It’s an argument that may help others understand Russian attitudes toward President Vladimir Putin, his “special operation” in Ukraine, and toward the United States. Do not piss against the wind - nothing depends on us anyway.”Īll these years later, my friends and I are arguing again. If it will be necessary, they will send us to Afghanistan. We will never know the whole truth, and what we should do? They will always decide for us anyway. When they cooled down, Kostya, one of the quieter boys in our group, said: “OK, guys, stop quarreling. You, Sasha, are just a bullshitter and a coward!” And in general, we are not at war with Afghanistan, but with America, and if we retreat there, they will start a nuclear war against us. “Stop lying!” This was another friend, Victor. First, our soldiers kill civilians, and then their mothers die crying because their sons are killed.” “My neighbor, who returned from there, told how they burned a whole village just like that. “I won’t go to fight in Afghanistan,” my friend Egor said. I remember that day in particular because of what happened while we watched the mourners, the women in black who followed the casket. And because of the arguments that are raging now among our group of childhood friends. Lately, I have been thinking of that day - and that war - because of the current war in Ukraine. Most of us worshipped the paratroopers, and some even cherished the dream of serving in Afghanistan. My friends and I knew there was a war in that faraway land and that people were dying.
On TV and in the newspapers, they talked about Soviet soldiers planting flowers and helping to build schools in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan in 1980 such processions in Orel and other Russian cities were not uncommon. We could see the body, a 20-year-old perhaps, in a paratrooper’s uniform. The casket, carried on the shoulders of young guys in sailors’ vests and blue berets, was open. The road was blocked by a funeral procession. My friends and I were on the bus, a group of 14-year-olds from Orel, some 220 miles southeast of Moscow, returning home after judo practice, when the traffic suddenly stopped. I have a clear memory of that July day in 1987.