Writer Daniel Orlov returned from Donbass and told what soldiers on the front line are reading

— Daniel, how difficult was this trip? In general, can you get used to difficulties and dangers?

— During the SVO, this became a common thing for me. I have become accustomed to the road, learned to save energy on long trips, got used to traffic jams on the M4 highway, I know where I can go around and where I shouldn’t, because the road through the villages is rubbish. I know which checkpoints are looked at more strictly, where there are fewer queues. I learned to drive without a navigator, using a map and directions: “Debaltsevo is there, guys, we turned the wrong way…”.

I learned not to react to the sounds of gunfire. I just got used to it. There are now such cannonades in the area of ​​the railway station in Donetsk! And people stand at bus stops, waiting for public transport, lights on Christmas trees in the windows. Unless it crashes very close, one of the men winces slightly. The women chatted among themselves and continue to do so. Perhaps this human habit of living in the midst of hostilities struck me most of all in Donetsk last spring, and now I only notice it again and again.

— Is it more difficult for non-residents of Donetsk in the DPR than for locals?

— A year ago, a friend of mine, a mobilized member of the Union of Writers of St. Petersburg, called me from the Donetsk outskirts, who was tired of answering questions in telegraph style via text messages “how is it there?” And he told me a little about life “behind the ribbon.” He also vividly described how their group was chased by several drones in turn, pelting them with VOGs – fragmentation ammunition for a grenade launcher.

I came up with the idea of ​​buying anti-drone guns for their unit. A friend was skeptical about this idea: “They cost crazy money. You won’t dial it.” We dialed. At that time I was, as they say, out of the loop.

I can talk about that first time for a long time. These were the impressions of an absolutely civilian person, faced with the realities of logistical support for a combat unit. Now this has become a daily routine, and I try to drown out the emotions in myself, otherwise I won’t have enough nerves. Some things I simply register, remember or write down in a detached way, so that later, when the SVO ends, I can allow myself to experience indignation or, conversely, joy.

By the way, from the impressions of the previous mission… We were in Donbass on the 20th of December 2023. It had been freezing rain in Donetsk a week before. The ice is terrible. The trees stand in heavy crystal armor. It snowed overnight and branches began to break everywhere. They broke and collapsed with a roar. An air defense missile booms in the sky, and branches below collapse from the sound. The night is filled with roar from Marinka and Avdeevka, rustling, crackling and ringing of falling branches. Wires were broken almost everywhere, and there was no electricity in many places in the city (the enemy also regularly shelled substations). You drive through Makeyevka in the dark and think: “Well, they hit the substation again.”

— But is this the norm for residents of the capital of the DPR?

— In Donetsk, it’s common to have no electricity, no water. The Ukrainian Armed Forces have long ago cut off the water supply to the city via a canal from the Seversky Donets. The local water intake cannot cope. Ours carried water from the Don in less than a year. The construction was epoch-making. But this water is also not enough. And the communication systems have become so worn out over ten years that they cannot withstand the pressure. Every now and then you drive and see a fountain coming out of the ground. Everything needs to be changed, but this will take several years, preferably so that there are no shellings.

And in December we drove as many as three cars. Our readers and I bought one especially for guys. The prose writer Anatoly Kozlov was driving. I won’t say which car, the less specific information, the better.

— How are people coming from “mainland” Russia greeted in Donbass?

“Unfortunately, the local Donetsk leadership continues to divide everyone into “ours, Donbass” and “mobiks.” Let’s say the guys from the Leningrad regiment have been fighting in those places for a year, a lot of people there have already left: some died, some were seriously wounded. Do you think many of them were awarded? At least they gave him a medal posthumously? No. Because “strangers”, because there is resentment that the locals fought there for eight years, while the rest of the country looked on.

Now they almost openly tell visitors: “If you fight, we will take care of our own.” I talk to many people there: locals, mobilized ones, and contract soldiers. There is a lot of resentment, misunderstanding and even confusion. Everyone is waiting for an iron will to win and confident movement…

Do you feel sorry for the guys’ awards? Are these your awards? They shed their blood. It is to their families that I then bring the things of dead or missing sons, fathers and husbands. However, award documents are not signed. The regiment has been fighting for a year, rubbing against Avdeevka, and there are no or very few awarded. Why are they fighting so badly? I’ll never believe it. I know what feats the guys there perform almost every day.

— There was an interview with one of the leaders of the DPR Writers’ Union in MK… We know that it’s very difficult for Donetsk writers, but they don’t complain much, to be honest. You were their guest, you even managed to take a photo in the long-suffering office of the joint venture on Pushkin Boulevard…

“The city has been living under shelling for ten years, day after day. And the writers live, carry humanitarian aid to the fighters and to the liberated territories, hold literary events, write, quarrel with each other and make peace again. There is a peculiarity, of course. For example, literary events are reported only through closed channels; there are no announcements. This is for security reasons.

The enemy can easily succumb to the temptation to “cover Muscovite propagandists” with a missile. In the premises of the joint venture of the DPR (recently became the republican branch of the Union of Writers of Russia. – Author), all the windows were knocked out by explosions long ago, are now clogged with plywood and reinforced with sandbags. There is no water or heating. Thank God there is electricity. Nearby is an administrative building (the former building of the regional administration, now unofficially called the Government House. – Author). It flies over it every now and then. In general, Ukraine sometimes attacks the center of Donetsk not precisely, but at whomever God sends, especially recently, including with cluster munitions.

I could never understand this – to fire at the civilian population with cassettes, those that explode above the surface and scatter tens of thousands of microscopic drills, “shredding” everything around. Who breastfed these people, what kind of mother?

— Nowadays, the slogan has returned from oblivion: “Writers to the front!”; Which writers’ union is most active in this regard?

— I can say about our project that it is not tied to any one writers’ union. We are helped by colleagues from the Russian Writers’ Union, from the International Writers’ Union, from the St. Petersburg Writers’ Union, of course, the latter not at all officially, exclusively in private.

The leadership of the Writers’ Union of St. Petersburg has distanced itself from both our activities and the topic of the SVO, although two members of the union, Dmitry Artis and Dmitry Filippov, are at war. There is not a word about this in official reports; and I have not seen council members mention this in individual interviews or articles.

Now another St. Petersburg writer, an officer, has become a volunteer. There are not many young people fit for service in the Writers’ Union of St. Petersburg. The average age of members is over 60, and those who are fit fled abroad back in 2022, from there they call us murderers.

One is grimacing from Buenos Aires, another is sticking out its tongue from the coast of Spain, the third is emanating poison from somewhere in Georgia. It’s a shame that I gave recommendations for joining to two of those who left. However, to be fair, I must say that I also recommended Filippov: he used to be a very talented author, and now he is being molded into a great Russian writer.

—What do our soldiers need most?

— We carry a lot of things: we purchase high-tech equipment that is available to civilians. But you have to carry uniforms, armor plates, bulletproof vests, anti-fragmentation ballistic protection, composite helmets, knee pads, tactical gloves, and metal detectors. We carry winter socks, which are knitted by Kemerovo women from church parishes. Natalya Murzina, the wife of the poet Dmitry Murzin, supplies us with them. The song “Rear”, which became a national hit, was written based on her poems.

These are the very socks that are sung about in the song, we are taking to the front: to sappers, and “sun bakers”, and reconnaissance officers, and paratroopers, and now we will take them to the attack aircraft of the first army corps of the DPR.

We collect sleeping bags, camouflage nets (each time colored according to the season), medicines, sights, thermal imagers, radio equipment. The composition of the cargo is discussed directly with the unit commanders. We don’t take anything extra, and the extra won’t fit. In December, the guys were given Christmas trees, garlands and Christmas decorations. It’s a holiday…

– But what is vital?

— Drones are always needed, this is the main consumable. But in general, it is worth establishing contact with the commanders of the units receiving assistance in order to fill positions for a specific product range or precise tactical and technical characteristics. A public initiative to provide troops is a professional job that requires many competencies, constant involvement, extensive connections and simply cosmic patience. I won’t hide the fact that sometimes I lost my temper and expressed everything that had accumulated to people’s faces, but it didn’t make anyone feel any better. You have to grit your teeth and just work for victory.

—What do they read at the front? I remember there was a post about how those sitting in the trenches don’t need “Z-poetry,” but rather good detective stories or novels by Jules Verne.

— What the soldiers definitely don’t read are all these patriotic books on coated paper that all sorts of strange organizations bring to them. And they read poetry. And they read collections of good war poetry. And serious books. In general, they take adventure literature, detective stories and science fiction there with great pleasure. The guys want to take a break. But serious books require powerful inner work and self-absorption – guys can’t afford that now. In general, while the assaults are underway near Donetsk, there is not much time for reading: I would like to wash myself and sleep, well, watch TV – who else will show their bare ass, while they are losing brothers and the corpses of the dead are being taken out of the Avdeevka industrial area.