"...I had already said goodbye to life in my mind. I thought: if I’m going to die, let it be in battle, not shot in back," – call sign Rico
It would not be an exaggeration to say that the story of 51-year-old Anatolii Ostapchuk is, in many ways, an encyclopedia of this war.
Over three and a half years of the full-scale war, he served in the medical unit of the 47th brigade, leaving it and returning again. He served in a reconnaissance platoon, in a sniper squad, and assisted a tactical medical instructor at a training center. He was discharged from the Armed Forces due to disability, but, unable to tolerate the draft-dodging attitudes in the rear, he returned to his original medical unit…
Anatolii Ostapchuk, call sign Rico, spoke about his path in the war with an unchanging half-smile. Only when he recounted how he had almost said goodbye to life in a brutal fight near Avdiivka did something particular, piercing, flash across his face. Apart from that, no affectation or grandstanding. A decent man in his rightful place. And now, here is the monologue of this man for your attention.
FIRST DAYS OF THE WAR. "I DIDN’T TELL MY WIFE ANYTHING. I SAID I WAS GOING TO THE STORES, BUT I WENT TO THE MILITARY ENLISTMENT OFFICE…"
Officially, I came to the military enlistment office on March 6. Before that, I was working in the Makariv district of the Kyiv region. What kind of work? Private security for a house. In fact, I was already carrying a rifle during the first week, waiting for guests, because combat operations were already nearby. True, no one stormed my site, but we were ready to meet the Muscovites from Motyzhyn, the ones who fled from destroyed convoys. So, you could say I’ve been at war since day one.
Our boss said: you can either go home or stay here; we will be forming a territorial defense unit. But I was brought up in a more Soviet way, and those formations didn’t make sense to me. I thought: if you’re going to take up arms, you should go to the military enlistment office. So I went home with that thought. I didn’t tell my wife anything. At that time, shops were closing down, and something needed to be bought. I said, "Let me go, I’ll find something." And I went straight to the enlistment office, gave them my phone number. It was only the first week of the war, many volunteer fighters. I came in and said: if needed, I’m ready; I’ll be at home. They asked about my military specialty; I said I served conscripted, as a radio telegraphist. And the next morning, the military commissar called me and said: Come with your things.
At home, I still didn’t say anything. I said, they’re calling me to the enlistment office by phone, without a summons. I’ll go there, but this time I’m taking a backpack with me. I told my son: sit with me, we’ll drive there together. They’ll probably check my details and let me go since there are many people... At the checkpoint, I warned the guys in advance that my son would be driving back without a license because I’m going to the Territorial Center of Recruitment (TCR and SS).. He was only 17. Well trained to drive...
Did they understand what was going on? Probably neither of them did. They just went home. Meanwhile, we were already headed to Zhytomyr to the Territorial Center of Recruitment. And that’s when the First Bohun Brigade was formed.
HOW I ENDED UP IN THE MEDICAL UNIT OF THE 47TH BRIGADE
The brigade was being formed and the medical unit was formed right away. That’s where I ended up. But I was fired up to fight. And I saw: our medical unit stayed in Zhytomyr, while the battalions were forming and already heading to fight, some to Bakhmut, others to the Kherson region. One battalion left, then the second, then the third… I went to the chief medic and said: "I didn’t come to the Territorial Center of Recruitment just to fight in Zhytomyr; send me to a battalion!" He said: "Alright, the fifth battalion is forming, you’ll go there."
I joined that fifth battalion, where there was an excellent chief medic named Kurt. That fifth battalion trained intensively for about three months near Zhytomyr. Then we headed to the Kharkiv region, and an order came to disband the battalion and use the personnel to cover losses in the first four battalions. By that time, we had been working together for several months, our coordination was solid, and the team was formed. Kurt said: the 47th brigade is being formed, and they offered for all of us, our entire battalion medical unit, to join. We would become the backbone of the 47th brigade’s medical company. So all twelve of us joined the 47th. Kurt left us and became the reconnaissance platoon commander, while we took on forming the medical company. To this day, only two people from that original group remain in the medical company.
Brothers-in-arms from the second squad, left to right: Doc, Rico, Shturman, Shpak.
And it just so happened that a driver was needed for an old beaten-up UAZ. I had extensive experience repairing and driving old Soviet vehicles…
SIX MONTHS IN RECONNAISSANCE. "IN THE 23RD, WE WERE FIRED UP TO PUSH FORWARD…"
In the medical service, I trained up and checked things out, it was all good. But my commander had become the reconnaissance platoon commander! So I said, "Kurt, I still feel like I have the strength to do a bit more than just medevac. Take me with you."
He needed trusted people, too. He connected me with the observation platoon commander. I went through the interview, and he took me on as a driver mechanic of a reconnaissance vehicle. That’s how I joined reconnaissance. I served there for six months.
Back then, I was sure that by summer 2023 I’d be washing a cargo barge in the Sea of Azov. We were fired up to push forward. Our tasks and training were about moving out, deploying into combat formation, "forward—forward!"
Our very first mission was at the start of the counteroffensive. The battalion had to punch a hole in the defenses, and we, the reconnaissance company in Bradleys (I was the driver mechanic of a Bradley), were to enter and break out into the operational area. The approximate target was Solodka Balka. It was just beyond Robotyne.
The commander got into my vehicle. But only the beginning went as planned because the battalion couldn’t break through further. We arrived, and there was an ambush. Nothing like what we had prepared for. We reported that it was impossible to complete the assigned mission. For 3.5 hours, we just stood there like shooting mark. And on the Bradley, the main gun was out of order. A real circus! We went to the commander for a month complaining: "The Bushmaster on our Bradley isn’t working!" Eventually, we repaired it. But on the first day of the counteroffensive, we were helpless. The commander said: well, you’ll be taxi drivers, handling evacuations…
At some point, Bradleys became irrelevant for reconnaissance. We realized it was impossible to carry out the tasks we had trained for. My Bradley, which I named Horpyna after my grandmother, was handed over to the second battalion. It was probably the only one to survive during our time in Donetsk. After Donbas, during recovery, the guys saw it at the training ground. Our crew started going to observation points basically as infantry. We even carried a machine gun with us…
Horpyna and its crew
What else do I remember from my reconnaissance days? Once we set up an observation post, so close to the enemy positions that we could hear their conversations. Later, we realized it was only about 80 meters to their machine gun crew.
There, in a dense tree line, I celebrated my 49th birthday. What’s the upside of being so close to the enemy? Enemy artillery didn’t target us. We were ready to repel any attack and report immediately. Nothing came our way. But we didn’t account for errors in our own artillery fire. How could we have predicted that our mortar crew would start firing on us? As a result, we were concussed, because the shells landed very close. By the time we contacted them via radio to adjust fire, some time had passed. Thank God, the guys from the 131st reconnaissance battalion were nearby, they quickly located the mortar crews and calmed them down. But a couple of shells landed close by. That happened on my birthday. The medics joked: since I wasn’t responding on the radio, the mortar crews just didn’t know how to wish me a happy birthday…
CALL SIGN STORY. "I HAD TO COME UP WITH SOMETHING ON MY OWN"
- My call sign is pretty ordinary: Rico. Why that one? Early in the war, as a medical service driver, I needed a call sign. I had some kind of medical patch on my sleeve. Plus, everyone was unfamiliar, since the unit was newly formed. Whenever a medical issue came up, everyone turned to me, complaining about their health, as if I were an actual doctor. So the call sign "Doctor" started to appear by itself. But I have nothing to do with medicine except being a medevac driver.
Besides, "Doctor" is a very impractical call sign. There could be a situation where they actually need a doctor and then it would be unclear who they’re calling for.
So I had to come up with something myself. I reversed the word "doctor" and got "rokot." I played around with it some more—and voilà! Rico!
I DIDN’T WANT TO SERVE UNDER A COMMANDER WHO JUST SAYS "GO HERE AND STAND THERE"
"Why did I leave reconnaissance? First, we lost the Bradleys and started operating as infantry. But the main reason was that they took away our commander. That was when Markus left, the ideologist of our "theme". I supported his vision, which helped motivate the fighters. I still get called ‘bitten by Markus’ (smiles – Ye.К.).
Markus left, and immediately our company commander was demoted and removed. What really happened at the 47th headquarters, I don’t know, but they took away a commander who didn’t just send people somewhere on the map by pointing randomly, but helped plan the mission and let us decide how to carry it out. That was the approach, not "go here and stand there." He cared for the personnel. Yet they removed him and put in a commander who started throwing us into support roles during assaults.
I went straight to him and said I needed to transfer back, but not alone, because I couldn’t leave these guys behind. So I took my entire squad, all four of us, together with me. And that’s how we ended up in the medical company.
Right after that, we went for recovery following the Zaporizhzhia direction. Then, throughout the entire Donetsk period and the Avdiivka direction, the guys worked, and continue to work, in the medical company.
MEDICAL COMPANY DAILY LIFE: WOUNDED, EXPLOSIONS, FORCE MAJEURE
This job has its challenges. At one hospital in the Sumy region, a missile struck just when I had a patient loaded. You want to drop that wounded person and run because a guided aerial bomb was coming in, roaring towards the hospital. Fortunately, it didn’t hit me or the patient. I didn’t abandon anyone, I stayed right there.
In the medical service, there is no formal position of driver. We have driver-orderlies. So, of course, I have to be able to replace a medic if the medic is not on hand or if there are multiple wounded and help is needed.
What medical skills do I have? The basics. I can apply a tourniquet, describe and record wounds. If there’s a light injury and a severe one that my partner is handling, I can watch over the lighter case. But I’ve never taken on tamponade myself, that’s more complex and always done by the medic.
In Donbas, Mariia was the senior member of our crew. She could assign me the lighter cases to check for bleeding.
I just sat down, started moving, and at the same time checked him out: "Alright, try moving your hand…" I was assessing him on the go. The guy had his fingers torn off, but the blood had mostly dried, just capillary oozing, and he still had a glove on. The glove was twisted and basically stuck on. I said, "We won’t touch anything now; the stabilization point isn’t far. We’ll sort it out there." He said, "It`s okay." A real Cossack, I remember being genuinely impressed. He said, "Yeah, just fingers this time, no big deal. Last time was worse." He’d been fighting since 2014. A true Cossack. "Give me a cigarette, if you can," he said. "Just quietly," I told him, "we’ll crack the window a little…"
Do I hear the conversations between the medic and the wounded in the back? Of course I do. Medics have a standard protocol. First, you have to keep him occupied, keep him distracted with those questions. You can talk about anything, just to keep the wounded man engaged and responsive.
As a driver, I need to be highly alert to changes in the situation. When I see the wounded starting to lose consciousness, I have to step on it. Or the medic will say: we need to hurry! Of course, there are moments when we don’t rush, if, for example, the wounded person is stable. But if the medic says, "Tolia, step on it," I understand that the saturation is dropping. I know she has monitors; she can see the condition worsening. That’s when I try to get to the stabilization point or the hospital as fast as possible.
I had a case on the Donetsk direction. We were supposed to pick up a man from a point near Ocheretyne. Someone had brought the wounded man there; we transferred him to our vehicle. But instead of one, we had to take several wounded. The thing is, the man weighed over 100 kilos. In winter, several brothers-in-arms had hauled him from the positions to the transport. An FPV drone hit them and wounded the evac team. We had to take everyone.
Later, it turned out that the fighter they were carrying had, for a time, been presumed KIA, taken for dead. In fact, he was just freezing. He was unconscious, from exposure/frostbite or something else, I don’t know. The point is, for a while he was counted as KIA. Then someone checked: no, he’s alive. In the end, we evacuated him plus the three who had been carrying him.
Per protocol, both the wounded and those with frostbite must be moved into warmth as quickly as possible. We use thermal blankets; the vehicle is already warmed up by the time I’m waiting for a casualty.
FROM MEDICAL COMPANY TO SNIPER: "I HAD ALREADY SAID GOODBYE TO MY LIFE, IN MY MIND"
"Did we ever lose wounded on my shift? There was a time I drove up, waiting for casualties, and a Bradley arrived. Its door was locked. The driver mechanic ran up and started whacking the handle from the outside with a hammer. Then I realized it was locked, had to be opened from the inside. We lost some time unlocking it. Only later did it hit me: you’re a driver yourself, you’ve got the emergency ramp release in your kit! The Bradley had already been hit; it wasn’t going back. We could’ve opened it with the emergency release, but I’d forgotten. We finally got it open, and there were wounded inside. That stuck with me. We loaded them up, and one didn’t make it in time, a young lad. His brothers-in-arms said, ‘The kid didn’t make it…’
After that, it hit me hard. I felt I hadn’t done everything I could. And frankly, something kept gnawing at me all along. What exactly? That I’d left brothers-in-arms doing the fighting while I ‘ran off’ to the medical company, took my own guys with me, hid myself away, and sat there, while the boys were doing the job and dying."
Then one of my brothers-in-arms, the one who had served with me in reconnaissance, transferred to the sniper platoon. He turned up at our stabilization point with poisoning. He was yellowish. Not wounded, but chemically poisoned. The enemy was using those agents there quite often. He wasn’t sent to a hospital but to our treatment section, where a crew was on duty. Once, when I was on duty, I looked at him, yellow, exhausted and said, "Mykola, you need to rest. Look at my job: you drive, you ferry people. It’s a completely different kind of work. Let’s switch."
Why did I say that? Because I already understood people need to be rotated, they need some rest. And I’m from the medical company. I said, "You rest, I’ll arrange it with my commander; he’ll take you here as a driver. And I’ll go to your place, to the sniper commander."
So we wrote transfer requests within the brigade. I submitted mine for the transfer. Two company commanders signed off, and the requests went through. My transfer to the snipers was approved in the official roster, but they kept delaying something with Kolia’s. Still, I went to the sniper platoon, as a driver. It happened that the platoon commander remained in the ranks, me, newly arrived, and Kolia, who was supposed to rest for 10 days but was back in action. The chief of staff came and said: there’s a mission, who’s going? I told the commander: no, Kolia’s not going. I didn’t come here for that, I came to replace him. "We’re going together."
So there we went, the sniper pair, he was the sniper, I was the spotter. Even though I was officially listed as a driver, I ended up working as part of the sniper team.
It was the settlement of Sokil, closer to Hordivka from Avdiivka, just before Prohres. Basically, we entered. The road in Sokil is just one street. (He points at the tablecloth – Ye.К.). Here are our positions. The street ends, and here are our front-line positions. There’s a body of water here. Beyond that are other units, I don’t even know which ones exactly.
We landed quietly, after all, we’re not infantry. What’s good about a sniper platoon? We move into our own positions ourselves. They dropped us off where they could, and we moved along that street, from yard to yard, under trees, early in the morning, from basement to basement.
The task was to move out and help our troops repel the enemy’s relentless assaults on the positions. There was a tank ditch. The enemy used that ditch to enter our tank ditch, which they had already seized. They would jump out close to our positions, and our machine gunners would take them out. We could support from a bit farther back, find a firing position and engage as well.
Long story short, the two of us set out. Our positions were separate, about 300 meters from the last house on that street. We reached the last house and realized there were FPV drones swarming. We simply wouldn’t have time to dig in. This was the 3rd Battalion’s area of responsibility, and the company commander, Lisnyk, told us over the radio: get to the position and work from there with the infantry. Why waste time digging? Or just cover yourselves with a piece of corrugated roofing.
We kept looking for a position. That first house was smashed up, no cellar or dugout. It was so wrecked you couldn’t find any cover. We pulled back toward another house to find a firing position. But Lisnyk came on the radio: no, falling back is a bad idea now, an enemy IFV has slipped through and dropped troops behind you on that road.
That stunned us. The only way back was along that road or skirting the body of water, but then we’d be exposed from the road. We’d be shooting marks. He said: move forward, break through to the positions. From there, we’ll evacuate you by Bradley. But we knew that the nearest position was held by three Georgians from reconnaissance. One of them didn’t understand either Russian or Ukrainian. Another understood a bit more or less. Communication with them was very poor, either they didn’t take the radio at all, or the connection was bad. And friendly fire wasn’t off the table either.
And I realized the enemies had already landed; if we ran toward our positions from the rear, most likely they’d shoot us first and then figure out who was firing on whom.
The commander consulted: "What do we do?" I said, "Pashа" (he was the group leader), "here’s my take. We have a better chance of surviving if we just brazenly rush down the street at them. How many are there? Eight? There are two of us. Maybe they aren’t immortal either." After all, everything around us was exploding and incoming fire was constant.
"I said—and by then I had already, in my mind, said goodbye to life. I thought: if I’m going to die, let it be in battle, at least having a chance to do something, not shot in the back (or by our own).
Pasha said: "We have a backup path along the water’s edge. But we’ll be visible. At night, there’s no chance to get through. We can try during the day, not directly at them, but veer off… Between the water and the street are people’s gardens. Let’s go through the gardens along the water. But we’ll still be visible. Our chance is that we’re in multicam, not pixels. Most enemy forces are often in multicam too; their landing force is here, it would be a mess. They might mistake us for another friendly group moving through. Let’s try to get past them without a fight."
Also, there was a personal detail for me in this situation: our position, belonging to the 3rd Battalion, was called Viktoriia. But when Lisnyk made radio contact with it, he somehow called it Sofiia instead. "Sofiia, come in.", "I’m not Sofiia, I’m Viktoriia."
This only shows how bad my state was at that moment… I have two daughters: the older one, Viktoriia, and the younger, Sofiia. I sat down and said goodbye to life. My daughter was 9 years old. I thought, "Daughter, sorry, you’ll probably have to live without your dad." And then the radio crackled: "I’m not Sofiia, I’m Viktoriia." Well, I thought, maybe my fuse is starting to blow. Looks like my older daughter needs me too…
What happened next? We simply passed right over them. I’m a religious man; I mentally appealed to higher powers: "Your will be done, holy God, guide me." And as if in response, a calm state settled over me: "Go, everything will be alright."
We moved calmly as a two-man team: Pasha first, me second. A wide body of water lay to our right. I held the left flank; he covered the front. One thing even made me laugh: I had a round chambered and took the safety off. Pasha says, "What? You don’t keep a chambered round on safe, do you?" "Pasha, what, are you afraid I’ll shoot you in the legs?"
It was our first sortie together, we hadn’t trained as a group. That’s very bad. A team operating in combat should already be well-drilled. We had to build that cohesion right there, in combat.
And that turned out to be my last sortie. I already had Group III disability status from civilian life. I came back from that mission and said, "Guys, I can’t keep up anymore."
"At night it wouldn’t let up. Something landed nearby while we were sitting there—mortar fire; we got concussed. They sent me to the medical company for a few days to get IV drips. I said: no, I’ve had enough. I can see I can’t carry this mentally. And by then, if you had a disability status, you could simply be discharged from the Armed Forces of Ukraine. I wrote the report—and left. That was June of last year."
I REALIZED THAT MY GUYS WERE THERE, IN THE MEDICAL COMPANY. I STAYED HOME FOR THREE MONTHS AND THE DECISION WAS MADE: I’M GOING BACK.
I went home, returned to my job. They told me, ‘Please, you can come and work.’ It was personal security, but I’m not a bodyguard, just a guard. I came back, but then started interacting with colleagues. They weren’t the same anymore. Some people had changed. I saw, they’re not my people, a completely different mindset. There were excuses for those who didn’t go. I thought, I don’t want to argue with you. I just didn’t feel comfortable working in that group. And if someone said something provocative… We’re all armed, and I still hadn’t recovered from my concussion… Later, a brother-in-arms laughed at me: ‘You hid in the army to avoid going to jail!’"
Jokes aside, I knew my habit of solving problems quickly with a weapon was still there. If a conflict situation came up, I might act first and think later. That’s not me anymore. But back then, after everything… I just felt out of place there. I wasn’t one of them. And people treated me with caution.
That’s the main reason I came back. I realized my guys were there, in the medical company. I stayed home for three months and the decision was made that I’d return. It took another two months for my wife to finally break down and say, "Alright, go." Because her first reaction was: "Get a divorce, I’m done staying up nights, waiting to hear from you."
I promised her I wouldn’t join a combat unit. I got in touch with the guys, they said, "Where else would you go? Go to your unit, the one you know, the one you helped form." So that’s what I did. I called the company commander, Makhaon: "Do you need a driver?" He said, "Come on over." And I did. The same medical company, practically the same personnel. But now Makhaon was the commander. The work was well-organized, basically the same. Though when I arrived, they sent me for two months of Basic Combined Arms Training (BCAT). I spent over 40 days at the training center, helping the instructor with tactical medical lessons. I taught algorithms and assisted the instructor. We split the group, he led half, I led the other half.
"Since the beginning of this year, I’ve been back on medevac, only now in the Sumy region. Is it any different from Donbas? Roughly the same as on the Avdiivka direction. The roads are worse. In the Donetsk region the roads were good. Here I sometimes hear the suspension creaking; I’m afraid the subframe’s going to be toast, because I really "floor it." We’ll find the "bucket", sure, but we still have to get the wounded there in one piece…"
Attention! Those who wish to help Anatolii Ostapchuk’s unit with medevac vehicle repairs can send their donations here:
https://send.monobank.ua/jar/2Gx8uQiR7z
Yevhen Kuzmenko, Censor.NET
Photo from Rico's archive
