Stanislav Asseyev overcame his fear and took up arms in January to fight the Russian invaders. “It is not the fear of death that grips me, but the fear of being taken prisoner again by the Russians. Because the second time will be worse than the first.”says this 34-year-old man with pale skin and thin fingers. A survivor of Russian jails, wounded several times on the front, he has once again taken up the fight in the city of Pokrovsk, which has now become the epicentre of Russian attacks.
Death has already brushed him twice this year. When The World met him in mid-July in a Kiev café, he bore the scars of hell on his body. Under the bandage covering his neck, two fresh scars bore witness to the passage of a shell fragment that grazed the carotid artery. Another fragment hit his ribs, without touching any vital organ. “It was the 1er July in Niou-Iork [nom d’un bourg du Donbass, conquis et complètement rasé par l’armée russe, le 18 août]the situation was critical. With my comrades from the 109e territorial defense brigade, we said to ourselves that we would only get “200” or “300” out of it.he recalls, using numbers that mean, in Soviet military jargon, “dead” and “wounded.” The first time was on April 13, when Private Asseyev suffered a concussion after a week of continuous bombing.
Terrible experience
In the meantime, his wounds have healed and he is now recalled to the furnace of Donbass. “I went back to my 109e brigade in Pokrovsk, but our battalion is being disbanded due to losses suffered”he explains. As a result, and as is the case for many wounded soldiers, his official role is now that of an instructor. He says that the main danger in Pokrovsk comes from the S-300 missiles: “The Russians are bombing all administrative buildings in the city with these missiles, from kindergartens and schools to the military commissariat.”
The only positive point, notes Stanislav Asseyev, is that the extremely destructive strikes of guided gliding bombs have decreased. They are the bane of the Ukrainian military on the front, because even the strongest pillboxes cannot withstand them. “This is the result of the destruction by our forces of a number of airfields and ammunition depots on Russian territory.”he rejoices. Pokrovsk, a city of 60,000 inhabitants before the war, is the primary objective of the Russian push into the Donetsk region. Moscow's forces are now only 10 kilometers away and the Ukrainian offensive in the Russian region of Kursk has not slowed their advance in any way.
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Source: Lemonde
