https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/europe...ing-in-ukraine
A Kiwi soldier fighting under Ukraine’s military intelligence says he’s prepared to die.
Kane Te Tai, code name Turtle, is fighting in a secretive reconnaissance unit on Ukraine’s front line in the eastern Donetsk region.
After deaths, injuries and resignations, Te Tai now leads the Foreign Reconnaissance Team after only joining in July.
As Te Tai was interviewed, he had to be careful his phone wasn’t too bright, so as to not give his unit away to any Russian drones flying overhead.
“We live on the line, we just occupy whatever place we can find at the time.
If it gets too hot we just find somewhere else,” he told Stuff.
“The last three vehicles we’ve had, in the last month, they’ve been hit with artillery. Holes in the front, s... just smashed through.”
“I remember just looking at everyone in the pit and we all had this look on our faces like, ‘well, the party had to end some time’. We had this feeling of acceptance.”
But, just as the next shell was set to kill the team, it flew off somewhere else and the Russians then began to bomb regressively back along the tree line.
“
By divine intervention we missed getting smashed... We all knew we were supposed to die that night.”
“Pretty much from the second they take you into the camp,
they don’t tell you what’s going on.
“They operate it like a psychological test, to see if
you can be just told what to do and not know any other parameters,” he said.
“When you talk to someone, it’s always a cover story, you’re never talking to who you think you’re talking to,” Te Tai said
“As soon as we pulled up...
Dom had no shirt on... he said, ‘let’s do some work’.”
“I was like ‘my man!’.”
Abelen had put in a good word for him with Ukrainian intelligence, Te Tai said.
He gave Te Tai the code name of Turtle, after he had originally named himself Talon.
Talon was too cool, Abelen said
“There’s a
high attrition rate either by death, injury, or guys wanting to leave.”
At night Te Tai
watches Netflix and YouTube fail compilations to decompress. Sometimes, he hears the Russians shelling, keeping him awake.
“Don’t get me wrong, I don’t find anything glorious about killing young mobilised Russian boys who are crying in their trenches,” he said.
“I’m willing to die, for sure, but I don’t want to die.”
Te Tai has no plans to leave and wants to attend a victory day parade in Kyiv.
“I know we’re
going to win,
I know that for sure,” he said.
“I’m staying
here until I can’t take it any more, or I am dead.”
Here he is showing us how many mens assholes he's been inside of this week