Kirill and his Dad were very eager for him to be accepted into our College in 2018. They’d come to Russia to work at the World Cup, Veniamin is a Cook, 17 year old Kirill was his kitchen helper. I met them at our Admissions Office in Sokolniki in the August heat and we chatted about sports. Veniamin remains a diehard of Arsenal Kiev, Kirill loved Lokomotiv Moscow. I’d hoped to have Kirill join us, but a scholarship offer from a University in the South of Russia was too good to turn down. He studied in Kuban State, Veniamin returned home to Kiev.
Kirill graduated last year and returned home to look after his family. Veniamin had been called up, sent to serve as a tank driver and was badly injured in Summer 2022 near Kharkov. Veniamin told me he didn’t want Kirill to return. He wanted him to stay in Russia and avoid the madness. Kirill, having suffered jibes about his nationality and insults from a workmate which led to a fistfight, decided home was safer. In July 2023 he travelled via Belarus to Poland and from Poland to Kiev. He was called up almost immediately to join the Spring Offensive.
Two weeks of training then sent into action. For four weeks he survived, was taken out of the line and returned home for a week. Veniamin said he looked broken. Pale, tired, irritable. He slept all day and sat in his room at night on alert. At the end of a wordless week, he was returned to the front. Veniamin didn’t know where he’d been, only that he was “somewhere hot”. Kirill only spoke about his experience once. Lack of food, no sleep, no ammunition, no air cover, no medical help. Veniamin didn’t push.
In late-October he returned home, minus two fingers. He was angry. He hated everyone. He began to drink. He got into fights on the street. He hated everyone and everything and himself. Veniamin finally got him to sit down and talk in mid-November.
He told of how these old men, older than me, and young boys were being poured into trenches, only to be buried by their own bombs. He went out a patriot and ended up a cynic.
Kirill got a job in a bakery thanks to Veniamin. His 1st class degree in Banking and Finance from one of the best universities in Russia was spat upon, literally, by employers. Kirill thought that as a decorated hero, with a great education, he’d be welcomed with open arms. Yet nobody wanted an 8-fingered loser. I last heard, on the social network vKontakte, from Kirill in December. He saw my photos from Ireland and asked if I’d been home. He asked about Tim and that was that.
On December 20th he was walking home from work and met his Mother, Larisa. She asked him to help carry home potatoes she planned to buy at the market and naturally he agreed. At the market a military press gang were hunting for more bodies. They approached Kirill and asked for his documents. He hadn’t got any on him and said he was no longer eligible given his injury and service. Larisa intervened, as did other women in the market, until one of the ‘recruiters’ pulled a gun and another wrestled Kirill to the ground. He was handcuffed and dragged to a waiting van - one delivered by a UK charity to act as an ambulance.
For a week nobody knew where he was. Veniamin and Larisa called everyone they knew, visited every police office and barracks, but nobody knew what was happening. Veniamin, using contacts, got onto the Ministry of Defence and was informed that Kirill had been arrested for assaulting military police and was in a military prison. It was a lie. On January 14th Kirill’s former commanding officer called Veniamin and asked if he could visit their apartment on the outskirts of Kiev. Two hours later he arrived and told how their son had been transported in a truck, with 8 others, to Avdeevka on December 21st. He was given fatigues, a weapon and put into a platoon of fellow forced conscripts. That night the platoon was sent to a “strongpoint” and were ambushed on the way. The column of vehicles was destroyed and the c.o. said less than a dozen were uninjured or dead, Kirill was not among them.
Veniamin and I spoke late Saturday night. He was heartbroken. One thing really bothered him and is eating at his soul.
I think of him, being dragged away and sitting in some van, knowing where he’s going and wondering why his Mama and I didn’t rescue him. My little boy, knowing he is being sent to his death and cursing Larisa and me for not saving him.
Press ganging gets zero coverage in western media. Zero. Nobody cares. An Estonian MP calls 900,000 Ukrainian men who left the country cowards. In Ireland I heard people saying - why aren’t they back there fighting? And nobody cares. A fake news story in a Polish newspaper set Europe abuzz that fighting age Ukrainian males would be deported. And nobody cares. RTE, BBC and CNN don’t ask - why do they need to drag people from the street to fight? Surely the patriots will run to the front and die with delight? As Linda Graham, Leo Varadkar, Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak, Annalena Baerbock and other politicians thrill in seeing Ukrainians being slaughtered, nobody is asking what happens afterwards? The reckoning and vengeance will be brutal. Those men who dragged others into UK and Irish donated vehicles so they could be murdered, they will have to join the mass exodus or be jailed - or worse.
cannon fodder , pawns, next please King and country,