The same Valera Ananyev from the Airborne Forces: about why he left the army, the biggest fear in life, and the girl of his dreams

Six months ago he returned from the front and on October 10 officially ceased to be a military man.

His “Statement of Paratrooper Valery Ananyev” collected hundreds of thousands of views, as did a video from the front line: about the capture of Slavyansk, the results of the battles, shelling, and army life. All the time in the ATO, Valera kept a video blog, trying to show the army as it is: without exaggerating the horrors of the war and without downplaying the shortcomings of the command.

Until the fall of 2014, he was a contract soldier, when the war began he could have quit, but he imagined how he would be at home while others were fighting, and he could not. Together with his 25th brigade, he liberated Slavyansk and Zhdanov, took part in the battles for Uglegorsk, Shakhtersk, Dobropolye, Kramatorsk, Kommunar and Debaltsevo. The mechanic-driver of the BMD miraculously survived several times after the BMD was hit by an RPG shell.

He decided that he would serve as long as he could. I was happy to notice that the command began to treat the soldiers more adequately. That the provision is improving. He devoted almost his entire adult life to the Airborne Forces... And he quit.

Valera told the Depo.ua journalist why he left the army and what he plans to do next.

It was difficult for him in a peaceful city. Out of habit, he peered intently into the faces of passers-by, trying to imprint each one in his memory. Walking became exhausting. I looked at the children with mixed feelings. I didn’t see my children for a very long time during the war.

In six months he has almost gotten used to living in civilian life, but from time to time he gets upset. Two shell shocks remind us of themselves. A lot of health problems, memories, scary and funny, and all-Ukrainian fame. With such baggage, 23-year-old Valera Ananyev returned to peaceful life.

THREE MONTHS IN STUDY WERE HARDER THAN TWO YEARS IN THE WAR

- Did you go into the army immediately after school?

- I was a patriot. I believed that the highest manifestation of patriotism was to go to serve my country, I wanted my parents to be proud of me. On July 14 I turned 18, and on the 15th I was already at the military registration and enlistment office and wrote a report that I wanted to serve in the Airborne Forces.

- Your video message says that you are leaving the army through fucking... zm. But wasn't he there when you arrived? He has always been, no matter how used to it...

- All people join the army with some kind of idea. And how quickly you’ll be disappointed depends on how much you’ve worked yourself up. Everyone is disappointed. It doesn’t matter whether you came as an officer or a soldier, for military service or for a contract. So I worked myself up a lot, and while it took a couple of months for someone to be disappointed, it took me a year. I believed that I would become an officer, and I would be a normal officer, but when the time came to go to university, I already realized that I did not want to connect my life with this.

- Our army before the war was really like in the jokes: we roll a square one, we carry a round one?

- Well, look, our everyday life in the army: Monday is commander’s day, half a day of drill training, Wednesday is rubber day, chemical protection. They put on rubber suits and gas masks and ran around in this, seeing almost nothing (because the glasses in the gas masks fogged up from breathing). Thursday - shooting and driving, Saturday - park maintenance day, we did cleaning, mowed grass, painted curbs. This was a regular service until 2013, when reforms in the army began and we began to study military affairs every day. Nobody painted the borders anymore.

And before that there was training. So, three months of training were morally and psychologically more difficult than two years of war. We slept very little, ate very little, and worked very hard, walking and running. We worked so much that we stopped perceiving reality and did everything automatically. When you just had to walk a lot, it was great fun because you didn’t have to work. And we walked for a long time, 40 kilometers. When I walked, it was cool because I could think about something of my own. It was nice to just think about something of my own.

- Did this bullying bring any benefit when you went to war?

- The war after that was like candy for me! Live in a tank (BMD - armored landing vehicle) for six months, so what? But I am myself. Seriously, three months of training was more difficult than all the time I spent in the war.

- Did you have many guys in the 25th brigade who left the army just after the ATO began?

- In June 2014, I approached the guys and said – guys, what is the ATO? They say - ATO? Who knows. Where did you hear that? We go to the commander, he says - so we are in the ATO.

-Are you kidding now?

- I’m absolutely honest, we only learned in June that our war has been called ATO since April 17. We always believed that we were at war. Although in reality, what difference does it make what you call it...

At the beginning of the ATO, many of our personnel went over to the “DPR-LPR” side. They deserted, left positions, ran away from units - many of those in the unit were from the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

- Did the way you imagined the war coincide with reality?

“I didn’t care, I went to the army to fight.” He even paid a bribe to get to Africa for a rotation. We handed over $300 to one, and he cheated us.

Well, I ended up going to war. After that, I am more careful about what I dream about (laughs).

HORROR FILM, SHOOTING AND FOOD FIGHT

- There is a stereotype that war is constant shooting and running around. In fact, war means a lot of free time that has nowhere to go. Especially in the first year - perhaps there has never been a single year when I read as many books as in 2014. I already ran out of books on my phone, I read Solaris twice in a row.

- What about food?

- He was absent. Even dry sometimes. In 2014, when we were at the Kramatorsk airfield, we had no food for a month and a half. We ate liquid porridge three times a day. Then the porridge ended and we drank water. Then the water began to run out, and we were given half a glass of tea. When the water ran out completely, we got it from the fire well. We ate crackers and biscuits. They also gave us a can of condensed milk for two of us every two days. It was incredibly delicious! You get into the car, turn on a book on your phone, read and drink condensed milk... Happiness...

We also tried to cook it, but it was of such quality that instead of turning into toffee, it became some kind of black liquid.

Sometimes they tried to drop food on us from an airplane - helicopters were already shot down then. And then one day our package flies by parachute, and we see several boxes being carried away towards the city. The separatists begin to go after these boxes. And we're going. A shootout begins over food boxes. We fought them off, we are happy - cool, food, let's eat!

We open it, and there are cartridges, s...ka.

And somehow we agreed with the taxi drivers, chipped in and they brought us chickens. We roasted them over the fire. And I eat, and I feel that I’m already full, but I remember that tomorrow there will be nothing to eat again, and I continue to eat. I was so full I couldn’t even sleep! But I don't regret it (laughs). Otherwise it was great: evening, summer, heat. We sat with the gunner on a hot concrete slab: in shorts, rubber flip-flops, machine guns nearby (we had a post), brewed tea from the herbs that I collected in the field, ate biscuits and talked. And I already knew then that I would miss these days.

We slept for a month and a half in the tank together: the gunner in the turret, and I in the mechanic’s place. There is a post 40 meters in the other direction, 100 meters behind us is a barracks. From time to time they hit us with mortars and agees. To make it more difficult for the separatists to choose targets, we were somehow given old, broken Urals, and I arranged a sleeping place for myself in the cabin of one of them. For the next two weeks I lived there like a god.

And somehow I was lying there, watching a horror movie on my phone, when suddenly a mortar attack began. I have never been so scared in my life! Well, the scariest moment in the film just coincided with these mines!

I got dressed, put on my shoes, got out and ran to the checkpoint. There's no one there. Everyone is in the trench. Throw a grenade there and that's it! And behind us is a barracks and 40 personnel. I scolded them, dispersed them to their positions, climbed into the pillbox, drank condensed milk and thought: if a mine lands now, it will be very painful, because the pillbox is not dug in. There was never any fear of death.

- Have you ever been afraid?

- I just watched a movie once. Paranormal Activity Part 1 is the scariest movie I've ever seen, especially when combined with sudden gunfire (laughs). Twice my BMD was hit by an RPG shell, but nothing happened to me.

I’m generally a happy guy: you’ll see enough of burnt-out cars, guys without heads, and I also finished the battle then, and only with a shell shock. I then decided that the immortal had told the guys: whoever is in the car with me will not die. And so it was.

- Apparently, mom made an agreement with someone who is in heaven

- I don’t know... With dad... He’s already in heaven.

“Didn’t you think that you might have some kind of higher purpose?”

- I decided for myself that there is no high goal in life. When you have breakfast with a person in the morning, and after lunch you pick him up piece by piece, you approach life somehow differently. I was Orthodox, now I am an atheist. In general, the topic of religion and faith comes up very often in war, and everyone there becomes very religious. But when I discussed matters of faith with these religious people, they all became very angry and cursed at me. I didn’t understand how a religious man could be so evil.

And what is it like to live according to your conscience? Some people's conscience allows them to cut children and rape women... I believe that a person should not insult other people. Everyone should have their own comfort zone, and you should not violate it.

THE PROVISION HAS CHANGED, AND THE FUCKING...ZM IS BACK

- You said that you started volunteering during the war

- In 2014, when I first gained popularity, different people started writing to me. We had just liberated Kramatorsk and no one had anything; all their belongings were burned during the shelling. I wrote on my page, they say, if anyone can help with equipment, then help, please. One person answered, a second, a third, and so two million hryvnia passed through me to the brigade for a year and a half. But the command of the unit did not take it joyfully at all. In their understanding, writing on the Internet about what is happening inside a part is something incredible. Here I am writing where something is wrong. And they read, understand that these are their shortcomings and get angry.

And it made me angry when you read on Facebook that we have everything, and then you look - a torn armored vehicle, a helmet from the Second World War. So we were gathered in Kramatorsk.

- There is an opinion that volunteers needlessly took on the responsibility of providing for the troops and because of this, government services do not function properly. Because volunteers will bring everything anyway. Do you agree?

- Previously, there were no volunteers and officials stole. Why now, if volunteers stop helping, will officials stop stealing?

- Has the army changed during this time?

- Yes

- How have you changed?

- The provision has become better, there is less corruption from below. Here is our former chief of finance, he is on the run. When the war began and units began to be put on alert, there was a sharp shortage of everything. No money, no things. Previously, in order to receive financial assistance, you had to pay a quarter of the amount that they should have given you in order to give you the rest. Now everything is charged normally. Forms, if previously they only gave one set for 2.5 years, now they clearly give out everything they have. The quality is so-so, but it is there, everyone gives it. They have their own helmets, armored armor, and they are beginning to modernize their machine guns. It is clear that the first pancake is always lumpy, especially when it is at the state level and on such a scale. But I hope that the reforms will be implemented and it will only get better.

- So why did you leave then?

- Because the provision has become better, but the people remain the same. When the war began, it began to dawn on the officers that they were nothing without soldiers, and the attitude became appropriate. The commander with whom I spent a month and a half was Captain Andrusik, for me the standard of an officer. He dug with us, was on duty, did everything with us, and at the same time, we respected him. And in my unit the officers began to behave a little easier. But when the war subsided a little in 2015, the old contract soldiers left, new soldiers came, and the officers began to treat the newcomers like they treated us before. The soldier is shit and has no opinion. I don't like this attitude. I'm not shit, I'm human, and we're not in the Soviet army, where soldiers are meat. I understand that the death of a soldier is a statistic, but it is a statistic for those who are there. And for those who are nearby - the battalion commander, the company commander - such an attitude cannot exist, because we are all in the same ass.

- How can I change this?

- First, we need to retire the teachers of military academies, because an officer comes from the academy with a Soviet mentality and the confidence that a soldier is not a person.

Fortunately, from the officers who were platoon commanders at the beginning of the war and have now become company commanders, I see that the army is beginning to change. I think in 10 years everything will definitely be better.

- Don't you miss the army?

“I sometimes thought that maybe I should have stayed, and then I remember this idiocy, when, for example, it’s freezing, and we stand for an hour on the parade ground, waiting for the brigade commander to decide to come from headquarters to formation, and I understand that I did the right thing.

I WOULD LIKE TO DATE A GIRL WHO DOESN'T KNOW WHAT KIND OF CHARACTER I AM

- You've been in civilian life for six months already. What are you doing and where do you see yourself next?

- Now I work with media content, develop advertising campaigns, shoot videos. I’ve been on social networks since the beginning of the war, I’ve studied all these mechanisms, I know when it’s best to publish messages, how to do what. I like to do something creative and it seems to work.

- Are girls still flooded with letters? Write that there is no longer a need for fans?

- (laughs) When I receive a message: “you are beautiful,” it remains unread. I would like to date a girl who has not seen a single one of my videos. Who doesn’t know that I’m, let’s say, a media character. And then she would look at my likes, a bunch of views and would be surprised. I really like surprising people.

- You have a video where you communicate with children, who, apparently, will eventually become the adult population of the region. The authorities will have to establish communication with them. But everyone has family relatives, and many have a brother or father who died for the “DPR.” What future do you see for Donbass, which fought?

- Everything they have there is militarized and Orthodox. On September 1st, a pop and some military dude are performing. Children are already growing up in all this, they do not analyze information and everything that comes to them, they assimilate. Their future is sad. The war will last another 10 years and then it will be like in Transnistria.

- How can we return Donbass and Crimea if there are so many people there with “broken” brains?

- We know from history that all territories were constantly transferred to someone. But generations change, but the land remains. The territory of Donbass will exist in 10 years, and in a hundred, and new people will be born.