Alla Pierce
(RINF) – Residents of villages Novosvetlovka and Khryashevatoe about Nazi battalion “Aydar”.
I have heard much about the village of Novosvetlovka and wanted to visit it even if only briefly during my trip to the Lugansk Peoples Republic. Last summer the Western backed puppets that seized power in Kiev, mobilized an army with various Nazi styled battalions to launch punitive operations in the South East of Ukraine. The people of Lugansk and Donetsk provinces refused to accept the Nazis authority. Just like a poet once said: ”I won’t ever walk alongside a fascist even in my most gloomy delirium”. The general public refused to collaborate with the fascist ideology of new “government”. In order to defend their homes, families and children and so to not betray the memory of their fathers and grandfathers men who took up arms and joined the local militia.
Not all males from the villages and cities joined the militia. In the beginning they didn’t expect anything too bad and had no idea that they — as peaceful civilians — would ever be labelled and slandered as terrorists. Also, they did not consider solders from the Ukrainian Army as enemies. As many of them said: “It’s hard to consider someone an enemy when you speak the same language with him”.
The villages of Novosvetlovka and Khryashevatoe were then caught in the middle of a crossfire. Even now, a year later, we can see ruins and holes from bombs on the roads.
Here, in Novosvetlovka a Nazi battalion named “Aydar” stationed itself. Some units of the regular Ukrainian Army were also situated there. The behavior of “Aydar” towards ordinary peaceful civilians was so terrible that they ended up being confronted by their own Ukrainian troops for their horrific actions and on several occasions this broke out into firefights between the same sides, according to accounts by many of the villagers.
Looting, raping, and killing were some of the staples reported by villagers when “Aydar” was present in Novosvetlovka and Khryashevatoe.
“One night, around 2 am they kicked us out of our houses and moved us to the church where they locked us there.”
We all have in our mind our parents’ stories about locked people being burned to death in churches during WW2. And now, in our current times people were terrified being locked in there… However the Nazis didn’t torch the buildings. Instead they just kept the civilians in there so they could carry out mass looting. All night long “Aydar’s” solders went from house to house and stole anything that wasn’t nailed down which they used or mail back to their own homes.
“Aydar” literally “cleaned up” all our stores in three days. As they drove by, street by street, they just smashed all the shop windows and took everything and left. When all local militias were here all the local retail industry flourished.”
This war has created a huge chance for people lacking any honor or conscience to increase their personal wealth. Looting, bribes for avoiding conscription, bribes at the borders with the Republic and the billions earmarked for the war and corruption in general- from small amounts to huge is of great interest to the Ukrainian side in of this war.
The people from Novosvetlovka continue their story:
“A Nazi found a St. George ribbon (now it’s a symbol of the Victory in the Great Patriotic war — Alla Pierce) at one guy’s house. They tried to shoot him, but he ran away. Then, they planted landmines in his basement, rendering his house dangerous and useless for human life. Additionally they set his car on fire. Just because he escaped execution.”
“One civilian who was deeply troubled by what he saw exclaimed his disgust for all these punitive actions and approached the Ukrainians demanding to know why they acted the way they did. They responded by shooting him dead in his car and burning him and his car to the ground. They refused to let anyone claim his remains for 10 days. There was only about 15 kilograms of his burned body left. Do you know how the human body looks after burning for so long?”
“Nazi shot at multiple houses or simply planted explosives blowing them up. They blew up the Oil tank farm. Everything was destroyed at the factory.“
“They acted so brutally, we saw the tank driving straight into our village club. On the other street they placed all locally owned vehicles in two rows, and then set up booby trap explosives in them.”
– Is it true that they threw grenades into basements?
– Yes they did. The Nazis walked at nights with machine-guns and shot anything that moved. They asked if anyone was there and then threw grenades. My neighbor was shell-shocked, but he was lucky, he is just deaf, but stayed alive.
“We hid in the neighbor’s basement. See that garage? 10 families lived there for six weeks.”
“They also stopped people on the streets and checked if anyone had gunshot wounds, to find out if they participated in any military action.”
“Once I asked them why they wreak such havoc here.
They were men from Lvov (Western Ukraine — Alla Pierce). They replied: “Old man, victory will be ours, and we’ll dance on Moscow Red Square”.
I said, dance where you want, but why you are destroying everything?”
Now local people are smiling telling us how they hid their possessions in the woods, but that smile goes away when they talked about raped girls.
The villages of Khryashevatoe and Novosvetlovka are located next to each other.
There, in Khryashevatoe, 58 houses were completely burned down.
On the other side of the road we saw the shell of a burned out tank, all covered with flowers. We asked the local people about this tank. They talked about it with a deep pain in their eyes.
“It was our boys in there – they fought for us and they all got killed.”
Now this tank is a Memorial to the militia tank crewmen that were killed fighting against Nazis in the intensive tank battles that occurred last year. There are always many flowers, small icons and even candies brought in honor of these fallen young men.
***
One Ukrainian asked me to keep my heart cold and not get emotional during my trip to Novorossia.
– You are a journalist. You must be objective! Do not write right away, wait when you cool down. You just have to have a cold heart.
It’s two month already since I visited Novosvetlovka and Khryashevatoe, but my heart is still burning and screaming from pain.