Successful businessman mobilized for the maritime border guard service
Mikhail with the call sign “ZAK” - the sergeant of the anti-aircraft artillery team of the Navy ship “Pavel Derzhavin”. Before mobilization, he had a profitable business — he advised well-known entrepreneurs and farmers in Ukraine and was engaged in the sale of combines, tractors and other agricultural machinery.
According to Mikhail, on February 22, many clients called him and claimed that the Russian army would soon go on a large-scale invasion of Ukraine. To the last, Mikhail did not believe in this, and on February 24 he came to the Odessa Marine Guard detachment to defend Ukraine with the border guards against the Russian invasion.
As in 2014, Michael did not hesitate a day. After mobilization, he was appointed to the post of commander of the artillery department of the Lubny KRMO and defended the entrance to the Danube from the sea. Subsequently, he also served as the chief of the radio engineering team on the flagship of the Marine Guard.
“I made the decision both then and this time, in fact, immediately. In the morning he learned of the invasion, had a quick breakfast and immediately headed to the detachment. I understood that in these early days Ukraine very much needs those who will stand up for it. On February 24, there was only one desire — to get weapons as soon as possible and stand shoulder to shoulder with our brothers to defend their native land,” says Mikhail.
For the first time, Mikhail encountered the aggression of the Russians in 2005 in the Crimea. Since in his specialty he is a professional engineer of catering technology with extensive practical experience, once, under the protection of colleagues, he agreed to help a group of investors from the Russian Federation in the aspect of arranging a hotel and restaurant complex in Yalta from scratch. Things were going quite well, the prospects were obvious, Mikhail's expertise and professionalism impressed the Russians, but at one of the working meetings they allowed themselves to call him a crook several times.
In response, Mikhail also called them Muscovites, and they did not like it very much. In addition, such parity caused them considerable denial and even indignation. Literally on the same day, Mikhail said that he would not cooperate with such partners. Neither the subsequent apologies of the main “partners” nor the prospects of good earnings changed the decision made and the Russians had to further equip the complex without a Ukrainian specialist.
“I was born in the days of the Soviet Union and I remember from childhood how the authorities constantly formed the public opinion that all other peoples are younger brothers, so to speak, the second kind, and the Russians are precisely the title nation. It was implemented everywhere, in all spheres of life — all these anecdotes about Moldovans, Chukchi, Khokhs, or black people, film roles where a representative of one nation or another was covered in a negative or comic aspect — it was also part of disguised propaganda. And we see what it all led to. In the modern world, such an attitude towards other people is unacceptable. Racism, fascism, genocide of different nations are ideologies that have brought death and grief to a huge number of people on the planet. In modern history, there are examples when countries were divided into totalitarian and democratic forms of state government, and it is quite obvious in which people live perfectly and in which they are simply trying to survive. There are many examples of how authoritarian leaders end their lives in vain. And this is what the whole of Ukraine is fighting now, so as not to fall into the totalitarianism that the Russian Federation carries in itself,” says Mikhail.
State Border Guard Service of Ukraine
