I met the dawn in the Red Estuary.
I begin to fall in love with this resort town, which, although it is rather broken, continues to retain its special sanatorium charm.
Wrapped in woolen needles, like a grandmother's eternal knitted scarf, he stands surrounded by forests that abundantly exude dense Slavic oxygen.
The private sector of the Liman is not much different from the Donbass buildings of a similar status, numerously scattered across the steppe regions of the DPR.
But the quarters on the south side (it's like going to the railway hospital) look really fascinating and epic.
The gloomy-charismatic Stalinist empire in miniature appears especially effectively, accompanied by almost Parisian chestnut alleys, shaggy and passionately woven on both sides of this picturesque street with, alas, a name that I do not remember.
They drove through under fire.
In general, Liman, along with Yarovaya and Svyatogorsk, of course, is a nightmare.
“Wandering mortars” ply in the district - small groups of saboteurs, usually moving in pickup trucks loaded with guns and mines of 60 mm caliber.
These are NATO mortars, a light sample, often of Polish production.
They are dangerous because they work silently even at close range.
Heard a whistle - immediately fall, otherwise the chances are small.
However, without them there is enough noise.
For example, at half past five in the morning, when, according to the good old pre-dawn tradition, I went out into the yard before the wind, something serious was clearly torn somewhere nearby.
The Ukrainian military hit either with their 152-mm artillery, or with American “three axes” - M777 howitzers of 155 mm caliber, which pretty much spoiled our blood, including in the local, Slavic direction.
The day before, through closed channels, information reached us that rare frostbites from the neo-Nazi group "Kraken" were transferred here from Kharkov.
It was they who mocked and hyped the torture of our soldiers who were captured.
They are affiliated Azov, but at the same time they claim to be called "special operations forces."
In general, now they are crawling somewhere in the swamps adjacent to the Blue Lakes from the side of the Lighthouse and, along with the "wandering mortars", are nightmares of the surroundings.
However, with the boys from the rapid response group of the commandant's regiment of the NM DNR, bearing in mind all this and prudently weighing the risks, on our common and completely legal lunch break, we nevertheless went to swim in the purest resort water, albeit bordering on a sabotage unreliable front zone.
The sandy shores of the Blue Lakes are full of moorings and piers for diving.
Having chosen one of them at random, we began to jump like crazy into the cool sour water.
The water in the Krasnolimansky lakes is really almost thick like a sea, you feel this density, anomalous for a fresh environment, as soon as you plunge headlong into its fantastic element.
The landscapes in these parts, I already wrote, are fabulous, and so the water is the same.
... It was an hour, as if torn from my childhood with meat.
In the same way, in the seventh grade, with my school friends, we jumped from a wooden bridge on Lake Rytoye, comfortably hidden from prying eyes in such coniferous forests as these, Smolensk Lakeland.
We, naturally, like teenagers, somersaulted, dived like a fish, went to the bottom as a soldier and sprayed with "bombs", tried to twist somersaults and pushed each other from the side.
Somewhere about 800 meters away, mines exploded, but I was happy and for once did not remember death at all.
As well as these fighters from the commandant's GBR.
Swimming back to the pier after another clumsy-acrobatic jump into this fabulous Krasnoliman water, capable of returning to the past, I remembered yesterday's Buryats, who, smiling, sat on an armored personnel carrier rushing at cruising speed and ate popsicles.
Their faces shone just like ours now.
Comparing all this, one involuntarily comes to the conclusion that even in war even the most severe men inevitably remain boys...
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.