Convicts-turned-cops on forefront of Ukraine’s battle against Russia

“All of us are afraid. We all die. We all feel pain,” Onishchenko, whose nom-de-guerre is Friman, tells them. “But some people fight against this, and others surrender. I am fighting and I’m here, all cowards are over there. They can always find excuses.”

Onishchenko is the head of Ukraine’s Tornado volunteer battalion of about 100 people, formerly known as Shakhtarsk. Most of its fighters are former convicts from Donbas who are now formally police officers reporting to the Interior Ministry. For reasons nobody can properly explain, the battalion’s logo features a yin and yang symbol of Taoism.

The battalion’s former convicts turn out to be more patriotic than local police officers, many of whom have joined the separatist cause.

Onishchenko himself was convicted for racketeering and illegal arms possession. Many of the fighters use convict jargon and prison humor. For them, Russia’s war against Ukraine is personal: it’s the continuation of standoffs between rival gangs for turf.

Major gangsters who had previously dominated the crime scene in Donbas mostly supported Ukraine when the war flared up in April 2014. But the emergence of Kremlin-backed separatist republics gave rise to new bandits who joined insurgents’ ranks and started seizing the property and financial flows controlled by the old mafia.

One of the fighters told the Kyiv Post that armed pro-Russian militants had once barged into his house, threatened him, made his wife and children kneel before them, took valuables out of the house and said that they would take over his business. The fighter spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Tornado fighters at their base near Lysychansk.

Complicated history

The battalion, set up in June 2014, was initially called Shakhtarsk after a city in Donetsk Oblast but was dissolved in October because of accusations of looting. It was soon resurrected as the Tornado Battalion.

Tornado fighters admit that cases of looting had taken place but they argue that the media have greatly exaggerated their extent. Moreover, those accused of looting have been expelled from the unit, and currently the crime is severely punished, they say.

In addition to convicts, the battalion includes Ukrainian nationalists, including ones from the Right Sector and Spilna Sprava (Common Cause) groups. The Shakhtarsk battalion initially included the Jesus Christ Hundred, linked to ultranationalist Dmytro Korchinsky’s Brotherhood right-wing group. But this group later became a separate unit, called the St. Mary Battalion.

The Tornado battalion has several female snipers. One of them, a pro-Ukrainian native of Luhansk, says that she had joined the battalion because she had no other choice after the city was seized by Russian-backed insurgents in April 2014. Another one hails from central Ukraine and is a member of the Right Sector.

Shakhtarsk was initially linked to Oleh Lyashko, leader of the populist Radical Party, who has been accused of using it for his own causes and even promoting the unit as Lyashko’s Battalion. Tornado fighters confirm that Lyashko helped them initially, for instance gave them an armored minibus, but they subsequently parted ways.

A barren landscape

The battalion’s rear base is located near the city of Lysychansk in Luhansk Oblast, while their field base is in Stanitsa Luhanska northeast of Luhansk. Some of the battalion’s fighters are also based in the city of Popasna and at the 29th checkpoint near Lysychansk.

The setting for the battalion’s field base is eerie. The entrance to Stanitsa Luhanska is marked with a burned tank whose gun turret lies 10 meters away, with woodland heavily damaged by Grad multiple rocket launchers in the background.

Every centimeter of the land seems saturated with war, and the sound of assault rifle fire has become routine. Most of Stanitsa Luhanska has turned into an apocalyptic landscape with few signs of life: ruined buildings, closed stores, many of them damaged by fighting, and few locals who dare to walk along fences and try to run indoors as soon as possible.

A ruined building in Stanitsa Luhanska.

The philosophy of war

At this grim forefront of fighting, Onishchenko talks about his philosophy of contempt for those who find excuses not to join the war with Russian aggressors, saying it’s every man’s duty.

“Who am I if my mother has had a stroke and I’m here waging war?” he told the battalion’s fighters when several of them said they had to leave the unit due to family problems. “Who am I – a villain who doesn’t love his mother or a patriot? She’s weeping over the phone because she’s afraid she’ll die and won’t see me. But I can’t go, I can’t leave you here.”

Then he points to another soldier. “He, who hasn’t seen his newborn child, who is he?” Onishchenko ponders. “A traitor to his family? His wife is crying and saying ‘come here and hold me in your arms’.”

The fighter who acquired the nom-de-guerre German due to his ethnic roots agrees with Onishchenko’s logic.

“My sister has six daughters, and I have a daughter,” he said. “My sister’s husband died last year. I also have a wife, mother and mother-in-law – there’s a lot of women around. Who’ll fight for them? I will, of course.”

Fighting the Russian army

Onishchenko believes that attempts to evade every man’s duty to defend Ukraine is the reason why “the enemy is treading on our land.”

If Russia keeps helping its proxies in Donbas, Ukrainian troops will have to retreat, he said. “Our forces are not equal,” he said. “It’s hard to fight the Russian army because they have new equipment, good weapons and well-trained soldiers.”

Tornado fighters wonder why Russia has triggered the war.

“We always wonder why Russians started hating us, Ukrainians – Slavs just like them and their brothers,” Onishchenko said calmly. “Why are they killing us, why are they destroying our cities?”

Wealthy Russians often go on a “safari”in Donbas, he said, adding that his battalion had seen several such cases. “The best kind of hunting is hunting for those like you – humans,” he said. “And we, Ukrainians, are the game.”

Abandoned by the state

Another Tornado fighter, Volodymyr Kabakov with the nom-de-guerre Pacifist, is from Zhytomyr. Before the EuroMaidan Revolution he worked at a bookstore and took part in hippie-like rural communes where people shared property, including those organized by the Jiggling Cedars new religious group. Subsequently he participated in the revolutionary events in Kyiv as part of the Democratic Alliance center-right party.

At the Tornado Battalion, he was trained as a paramedic, and has often provided first aid to injured fighters.

Kabakov is frustrated with what he believes to be a lack of proper military leadership in Ukraine’s war effort. One example is the battle for Illovaisk in August-September 2014, when Ukrainian troops were surrounded due to the incompetence of the General Staff, he added.

The Shakhtarsk Battalion had no intelligence data, and the anti-terrorist operation’s headquarters promised to send heavy artillery and armored vehicles, he said.

“We waited for armored vehicles for half a day,” Kabakov said. “A tank arrived, but its gun was broken, and it became useless for fighting. Our offensive stalled.”

Unlike other units, Shakhtarsk managed to escape from Illovaisk without big casualties. One reason is their good knowledge of the terrain, since at least half of the battalion is from Donetsk Oblast. At that point, the battalion had about 700 fighters.

Despite the battalion’s military achievements, the government stripped its fighters of war veteran status after the unit was dissolved in October. At that time, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov praised Shakhtarsk for its performance during the battle of Illovaisk but said that he had to dissolve it because of alleged looting in Volnovakha and other places.

“The state has forgotten that these people tried to storm Illovaisk and sacrificed their lives,” Kabakov said.

Tornado fighters already have the “Afghanistan syndrome” – a popular name for the post-traumatic stress disorder experienced by soldiers after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979-1989, he said.

“You’re supposed to be a hero,” Kabakov said. “But you’re not really a hero. You’ll beg for alms at a train station and no one will give a penny to you.”

Tornado snipers training at their base near Lysychansk.

Tornado commander Ruslan Onishchenko talking to the soldiers who wanted to leave the battalion at their base near Lysychansk.

Alexander Rychkov is a freelance journalist based in Ukraine. He can be reached at [email protected].

Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected].