Head of Combat Training Department of 3rd SAB Kyrylo Berkal (Kirt): We need to throw corrupt officials out of politics
-When I read information about you and asked my friends who knew you, they kept saying "legendary".Why do you think they call you legendary? How do you live with this definition?
-I don't know, nobody says that to me personally. It's a legend. I've been in the business for a long time, I know a lot of people. I can't say that I'm a legend, we still have to complete this story, complete this volume, to make any definition of "legend". I treat people like a human being. I learn from the best commanders and leaders and teach future commanders and leaders to do the same, taking into account our mistakes. I do not consider myself a legend, I believe that we have a strong team, a strong nation that needs to be fought for, created, revived from scratch.
-How many days were you in captivity and why do you say so little about your time there? Was it for security reasons?
-Yes, I give advice to soldiers, firstly, never be captured, but I also give advice to commanders on what to do in such cases. I was there for four months. I graduated from the National Aviation University with a degree in international law. I also studied the criminology of international terrorism. Just before my capture, I was re-reading the Geneva Convention, it was interesting, I saw that with my rank of "major" I was supposed to be paid 60 Swiss francs, but I didn't see any Swiss francs. They took away our uniforms and insignia, they beat us for wearing them, so I thought that in Yelenivka, where there were some violations, but it was just a flower. In the Donetsk detention centre in the basement, in Russia, in Taganrog, in Volgograd, they completely mock, kill and destroy our guys. First of all, they believe that they can cancel our combatant status and make us criminals, not international crimes, not war crimes, but domestic law, Russian law, the 'DPR', all this nonsense.
-Did they understand that you are you, that you are Kirt, that you are a figure?
-"I did everything to confuse them at the initial stage, I didn't want to play along, to do their work for them. And they are not the only ones, a lot of things are exaggerated for them. I'm not going to tell you much, so as not to really harm those who are there. Unfortunately, a lot of guys are there, a lot of them did not return. In captivity, I saw Russia, I saw the real Russia, the real DPR, I saw their changes. When the offensive started, we didn't know about it, we just got Russian propaganda, we were turned off, and music, rock and roll, appeared. The DPR people were running in, and then I heard, aha, they are mobilising this one, that one was torn away. They thought, what if the Ukrops come back, what are we going to do? So they ran. Like in the film about Mowgli: "Sher Khan, we'll go north, little jackal". There were many such jackals there. They had been taught since childhood that we had come to kill them, so when we were defenceless before them, they were given freedom, and they were able to bite us. And the second thought I have is that I was very afraid of that if I came back and our people did the same to them. I think if we are the same, bastards like them, then there is no difference between us. Then there is no difference for whom to fight for, if we have sunk, because it is a lowliness when you have all the power, when you understand that you will not get anything, you just mock the defenceless. I was still pleasantly surprised that our conditions are completely different. No matter how hard they try to twist it, thanks to propaganda.
-They constantly talk about being in captivity...
"Look at their faces, the colour of their skin, and our guys, half-destroyed, destroyed, with a completely distant look. Some of them we have brought back psychologically, and some we will never bring back, and it will be in you. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I have dreamt that I am in captivity again, it is the worst feeling in the world.
-Is it difficult not to break down psychologically?
-Well... It must be difficult, someone broke down. But there are certain means of self-regulation. These are your emotions, your family, your memories. The most important thing is memories. Once I read a perhaps clever book or article - don't invest in material things, invest in memories. That's why I love travelling. Every trip since my childhood, when my mother took me, all the memories I had with my wife, all our adventures, travels, I walked with her every morning in Istanbul. When we were given kisel once every hundred years, I imagined that it was a Turkish dessert called triscuit, and we were sitting in a café near the sultan's palace, eating my triscuit with a cappuccino, looking at the Bosphorus. Because all I can see is the sun's rays falling on our bars, we don't see the sky anywhere, only a blade of grass growing through the asphalt and these rays. And I imagine being in Istanbul with my wife - that's what saves me.
-"I should thank your wife for giving you such memories, you see, she may have saved you with these memories. It's just a mental thing.
-"Of course, it works very well. It's the magic of women: my mother, my wife, everyone who prayed for us, everyone who pulled us out. People in Thailand still pray for us and put Buddhas on their shelves for our return and victory.
-And how to return those who remain in captivity now? How do you see it? Do you have any recipe - on whom it depends?
-A recipe? It depends on everyone, on our victory, our joint efforts. Some of our successes, even the successes of our brigade, some of them, have given us some steps forward. I won't reveal anything now, I'm just saying that the success of us as Ukrainians is the success of every official, the success of every soldier, the success of every manager who is really fighting on the economic front, but has not just bought himself an indulgence in the form of a single donation. Donations, you know, like before, we go, some old lady is asking, some leper is asking, and we pay him off for 50 UAH. This will not happen to us, I gave 50 UAH. We even have a song - "Forgive me, guys, that I was not in the ATO". You can't pay off if we treat it as a payoff, and we are not fighting for this, we are doing our bit, because there were old ladies who saved up their pensions for a drone, so the contribution of this old lady, for whom half of her pension is all, minus 500 calories a day, is a huge contribution. And a person who has a fortune, a big pro of a million, and gives 100 hryvnias, 1000 hryvnias - these are different things. So it depends on everyone when we bring the victory closer, and each of our victories, each of our strengths, because Russia is like that, it only considers strength, when it sees our strength, it wants to buy time. To buy time, it makes certain concessions. And these concessions are the return of our guys.
-You defended Mariupol and now, a year later, have you found answers to all the questions that worried you? And about the amount of equipment that was available, you said that out of ten tanks, two were working, and why did this happen? Do you understand why now?
-"We'll find out, there is an answer, I'll give you a simple example. A week before the invasion of Mariupol, we held training for the population, training to prepare for combat operations, and I took a non-combat topic. We'll show you the assault rifle, but I don't want to turn you into a soldier in a day, it's impossible. I started with shelters, bomb shelters, I demonstrated, I told people to go straight to their basement and see what was there, whether there was a basement at all, whether there was a bomb shelter, and I showed them how it should be, showed them how they could create at least some kind of bomb shelter, even a handicraft one, out of simple things. We went to several heads of the district administration and asked what was there, where, how? They told us that in 15 year they forced us to do it, demanded another year, and by 16 year we had done everything, it was constantly checked, and then they abandoned us. We opened cafes, warehouses, vegetable depots, and storage facilities in the bomb shelters. That's it, most of the bomb shelters were not ready. Here's an example. The system. That is, our society is still like this. If a person had a slightly different mentality, realising that now it could happen, as it has already happened once, the shelling of the Skhidnyi neighbourhood and maybe, well, I don't know... If you have a child and today you protected him from the environment, from dangers, and in a day, he is three years old now, and then three and a half, and you - well, go for a walk, that's it, it's gone, it's settled. That's how we were, unfortunately. But this is upbringing. First of all, it's our upbringing, our mentality. We must at least once start thinking and living with these ideas, and I urge everyone to think back to the first days of the full-scale war, the first day of the invasion, the first month when the whole of Ukraine was consolidating. From Transcarpathia, to the west of Ukraine, to the centre, to the east, everyone consolidated, everyone even remembered the language or started learning it, everyone started helping each other defend each other. This is the feeling we need to recall now, not one hundred per cent, but at least seventy per cent of it, and hold on to it until we win. This is the main recipe for winning this war.
- Do you agree with the thesis that we have lost the unity that we had at the beginning of the full-scale invasion?
-"People have forgotten, but it can be recalled. We have an example, we have case law. We have a great precedent, we have it, and people need to take it up. I tell my recruits that when they finish the recruitment course and become full members of our organisation, they get our chevron - your main battle - with yourself. You have already won once, when you completed these courses, you did not break down, you already have a precedent and an example of your victory - the most important victory in life - victory over yourself. And no matter how hard it is in life, remember the time when you won once and do it again. Every Ukrainian should remember how he defeated himself for the first time. He didn't think about his salary, his lips, his vanilla raf coffee, his wealth, his Lexus, those kinds of things. He thought about the main thing - the safety of his family, country, and state. About our integrity - that we could lose our identity.
- You know, back then everyone thought that it would end quickly, we made it through to the end of the year, even until 2022, and then everyone saw that it was going to be a long time, and that's it, they relaxed.
-"We all always like quick results, so, you know, business schools, leadership schools that give you a certificate of a cool guy in three days are very cool. Because the alternative is to study at a university for 4-5 years, studying and practicing such tomes every day. And in three days, you get a certificate, a class, a great recipe. We need to educate. You know, the Soviet Union, the Soviet empire, specifically etched our warrior spirit, Ukraine, Ukrainian, Slav, Cossack, Rusyn, Druzhynnyk, Kharakternyk, Scythian, Sarmatian, always defended this land against the hordes that attacked us - Tatars, Mongolians, Hordes, Pechenegs - from the east, from the steppe, from the north. It's like in the Game of Thrones - we are the Night's Watch, which defended the human world from this army of the Night King. It's the same now, and we have to take into account that it is our destiny, our bread, our purpose to defend ourselves. In our tradition, you can be a farmer, an artist but you have a double profession, you are always a reserve, you are the guardian of this country. If there is a threat, the bells just ring, that's it - you put down your brush, put aside your work, take an axe, bow and spear and go to defend your country. I understand the heart of a mother, but many mothers let their children go, and many ran away from their mothers to defend their country. And thanks to these guys, we are still here with you, thanks to these guys, there will be a children's party in this hall after our interview. Because someone was not afraid to give up their child, their most precious thing. If we do not defend ourselves now, they will take our lives anyway, they will take something more than our lives, they will take our identity and freedom.
-How do you assess the past year, 2023? We can talk about our advances, about the counter-offensive, which we talked about a lot on the air, but it happened as it happened. How do you generally assess the past year from a military point of view?
-From a military point of view... Let me compare 2023 with 2022. When I, as a military man who had already served for 8.5 years, studied Western, old Soviet and Ukrainian books and compared the capabilities, forces and means of the Russian armada with our own. I thought that Mariupol could hold out for three weeks, Ukraine for a month, and we have been beating them for two years. We've already burned Soviet tanks... The world's other armies did this a hundred years ago. No one has done this to them for so long. We sent so many Russians in this package, even this song "Vanka-Vstanka", when I returned from captivity, it inspired me. Even if Ukrainian pop is like this, we have a chance. We have the only chance now, and we have never had such a chance during the existence of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, to destroy this threat and eventually gain our independence forever. Yes, it's hard, but remember how all the soldiers, advisers, intelligence, everyone gave us a month and a half. General Richard Shirreff, the former commander of NATO forces in Europe, in his 2015 book "The War with Russia", in his alternative history, gave Ukraine three days and seven days to suppress pockets of resistance. We have been at war for two years now. Yes, the counter-offensive did not work.
-Were we right to talk about a counter-offensive then, or should we have voiced it at all?
"I don't even understand what is going on, we are discussing such narratives, we should not talk about the counter-offensive, but about our guys and focus on this direction. In captivity, I heard that they have a programme called "We will break through, despite the sanctions". In it, they talk about how bad things are for them because import substitution is not working. We should have programmes about how difficult it is for us and look for ways out of this, give advice, specific advice in each area, hold seminars, discussions, discourses about finding specific answers. In every area. There is no need to think about these things that do not depend on us. Do what you have to do and it will happen. We need everyone to do what they can in their place. Because this is our prediction, it irritates the military very much, because behind every metre... What did they do, liberate a kilometre? What a kilometre. I run a kilometre in 4 minutes, and these guys ran this kilometre at the cost of ten of their best friends, twenty more lost their health, yet, there are far more Russians lying across this kilometer of land. That is, this kilometre is watered with our sacred blood and their rotten meat. There's no need to measure or compare, there's no need to help, there's no need to help and inspire, so that even when your muscles in the trench are cramping from the cold, you reach for your phone and see people saying, 'Come on, guys, we're with you.' And that gives more strength than thinking about our next offensive, counter-offensive. We need to change, we need to learn in our respective positions. We need to make changes, implement reforms faster.
-You know, it's probably not just the responsibility of people, of each of us, indeed, there is, but there is also the responsibility of certain politicians.
-Of course.
-Yes, politicians, let's talk in general, without personalities, they also voice certain things, they also fascinate us.
-Fascinate.
-They tell us things that, unfortunately, do not correspond to reality, and someone believes and then is disappointed.
-"There is a moral and psychological support, so some of them created the wrong narratives or misallocated the focuses that were needed. Yes, at the beginning, we needed to remove this fear, this myth of Russian tanks coming - it had to be removed, everything would be cool, relaxed. That's it, we've calmed down. Now we need a narrative like this - a total war, so to speak. No matter how disgusting it sounds. Yes, there is a place for rest and celebration in this war, but 95% of the time you have to work, you have to fight, this is war. When you put everything personal on the third, fifth, tenth plan. This is a collective game. It's not about legends, heroes, or individuals who win. Only society wins here. One just blindly rolls and is rolled, while the other can stand and not let them roll on you.
-How do you feel about mobilisation in general in the country and how do you see it this year? How do you feel about the thesis that we are running out of people, which is what the military people who come to me for interviews say?
-Yes, he arrives, he has lost his friend, three of his friends have gone to recovery, some of them will never recover, some of them are missing a limb, he is joking, joking about his lost leg, and then looks away because he is in pain everywhere, he understands that he will not return to normal life and he thought he would, but something is not working. So his pain is understandable. You can understand them all. Yes, we need mobilisation. We are at war against a country that is mobilising its resources. That is, my whole speech is about the fact that this is everyone's business. Mobilisation is necessary and total, but the distribution of human resources should be much better. We need to keep business and management specialists, business managers, HR managers, we don't just need assault soldiers. Anyone who is unhealthy, completely unhealthy, goes to serve. Are you a barber, a hairdresser? Yes, we need barbers there as well. The US army has special barbers, cafes, military shops where military people work and serve, and we need this too. We just need IT people, because nowadays they are trying to transfer everything into technology in modern units, everything that is allowed by law. I have already transferred all the tests into a Google form and, firstly, I am saving the world, I am not wasting paper, the beavers will live happily, and secondly, it is much more convenient, it optimises working time, we need to optimise the resources we have. If we optimise the resources we have, we will be surprised. This is the phenomenon of the Azov units - we had no template and no stops. We saw where we were going and used all the technology, our spirit, our strength, and everything we had to achieve the result. Today, the result is victory. The Israeli army employs autistic people, people with certain disorders, for certain jobs. Because these people can look at monitors for hours, identify targets without losing concentration. Maybe we need to learn this? Everyone can be used correctly. If everyone in their place gives 200 per cent, you can find a job for them according to their own, my commander and I like to use a Japanese term called "do". This is the business that brings you inner harmony, in which you open up to the maximum and use all your strength, follow the path of improvement in this business. In war, military service, you can find something for everyone. Someone can be trained, yes, young, healthy, yes, we will take them into the infantry, but if they have great potential, they are super-IT people, we need such people like oxygen, these people will be able to do much more with their brains than if they were the best shooters, skilled cross-fit athletes. And we need such people too.
-That barber you mentioned or the IT guy, does he have to come to the army himself or should a TCC employee come to him and explain that there is a list of things we offer you?
- Comprehensively. We need to optimise mobilisation, completely change the system, take away these women with such hairstyles who have been rude to soldiers for thirty years and put girls from call centres, people who already have experience of dealing with customers, optimise this process, and explain it to people. We have fear only in one case - when there is no information. I teach my junior commanders to provide information to their personnel. Information flows both from the bottom up and from the top down. And this process of information exchange is constant. That's how we have to provide information, but also campaign - come yourself, why drag you away? You will have more time to prepare.
- You know there will be no queue.
-There will be no queue, because this is the attitude, I'm sorry. All parents should think about what they want. That now, yes, they are saving a child, but then the enemy comes and kills this child in front of their eyes and the child will not be ready. This is a collective game, a collective war. We will only win together, everyone will be destroyed one by one, no matter how tough they are.
-International support - how do you see it this year? What is your attitude to the expectation that international support may decrease and we will receive less money than we did a year ago?
-"I have calculated the worst case scenario. If you even shoot soldiers with old Soviet binoculars, without copters, without everything, you have to have a plan B. I mean, I have a plan B, I teach people, but I believe that this year we will finally start to implement this ethereal, beautiful phrase "defeat corruption". How many proteges of the corrupt Kuchma will go to jail, how many will be thrown out of politics, how many will be thrown out of schemes and turnovers. We will take into account all the recommendations and suggestions made by the European Commission and our partners, and we will start listening to them, learning from others, and not shying away from our own. We will start to optimise this process, and we will do even more than we have been doing. And we will use what we have much more efficiently. Yes, we will always lack a hundred more radios, a hundred more tanks, we always want more, to make it cool and easy, but you learn to use what you have more efficiently. Because our efficiency means the lives and health of our guys, and the lives of our enemies that we will take because they came to us.
-How will Russia behave this year? They are determined to fight, probably not for a year or two. What do you think their actions will be, and is it possible that the Russian Federation will launch another full-scale offensive against Kyiv and Kharkiv, as they say?
-He's going on now, you know, there's an American term - action - action, reaction - reaction to this action, and counter-reaction. That is, we had our action, our counter-offensive, their counter-action - they repelled it, and their counter-action - they are going to go on their offensive after that, it is expected. I know they will push, push, they will. They have taken the technology and now put the industry on military rails, they are riveting drones in batches, that's it. Previously, only volunteers, it was very difficult for them to put it into service with this Soviet system, to use it when a thousand colonels say "not according to the charter, comrade". That's it, they are adapting too. The army that will be the most adaptive, that will move away from clichés, that is, we see that we now have to throw all our resources at counteracting this.
-Are we throwing?
-"We are throwing everything, the 3rd Assault Brigade is throwing all the resources, our families who surround us, the entire Azov movement, the three Azov units are throwing everything into this cause, we are developing and we are thinking about how we will fight in a year, what we will face in a year, and we are preparing for it. We received a million from volunteers and quickly built a barracks and a gym. In two months, the guys are already living and training there, whereas if they were to use public funds, through a tender, the same thing would happen, but three times worse, because the materials are worse, the time frame is three times worse, and the money is much higher.
-Do you admit that we could be at war with the Russian Federation for many years?
-"You know, I didn't think that I would be sitting next to you now, I didn't think that I would survive March 2022, our ancestors fought all their lives, yes, the horde came, they beat them out, they left. This is our destiny, that is, it is not all, yes, we have to adapt to it. Again, I believe that we will defeat them in a year or two, and I will be able to return to my business in Thailand, which I have forgotten how to run, and maybe I will need some experience as a commander, but there is an option that I will have to continue to pull my fate and do what I have to do. So we have to learn this stoicism: what we can influence, we influence, what we cannot influence, we don't have to... I even try to teach myself not to get angry, not to feel emotions in traffic jams, because I can't influence them anymore, and sometimes it works.
- Really?!
-Sometimes it works.
-It's your experience.
-Sometimes it works.
-You say several times that we will win if we win... How do you see victory?
- Victory is the destruction of the enemy's will, and their will, the enemy's will, is the destruction of us, and that will be victory when we break this spine. This can be done in three ways: cyber warfare, psychological warfare, and economic warfare. That is, to push all this so far that their will is broken, and they give up the will to devour the people. To influence other people. You have to fight as long as you have to, because the reverse medal is worse, it's worse than life. Therefore, we will have to live like this, we will have to continue to lose the best, to train the young, to lose the best.
-Have you lost a lot of your best?
- I lost a lot, a lot. I have seen that strength comes from analysing and learning from your mistakes, teaching people, the future generation of commanders, from my mistakes so that they never make them again, and learning from the mistakes of our predecessors.
- How motivated are the fighters you are recruiting now? What is the motivation of the guys now?
- The guys who drew us a letter in 2014 come and say, 'We watched your video, I went to the 5th grade'. These are different young people. I am very impressed. When I came back from captivity, I was euphoric, because the people here are so excited - wow, wow, I turn on an advert, I think it's some kind of special forces advert, and it's Nasha Ryaba carrying humanitarian convoys, it's so beautifully done. The people are all so friendly, so down to business, the dog Patron, Vanka-Vstanka. It's really cool. Young people are charged up, young people are no longer for Sasha Belyi. They are trying to exert this political and psychological influence again. Boys. The word of a boy. All these jokes to throw up. That's it, we have our own tough guys... Krakow, Azov, the 93rd, paratroopers, marines, the National Guard. We have our own tough guys who have been trained in a modern way. Not the old adverts about shovels and armoured personnel carriers, but a beautiful Ukrainian product. When this visa-free regime started, people saw a better product, saw Europe, they came back and created much more interesting, cool craft, cafes and shops in Ukraine. There is no such thing in the world anymore, there is already such a tourist consumerism, but we have our soul, our creativity, this potential. And the young people are the same, I am very pleased with the young people, they will win and we will do everything to help them win and we will be together with them. When I came to the brigade, I saw how in a short time, that is, we had been creating the Azov regiment there for years, it was a process, during the war there was fear, loss of friends, but they had evolved and achieved what we achieved in 5 years, so war is also a forge of progress and it allows guys to develop. Nowadays, young people at the age of 19-20 have a lot of life experience and a path, I didn't have it at 25 when I first came to the war, so they already have it. And people will be wiser.
-Where do you get your motivation? Your eyes are burning.
- And I take motivation from them, I remember back in 2019, I was burned out, I was completely burned out because of certain cases. But young soldiers who wanted to become sergeants and instructors came and said, "Guys, we watched your video and were motivated, and I joined the army because of it. Then we trained them, made them sergeants, and they showed results. Then we trained them as instructors, they started teaching and they showed results, and that's it, my eyes are burning, I understand that they need me. I can't, if I show that I've given up, that I've broken down, it will be hard for them. That's what motivates me, that they need me and I need to constantly recreate myself from the ashes like this Phoenix bird and fly on and light up the whole world around me. We used to have a poster where I was just shoved in for no reason, we will ignite the flame of hearts. Our task is to ignite this flame, which will erase and destroy this horde from the east, and after that it will rain and sprout roots and Ukrainian sunflowers and other beautiful flowers.
-And what about you, if you burn out, as you say, burn out, or get tired, does it happen often? What causes you to wake up and feel discouraged, like everything is not going right, like everything is wrong, not the way you want it to be?
- Controlling your emotions all the time, following some kind of emotional high, will lead to a decline, it's like drinking coffee. At first, you have a lot of energy, and then you lose it, fade away. Emotionally, it's the same, we need to learn to control our emotions. When I communicate, teach a course, give a lecture, and then analyse previous actions, if possible, I will spend half a day or a day not talking to anyone, reading a book, catching up on Zen Buddhism, and recovering. We have to recover in this way, to find this time. That is, time should be used wisely - here is the family, here is the wife, here are the friends, a simple book, a film.
-What would you say to Ukrainians now, who will watch you and want to change their position?
"I have already said, Ukrainians, remember yourselves, how you consolidated at the beginning of a full-scale war, return to these feelings and charge everyone. To change the world, to defeat Russia in this war, you must first defeat yourself. Defeat yourself every day and Russia will run away.
- Thank you very much, I've been inspired by you. If I go through any difficult period in my life, I know who to call.
-Come to our school, courses, or brigade.
-Thank you.
