[music] Part 3, The Battle for the Boot. There was little pomp to their departure from the base. Ivan was one of three junior officers in the transport helicopter. All of them had gotten a reputation for refusing to go to the front. These scoundrels were joined by two dozen kentrachniki in what they jokingly called the flight of the rogue officers. Ivan had always been a nervous flyer, but he didn't feel anxiety anymore. He was busy making lists of things he would need to acquire to ensure that he would see Anna and Sasha again. The troop transport made multiple stops as it crept across Russia. Along the way, Ivan started buying things to augment his military-issued gear. He got kit from an injured Wagner fighter who had just returned from Mariopo. The guy sold him everything he had, body armor with a rope and a carabiner, as well as a tactical belt and a first aid kit. The mercenary didn't rip him off. He even went to the airport to meet him because he knew Ivan was in a rush. Ivan also bought himself lower boots. He had read online that they was stood shrapnel from improvised explosive devices. He wasn't sure it was true, but anything was worth trying. He bought an axe and a knife. He tried to cajole the men around him to equip themselves too. "Guys, you're going to war. You could die." "Of course, the bullet is a fool," he quoted Alexander Suverov, one of Russia's most famous generals. "But the odds go up when you have normal equipment." "I can't," they replied. "I'm bad, man." Ivan thought it was depression. Maybe he just wanted to be alive a little more than they did. Maybe, as Anna had said, he really was greedy for life. Ivan's transport truck rolled across the border into Ukraine with little fanfare. Just one in a long convoy on a broken road. It had taken them three days to reach this point. They were never briefed on anything, just loaded, unloaded, and reloaded into helicopters, planes, and trucks. The front was squalid. Their final stop was a tent encampment somewhere in a strip of forest. But even there, Ivan spotted Ukrainian quadcopters overhead. There was trash everywhere. Toilet paper, bottles, rations wrappers, boxes, boots in the grass. Ivan was baffled. Didn't these men realize that the Ukrainians would see this crap? They would throw their own shit back at them in the form of rockets at their heads. Some lieutenant colonel from troop services with a mustache came by in an old Soviet car to welcome them. "Settle in here and they'll come get you," he said as he drove away. And Ivan soon discovered an immutable fact. War can be exceedingly boring. The newly arrived men said about collecting the trash. The Russians had deployed across the front, corresponding roughly to the military district that the troops were from. So a base from the Leningrad region would be a different spot than a base from the Novus Bierce region. As a result, everyone knew someone when he got to the front. The newly mobilized Mobics were usually distributed to units from their own region. When a new shipment of soldiers arrived from their base, the units sent their buyers, scouts, to plug holes in their rank and file. They would come by looking for a rifleman, or an RPG gunner, or a tank driver, and so on. The men who weren't chosen by scouts passed their time talking or drinking whatever they had managed to bring. One by one, everyone was selected until just the rogue officers were left. Maybe no one wants us. That was fine with them. They had no cell reception, but Ivan took photos of everything. The trench, the tents, the coffee, thinking he would find a way to send them to Anna. After a few days of loafing around, they decided to go to a village they saw in their driveover. They stopped the first civilian car they saw. "Will you give us a ride?" the older man obliged. Ivan imagined it from his perspective. Big guys with machine guns sauntering down the street. Who could refuse? The driver had no idea that the officers hadn't even been issued ammunition. In town, it seemed that everything was set up to service the front. There were power banks charging in a big plastic tank where people gathered to get water. The post office was selling SIM cards so soldiers could call home. A girl at the local shop was even running a currency transfer service. Families in Russia could transfer money to a Russian account, and for a commission, the girl would give the soldiers the cash. They bought water, bread, and sausages. It felt to Ivan just like being in Russia. The same small villages, the same old Soviet cars, the same broken roads. Though he tried to ask how things were, he knew the locals wouldn't tell him the truth. It didn't occur to Ivan to consider himself an occupier. After all, he was there against his will. Guilt is a peacetime luxury. They had been at the front for five days when Colonel S himself arrived. He was looking for Ivan personally. "I need you to write a report," as told him. "What report? Didn't you file a lawsuit against me? They need you to write an additional report. We'll take a picture of it and send it in." Ivan couldn't even fathom it. A report? Like on a paper with pen? He didn't have those. They didn't even have water. This clerical work seemed like such absurdity. They could all die right now. "Comrade Colonel, what report?" Ivan said. "I'm already at war. What more do you need?" The Colonel looked at him. "What lawsuit?" Ivan said. "It's over. I'm already here." "Then is everything okay?" S asked. "Yeah, everything's fine," Ivan said. He didn't need to consider it. He had been on bad terms with S in Russia, but in war he'd better not look for any enemies. The next day the Mustachio Lieutenant Colonel returned and found Ivan and his fellow rogue officers. "Guys, we totally forgot we had three officers here. Completely forgot," he said. "Let's go. The Mobics have arrived. He will train them." After Ivan left, Anna remained immobile on the floor of their hallway. The pain came from inside a place she didn't even know was empty, and she began to howl. She lay there without sensing time or space until she realized she needed to watch Sasha. She got up and walked back into the kitchen. A friend arrived to try to help. Anna heard the sound of an aircraft flying past the house. She understood that Ivan was on it. Her friend put her in bed. The next day Anna tried to go to church to pray for Ivan, but she was too ill to make it. She called the only psychiatrist in their town. "I need medication," she told the doctor. "I can't handle it. I just can't handle it." She walked to the drugstore and found a line of women out the door waiting for the same pills. "I'll give them to all of you without a prescription," the pharmacist announced. "I have a son there myself." Anna took two different antidepressants at a time. They made her ill, but she was hollow anyway. A blunt, stinging pain along with bitter hatred. She despised everybody, but especially people who talked about the war. It filled her with a kind of rage she'd never experienced. She couldn't criticize the SVO or say anything about the government. She couldn't scream or grab hold of the person speaking and shout, "You've never sent a loved one to their death, you bitch. You'll never know what it's like." Everything she felt was compounded by the communal silence, the feeling that everyone was indifferent or resigned or worse. She was horrified by the response of some of the women she knew. One of them threw her husband to party the night before he deployed, gathered friends to see him off with a lavish dinner. Anna couldn't believe it. Celebrations. The worst part is he didn't fly out that day. "He came back," the woman told Anna. "I was like, "Why the hell are you back? I've already seen you off." It wasn't just enthusiasm. There were plenty of stories of women who ran pressure campaigns to persuade their husbands to enlist. Men earn money in war, and you sit at home and get a measly $30 they chided, pointing to a neighbor's new lada. They threatened divorce. They drove their husbands to their wits end. They were mothers who escorted their sons to the enlistment office, sometimes against their will. One woman, the story went, sent her husband to Wagner, and then took the payout for his dead body. She married another man who joined Wagner and met the same fate. Then she married a third and a fourth. She became rich. Her social media was covered in their photos. "Oh, my dearest, you are remembered. Loved, mourned." The government's recruitment propaganda campaign targeted women, too. The regional authorities took pictures of the wives and children of dead soldiers who were given coffin payments and ran them on telegram channels. They didn't seem to realize how awful it looked when a young family stood there, holding ten thousand rubles, roughly a hundred dollars with the caption, "We helped the widow of the man who died for our country." Still, for such impoverished people, even such a son meant something. Besides, a mother who received her son's body in a zinc coffin did not want to think that her son was an occupier. She wanted to believe that her son was a hero. State propaganda convinced her and her entire social circle that her son died for a reason. Not for the ambitions of Vladimir Vladimirovitch, not for his power, not for his money, but as part of World War III. And she could find some semblance of comfort in that. Russian children were already exposed to war glamour from birth. Playgrounds with decommissioned tanks instilling in them that war is normal, that military hardware is normal. But after the invasion, the campaign entered overdrive. In the 2022 budget, about $130 million was designated for things like military propaganda lessons, the acquisition of state insignia for schools, and the funding of children's patriotic events. In 2023, this rose to more than $560 million. In September 2022, the Kremlin rolled out conversations about important things, compulsory lessons that would focus on cultivating patriotism, love of country, and the correct history. Putin taught the first lesson himself at a school in Kaliningrad. Two months later, the education ministry announced a new course in schools that would become known as fundamentals of security and defense of the motherland. Secondary school students would be required to shoot guns with real ammunition. They would learn how to handle Kalishnikov rifles, throw hand grenades, and operate drones. At school assemblies, administrators lined up children in the form of the letter Z, Russia's symbol of support for the war against Ukraine. Schools installed hero desks in classrooms, featuring images of Russian soldiers who died in Ukraine. Active duty soldiers, as well as Wagner mercenaries, were often invited to speak to students. Publishers began scrubbing mentions of Ukraine from history textbooks. A campaign for school children to collect empty cans to make candles for soldiers in the trenches was a success. It didn't stop with children. New patriotic shows and segments aired regularly on Kremlin curated television. Russia fights only defensive wars, people assured themselves. A myth cultivated since Soviet times. Across government offices, state employees were subject to propaganda. At Anna's office, the bosses forced everyone to watch a movie, explaining why Russia had no choice but to save Ukraine. Showcasing gruesome injuries that the fascist Ukrainian regime had supposedly inflicted against ethnic Russians, severed hands, injured children. They blocked the room's exit. Anna put her head down on the table and refused to look at the screen, but her coworkers were captivated. "Is it really so?" they exclaimed. "What a nightmare!" Anna wondered how sick in the head they had to be to believe this. After Anna's first social media post at the start of the war, she decided that she would not post her own content anymore. When she reposted someone else's, the head of her department called her in and threatened her with prosecution for discrediting the military unless she removed the repost. "If you say anything again, you'll get a criminal record," the department head told her. "This is not a joke. Delete it." Then her direct supervisor, Colter, "I'm begging you. I'm asking you as a human being, please don't put my head on the scaffold. I'm responsible for you." Anna deleted the repost. And so, whether it was propaganda or intimidation, the ensuing silence was the same. Anna stopped speaking to her work colleagues. But after Ivan deployed, Anna stepped through the mirror. The same people who had cursed and heckled her when rumors spread that Ivan was trying to avoid fighting now told Anna what a hero he was. They told her how much they respected her, how they valued her family's sacrifice. "Don't worry, dear," they could. "He'll come back. He's defending the country." She wanted to spit venom in their faces. Seven platoons formed up in front of a forest clearing. It was mid-October, warm, muddy, and lush. The Russians had set up a hive of tents, constructed a firing range out of the earth, and organized the Mobics. The three rogue officers were assigned their people. The rest were led by lieutenants who had themselves just been mobilized. The men were nothing like Putin promised. Only some of them had military experience. Others had zero training. Ivan said about choosing his three squad leaders so that when he set a goal, they would be the ones to corral the ten men under them to the task. In the encampment, many of the men were drinking. Ivan couldn't blame them, but he told his squad leaders that they should tell everyone that there was no alcohol in his platoon. Drunks were capable of anything. A drunk could see a squirrel run into a tent and throw a grenade at it. And it was worse with civilians who had been handed draft papers out of the blue. The mobilized when they are drunk, they are not human, Ivan explained. If anything shoots, you have my permission to fire. If a drunk walks in our direction and doesn't follow your command to stop, shoot in the air, and I'll come out. If he still doesn't understand, we'll end him. The next morning, Ivan and his platoon reported to a company-wide formation of the training grounds. There were obstacle courses and stations for machine gunners, snipers, and RPG gunners. Ivan had assumed that there would be specialists conducting the training for the different activities, but instead, Colonel asked him with teaching his own men most of it. Ivan had never been in the infantry, but he tried to remember what he could from the academy. He told his men how to run, how to shoot and cover. Keep the shooting constant. When you take a position, try to shoot single shots so that you don't use up ammo quickly, so that the enemy keeps his head down. There's no difference between firing three rounds in one. Periodically, without aiming, just shoot once. Ivan drilled with every man he had. They said nothing to do with patriotism or benevolence. It was all in the service of self-preservation. Each one of them could end up being by my side in a fight and making the difference to my life. But the opportunities for practice were abysmal. While the Ukrainians actually trained with their American javelins, the Russians treated their missiles like treasure. Ivan heard that the anti-tank specialists got to train on one only once. He was told that a single mortar cost 500,000 rubles, roughly $5,500. Later, Ivan saw specialists totally miss his shot and cost everyone their cover. The Ukrainians hit back and ten Russian soldiers were killed. But as the butcher was known to quip before an operation, the female reproductive organ will bear more children, but the rocket is expensive. The Russian military remained the Russian military, no matter the location. Ivan found that he was always being called somewhere to write a report, a ten-some meeting, stand in a formation, useless tasks as if they were on their boring base in Russia, not five kilometers from death on a stranger's land. It was always raining or miserable. Ivan was constantly trekking through mud and puddles. It was impossible to remove the grime from his boots. Still, he made it a point never to complain. Got it, he chirped. That's right, comrade Colonel. He answered every request, attended every formation, kissed every ass he had to. My life depends on me right now. It's clear what sabotage leads to. The basement pits were never far from anyone's mind. A few weeks passed before they were told to pack up. They would be going to join their new units. The buyers were coming back, and the guys gathered their kit. Scouts drove in and looked them over. Are you Captain? Yes, Ivan said. First battalion, Scout shouted, and Ivan climbed into the carrier. The town they arrived in looked as though it had been a nice place. The kind Ivan would have loved to visit in peacetime. People had taken care of their homes and gardens. They grew grapes on canopies over their carports. How the whole place was pockmarked by battle. Houses leaning sideways, fences collapsing, roofs shattered by shells. The Russians didn't know or didn't care about the street names. They called them by numbers. First, second, third. Ivan was directed to head along first street to command headquarters. The road was marked by a tank that was wrecked when the Russians drove it over a pile of their own mines. As he walked, he picked up an apple from the ground and bit into it. It tasted so sweet. He saw a familiar face, a sergeant from his base, callsign fiend. Fiend recognized him too. They greeted each other enthusiastically. It was nice to run into someone from home. Fiend showed Ivan around a dilapidated house the soldiers had occupied. They sat in the kitchen. Rations wrappers and half-open containers the soldiers had taken from the village's cellars lay on the table. Between onions sat a grenade. Ivan took a photo with his phone, amused by the oddity of his new reality. Everyone was smoking, lazing around on the floor. They explained that they had nothing to do but wait. "What if a shell hits this house?" Ivan asked. "You could at least sit in the basement." "It's a roulette," they replied. "There have been cases where people hit in basements. The mortars didn't hit you, but they hit the concrete foundations and kill you anyway." "Nah, I'll probably sleep in the basement," Ivan decided. He went to have a look. Ten feet away from the basement entrance, a grad was stuck in the ground. The men were sleeping next to an unexploded rocket. There's a toilet there, but don't use it or it may detonate the guys called to him. Back at the table, Fiend started explaining the setup. The battalion's headquarters were across the street. Although they were supposed to be a specialized reconnaissance unit, they were now in charge of initial assaults, the first group to take territory. It had turned into a bloodbath. For months, they had been trying to take a windbreak in the rolling farmland that everyone called the boot for its shape. By early October, they had already been repelled half a dozen times and taken a lot of casualties. They knew they would make another attempt. They just didn't know when. The boot was heavily fortified. The Ukrainians had dug extensive tunnels. "It's fucked there," a guy or survived the last offensive told Ivan. "It's not like you just walk in and that's it. There are a ton of guys sitting down there." Their commander, whose coal sign began with an L, so we'll call him Lion, was another man I even knew from home. Lion had been a tanker but ended up as a commanding officer in infantry. He left their base in August as a major and was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel during his time in the SVO. At the base, he had been an asshole, but the guys agreed that as far as commanders who stayed safe in the rear trenches go, Lion was a good one. He pushed back against his superiors when he was given stupid orders. Fiend relayed a story in which Lion refused to send his men forward during one assault on the boot. "There's no option," Lion shouted. "It's a meat grinder there." Lion's believe that they had been punished for Lion's intransigent refusals, assigned to worse patrols at the point of contact, but they didn't mind. At least their commander didn't think of them as trash. By this spring, Lion would be dead. Ivan headed to the Command HQ to officially receive instructions. Lion was in the basement, the walls covered in rugs. "I'm here," Ivan reported. "Well," Lion looked him over. "You can't get the fuck out now, can you?" "That's right," Ivan replied. Lion passed him a list of his platoon personnel and dismissed him. Ivan asked his new deputy to collect the rest of the men who were living all over the village. It took an hour to assemble everyone. When his 30 men lined up, Ivan learned they were all contracticky. Ivan addressed them. "Okay, men, let's work. Let me say right off the bat that I have no combat experience. We'll get it together. Whoever has combat experience, step out and tell me about it." One man stepped forward. His coal sign was student. He had fought before in one of the southern wars of Ivan's childhood. He was a machine gunner there. "Are you ready?" Ivan asked him. "Yes, I'm ready. You'll help me if I need it." "Yes." The assembly was over. The guys explained that over near a fence there was a can. If you put your phone on the can, sometimes you could catch cell reception. Ivan went over, opened what's happened, messaged Anna, 103. It hadn't taken Anna long to quit her job, leave the base and move home to her family after Ivan's deployment. She started trying to renovate their apartment to give herself something to do. Before Ivan left, he removed his wedding ring and gave it to Anna for safekeeping. She wore it on a chain around her neck like a talisman. As the child of a deployed officer, Sasha was placed into a good daycare right next to their apartment. They could have their pick of any in the city and Anna chose the closest one. It disgusted her when the other parents fawned over them during pickup and drop off. She avoided their attempts at conversation. Anna kept her phone on her at all times with the volume all the way up. It was always charged. She continued to watch telegram channels and contact groups about Ivan's case. She corresponded most with an organization called Edite Lesum, which worked specifically to help service members escape. The group's name could translate is Get Lost. Go fuck yourself or go by the forest. It was started by Gregori Sferdlin, an exile from St. Petersburg who had fled the war and gone to Tbilisi, Georgia. Sferdlin graduated from college as a reserve officer, the same method the Defense Minister Shoygu employed to avoid actual service and had the idea for the project within days of the mobilization. He wanted to find a way to help people not go to war. It was a way to take civic action, to prevent Ukrainian deaths and the Russian armies atrocities, as well as to save Russian lives. If they were all guilty of paving the way to this war, they could at least atone by trying to prevent the greatest amount of harm. When he announced the idea on social media, Sferdlin immediately received hundreds of replies and volunteers, designers, IT people, psychologists, lawyers, people who had cars and offered to drive deserters, those who wanted to contribute money to help evacuate those who didn't want to fight. Messages poured in. I live near the border with Kazakhstan and I know how to bypass the checkpoint. Please keep my contacts, but delete all the messages. Within a week, Edite Lesham had developed a database of information about the rights of service members, the mobilized and their families, advising people on how to avoid their draft papers and how to leave the country. Edite Lesham had helped junior officers escape Russia, but never anyone as high-ranking as a captain. Anna lived from one phone call to the next. She slept 15 minutes at a time, 50 minutes of sleep and then awake, 50 minutes of sleep and then awake. In her dreams, there was only Ivan, only war and only death. She started scratching her wrists and ankles. They were covered in blood. They would scar and shimmer like burns. The guys in Ivan's platoon were, as he put it, decent men. They had all picked their own coal signs when Ivan passed around a sheet of paper. Among them were bare blood, the deputy platoon leader and first squad commander, fiend second squad commander, keba third squad commander, Achilles, apricot and student, machine gunners, frost, old man in space on the RPGs, hunter, paddle, shepherd and tin man, rifleman, rich lake, the medic. When Ivan talked to them, they explained that they hadn't been dragged there against their will. Some were career enlisted. Others signed three month contracts, thinking they could make some money and go home. After signing, they were told to report back the next morning for transport to the SVO. They never even met the commander of the base they were assigned to. None had received the training they were promised. Ivan couldn't believe they chose to be there. "You do realize you can die in a war," he asked. "This isn't a job where your failure is your termination. Your failure in the army is your death." "Yeah, yeah," they replied. They told Ivan that they fought in another man's war for the economic well-being of their children. After a while, as more and more of their comrades were killed, that war would become theirs as well. It was more than just the money. The government promised that their children could be admitted into schools normally reserved for those with high marks, bribes, or connections. Back home, Shepard was a rancher. He bred sheep and horses. It paid well, about 400,000 rubles, $4,400 a month in profits, which was four times what Ivan made. Shepard explained that he had five children and eight sisters and brothers. He made a decent living, but he organized weddings for his siblings and helped their children. Now one of his daughters was trying to get into the police academy. Shepard explained to Ivan that he had been told it would be much easier for her to get in if he was at the SVO. Three months for her whole future. The mobilization had put an end to these ideas. Now every contract Nick was obliged to serve until the end of wartime conditions, which could continue indefinitely. The platoon got along fine. When someone went to town to buy something, he brought back extras for the rest of the men. People would drop by and grab coffee or a cookie and talk. They didn't have much else to do. Humanitarian parcels were often passed through lion's basement, though they had already been picked over by others along the way. The good stuff never made it to the front line. Instead, they got chocolates and socks, and sometimes they got postcards from school children who wrote to them during patriotic lessons. Ivan took one to his kitchen of grenades and onions and pinned it up on the wall. "Soldier come home," it said, accompanied by a child drawing. "Remember, we're waiting for you." He thought it might cheer someone up, but when he looked at it, he just felt empty. It wasn't long before Ivan was summoned back to Lion's basement and shown drone footage of the boot. They could see the trench full of Ukrainians in the frames. Lion told him that the two companies had been assigned different segments of the boot. One company would move first than the other, like a pincer, to force the Ukrainians to retreat through the middle. Lion's three platoons would divide their section into three parts and do the same pincer move on a smaller scale. Ivan and his three squad leaders re-watched the drone footage more closely. The ground was scorched from past battles, and overturned armored personnel carriers were scattered around the burned brush. The guys who participated in previous attempts pointed out where the Ukrainians had positions earlier, a pumping station and a vineyard which housed a sniper's nest. Ivan and his deputies agreed that they would run in shooting, throw a grenade at the Ukrainian trench, take the point and wait for reinforcements. It wasn't a brilliant strategy, but Lion didn't care. They just had to advance. 90 lives for two miles of earth. Previous attempts to take the boot had been on foot. They had crawled across minefields and been overpowered. Now, without radically increasing their numbers, they were told that they would ride in with a tank which would clear the mines with a visor that dragged on the ground and raise the topsoil. Command said the men would walk behind it. If it snagged a mine, the vehicle would take the impact. Everyone agreed it was idiotic. Like banging your spoon on your plate and yelling to the Ukrainians, "I'm here! I'm here!" They had two days to train, so they went back to the range. During one practice, they were told to line up in formation. The general, in charge of their entire operational direction, strode out to address them. "Comrades, we've got to get the boot," he began, leaning against a tree with his hands on his stomach. "I know exactly how you feel. I have a son in the airborne. I was storming a forest the other day, ran into a wooded area just like this myself." He told them not to worry. Another company would come in from the right side. "We're going to have artillery like you've never seen in your lives. There will be 13 tanks. You're going to be covered from all sides." Reconnaissance reported that there are no more than 15 people in this forest belt. There are only mobilized men guarding it. Don't worry, they're even more afraid than we are. They'll run away as soon as they see you. Ivan knew this was a lie. Their own drones had shown them the troop strength and the extensive tunnel system. He knew from school that any stronghold should be attacked by 280 artillery shells, not fired just in the general area, but at an actual target. And only after that were the infantry at three times the defense's strength gone the offensive. Ivan had watched the YouTube videos of the third separate assault brigade of Ukraine, formerly known as Azov. He saw how real warriors took territory, the ones who were fighting to liberate it. But Ivan didn't want any territory. He didn't want to do a particularly good job. He wanted to find a hole to sit in. The main thing was just to survive. The night before the operation Ivan prepared his supplies. He took apart all the magazines, wiped down the springs, oiled them and carefully hung all the grenades in the proper way. He put extra ammunition in his backpack, along with his first aid kit. He distributed medical supplies to his squad leaders. They would leave their phones and lines basement in a bag so no one could see their geolocation. Before Ivan handed his phone in, he sent Anna a message. 102. When Anna got the message, she remembered a video she saw online of a psychologist who said that we go crazy the moment we allow ourselves to go crazy. She told herself that Sasha couldn't lose two parents at once. Take yourself in your hands. You have a mission. She grabbed herself, slapping herself on the cheeks. Without that, she would stay still, looking at the same point on the wall like being submerged in water. Sasha was worried, clearly aware that something wasn't right. For that, Anna beat herself more. If Ivan had to survive, so did they. She scrolled the news on Telegram endlessly. Russians were on the retreat and the defensive. That month, General Sergey Sarovikin, previously known as the butcher of Syria, had been named Russia's overall commander in Ukraine. Sarovikin had a reputation for efficiency and brutality. Under his command, the Russians began constructing what would come to be known as a Sarovikin line. Miles of concrete pyramids known as dragon's teeth and deep ditches called tank traps for the defense of their supply lines. They would build miles of trenches with pillboxes. Small fortifications that their troops could shoot from. The newly mobilized would be put to work. Units could rotate, even rest. There would be reinforcements from men like Ivan. The commander of Ukraine's armed forces, General Valeriy Zaluzhny, stated bluntly, "Russian mobilization has worked." It is not true that their problems are so dire that these people will not fight. They will. But the mobilization had also awakened the ire of some of the most sympathetic quarters of society. Women. Mothers of newly enlisted conscripts. Wives of mobilized men gathered on Telegram groups to coordinate humanitarian packages. Memories of the mothers of conscripts from the Chechen war, who moved like ghouls in the dark of the eastern Caucasus mountains, looking for the bodies of their sons, or hard to erase from the national psyche. The Kremlin worried that these women would eventually take to the streets. They were active. They wrote to their governors, to their mayors, to the committee of soldiers' mothers, to the president's office, to defense minister Shoygu begging for their husbands and sons to be returned. Anna drove herself to exhaustion, sourcing humanitarian packages for Ivan. She contacted everyone she could to collect money for his parcels. When he told her he needed a thermal night vision scope, Anna started looking for it everywhere. She was not the only wife trying to supply her husband at the front. Everything near her was sold out. Everything was expensive. She found one for sale in Moscow and contacted a girlfriend there. Neither of them had any idea what a thermal night vision scope even was. It looks legitimate, she reported back to Anna, or at least like a tube you can look through. When Ivan called her and told her that everything was fine, she knew he was lying because he periodically sent pictures. She watched as Ivan shrank to hack his former size. They didn't discuss it, but she knew he sent the pictures to help her geolocate his body. So many Russian women did not know where their husbands died. Anna knew she didn't decide. She knew that if Ivan were killed, she would go there herself to collect his remains. She would not let him rot in pieces in some sunflower field. At 0500, the company arrived at its position and waited. Ivan saw Spicy, the second platoon leader, who would take the middle of the belt. "Well, see you tonight," Spicy told him. "Yeah, see you later," they shook hands. "Guys, it's going to be okay," Ivan told his platoon as they waited. "We've been practicing. Everything's going to be fine. Don't panic. If you have any questions, tell me right away. The main thing to remember is to cover each other. The most important thing is not to panic. Do not panic. Panic is the enemy on the battlefield." Everyone sat there, breathing out, waiting for the sounds of the other company moving in. But it was silent. I couldn't understand where everyone was. Lion radioed Ivan to advance anyway, and Ivan passed the command down the line. The tank, followed by an infantry fighting vehicle, rolled loudly into open territory. They were less than a mile from the Ukrainian position. Spicy's platoon was moving too. Ivan could hear the men shooting from their tank. No one fired back. Everyone stopped and dismounted. Immediately they came under fire. Everyone down, Ivan shouted. There was a machine gunner shooting from the Ukrainian stronghold. The Russians returned fire. Ivan's deputy, Bearblood, was holding his hand, screaming. Part of his finger had been blown off. Down, Ivan shouted, "Don't move." Old man went to work. He fired the RPG straight into the Ukrainian stronghold. It exploded. And it was quiet, except for the radio. Spicy is 200, it blared. Spicy is 200. It had been about five minutes since the offensive started. The guy Ivan had just shaken hands with. They had been 50 yards apart. From Ivan's vantage point on the ground, it looked nothing like the drone footage he studied back in the basement with his squad leaders. He could see only the trees, no landmarks, no black dirt, no water towers or high points. The earth began to burst. Then there was a double sound that Ivan didn't register until he saw something tough-the-earth five meters ahead of him. A splash, then another, moving toward him like stones, skimming a lake in reverse. A sniper was working on him. He turned and saw a crater. He crawled backward until he tumbled down into the hole. Ivan looked around and saw a handful of others from his platoon also hiding in the crater. The hole was huge, created by a bomb roughly 10 feet deep and 20 feet in diameter. The radio screamed periodically, "This one's 300. This one's 200. We need an evacuation right away. Urgent. Help." They had changed all their coal signs before the offensive in case the Ukrainians had been bugging them. It was Lyons' directive. And instead of 200s and 300s, they should call them Xs and Os. But in the end, it didn't matter. Everyone was screaming as usual, 200, 300. When Ivan poked his head out of the crater, he could see apricot, a machine gunner, fiend, second squad leader, bare blood, deputy platoon leader, tin man, the senior rifleman, all lying there. He saw someone running toward their crater, totally upright despite the sniper's bullets and leaping through the air for the final steps. At the last moment, there was a grimace of pain on his face. Ivan watched it all as if it were in a slow motion film. "I'm hurt," Achilles shouted as he landed. He was hit in the back. His pelvic bone shattered. They started bandaging him. They stayed in that crater for an hour or a few minutes. They didn't know how long, thinking about what to do, hoping for backup. I have two 200s Ivan called for support. There are 300s and a heavy 300s. A Ukrainian tank broke out of the treeline, firing, hitting somewhere near them, retreating somewhere, and then it was quiet again. Ivan looked out and radioed what he thought were the tank's coordinates. The Russians fired from behind Ivan with an automatic grenade launcher and missed. 20 meters right, Ivan corrected. They kept firing. Ivan kept adjusting, but the Russian efforts kept failing. They were just totally inept, wasting opportunities. Each time Ivan had to figure out the adjustment, he stuck his head out of the foxhole, playing whack-a-mole with the sniper. It would be a dark comedy if the punchline weren't Ivan's life. Half an hour went by, a dozen attempts, until it was clear that it was useless to keep taking the risk. What began as an obviously bad idea would grow ever more absurd. Achilles started to turn pale. No one had thought to check him for an exit wound. When the men turned him over, it was right there on his stomach. Ivan pulled out hemostatic powder that Anna had sent him and poured a ton of it in the hole where the bullet came out. With gauze on top, they pressed down hard. "I need a fucking evacuation, Ivan," kept shouting on the radio. "Go back on the fucking offensive, lion radioed." They must have been there for hours when they saw the Ukrainian drone. The Russians started shooting at it. The drone dropped its munitions 10 feet from their hole. They managed to knock it down, but they knew they had been spotted. "Where's the trophy money I was promised?" one of the men joked. "Go get it and bring it back to me," Ivan replied, "and I'll put it in order." At least they still had their sense of humor. A voice above cold to Ivan. He poked his head out of the hole. It was student, the second machine gunner. He was 20 feet away pinned down by his heavy backpack and couldn't cut off the strap. One of his arms was mangled. They had two options. Get student from above and risk the snipers or dig a trench toward him. "Dig," Ivan shouted his men. They dug for hours trying to make ridges and shelters out of the ground, but the earth kept crumbling in. They dug a 10-foot trench, but the more they dug, the more it crumbled. They were tired. They hadn't eaten. It was already the afternoon, and they had set out 12 hours ago. A man could die Ivan commanded. "Let's keep digging." They stopped to take stock and realized that the digging had made their own hole smaller. As the dirt fell into their crater, they were raising themselves up to level ground and was like a cartoon. "Guys, let's stop," Ivan commanded. "We're going to dig ourselves to the surface." Their water had run out. All they had left were cigarettes and felt as if they were smoking one a minute. Everything they touched was clawing at their throats. Somebody had some candy. They passed it around until it was gone. They had no idea what to do next. They made a rope out of their belts. Old man volunteered to run out and clip in student with Ivan's carabiner, and then they could all drag him into the crater. Old man crawled over to student, and for some reason, he decided to inject him with Premidol right there. The powerful anti-pain drug that the Russians were given at the front was known to relax people. It made student floppy and impossible to drag. As they struggled to heave him, the sniper started again. Old man ran back and jumped in the crater. When he stood up, his pants were hanging low off his body. His jacket and belt were split in half. The sniper's bullet had skimmed him. Dumb luck was their only savior. Attack line continued to radio. Attack! "Guys, we got to do something," Ivan said to the men. "I can't just ignore orders from command. They will lock me up if I go back. What are we going to do?" Everyone knew that there were snipers out there and that if they left the hole, one of them would surely die. "Let's pretend we are attacking," one of them offered. "You go on the radio and talk as if we're attacking and we will shoot from inside here." "Let's do it," Ivan decided. "Everyone here in favor of this story? Do you understand what we are doing right now?" "Everyone agreed." "Is everyone clear?" Ivan repeated. "We all say the same thing." "Yes," Ivan got on the radio. "I'm attacking. We're advancing. We're advancing." All of them pointed their weapons out of the crater and started firing rounds in the air. "I'm attacking," Ivan shouted through their own melee. "We're advancing. We're advancing. I'm trying to move out. I can't get out and the enemy is firing." There's a tank coming line radioed. "Get behind the tank and follow the tank." The Russian tank drove past Ivan's crater. "Is everybody ready?" Ivan asked his men. "Let's at least fake it. Stand up." The men stood up and the tank let off around. All of them fell over from the bang. The tank pulled back its turret right above the crater and from ten feet above their heads let off another round. The men were deafened. Everything inside their pit was shaking. Little grains of sand jumping up as though gravity had been dismissed. They grabbed their ears falling down even lower. Slowly, Ivan heard voices more distinctly. It was lying on the radio again, screaming and cursing at them to advance. "I need an evacuation," Ivan shouted. Moments later, explosions, sparks, smoke. Ivan looked out of the crater and saw more men running toward their hole. The evacuation vehicle had been blown up. The commander of the evacuation group ended up in their hole too. "Come on," Ivan shouted at him. "Report from your side that the evacuation group was hit so that this comrade doesn't think we're just fucking around here." The evacuation team has been hit. We need a way out. We have a lot of wounded. Ivan decided he had had enough. If no one came to help them, they would wait until dark and move back. "We're getting out," he radioed lion. "Don't leave without the 200s," came the reply. "If you leave them, you're going back to retrieve them." After the sunset, the soldiers crawled out of the hole. They each grabbed a wounded man and took turns dragging everyone back. They left the dead, apricot and an engineer who had been attached to the platoon a few days earlier for the operation because they didn't have enough hands. Ivan crawled all the way back, the dirt and the rocks shredding the knee pads off his uniform. He turned and saw that some of the men had disregarded reason. Despite at least two snipers, they walked upright without helmets. Ivan, who always wanted to survive just a little bit more, kept crawling. In the safety of their rear trenches as far from the front as you could get and still be near the point of contact, lion had the luxury of fury. "Why did you leave the 200s?" he demanded of Ivan. "You bastard, I should lock you up. Fucking pussy." Ivan just listened. He knew it was important for the widows to have proof of their husbands' bodies to try to collect the coffin payment or to have peace of mind. Otherwise, the state could and probably would declare them deserters and try to deny the women the payouts it promised. But Ivan had no regrets. He had to save the lives he could. He also didn't think that was why lion was so worked up about it. Battalion commanders must get some kind of penalty for leaving bodies behind. When lion finished cursing Ivan out, he told him that his platoon would be going to support the third platoon led by Soviet who had taken the territory they were supposed to. No sleep, no food, just more walking and fighting. Yes, comrade Colonel, Ivan replied. Ivan returned to his men and explained the situation. Four of the men refused immediately, but lion threatened them with arrest and they were lented. It was past midnight as they trek through the darkness. Ivan's back had started hurting. They got to the trenches, dug near some trees and bunked in for the night. They hadn't eaten in 24 hours. The third platoon shared some of their rations. Ivan chewed a scrap of lard someone passed him and they lay down to sleep, huddling close to one another. They were freezing. Ivan woke up to a mouse biting his finger. He was furious, not that the mouse was hurting him, but that it ended his slumber. It was so cold that he couldn't fall back asleep. It began to drizzle. Though it was uncomfortable, the rain would make them less visible. Ivan heard a buzzing overhead, and first no one realized what it was. A quadcopter with a thermographic camera, which meant it could see them even though they were hidden under trees. It could sense their heat and adjust a mortar. Ivan had only heard that the Ukrainians had these. His battalion didn't have anything like it. Immediately, they could hear the artillery exits, and the arrivals began falling around them. It was carnage. Wherever they ran, the explosions followed. When a shell missed the direct hit, it hit the thicket of trees above them. Branches splintered and fragments of wood, earth and metal engulfed them. A man near Ivan started screaming, "Arm! Arm!" Moore screams. As Ivan ran, he thought of Anna. "Imagine that all my love, all my tenderness for you, it will be transformed into a protective balloon that will protect you from bullets, from explosions." He could nearly see the dome's boundaries surrounding him as he ran at full speed. Ivan saw nothing, felt nothing, until he tumbled down into a trench. A shell slammed somewhere nearby, inches from the opening. A fragment hit the third platoon commander, ripping out his stomach. Ivan was a few feet away. He grabbed a soldier who was stumbling and started walking. The rain had turned the road from clay to sludge. It stuck to their feet. Every step they took, their shoes getting heavier and heavier. Between the grease, the body armor, the helmet, and the guy he was carrying, Ivan could barely move. His back was hurting, and he began limping under the weight. As he walked, Ivan started thinking. In the first attack, just hours ago, he lost two men. Now this. Going back to Lyon again, what would happen? They'll say, "You're resting one day. Tomorrow we'll attack again." Ivan's back was twinging. He knew a guy back at the base, Roman, whose herniated disc had gotten so bad after wearing a flak jacket at the front that he lost the use of both legs. Too bad mine isn't more like his. Ivan thought to himself. Or is it? Ivan focused on his pain. He turned it over in his mind. What a tantalizing daydream. He heard on the radio that an evacuation vehicle was coming. He limped along toward the point and saw it there. Men were starting to load up. He passed the soldier's slack body to a medic, and stood by to give others a hand up when he saw Fiend. Fiend's leg was wounded. "Did you know Warrior died?" Fiend asked. "Oh, brother, I didn't," Ivan said. Ivan knew Warrior was Fiend's closest friend. Fiend was on the verge of tears. "Brother, I'm sorry," Ivan repeated. "The main thing is that you're alive, that we're standing here with you." Fiend clambered up the evacuation vehicle. Shepard was sitting on top of it. "What's the next move?" Ivan looked up at them, thinking. "Is that it? The driver called down? Shall we go?" Ivan turned it over again. "No," he shouted. He climbed up. "Now, let's go." [BLANK_AUDIO]
