FEODOSIA, Crimea – Two friends and colleagues who served for 10 years in the Ukrainian 1st Marine Battalion, Olga Mednova and Yulia Medinskaya, hugged each other tightly outside the Grey Barracks in Feodosia, Crimea, on March 24.
They did
not know when or if they would see each other again.
Mednova was
heading to Ukraine in a ragged military convoy, retreating from the ruins of
their once-proud battalion.
Medinskaya was
staying back in Feodosia, to see what civilian life in Russian Crimea would
bring.
The
Ukrainian 1st Marine Battalion was one of the last military bases to fall to
Russian forces that started taking over Crimea at the end of February.
After three
weeks of a Russian blockade, and harassment from pro-Kremlin Cossacks and other
Russian-backed self-defense forces, the marines were still flying the Ukrainian
flag as late as March 23 – the last Crimean base to do so.
Following
negotiations with the Russians, those personnel who remained loyal to Ukraine
hoped to pull out in orderly retreat, with their vehicles, arms and equipment.
That hope
was rudely destroyed in the early hours of March 24, when Russian special
forces efficiently stormed the base, using stun grenades, gas, armoured
personnel carriers and machine guns.
Ukrainian
forces, whose weapons were all stowed away ready for withdrawal, fought back
with their fists. It was over by 6 a.m. Most of the marines were driven away in
Russian trucks, to be released a few hours later, while more and more Russian
soldiers moved into the base. The Ukrainian commander and his deputy were taken
away by helicopter; their whereabouts are still unknown.
“The
Russians completely destroyed the clinic, even though they knew perfectly well
that it was the medical facility,” said Olga Mednova, who has worked there as a
military sanitary instructor for 10 years. She held out a handful of used
bullets she had collected after the raid as she described the shattered windows
and furniture.
Those same
Russian soldiers who blockaded the Feodosia base are well-known to Mednova.
They are
from the Russian Black Sea fleet and previously shared many training exercises
with the Ukrainian marines. Last May they marched together in a joint parade to
mark the anniversary of the end of the Great Patriotic War (as World War II is
known in Russia and Ukraine).
“We walked
shoulder to shoulder; it was really beautiful,” Mednova said. “They were our
friends a month ago. And now they have surrounded us and are saying ‘come over
to our side.’”
Ukrainian
servicemen and women in Crimea face a tough choice – to defect and join the
Russian army, to de-enlist, or to be evacuated from Crimea back to Ukraine and
remain serving.
A week ago,
around half of the 300 or so Feodosia marines (out of an original 500) who had
held out since the beginning of March intended to stay loyal to the Ukrainian
army. But only about 50 people left on March 24 for mainland Ukraine.
One of them
was Medinskaya, a sergeant heading for an unknown future. That morning as she
collected her rucksack from the base, she hadn’t even been sure where the
marines would be going in Ukraine. She was leaving her 10-year-old son behind
in Crimea, as well as her parents.
“I don’t
even know myself why I’m leaving,” she said. “I don’t even know who’s betraying
us any more, the Russians or the Ukrainians. I have a child; how can I leave
him and go I don’t know where? And the worst thing is I don’t know if I’ll ever
be able to return for him.”
Medinskaya does
not see leaving the army as a solution – if she does, she will lose her income
and pension.
And joining
the Russian army, as many of her colleagues have agreed to do, is impossible for
her. “I just can’t see how I can give my oath again. I can’t do it. All that’s
left is to be honest with myself and not to be ashamed in front of my child.
But I’m sure nothing good is waiting for me in Ukraine.”
Medinskaya’s
bitterness, like that of the majority of her colleagues, is reserved for the
new Ukrainian government and its failure to give direction to the military in
Crimea.
First,
soldiers felt let down when no order came to take decisive action right at the
beginning when, they believe, there was a chance to repel Russian forces.
Then as the
days ticked by and the pressure increased, they felt abandoned when all Kyiv
could say was “Hold on and do your duty.”
Finally,
after ex-Ukrainian Defense Minister Ihor Tenyukh called Ukrainian sailors “a
joke” and “dishrags” for not showing more fortitude, they felt betrayed. The ministry
quickly backtracked and said that soldiers who returned to Ukraine would be met
as heroes rather than with legal proceedings for dereliction of duty. But it
was too late to revive already hopelessly battered morale.
“I’m
disappointed in everything. The worst is not when friends betray you but when
the government betrays you,” Medinskaya said. “Did they sell our country a long
time ago? Probably yes. And us pitiful patriots – where do we go now? And why?”
Medinskaya’s
friend and colleague Mednova has decided to stay in Crimea and leave the army.
She fears to lose her flat (for which she gets support as a single mother), and
even more she fears that if Ukraine introduces a visa regime with Russia she
will not be able to return to visit her family.
“I can’t
abandon my parents, they and my daughter are all I have,” she said. She was
born in Crimea and considers herself Russian. Nevertheless, she says she does
not want to serve in the Russia army because “It destroyed our lives. I already
gave my oath to the Ukrainian army. I’d have to overcome my conscience and my
honour, and I don’t think I have got the moral right to do that.”
Russian
forces have promised that Ukrainian marines who join the Russian army will be
able to stay in Feodosia, and the battalion will remain as intact as possible.
But Mednova doubts that. “The marines as an elite force won’t exist anymore, no
more black berets. When I realised I wasn’t going with them to Ukraine, I went
home and took my military service card in my hand and cried. We wore our black
berets with such pride. It’s so painful to understand that it’s all over, that
the people you served with, you might never see again.”
Her real
fear and Medinskaya too, is that Ukrainians who agree to join the Russian army
may be deployed on the Crimean border with Ukraine, to face former comrades at
gunpoint.
The
Ukrainian marines left Feodosia at about 4 p.m. on March 24, heading for Nikolayev in Ukraine.
Hardly the convoy they had been promised, with weapons and equipment intact, it
was a single battered bus, an army lorry, and a few private cars.
The
Ukrainian Defense Ministry said today that out of 18,800 servicemen and women
in Crimea, only 4,300 wish to return to Ukraine to serve in the Ukrainian army.
As Mednova and
Medinskaya hugged goodbye, Nina Kosenko watched with sadness.
A Russian
who moved to Crimea as a young woman, she worked for 35 years in the pharmacy
at the barracks in Feodosia.
“It’s such
a terrible shame,” Kosenko said. “We always lived together with no question
about who was Russian and who was Ukrainian and who was from somewhere else.
And now we’ve been divided.”
As the
convoy left, Mednova, still as yet a member of the 1st Marine
Battalion, had to head back to base to salute the Russian flag.
“I’m
against everything that’s happening here, but I’ve had enough of this situation
in Crimea, and have realised I just have to think of my own situation,” Mednova
said. “I feel like I’d rather Crimea didn’t return to Ukraine, after all this.
I don’t want to live in Ukraine any more, or in Russia either. I just want to
live in peace.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Lily Hyde can be reached
at [email protected].
Editor’s Note: This
article has been produced with support from the project www.mymedia.org.ua, financially supported by the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs of Denmark, and implemented by a joint venture between NIRAS and BBC
Media Action.The content in this article may not necessarily reflect the views
of the Danish government, NIRAS and BBC Action Media.
