generalspeaking

Monday, December 29, 2014

Burying Their Volunteer Dead

"What I don't understand is what he died for. Why couldn't we let people in Ukraine sort things out for themselves?"
"I tried to persuade him [son Anton Tumanov, 20] not to go because of what was happening in Ukraine. But our president said that none of our soldiers would be sent there -- 'it's just Ukrainians fighting each other' -- and I believed that. So in the end I did not argue."
"[Anton said to his mother] 'Who wants to die?' That was their thinking. Nobody was attacking Russia; if they had been, Anton would have been first in the queue."
"Our children are nameless, like homeless tramps. If they sent our soldiers there, let them admit it. It's too late to bring Anton back but this is just inhuman."
Yelena Tumanova, 41, Kozmodemyansk, Russia

"Tomorrow they are sending us to Donetsk [the rebel capital]. We're going to help the militia."
"[Following day] We're handing in our documents and our phones. They've given us two grenades and 150 rounds of ammunition each."
Anton Tumanov

^{Anton Tumanov’s grave in his home town of Kozmodemyansk, 400 miles
east of Moscow, Russia (Tom Parfitt/The Telegraph)}

"On August 22 we were given an order to remove the identification plates from our military vehicles, change into camouflage suits and tie white rags on our arms and legs."
"At the border we received supplies of ammunition. On the 11th and 12th we crossed on to Ukrainian territory. On August 13 at lunchtime our column was hit by a rocket strike, during which Anton Tumanov died. At that moment we were in Ukraine, in Snezhnoye [town not far from Donetsk]."
Russian soldier whose handwritten description was given to Yelena Tumanova

In Kozmodemyansk, 17-year-old Nastya Chernova, Anton Tumanov's fiancee, recalls having been informed by him that he was being dispatched on short trips into Ukraine to guard deliveries of arms and military vehicles to the rebels. Her fiancee, she said, lent himself to the enterprise against his will. "The last time we spoke he told me he and some friends discussed running away but they were a long way from home, they didn't have food."

^{Anton Tumanov, 20, far right, stands with army comrades in a photograph
probably taken a day or two before he died in a missile attack in Snizhne}

Anton Tumanov, while attending school had enrolled as a conscript soldier. Later, after graduating school he decided to become a career soldier when employment otherwise eluded him. In June he was sent with his unit to Chechnya. Before the first ten days had elapsed in Chechnya he and other base personnel were asked if they would volunteer to go to Donbas, but Anton and his friends refused. When mid-July rolled around Anton's regular army unit was dispatched to a camp in the Rostov area, close to the border with Ukraine "for exercises".

The short trips Anton was tasked to take part in was the very time when the Ukrainian pro-Moscow militias were on the cusp of surrendering to government forces in eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian military had almost surrounded Donetsk, and over the next month Russia responded by staging a major intervention, sending in tanks and troops across the border to aid the rebels to reclaim the territory they had gained and were now close to losing.

"Anton was not a volunteer. He didn't want to go to Ukraine to fight and kill people. He didn't have that aggression inside him. He joined up to defend his country", insists Ms. Chernova who posts poems about her fiancee on social media, remembering the time she woke abruptly from sleep with a premonition that he had died. 'Volunteers' on their own initiative, of course, is the offhand explanation that Vladimir Putin puts to charges that Russian military are aiding the rebels in Ukraine.

If Anton Tumanov had been answering "a call of the heart", he would have abandoned his post. Many Russian rights activists believe that hundreds of Russian soldiers have died in the conflict in Ukraine. Prosecutors refuse to investigate. Anton Tumanov, according to the official record, died "carrying out responsibilities of military service", at some "point of temporary deployment of military unit 27777", of the army's 18th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade permanently based in Kalinovskaya, Chechnya.

According to his death certificate he died of an "explosion injury" where he received "multiple shrapnel wounds to the lower limbs" resulting in "acute, massive blood loss". His mother, after receiving notice of his death awaited his delivery home. A sealed zinc coffin with her son's remains arrived. "There was a little window in the top so you could look at his face", she said. When she spoke to a major in Chechnya by telephone it was confirmed verbally that her son had died in Ukraine. No additional details were forthcoming.