West is almost always right, and Belarus is automatically wrong in the case with Uralkali and the hostage Baumgertner.
I confess, this is what kicked me: Western civilization is the rule of law. And the story that I decided to tell everyone clearly came up in my memory. First! For Belarus and Ukraine! And then believe it or not believe it - it's your business. By the way, this is a story about modern Western Civilization. About morals, geopolitics, the struggle of the West for a "place in the sun" in the 21st century. I have never told this to anyone before in such cruel detail. And by and large it is impossible to tell this. But you forced me, you fools, boobies and other sincere "Westernophiles" of Belarus! By God, I didn't want to.
Eight years ago, fate brought me together in the Netherlands to work with one man, about 50 years old. He was not alone, with his son. Both are from Ukraine. We arrived illegally to earn extra money through friends of the Ukrainians in Holland, the need forced. We work for a week or two, communicate a little. And one day after work, he said to me: "Let's go where we sit and have a beer." Why not? It is noticed. We saddled our bicycles after work and drove around Amsterdam. We went to the store, bought several cans of beer, sat down in the park. Banks in bags so that the police do not find fault, we sit, drink, talk about different things. And suddenly he says to me: “I see you are an interesting person, you can talk about everything with you. What if I tell you my story? " Me: “Which one? Come on if you want. About what?" He: “I am a former military man of the times of the USSR. And what I want to tell you, it torments my soul, I need to share with someone. " I answer: "Come on, I do not mind, there is time."
And he told. Former officer of the USSR special forces. A professional killer, no "show-off", a real man, you can believe. There is something in the look that you immediately believe - this one will really kill if need be. How do you express this impression? I don’t know, in appearance he is an ordinary person, slightly withdrawn. Emotionally calm, cool, almost steel look. "Inanimate" look. There is no life in the gaze, I realized this later, there most likely the "gaze of death" should look like. Detached and calm. Almost indifferent.
Well, a person had such a profession during the Soviet era in the ranks of the armed forces of the SA: to commit sabotage, blow up, kill, command saboteurs. And then the USSR collapsed. His seniority was dismissed on a pension. Difficult years began and he, like many hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians in his native Ukraine, went to work in the late 90s. For some reason I chose Italy. For several years he worked in various jobs. After learning a little language, he worked as a truck driver for garbage collection. They paid well. Then in Italy he lost his job. He began to knock around, look for earnings. Once a man came out to him. My interlocutor did not tell who it was, Italian or American. They sat down, drank, talked. He was offered to work in the former military profession in the Balkans, that is, to fight. There was nothing to be done, he agreed. The conditions are as follows: he is transferred to a military base in Italy, his military skills and physical endurance are tested there, then a task is set and after a while he is thrown into a military base in the Balkans. The duration of the business trip is about a year, then how it goes. Where, what place in the Balkans, in a conversation with me, this person did not specify.
In short, he was recruited as a mercenary and commander of other mercenaries for a guerrilla war on the side of the Bosnian Muslims. Later I figured it out on my own from his conversation that he fought against Muslims and most likely against Bosnians. He did not give details on this topic. And this is understandable: he himself is from a Christian country, one might say a Christian, but he had to fight on the side of Muslims in the former Yugoslavia, to fight against Orthodox Christians.
Who recruited? Seems like this: some Western secret service (s) in Italy. Italian, American, British, German? Do not know. One thing I know for sure: from one of the Western countries. They paid well. At the beginning of every month in Ukraine, a certain person came to his home and silently passed an envelope to his interlocutor's wife with an amount of $ 5,000. After that, my acquaintance called home, made sure that he had received an advance payment, and then proceeded to carry out the dirty military work assigned to him.
What was that job? He was appointed commander of a small diversionary partisan detachment. Every month he was sent 10-20 people, sometimes more, mercenaries from other countries of the world for the next combat raid. As a rule, these mercenaries were either from North Africa or from the Near East. All Muslims. According to him, all these people, including African blacks, were complete human shit, scum, garbage. Often drug addicts. Every month he was given a task on a map. Then they went over the mountains, often at night, in the mountains of Yugoslavia towards the settlements they had designated. Sometimes, according to him, he had to go through the mountains, along winding paths to the place of the assignment up to 80 kilometers. Serious physical activity. According to my interlocutor, he lost 18 kg as a mercenary during the 10 months of the war, and was lightly wounded in the leg. I asked incredulously:
- Show the wound.
He showed it. Indeed, it looks like a bullet wound.
“What did you do then in those settlements?” I asked.
- They killed - he answered shortly.
- Whom?
- Everyone in a row. Civilians: women, old people, children, men.
- Why?
“We were tasked with sowing an atmosphere of fear, panic, and terror in these certain regions of Yugoslavia, so that then the frightened population of hundreds of thousands of refugees fled from their homes, from villages, towns, settlements. In general, I organized a "humanitarian catastrophe" in Yugoslavia.
“How did this happen?” I asked.
- Have you not watched films about the war? As the Germans during the war broke into villages and burned, killed everyone in a row, pouring lead from machine guns on everyone, so I, with my next detachment of Muslim-African rabble, descended from the mountains and attacked peaceful settlements. You have no idea what a thrill the Muslim mercenaries were catching by killing Christians.
- And what a thrill, what was it expressed in?
- It so happened that they put small children on bayonets, cut open their bellies with knives, and so on. And they laughed wildly, like animals, with pleasure at the sight of the Christians they killed. Half, if not more of my mercenaries were on drugs.
- What happened after such a raid? Have you returned to base?
- It was not so! When I was hired to "work", I was given one indispensable condition: after completing each bloody raid, I had to return to the base to my employers ONE.
- Like this? And the mercenaries?
- You do not understand?
- Not really.
- I had to return alone, and all my subordinates in the detachment on the way to the base, under one pretext or another, I had to kill. One and all. There should have been no witnesses of the punitive "actions", not a single one. This was a personal order for me: always upon the execution of one or another punitive action, I had to personally "remove" all members of my unit.
- Gee! And how did you do it? Did you succeed?
- Is always.
- Tell.
- We returned slowly, with numerous stops. In the evening, before spending the night, I will place them, these "idiots", at different points in the mountains for protection, and then I go to check their "posts" after a while. I come to check him for "post", we talk, and then I silently kill him.
- What language did you speak? How did he “clean up” the witnesses?
- English, less often Italian. How? Well, here I am talking to "him" … And a man is such an amazing animal - his intuition is developed at the highest level. I’m talking to some Muslim mercenary after the operation before his liquidation, and he looks at me with his eyes, and I see in his eyes that he understands everything, guesses that I have come to kill him, his natural intuition tells him that. And he, as a rule, looks at me with frightened eyes, his eyes "run" in confusion on the sides. Intuition tells him: "run." But he thinks not by intuition, but by his brain. And the brain tells him to stay. Well, here I catch the moment and knife it. Sometimes from a pistol with a silencer. Sometimes from the machine.
- Like this? After all, you can hear it in the mountains.
- So they are "chumps". I then explain to the others: for non-observance of the order, I liquidated such and such. Or I will build them in "order". I'll start to find fault with one or two. And then one or two in the "ranks" straight and kill with a pistol or machine gun.
- And how did the others react at this time? After all, they could have started shooting in response?
- Yes, they were all shaking with fear at this time. In general, as a rule, Africans or Arabs, they are very afraid of the white military mercenary commander. They are warned at the base: for non-observance of the commander's orders, "this one" has the right to shoot each of you. So they know. And they listened superbly. And here I am on the way back … all …
- How did you feel after that?
- At first I could not sleep at night. Then you get used to it a little. In general, the psyche is gradually "peddling".
- And how many of these corpses are you on?
- Many, very many. That's why I decided to talk to you … It's hard for me to carry it in me … it crushes. I need to share with someone, after a conversation it becomes easier.
- How long did you fight like that?
- Ten months. There were many such units as I had there. As a result, we really organized a "humanitarian catastrophe" in the Balkans.
- Then what?
“And then at some point I realized that soon, very soon, they would begin to" remove "us as unnecessary witnesses of the West's intervention in the war in the Balkans. And I began to think about how and where to “make legs” from my “employers”.
- And how did it happen?
- I accidentally met Russian helicopter pilots, who also fought as mercenaries at that time. We managed to agree with them that one day they would take me into a helicopter and transfer me 200-250 kilometers away from conflicts. This is what I did in the end, in other words, I chose the moment and ran away. In the end, he survived. Then he returned to Ukraine on the cross-country outskirts.
- Clear. But what are you doing here then? Why not in Ukraine? You should have enough money now.
- So the fact of the matter is that this money for the murders did not go for the future.
- Like this?
- I have two sons. And the eldest in Ukraine, while I was fighting there, bought as many as 8 cars. Of these, 2 are minibuses. Addicted to drinking, partying. He crashed several cars, stole two. Got into debt. In general, when I returned to my homeland, there were no cars, no money. Some of the cars were taken away for debts. In short, do not send me this earned money for the good. Now we came here with the youngest, we are working with a friend, trying to help the eldest son get out of debt.
We parted before evening. My interlocutor said: "Thank you."
- For what? It's my pleasure !
- No. Thanks. It's hard for me, sometimes oh how it pulls me to relieve my soul.
- Do you dream about "these" by any chance?
- No. But I remember and feel everything.
They shook hands. Finally, he suddenly said: "Do you know, there is GOD."
It was getting dark. Amsterdam was immersed in a wonderful summer evening.
P. S. When, a few years later, it rang out in Libya, then in Syria, when they started talking about "rebels", I began to remember more and more that old interlocutor of mine. And every time I think that nowhere could be done without the "benevolent" hands of the Western special services, as it once did without the hands of that military mercenary from Ukraine, who, by the will of fate, I once met in Amsterdam.
So what about Western civilization based on law, gentlemen of romance? It is based on blood, and only then on the Right. On the Big Blood. Big geopolitics is almost always blood. And it is almost impossible to understand who is right on which side and who is wrong. The USSR killed 1 million Afghans in Afghanistan. Have any politicians been legally liable? Military? No one. Has anyone in the West been legally responsible for the “carve-up” of Yugoslavia? No one. For Iraq, Libya? No one. Now it is Syria's turn. And you say Right. There is no right in the world! The right of the Force remains! USA, the West is stronger. Russia is an outsider. Hence the "deriban".
