Fighting For Ukraine Yuriy Matsarsky

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. 

April 12th 2024
Yuriy shares the importance of carrying Ukrainian flags with him wherever he goes, spreading hope and unity in the midst of chaos and destruction.
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 12, 
Friends, I'm very grateful to you for your help. You can't even imagine how important it is. Thanks to you, I have opportunity sometimes to forget about our constant horror, to distract myself from the war. Without your help, I could not buy books for my daughter, which she needs for studying, set aside money for a trip to see my parents, whom I still dream of seeing alive, support my family, and not fall into complete despair. All this is possible because of you. If I could, I would hug each and everyone of you tightly. 
I want to tell you about one thing that I always carry with me. Of course, I always have my gear, combat boots, body armor and weapons. And also a first aid kit, power banks, and e-reader. But that's not all. I always carry a Ukrainian flag with me. It's always in my bag. And not just one. I try to have several. From time to time, I replenish my supply of flags, which quickly run out. 
They run out because I give them away. I give them to soldiers who have moved to new positions, leaving their flags behind at the old ones. I give them to civilians in liberated territories where the Russians have destroyed everything even remotely connected to Ukraine. I once gave a flag to an old woman in a liberated village. When the Russians came, she took down her flag, which had been flying over her house, wrapped it in a plastic bag and buried it somewhere in her garden. She didn't want the occupiers to destroy it. And then she forgot where she buried it, so she took mine, but she promised to give it back to me as soon as she found hers. She's a wonderful person. I hope she's doing well. 
Children in frontline cities also eagerly take the flags. They wave them when convoys of military vehicles pass by their cities on their way to the front, when helicopters fly over their homes, when funeral processions with a coffin or those killed by occupiers, pass through where streets. Maybe some over flags are distributed are now flying over the cemeteries. I've already told you about the tradition of placing flags over the graves of fallen soldiers. So our flags are important both for living and for the dead. 
That's why they run out so quickly and need to be bought again. Such a simple flag- blue on top and yellow on the bottom- but it contains so much meaning, so much sense. Now, it's a true symbol of a free world, of freedom itself, and I'm happy and proud to give my flags to people. For me, it's an honor to be one who can share such an important symbol. By the way, I share this honor with you. Because I replenish my stock of flags thanks to your help too. So, thank you once again. 

 

April 10th 2024
In one of his many roles in the army, Yuriy has become a documentary a military filmmaker, documenting the challenges of filming a documentary about a fallen young soldier amidst the destruction and despair of war in Ukraine. 
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 10. 
Right now I have a pretty strange specialty. I'm a military filmmaker. I shoot and edit a documentary about a fallen young soldier. When I was working in television before joining the Army, I saw how many people typically worked on documentaries. There was always a producer, director, editor, several cameramen, a sound person, composer, location scouts and character scouts. Usually it's a whole team of 15 to 20 people. 
We are doing it as a team of two. I'm the director, cameraman, sound guy; I wrote most of the script and even became one of the characters in this film. It's likely that I'll have to compose some of the music for the future film too. Honestly- I'm already prepared for that. I have never made a real film before, and now I am. And it's something I'm not ashamed of. I did not know how to edit videos before the Army, but now I'm helping other people with it. So I think I will manage with music somehow. 
But what I can't manage with is depression. I thought shooting would distract me from dark thoughts, but I could focus on the film and forget about the constant nightmare around me for a while. But it does not work like that. We arrived to shoot in my hometown of Kharkiv, just when the Russians decided to completely destroy it and began bombing it with double hatred. It's very hard to watch the enemy destroy a city that is dear to you. 
And the story of a person we are filming about isn't cheerful either. The guy was 35 when he died. He was a volunteer living behind a wife and two children. He was a person living his life, raising children, being happy, and then -bam- his gone, children are orphans, the wife is a widow, their world is gone, a void in its place. And that's just one story, one family. There are thousands of such stories, such families, endless thousands and there will be even more. Every day of the war, it's a few dozen, maybe even hundreds of obituaries, dozens of hundreds of shattered worlds, orphaned families, and endless pain. 
And it's very hard to come to terms with effect that this will go on for years. That the war will continue for a very long time, that it will take countless lives, destroy new cities, leave behind many more scars. It's for years, for long years. I'll have time to shoot a movie, return to the trenches, serve in the trenches for as long as my health allows, and the war will still go on. And people will die every day. Every. 
Perhaps it's because of this depression, that I'm recording new episodes much less frequently than before. Or maybe it's because I feel that listeners are losing interest in the podcast. Maybe it's just my imagination that they are tired of me, but I see that the last time help came to my go fund me was a month ago, and since when nothing, I'll try to put myself together and start recording more often again. But please don't forget about me either. 

April 2nd 2024
Yuriy delves into the historical context of Ukraine's struggle for freedom and emphasizes the human cost of political decisions. He also advocates for standing against tyranny and supporting conscious democratic principles.
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 2nd. 
The world fears Ukraine because it doesn't fully understand who we are. Due to this lack of understanding, during the collapse of USSR, US President George Bush Senior flew to Kyiv to persuade Ukrainians not to attempt to create an independent country, to remain subordinate. To Moscow to agree to the continuation of occupation. In 1994, the US, UK and Russia persuaded Ukraine to give up all its nuclear weapons. By the way, it was the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world. In exchange Ukraine was promised respect for its serenity and inviolability of its borders. And you know what this guarantor countries should do? If someone threatens this inviolability and serenity? They should hold consultations. Consultations, damn it. And when one of guarantor countries went to war against Ukraine 10 years ago, the other two started consultations. And we've been consulting for 10 years. While people are being killed and tortured while cities are being bombed. 
The world fears Ukraine's victory because it does not know what will happen with Russia after this victory. Maybe it'll disintegrate into dozens of states, each of which will receive part of a nuclear weapons arsenal. Maybe a new Putin will come- more insane and anti-Western than the one we have now. They've already gotten used to this; they continue doing business as usual with him. The west seems to think we can still find a compromise with him.  The ancestors of war who seek compromise with Putin, I'm sure are crying bitter tears in the after life because way too could have compromised with Hitler, with Hirohito, not die somewhere on Guadalcanal, not drawn off Omaha Beach but just come to an agreement. But they did not agree to that. Not because they weren't afraid- I'm sure we were scared to death- but because there are things you have to do even when your hands are shaken with fear. 
And they overcame their fear and did what they still grateful for, and will be grateful for the centuries- they defended freedom, destroyed tyrants, and gave hope for the future. Their descendants are now carefully counting the bullets they sent to Ukraine to make sure there won't be enough to destroy the entire Russian army, so that 100% won't pose a threat to Putin's regime. They belittle the memory of those who fought against evil, those who did not compromise, those who knew the price of freedom. And this price is not measured in dollars per gallon of gasoline, not in Euros per cubic meter of gas. It is measured in human lives. 
And anyone who says it's better to compromise with Putin so that gasoline and gas prices don't rise, so that business can continue as usual is actually saying "let the Russians kill and torture Ukrainians, as long as I have money." Such a person is a criminal and accomplice of occupiers and enemy of freedom. The world must stop seeking understanding with Putin and start seeking understanding with conscious and democratic principles. And they both say the same thing. Death to tyrants.