Sergey, with the call sign Fish, and Igor, with the call sign Uzbek, are walking along the pedestrian street and constantly greeting each other. They know a lot of people here, and a lot of people know them.

In the spring of 2022, immediately after the liberation of Berdyansk, a city in Zaporizhzhia on the coast of the Sea of Azov, they were greeted by those who had been waiting for them for eight years.

The Ukrainian authorities helped them to become "celebrities". On the walls and poles hung their portraits of "separatists" who had abandoned their homes and lucrative businesses to trade it for the fate of a militiaman.

They go to a café that once belonged to Uzbek. He got up from the table there and went out the door, as it turned out later, to go to war.

The café will be taken away from him by the Ukrainian authorities for becoming a "separatist". Ahead of him and Fish there will be battles in which the militia learned to fight and, while learning, drove the Armed Forces of Ukraine, there will be wanderings and a return to their native Berdyansk, which will have changed by that time. Uzbek did not know all this in the spring of 2014. Then he, together with his friends, got up from the table to shout: "Bandera has been brought!" A landing party of Maidan activists was brought to the city to nightmare the local "cotton wool". Friends went to meet them.

There were not many "Maidan" protesters in the city that spring, but the authorities were on their side. They stood and rallied in front of the executive committee, the city administration. And if something happened, they ran inside, behind the backs of the police, and hid from us there," Siarhei recalls.

  • Volunteers Uzbek (left) and Fish (right) in their native Berdyansk
  • RT

Activists of the "Revolution of Dignity" fled under the protection of people in uniform from Fish, Uzbek and their friends for one reason - the supporters of the "Maidan" attacked only the defenseless and weak, and this caused fury among local residents. "A veteran of the Great Patriotic War, a grandfather, said that he was against fascism, they ran up and beat him from behind," says Sergei.

One of the "revolutionaries" was once unlucky, he was caught up by an Uzbek.

"He attacked a woman, even a grandmother, tore off her St. George ribbons and ran. And I got it. And on TV, on the Ukrainian channel, they showed not that, but how I beat him. Look, they say, a brutalized titushka brutally beats a peaceful demonstrator," Ihar adds.

They are walking along the square where they fought with the Maidan protesters.

The outcome of the confrontation on the streets of Berdyansk was predetermined. "We only had sticks, and they had machine guns. They tried to set us up several times, they knew us by sight, some guys went missing. So we went to Donbass to get weapons. Although there was no choice even then, we received a phone call: "We have come here for your soul, leave," Sergey concludes his story about the "Russian Spring" on the streets of the city.

To take up arms, Uzbek and Fish went to serve in a Cossack unit in the Donbass militia. "In Rubizhne, the first battle took place, the equipment was then taken in battle. We continued to fight on the trophy ground," Serhiy briefly describes several days when the anti-Maidan activists, who were still peaceful yesterday, became professional soldiers.

The owner of a well-known café in Berdyansk, Uzbek, was happy when he could just drink tea. "From an ordinary plastic cup, from a bag, you pull and rejoice after the fight. This taste is not to be forgotten. It's not like walking down the street, walking into a café and ordering a kettle there. It's a different feeling, the tea is different, the life is different," Igor points to the entrance of the restaurant that once belonged to him.

"Do you know what I mean?" the Uzbek looks into his face to make sure he can hear him.

  • An Uzbek man near a café he owned before the war
  • RT

"To be honest, few people understood why we left here to fight for the mining villages, which no one had heard of," Sergey agrees and falls silent – obviously, not everyone understands even now.

And Uzbek understood, as he himself admits, only later, when, having won for some time, he went to the skete of Seraphim of Vyritsa in the north of Russia.

"You always have to sacrifice something. Instead of what you have given, the Lord will give you another. If you like, as they say now, a different quality of life. I'm not talking about things. If it weren't for the war, I wouldn't have understood much. Only war makes it clear what life is. What kind of people I met in Donbass, what kind of people, how they live, how they fight," Igor says in almost Gogolian words.

"I have a friend, a Russian German, who went to Germany, but came back because he could not help but return after May 2 in Odessa, after the massacre of the city's residents. Fought. We liberated Debaltseve together, and we were standing and looking at the city, and he said to me: "This is the best year of my life." Everything was in the hands of man. It was a philistine paradise, resorts, an EU country, and the best thing in his life was this. See?" says Uzbek.

Igor considers himself lucky – he also had days, months and years of happiness.

"I experienced it in Partizan, this is the city of Chervonopartizansk of the Lugansk People's Republic, not only me, all of us, all my fighters. When we drove the Ukrainian military abroad, they left behind 50 pieces of equipment. They fired in such a way that the barrels melted. We all realized that we had done something important not for ourselves, but for the Motherland, for the whole world, that we had not just lived. You can only feel it," Uzbek looks as if he wants to imprint every word into the eyes of the person he is talking to.

Uzbek and Fish then shake hands and go their separate ways.

Fish - to go to his artillery unit, to continue fighting. The Uzbek is still living and receiving treatment in his hometown, from which, as he says, he is already tired, which is so unlike the mining villages for which he fought. And then, as soon as his health allows, go again to where his help is needed.

"Berdyansk is intact, thank God, and we fought somewhere for other cities. Weird, huh? The Lord spared him," says Sergei at parting.