Навіщо. What For - Марія Старожицька

— Where is that Ossetia? Ah, here it is! Have you been to Australia?

Slon

— No. Why are you asking?

Laurel

— They have this lovely weapon called boomerang: what you give away is what you get back. I wish Russians used exactly the same. Then the war would be over.

Veles

— Don’t you have a feeling that we also use a sort of boomerang? It’s like ping pong, but more heavy. With launchers… There’s nothing left from my house in Horlivka but ruins. I’m glad that my family stayed in the basement when a shell heated the house. There were two shells: both from our side.

Poet

— How’s your family?

Veles

— Thanks God, all alive. My ex-wife works for DPR tax administration.

Poet

— Do you talk to each other?

Veles

— We have to. Because of our daughter. Not because of politics. My sister is in the local hospital. She’s an ophthalmologist, nurses militants so that they could see better and shoot accurately. Whenever I call, she yells at me calling a zombie and Nazis’s recruit. I was trying to explain her that this is the time when our nation is to be born, that this war is for the true independence. 23 years it was something else. I told her that we're of the same blood, and she would immediately respond, ”I don’t hear you, goodbye!” Tell me, Slon, how you fought for independence in America?!

Slon

— Oh, I don’t remember, it was a long time ago. 240 years or so. And the war lasted about eight years. I’m not sure who fought … Did the blacks and Indians?.. Ah, I’m not a fond of history. Even though my house looks like a castle— a fence with battlement and a tower on the second floor…

Strilka

— And there’s a heavyset American wife inside this tower who unceasingly chews her humbuggers and looks out through the window trying to reach you with her gaze that stretches out over the ocean.

Slon

— There’s no one there. Only a housemaid comes once a week. I discharged water in the swimming pool. Sometimes chipmunks come there from the forest close by and can’t get out…

Strilka

— Chipmunks… That’s too cute!.. I can barely hold back my tears…

Laurel

— I know them. They are like squirrels but with strips.

Veles

— You don’t give a damn that I’m injured!

Poet

— Consider we don’t. The commander told that there won’t be any transport for injured any more. Who was brought out, is a survivor. Covered our Cauldron.

Strilka (whistling)

— So it goes… with chipmunks.

Scene 1

Theseus (from the news feed)

— Ten days without reinforcements, and here it is. Press office of the “Donbass” battalion — columns have been formed and the route out of the encirclement has been defined and agreed upon. The Defence Minister of the DNR — a number of armed units of the Ukrainian army began to move to get out of the encirclement, these actions have nothing to do with the humanitarian corridor, it is a military operation to break out of the encirclement. It looks like our guys have a problem. They have been without food and water for a day, with their wounded. The Green Corridor is a bluff..

As the result of the shelling of the humanitarian corridor that terrorists were supposed to provide for the withdrawal of Ukrainian servicemen from Ilovaysk, Donetsk region, ATO forces suffered huge losses. Hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers have been killed; hundreds have been captured, — reported eyewitnesses. The situation around the situation of the Ukrainian military by Ilovaisk has been deliberately escalated by Russian Secret Services to discredit the military leadership of Ukraine. Ilovaysk is being used to escalate tensions — at the briefing the Advisor to the Minister of Defence told the reporters.

— Oh... Father of the fighter, call sign Poltava, what he told him by phone?

In the open field the column has been shelled by artillery and tanks.

No corridor, volunteers have been betrayed and failed, stupid shot.

An Armoured Division on one side, an Airborne Regiment on the other. They were waiting for us, they had prepared. All armoured military trucks — with one shot ... he saw the car, which broke through with several soldiers on top, raced closer to Zelenka (the cover of trees) on the move picking the unmounted, which managed to grab the metal... and on their corpses, on the trees, through the ravines, under fire as in the shooting range… Hell lowered to the ground?

— … And what’s with him? .. Father writes that now they have to decide whether to surrender.. And think if there is any other way ...

Scene 2