"Shot!" shouts the fighter. The shock wave settles ringing in the ears.

The calculation next to the "pipe" - a 120-mm mortar - is squatting for the results from the spotter. As the numbers come, the gunner will bend over the sight, and the loader will pick up a projectile to throw it into the barrel. And the next mine, flying out, will tear the air.

Mortar gunners of one of the battalions of the Tsar's Wolves brigade play a dangerous game with the enemy. They not only nail the positions of the enemy infantry, but also hope to call on the enemy's counter-battery fire. At the place of departure, along the trajectory of the projectile, it is possible to calculate and cover Ukrainian guns.

But this time the mortars of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are silent. "Royal wolves" shoot from a mortar trenches and firing points of the enemy.

  • RT
  • © Mortar crew of the brigade "Royal Wolves"

"We really want a captured tank"

Later, when, having gathered in the dugout, the crew will discuss the results of a short fire raid, this lack of response of the Ukrainian military will infuriate the senior officer of the battery with the call sign Molchun. Instead of a glorious hunt, a deadly competition with an equal opponent, it turned out almost like at the training ground, he states. "I'm dissatisfied, to be honest," Molchun expressed his opinion very briefly.

And everyone agrees that it would be nice to get hold of trophy art. It would be much more interesting. "We also really want a captured tank, even a T-54," says the battery commander Darga as the owner.

Darga means "commander" in Mongolian. Such a somewhat pretentious call sign he still wears by right. In civilian life, he was a major boss in the Russian Railways company.

"The railway is a strategic industry, workers have reservations, Darga did not fall under mobilization either by position or by age. But, as he himself notes with a pinch of self-irony, he took advantage of his official position to go to war. Because what kind of boss is he if he doesn't go to war," Darga adds, chuckling faintly.

The mortar commander wants an old, but simple and reliable T-54 tank with a 100-mm gun, perhaps because in the neighboring battalion (also from the Tsar's Wolves) they got two Rapier guns for their farm - also "hundred-millimeter".

Abandoned by the fleeing Veseushniks, they stood in the field until they were picked up by our fighters and put into action - to work on Ukrainian positions, on the former owners of these guns. Volunteer mortars, who have now also become artillerymen, hit with a canopy and point-blank range at concentrations of manpower and fortifications.

  • Commander of the Volunteer Brigade Battery, call sign Darga
  • RT

The guns received the personal names "Galya" and "Tanya", and now it is the subject of white envy of many commanders in the "Tsar's Wolves". Because in battalions and brigades they know how to fight and love, and every combat officer wants to get another tool for destroying the enemy at his disposal.

"I don't feel like I feel abroad here"

"Put out the cigarette!" comes a low commanding voice.

The machine gunner, hiding in the advanced trench, hastily extinguishes the light. He tried to smoke behind the parapet. It seems that they will not see him from the side of the enemy, but to the company Marines, a former marine, such a disguise seems naïve: on the modern battlefield, the enemy is targeted not only by human eyes, but also by copters.

"Call sign Saratov. Why am I here? To radically change life. I realized that I couldn't continue to live like this. What, don't you like the answer?" - grins in the dark half-smoked machine gunner.

Although other soldiers and officers of the battalion are talking about the same thing that Saratov is talking about: they are here to change everything, people's lives, the lives of their children for the better. Now their task in the Ukrainian counteroffensive is to survive. This is how the platoon Alik formulates the goal. The apparent relative calm is deceptive. There is no silence, distant breaks, departures and arrivals constantly remind us that the gunners are fighting. And to be alert is to be alive.

"If Ukrainians see that there is no defense, that the defense has weakened, they immediately begin to creep," explains Alik. That's why the company forces are so strict, if you give up the slack, the enemy will begin to probe the defense, and these are someone's wounds, and, perhaps, death.

Moreover, the enemy understands that he leaves the land forever, Alik is sure. It so happened that the line of trenches has now become the border of Russia. Volunteers feel themselves on their land, at home. "I don't feel like I'm abroad, it's all ours," Alik looks in bewilderment in response to the question of where he went to fight.

"The people here are all ours too. Some, of course, have their brains badly polluted with Kiev propaganda. But this will pass with time. You just need detox, cleansing from toxins. And so the Ukrainians are our people," adds the officer with the call sign Volga.

"There are enough stubborn people on the other side"

"Nobody forced us, we are all here for one reason - we chose it ourselves," Alik and Volga explain. - Behind the ribbon were who was whom: who was a tractor driver, who was a musician, who was a drunkard, who was an exemplary person, who was a hooligan, who was a boss. And here the nation ... Well, it's as if we are equal to one ruler. Here we are as one."

  • Officers of the Tsar's Wolves Brigade in the dugout on the front line
  • RT

These words could be considered empty philosophizing, but the people who uttered them are real volunteers. They were not mobilized, they went to the front on their own. In spite of everything, they rushed to the front line and achieved their goal.

The battalion lives in such a way that it is not boring. First of all, the enemy. "If I do not regularly invigorate the enemy, then I will feel useless. We must always keep them in good shape. My inaction is their actions, "says the battalion commander with the call sign Uncle.

The soldiers and officers of the battalion are the same enthusiastic people. "Here is Leshy, the chief of staff. At 04:00 he gets up, goes to the front line to mine. Myself, personally! And he is engaged in staff affairs, and he will instruct mines with his hands, and he will check everything, because the result is important to him, "Uncle introduces his first deputy.

The battalion commander is in a hurry to report what kind of people he has burning with business.

"There is a Hummingbird, how many wars have passed. You discuss with him, he gives out something. I told him: what are you telling me, I thought about the same thing a second ago!" - Uncle describes how such different people became, in fact, a single organism with common ideas, synchronous thoughts about how best to perform a combat mission.

The battalion commander is sure that he will have to tinker with the enemy: he does not tolerate hat-throwing.

War does not forgive frivolous attitude and underestimation of any factor - from weather to logistics. "There are also enough stubborn people on the other side. And some of them believe that they are fighting for their land. Only they mistakenly think so. This is our land, and we will explain it to them, "sums up the Uncle.