With his sun-leathered face and squinting blue eyes fixed on the horizon, the silent Ukrainian sniper resembles an old sea dog, sailing his land cruiser across the rolling plains of western Ukraine.
Viktor’s camouflage trousers and insignia identify him as a fighter with Praviy Sektor (Right Sector) the nationalist paramilitary group which was last year incorporated into the Ukrainian armed forces. His reputation as an ace sniper precedes him.
At our second refuelling stop, I can no longer contain my curiosity and ask to talk to Viktor. Seated at a shaded picnic table beside the petrol station, he reflects on his own life, on history and on killing Russians.
Praviy Sektor started at the 2013-2014 Euromaidan protests, when men like Viktor took up arms against the pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, after Yanukovych pulled out of an association agreement with the EU.
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I ask Viktor if he carried his Makarov revolver at Maidan. “Not just,” he replies. “I always had weapons.” The white rosary with a crucifix dangling from his rear-view mirror is another souvenir of Maidan. “We wore them so we could recognise each other. When Russia seized Crimea (in February 2014) we started forming military battalions, as resistance units.”
Viktor was decorated for the 2014-2015 battles of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, and again last year for his role in what he calls “the liberation of Kyiv”. He evades a question about what that entailed.
Has he killed and seen men being killed? I finally ask Viktor. “This is all I’ve been doing for years,” he replies with an ironic laugh that seems to suggest regret. So why does he do it?
“It seems like a simple question,” he says. There is a very long pause, and a sigh. “For centuries there was never a period when Russia did not start a fight with Ukraine. When they entered cities, the same things happened as in Bakhmut this year and in Bucha last year, but they always erased history.”
Viktor takes out his smartphone and shows me a photograph of himself in Afghanistan in 1984. He had joined the Soviet army. “I was an aggressor in Afghanistan,” he says ruefully. “I acknowledge I was a fascist in relation to the Afghan people.”
When the Soviet Union collapsed, “We got access to information and I started studying history and I analysed it for myself and I realised that Russia always persecuted Ukraine,” Viktor says. “Praviy Sektor is a group of people who need no explanation why you need to destroy Russians on our land.”
There were three wives and two children along the way, but one senses that Praviy Sektor has been Viktor’s real family. Was he ever wounded? “That’s secret,” he says at first, then adds, smiling, “I have 20 bullet holes in my body.”
The Russians claim that Praviy Sektor are fascists and Nazis. Is there any truth in that? I ask Viktor.
“They think they see fascists everywhere,” he replies. “This is not true, but in a way, we play a game with the Russians, because we know it needles them.” He shows me another image in his smartphone, of himself in a black T-shirt emblazoned with a Nazi war eagle, except that the eagle’s talons hold a trident, the symbol of Ukraine since the 10th century, instead of a swastika.
The iron cross on Viktor’s keychain catches my eye. It bears the same eagle and is engraved with worn German text. One can still distinguish the word Polizei. “It belonged to my grandfather,” Viktor explains. “He was in the Soviet army, and he brought it home as a trophy.”
Another photo in the smartphone shows Viktor with his American-made .50 caliber sniper rifle, a new acquisition since the February 2022 invasion. He shows me video of a soldier lying on his stomach to fire the weapon, tells how the recoil bruises the shooter.
The rifle fires armour-piercing, exploding bullets, he explains. “First you send a drone to track the vehicle. If you hit the ammo stack, it kills everyone inside, from a distance of three or four kilometres.”
Viktor’s hair and beard are greying. At age 57, he says he’s too old to continue as a sniper. He doesn’t know how many men he has killed. “But I have friends doing the same thing, and they have killed 700 targets since 2014.”
So much killing. Doesn’t it make him sad? “It makes me sad that Ukrainians are dying,” Viktor replies. “But it warms my heart that the Russians are dying too.”