Are you coming or are you going to raise your popularity? – It’s yours that I’m raising. – I don’t need to. – So, are you in a hurry? – We’ll be with you as long as we can. We’ll go then.
– But it’s forbidden to film. – It’s forbidden to publish, let them film. Serhii “Filia” Filimonov, deputy chief battalion reconaissanse You can film it now, but publish it only when we get killed. So, the training starts at 1 pm, so you’ll be here. Let’s go and see our guys training.
We are now entering the village we freed. And three villages before it were freed by our battalion. [Kharkiv region, Fall 2022] You freed those and now you defend them? We are defending villages further, but I can show you while driving,
All the bushes and villages we freed and entered first, all the trenches we assaulted. Almost everything in the Donetsk direction – recapturing and advancing – we took part in it as the avantgarde. Let’s step out and see what the guys are doing. – Could the “Tick” be here? – Yes, it’s possible.
Serhii “Filia” Filimonov is a 28-year old “Azov” veteran, actor (leading role in Oleh Sentsov’s “Rhino”), activist, and again servicemen after the beginning of a full-scale invasion. With his “Honor” company he joined the 1st mechanized battalion “The Da Vinci Wolves”. He also serves alongside his two brothers. 29 years old Victor Filimonov – UAV-scout,
And 40 years old Oleksii is assaulting Russian positions with him. It’s the second year in a row that three brothers are serving side to side in the same squad. Well, it’s hitting the sector now, but we have to check further. Let’s try zooming in here.
– So are we shooting like this? – Well, yes. Fire! We won’t see a thing here. So almost all your family is here? Oleksii “Tick” Filimonov deputy company commander Yes, they are. – How many of you? – Lots of us, but only three brothers.
But all the brethren are now one big family. It’s really hard to count. How does it feel to participate in the assault with your brother? near Bakhmut, spring 2023 Oleksii, are you OK? Faggots [derogatory term for Russians] in a trench to the right!
It is a high level of trust, reliability and risk. But when we are together, we support each other. It becomes easier. We do not feel nervous when it has already started. We can do it before or after the operation, rewinding some moments and then forgetting them.
So when battle starts do you not worry for “Filia”? I don’t, but I am concerned about my clear-thinking. That is a paramount thing in the battle. I know his skills will let him do everything right.
So I don’t worry about him, but I worry for myself to do everything right. Not worrying, but concerned. What does your mother altercate you for? Nothing, really. Well, swearing maybe, and Serhii’s smoking. She will get upset if she discovers me smoking. How does it feel to fight alongside your brothers?
They fight well. They are elder brothers, and Victor is a huge drone expert. Everywhere we go, people give his work a high appraisal. And Oleksii is very tough, experienced. When you go to the assault with your brother, don’t you worry more?
I love my brother very much, he was a role model for me my whole life. He was like a father to me. Thus I am worried about him. But the other guys who were going with me – some of them died, some were heavily wounded — I am worried about them as much.
But it is a weakness and a strength simultaneously. I am 100% sure they are capable and it is likewise. There is no impossible mission with them. Didn’t Oleksii try to talk you out of it all? Or you tried it with him? I was lucky he was assigned to my squad.
There were many times he tried to talk me out of some tasks. But I often forbid him from going somewhere. But still he was at almost every mission I was on. But I try to protect him, he is a valuable commander.
He is a deputy company commander now, and nobody can do this job better now. It’s unreasonable to let him fight in the first rows. He has managerial and training jobs to conduct. – Does he listen to you? – He’s got no options, I’m his commander.
Didn’t “Filia” talk to you about decommissioning? Because you have many kids. No, he didn’t. We know why we are here. And my kids are not the reason to go home, but to be here, I do it not only for myself, but to give them a good state to live in. Bakhmut, May 2023
I congratulated my oldest child with a video from Bakhmut, May 15, when we still were holding on to it. My daughter, happy birthday to you, miss you very much. The great pain is that we don’t see our children grow up, we do not participate in their upbringing.
It’s not the same via the phone. My wife told me that they had a girl coming over, and Orest, my son, liked her a lot. He asked his mother to buy him a ring so he can make that girl his wife. And she saw them kissing yesterday.
As a father, I would love to watch these moments, to talk to my son. Serhii and his wife Valeria had a second child, Solomia, born 26 August 2023 Diana Butsko, hromadske journalist: They are so beautiful. Yes. All girls. – Is it hard for you? – Quite contrary.
Boys and girls are both good, but girls are gentle. When I get home, they hug me and kiss me, so gentle. – So the girls have their pros. – I agree. What were you doing before the invasion? I was a contractor. Building management.
– So you had your team? – You can say so. I am certified, educated and all that. And now you live with your brother. What are the cons? What do you mean, everyday life? We have been together since we were kids. I mean unwashed dishes or something?
No such question arises. Common things just get done. Even if we talk about it, there never was somebody’s unwashed dish. It’s easier, we understand each other. Can I get instant coffee? Yevhen Hryhoriev, senior operator-fighter It is how it is. Today we’ll get pilaf with thai flavours. Horokhovskyi says economy will be alright.
Foreign partners will continue to support us and out national currency will only get stronger. Cappuccino? Don’t forget to subscribe and thank you for the sponsorship. We are reading all your comments, so write more! Who would know that I’ll move from journalism to blogging, dear God.
I was a serious person, and then I came to hromadske. – What does your mother tell you? – She is worried, but she supports us. I am not a mother yet, but I can imagine — three sons. And she didn’t try anything.
In 2014 I went to war, but didn’t tell her. I was constantly lying to her that I went elsewhere. But she and my grandma understood it nevertheless. And when I was wounded near Ilovaisk, I came home and told her everything, she said “I knew that, and I am proud of you”.
Oleksii is just like me, but older. A lot of things I know – I learned from him. And Victor is only a year older than me, and we lived one life. We fought the other guys often.
We looked similar. A lot of times when I fought somebody, he then was attacked instead of me. He came home not understanding why, but then we came out to the fight together. He is a very clever IT-guy. He achieved a lot and had a good payroll. He knows all that cyber stuff.
And I was a wrestler, studying in the boarding school. Then I became a football ultras, then civil activist, then 2014 war, and so on. – How old were you in 2014? – 18 or 19. Victor Filimonov, UAV operator Victor, you were an IT-developer, living a high-roller life? No, I wasn’t.
He is a very shy guy. No luxury life, just playing DOTA [popular video game] as every other IT guy. – Then how did you end up here? – I burned out at work. And it’s like a vacation.
– Bakhmut was easier than DOTA? – For me it was. I was just working and playing. – And you were not interested in drones, were you? – No, I mastered it at the beginning of the invasion. – And you wanted to be in “Honor”? – This is how it was: on 24 February,
2022 I went to Serhii and I haven’t come home since. – What did he say? – Nothing. We planned something like this. – What did he say? – Nothing. We planned something like this. Didn’t he try to send you away, like “you are not born for the war”? No, why would he.
– And Oleksii? – And him too. He even wants me to go behind enemy lines. – And what of your mother? – She accepted it. She didn’t want us to come, but she didn’t get to decide. I think she was ready since 2014, when Serhii went to war.
– But that was one son, and now three of them. – She’s got more. When then-alive Vitaliy and his brother came to fight, we asked them about their family and how so. He told us his parents got 4 more kids in reserve. – Not a funny joke. – Taking into account he died…
I didn’t choose where to serve. They needed a drone pilot, and so there was I. And we had little assault jobs then. And Serhii didn’t want me in the assault brigade. He didn’t want me in reconnaissance either, maybe he had a deal with mother. But Oleksii persuaded him to let me work here.
– He wanted you to serve in the headquarters? – Maybe, I didn’t ask. I see every job as necessary. If I had to be a stormtrooper, so be it. – When your battalion is assaulting positions, you see all from above? Yes. – And you see your brothers there? – Yes.
– What do you feel? – Same as looking at everyone else. – Were you worrying about them? – First times. There was a difficult situation. It was not an assault, but after they came back we didn’t have a connection with them for two more hours. And we didn’t know what happened.
– How are the russians fighting here? This is a regular army. Plus various formations, volunteer ones, consisting of various military and special forces units. They are fighting well here. That is, these are not Bakhmut ex-prisoners, these are not Wagner’s who are just throwing “meat” on us.
You can feel that there is military training here, there are trained people and they are trying to work. There have been cases when they have actually taken such interesting actions that we did not expect that they would do it. Technically, in terms of small-scale reconnaissance and counterintelligence, they are in some aspects…
They may have already overtaken or are beginning to catch up with us. For example, in terms of drones – there are no fewer of them. Mavics… It looks like they have no less. And the qualifications of specialists who work with small attack drones rise.
Now, the issue of protection against them is becoming more and more relevant. That is, some kind of mobile, trench-based electronic warfare equipment, light portable detection devices are very relevant now. Why do you think the russians want Kupyansk now? My vision of what is happening here is…
They are trying to shackle our reserves so that we can maximize using the parts that have been restored or are not used. If there is a fire here, we will have to move troops here, and we won’t be able to,
In their opinion, break through In the South, or, for example, squeeze them in Bakhmut. So I think they believe that the line of defense here may not be as strong as in other places. That’s why they create pressure here, hoping that we will react to it. In principle, their idea is logical.
It is not that they are doing something illogical here. In principle, if they had some kind of breakthrough here, they could have created a lot of problems for us. – What are the prospects for such a scenario? – I think it is unlikely. You have empty powder? – Yes. Run, run, run!
[Kupyansk direction, July 2023] But they are pressing hard, probing constantly. In other words, they don’t stop, they keep working, looking, searching in different places. They have enough… They have information on which units are working, where are the junctions between units, even what the morale is like, what problems we are having.
That is, they understand what is happening and try to look for such places, for example, that they think we don’t expect them to go to. For example, what happened in Novohorivka right now. This is just one of their attempts. It was quite successful. Canada, are you alive?
Yes, the enemy is already here. So we’re watching this one now. There’s a crossing over there, right? Well, we’re getting there somewhere. Sometimes we have flown up to there, but there is no point. There are hits up there, so we went down here for a bit.
That’s probably where it’s working from, from that… Go up a little higher. There, you see where it is. Did that tank just fire? Yes. Let’s check it out. Is it russians walking? – Yes. Where are they going? For an assault?
No, no, no, they’re coming to replace someone. It’s fun to see a crowd like that, Here you can see who they greet on the way. If there are any positions here. I don’t think so though… In general, it’s interesting to watch them walk, wave their hands.
Someone jumps out and asks for cigarettes or gives them some. It’s interesting. We have a video where… He walked around, said hello to someone, and then we shot there – 10 people ran out, and they started running through the forest like it’s a marathon.
And “Afer” flies after them as if he was filming a marathon. It’s really cool. If you hear whistling, it’s not coming for you. You see, they’re going to go there now, probably because through the landing. It’s good. Tomorrow we can catch and hit them there. So what are you looking for here?
We just notice the movement, record it in a report, and then someone analyzes what is happening, whether the nature of the actions is changing or not. If we see any equipment or a lot of people, we will use artillery. You’re correcting it too, right? In general, it is a very boring job.
You’d like to throw something on them, wouldn’t you? Not really. It’s boring here, it’s just that there was a lot more movement before, at the beginning of the war. Every day was an action-packed day, like two weeks now. But after Bakhmut probably…
If here we go out every two days to work, for 12 hours, before, we worked for 42 days in a row, without days off. Now, for example, if there were demobilization, would you not go? I mean, the war is going on. – Well, who will fight? Well, I would fight.
Would I like to serve in the Armed Forces? I don’t think so. Would I have fought? One hundred percent. Well, maybe without salary, without the diesel, without BRK, without any social protection, but I would fight 100%. Would I like to be a Cossack, for example, going to war when I want to,
Spending some time with my family when I want to – of course I would have. For the last task, where my guys died, I didn’t go with them. I was controlling the battle from the headquarters. Perhaps it’s my conscience talking, maybe I’m just deceiving myself, Maybe it’s… It’s hard to find a word, but
I think that if I had gone with the guys, everything could have been different. Although the guys were experts, they were very well prepared. I say they were the best fighters. They were just unlucky, just unlucky. So the next task we have, which we have developed, I want to go on my own.
How do you find the strength to continue fighting after this? What options do we have? There are simply no options – that’s one. Two… Most people who… Most soldiers are tired at war. We are tired of the war. We all want to go to our families. We all want
To raise our children, to have our civilian hobbies, to just live a normal life where you don’t lose people who are very close to you. Where you don’t risk being killed every day. But there are no options now. Now we are fighting in Donetsk and Luhansk regions,
In Kharkiv region, some are fighting in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. If we do not fight, if we do not fight here, we will fight after a while, in Kyiv, Rivne, Vinnytsia, Lviv, and so on. I mean, it’s obvious to everyone. And we simply have no options.
If there were any additional options, we would consider them. And so… That’s what I was talking about, that in principle, we are all ready to die. Of course we wouldn’t want to. Of course, everyone wants to live anyway. There are no masochists here, but before each task, everyone realizes
That if this one… What if this time, you don’t come back. They say goodbye to their families and to each other. And it’s really like most of the military, it all translates into jokes, black jokes, black humor. But this is an absolute truth, and everyone understands the consequences and specifics of our profession.
There are no other options. There are no other options. In fact, those people who are not preparing for war now. Those people who think that it will be enough for them to sit around now and write favorable comments on the Internet, like posts, that the war will take place somewhere else, without him.
I want to upset them. Most likely, everyone will have to fight. And the sooner these people understand, the sooner people will start preparing for it, the easier it will be to fight and the more likely they will survive. The more chances we will have to save the country.
He also has an unofficial call sign, “Dr. Death”. But now we have complicated it a bit. Now he is “Dr. Innovative Death”. In other words, the innovative assault platoon for “Dr. Innovative Death” will need people who are ready to kill russians in innovative ways. That’s all. To kill russians.
I will write it down, and they will accept it. Quiet, quiet! How far have you moved away? I want to replace the infantryman with an iron man. Here, please, is an iron foot soldier. The upper part is called a saber, the lower part is called a trot.
Oleksandr Yabchanka, assault platoon commander: This infantryman, a trot, carries a saber. There is a 7.62 machine gun here. It’s a very cool thing. That is, you can remotely control and move the 7.62 machine gun, move it over rough terrain, reduce personnel losses and, of course, cause great trouble for the enemy.
Because starting from a purely psychological point of view, when you are hit by such a thing… It’s unpleasant. There’s a machine gun and you don’t know how to kill it, and it’s quite difficult to kill it. The second thing is purely…
The first one is practical, so that a 7.62-caliber machine gun is coming at you. The second is psychological. It’s one thing to have people like you fighting against you, people who are alive. And it’s another matter when it’s unmanned. And even if you kill him, in principle
You don’t kill the enemy, you just destroy a piece of iron. With all my love for this thing, it’s still a piece of iron. And, of course, there is a third component – the economic one. Because, sorry, it costs about 22 thousand dollars.
Well, this is nothing compared to the life of an infantryman. According to the tradition of the Da Vinci Battalion, The commander does not send people somewhere, but the commander leads. And this is a very noble story. It’s a story that inspires respect, but it also has a downside.
Because this is a tradition of the Da Vinci battalion… Well, it’s a Da Vinci tradition. Da Vinci died. Precisely because he did not send people on missions, he was leading them. Da Vinci, Dmytro Kotsubailo, founder and commander of “Da Vinci Wolves”, which from a platoon became a brigade.
He served since 18 y.o., is a “Hero of Ukraine”. On March 7 2023, he died after an artillery hit in Chasiv Yar. After his death, his friend and deputy Yuriy “Kapusta” Kapustyak took command of the Da Vinci Battalion.
We are losing the best, the brave, we are losing the people who lead the way. At first, of course, we were very demoralized by all this. For a short time, that is, it was a tremendous blow to everyone. And probably for two and a half days
We simply did not understand what was happening and what would happen next. But in principle, in his life, he has built the right structure, gathered the best people and gave direction. And basically, after the funeral, everyone got together and decided that
For the sake of what he has already done, for his sake, we must continue his work and we are now stronger in many ways than we were before. Due to the fact that he built such a strong foundation and given us a clear direction in which we continue to move.
It was difficult, he is a very powerful leader. One of the most powerful leaders that I know. That I knew. But we are moving on, moving on. Da Vinci built something that will live on after death. He built the battalion, this structure, this organism, let’s say.
He put together this skeleton, and now we are trying to build muscle on it. We already built some, now we have to train them and continue the work he started. Brother, I can’t hear you, dial. It’s flying? – It’s here! Vitya! He’s above us. – Is he flying away?
Afer, Afer, I am Viper, over. Viper, don’t come in, there’s a drone hovering over us, Don’t go in, take a break. Plus, plus, I accepted. It’s really inconvenient to get it out. Viper to Afer. Viper here. Let’s sit down. We need to sit down, bro. – I agree, sit down.
It’s about to hit, and then we’ll see. I think they tried to hit you. No, as you said, we were standing in the village. No, just now. – Just now? It looked like an outgoing to me. – No. How close is this? If nothing falls here, then…
It looks like the hits are over. Is it time to go? Yes, I’ll be right out. Let me hide your helmet.
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