April 22nd 2024

Yuriy gives an account of survival in the war-torn Ukrainian cities occupied by Russia for a decade, unveiling the struggles, atrocities, and resilience of the locals in the "Women's People's Republics."

You can email Yuriy, ask him questions or simply send him a message of support: fightingtherussianbeast@gmail.com You can help Yuriy and his family by donating to his GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-yuriys-family Yuriy’s Podbean Patron sign-up to give once or regularly: https://patron.podbean.com/yuriy

Buy Yuriy a coffee here: https://bmc.link/yuriymat

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TRANSCRIPT: (Apple Podcasts & Podbean app users can enjoy accurate closed captions)

  It's April 22.

Several people serving with me come from the part of Donbass that was occupied by Russia back in 2014. Back then, they seized Donetsk, Luhansk, and several smaller towns. Thousands fled the occupation immediately. Some stayed, trying to adapt somehow, but later had to flee. The Russians did not admit at that time that it was their occupation of Ukrainian cities. Their official stance was that it was rebellion by local pro Russian residents who formed their own states, the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics.

In reality, these pseudo- republics were just a cover for the occupiers. Russian military and officials ran everything there, quickly seized local businesses from the residents, throwing wealthy inhabitants out onto the streets and settling in their homes. Those who resisted were either killed or fled to the free part of Ukraine after beatings and abuse. My comrade, who is from Luhansk, told me he had spent several weeks in a basement where Russian FSB agents beat him daily just because he served in the Ukrainian army in the early '90s, which seemed suspicious to the occupiers. He was released only because the Russians brought in a new batch of Ukrainian prisoners and there was not enough space and some of the old ones were just thrown out. He immediately left the occupied city and joined the Ukrainian army. He's been at war for 10 years. 10! And he dreams every day of going home. Home which is still occupied by the Russians.

What's happening now with the Ukrainian cities occupied for a whole decade is a complete horror. Russians don't really care much about their own cities. Except maybe Moscow and a couple of wealthy regional capitals and the occupied Ukrainian cities have turned into garbage dumps. Literally. Trash hasn't been collected for years, sewage systems aren't repaired, roads aren't built, and they've mostly engaged in looting and plundering. And human trafficking. Russians always have a shortage of cannon fodder, they put all reasonable healthy prisoners in their prisons into uniform, lured all the greedy fools with high salaries, but still they lack people. So, local gangs catch men on the streets of occupied Ukrainian cities and sell them to military unit commanders, who then drive these unfortunate souls in human waves toward Ukrainian positions.

There are constant problem with electricity in the occupied territories because all the electricians were stolen from the streets and sent to war. Public transport hardly operates because drivers and mechanics are killed in human waves, and there are hardly any man on the streets who have not been caught by the patrols of human traffickers hide in their homes behind closed doors. Locals sarcastically call these fake Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics the Women's People's Republics, because there are no men left there.

Just imagine a town with only women and really old men in it. It's unbelievable, but it's true. No man's land in a very specific sense. Specific and horrible.

April 19th 2024

Yuriy reveals the harsh reality of war in Ukraine, highlighting the grim consequences of every dollar that can buy bullets to kill Ukrainians, emphasizing the urgent need to strip Russia of its means for war.

You can email Yuriy, ask him questions or simply send him a message of support: fightingtherussianbeast@gmail.com You can help Yuriy and his family by donating to his GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-yuriys-family Yuriy’s Podbean Patron sign-up to give once or regularly: https://patron.podbean.com/yuriy

Buy Yuriy a coffee here: https://bmc.link/yuriymat

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TRANSCRIPT: (Apple Podcasts & Podbean app users can enjoy accurate closed captions)

  It is April 19.

One bullet for Kalashnikov costs about 50 cents. You can buy two bullets for a dollar, theoretically, with two lives. $1 equals minus two lives. It's simple math. It can't get any simpler. The point of sanctions imposed against Russia is precisely to leave Russians with as little money as possible, so we don't have the means repair weapons, build tanks, or buy bullets.

When the so-called Russian opposition starts complaining that the average people are suffering because of the sanctions, and that's why they should be lifted, they are playing into the kremlin's hands. You can't take money only from the state and leave the money for the people. That's not how it works. The state's money is the taxes people pay and the less money they have, the fewer taxes they pay, and the less where state can buy tanks and bullets. Those who call for the lifting or easing of sanctions are either fools who don't understand whether state's money comes from or they're working for Putin, pretending to be his enemies.

Russians who fled to the West, love to talk about how Russian people are not to blame for the war, how people don't support the occupation of Ukrainian lands and the killing of Ukrainians, but they are lying. Just read what Russians writes about the war- by the way, I've counted about 30 insulting names for Ukrainians. With this supposedly entire war, people have come up with. Just watch videos from the first days of a full scale invasion when thousands of people in Russia, were celebrating. They were genuinely celebrating dancing on the streets, having picnics near the border with Ukraine to see missiles flying towards our cities, and they were very, very happy about each of these missiles.

The so-called Russian opposition is a bunch of fools Putin's agents and people living in a fantasy world where the war can end without Putin's defeat, without destroying his army and without returning the occupied territories. Let me remind you once again that for a dollar you can buy two bullets for an AK that can kill two Ukrainians, and we need to make sure that Russia does not have that dollar so it cannot even buy war to bullets, because if Russia has even one less dollar, it'll spend it not on bread for the old person, not on the school notebook for a child, but on war. Because killing the Ukrainians rather than caring for its citizens, it's the only purpose of Russia's existence now. There's nothing else.

April 16th 2024

Tasked with writing for an American media outlet, Yuriy delves into the complex ties between Ukrainians and the Russian opposition during the ongoing conflict, aiming to shed light on the nuanced perceptions in a turbulent landscape.

You can email Yuriy, ask him questions or simply send him a message of support: fightingtherussianbeast@gmail.com You can help Yuriy and his family by donating to his GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-yuriys-family Yuriy’s Podbean Patron sign-up to give once or regularly: https://patron.podbean.com/yuriy

Buy Yuriy a coffee here: https://bmc.link/yuriymat

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TRANSCRIPT: (Apple Podcasts & Podbean app users can enjoy accurate closed captions)

  It is April 16.

A couple of weeks ago a major American media outlet- one that is truly democratic and reputable- asked me to write an article about how Ukrainians perceive the Russian opposition now and how much this opposition can help Ukrainians in their fight against the aggressor. I gladly accepted the task. I wrote about how out of tens of millions of Russians, only a few stood against the first stage of the war, the annexation of Crimea in 2014. The vast majority, including those now considered opposition figures were not opposed to the occupation of part of another country.

I wrote that most of most Russians who now live peacefully abroad and talk about suffering under Putin's regime lived comfortably in Russia when, starting from 2014, this regime was killing Ukrainians daily in Donbas and was almost openly preparing to occupy the entire Ukraine. These people fled Russia only when Putin announced mobilization and they faced the risk of becoming cannon fodder in this war. Before that, they were not particularly concerned about the war.

I wrote about how the luminaries of Russian culture- contemporary writers, poets, composers -who fled to the West and supposedly opposed Putin have still not determined their position on the war. They even dare to publicly declare that they are not ready to support the Ukrainian army. In other words, they still cannot fully understand that supporting the Ukrainian army is a truly noble cause, that this army is the only force that is currently saving Europe from the genocidal horde of Russian military criminals.

I wrote all this, sent it to the editorial office, and the editor, who was supposed to publish this text, replied to me. She said she was expecting a completely different text, that she needed a text about how Ukrainians see Russians as friends, that the war is all about Putin and maybe a few people around him.

According to the editor, it would be painful and uncomfortable to the readers of her outlet to read about how even opposition Russians are perceived by Ukrainians as enemies. She is convinced that what is happening in Russia now is something unusual, some deviation, that Russians are actually against war and killings, against occupation and concentration camps and she expected me to write exactly about it.

But such a text would be a science fiction, moreover less scientific and more fictional. You can't live in illusions in the third year of the war, thinking that only Putin wants this war. That Russians are his hostages who are simply forced to kill, rape, loot and destroy entire cities against their will. There are no two Russias, bad and good, there is only one, which lives by war, dreams of destroying Ukraine and is committing genocide against an entire nation. And even if you don't read about it in a reputable liberal outlet, it does not change the situation. Ignoring the problem does not solve it; it only makes it worse.