Special Envoy Front of Orijiv (Zaporizhia)
The artillery captain, known as The Tartar, quickly moves to his position. The radio warns: the Russians are trying to cross the lines camouflaged in a line of trees. As he passes by us, he looks at us curiously. Commander Taras explains the visit.
- They are Spanish journalists who have come to see me. You know that there I am a star.
- Let them come to my dacha. I invite them for a good coffee.
We make it clear to Taras, better known as The Spaniard, that we do not want to interrupt, especially in the middle of a Russian attack. "With The Tartar, we have to have a coffee no matter what. If he has already told you, it is impossible to say no because he gets offended if you don't."
We enter their domain, a kitchen of a family of farmers who fled from the war and is now occupied by soldiers. On one side are the stoves. A freshly brewed coffee fills the room with aroma. On the other side, a wall of lit screens, each receiving images from drones in flight, with an army radio for communication and a tablet to select the front area you wish to see.
The Tartar, who asks us not to photograph the devices, requests drone pilots for images of a specific point and enlarges them. Several Russian soldiers were trying to sneak away, but the drone located them. "Strilyaty z harmaty!", says the captain. In other words, "Fire the cannon". A few seconds later, the first boom is heard near us, the projectile flies a few kilometers and falls near the invaders. Then the captain adjusts the aim. The Russians retreat to their positions again under fire.
"We have these drones flying 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Thanks to them, we don't have to send our people to die at that point. We see them, we send them some mortars, and they retreat when they realize we have seen them. This is the daily game here," says the captain as Taras drinks black tea.
We are in the Orijiv area, in the battered front of Zaporizhia. From this point, Ukraine halted the Russians in their advance towards the region's capital in 2022 and then attempted a failed counteroffensive in 2023. All the villages in the area are either completely destroyed or mostly in ruins. Since then, Russia has been trying to advance north, but the area is mined, heavily guarded, and well defended by the 65th Brigade.
One of its commanders is Taras Mijalchuk, 57 years old, known to all as The Spaniard, who is now aiming to become a 'Hero of Ukraine', the highest possible distinction for a military member, whether alive or deceased, depending on a public vote but also with a significant political decision: "Taras is a hero to all of us," says another of his captains, nicknamed Chaplain. "We don't care if Zelensky awards him the distinction or not." Taras already has many important medals, although the main one is the respect of his soldiers. He wears a patch with the Spanish flag on his right sleeve alongside the Ukrainian flag.
The komandir Taras refers to his comrades as "his guys" and wears a patch that reads: "Commander of bearded children". "I arrived in Barcelona over 20 years ago and made a living in illegal jobs until companies saw in me that I could be a competent engineer. I ended up working at the Seat factory and other major companies," Taras recounts in perfect Spanish. "When the Russian invasion began in 2022, I stopped eating, stopped sleeping, and stopped having sex with my wife. I was getting sick from not doing anything to fight them! So my wife told me, 'Get out before you die here'".
The press officer has asked him to be restrained in his responses, but it is impossible for Taras to hold back: "I am a warrior. I like war. I have military experience in Afghanistan with the Red Army and in Nagorno-Karabakh. I have a few years under my belt, but very big balls [sic]". And he bursts into laughter.
Among the things that anger him is the fact that his own army does not provide them with what they need, and they require volunteers' help for everything: "The cars, the drones, the screens... We have everything thanks to the volunteers, and the army does nothing," he says, somewhat annoyed. We get in the car, and he takes us to see the result of one of the many guided Russian bombs that have fallen in the area. "This one killed one of our own. Don't get too close because there are still human remains around. We picked up the larger ones, but not the smaller ones." And he shrugs.
"Every day I talk to my wife and daughters in Spain. They will have Spanish passports very soon. I am very grateful to Spain. I love it. It is a friendly country that has treated me and my family very well. I am looking forward to returning," he says nostalgically.
In his daily rounds in the unit he leads, we see the turnover of frontline military medics, prepared for urgent evacuations in a civilian vehicle with an improvised stretcher in the back and the jewel in the crown: the workshop where the youngest members of the brigade assemble drones at lightning speed as if they were playing with Lego. With parts coming from China, they prepare the famous, cheap, and lethal FPV drones, the most decisive weapon in modern warfare.
Drone workshop in a village near the front.ALBERTO ROJAS
Taras' guys who are not on the front line at the moment are busy with screwdrivers and welders assembling drone after drone as if it were a factory.
Their pilots sleep in this dacha, with the windows covered with sacks so that light does not filter outside, and the Russian drones cannot see them. Today, the war is being played in these rural constructions, with young gamers playing a deadly game: "We also take risks because we must travel to the front line with our drone and fly there, so that the range reaches the Russian logistics," says Dmitro, one of the pilots.
- Do you accumulate stress like any fighter pilot?
- Exactly the same. We kill like them and have the same fear of dying.
Taras intervenes: "My guys are brave and have big balls [sic]. It's not easy to be here fighting for almost three years."