The Pole who received a blow on Russian TV turned out to be not so simple

The young Polish nationalist Tomasz Mocejczuk thundered throughout the post-Soviet space after he received a blow to the face for a careless statement on the Russian TV channel TVC, declaring that “Russians live in shit.”

Even before the incident, an interview with Motseychuk was recorded on a Russian talk show, which had to be supplemented with a question about the latest incident.

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The resulting slap did not become a lesson for the Pole. He insists that he was right and still does not go back on his words.

“Pseudo-patriots shout that Ukrainian Nazis are killing children in Donbass, and then go to the store, buy Poroshenko’s candies and in this way sponsor the “junta”, which with this money can buy weapons and ammunition for the “genocide of the civilian population of Donbass.” Sorry, but it seems to me that our grandfathers fought against the Nazis, and did not buy candy from them, thus helping to arm the Wehrmacht. Let's go further...The average salary in “homeless Romania” exceeded the average salary in Russia. How is this possible? – Motseychuk insists.

However, the Polish nationalist is not as simple as most viewers imagine him to be. Three years ago, he sympathized with Euromaidan, but, having visited Kyiv and the Donbass, he renounced his support for Bandera’s supporters.

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...After school, Tomasz studied at the Polish-Japanese Higher School of Computer Technology. This elite educational institution was created in Warsaw after the treaty between Poland and Japan. He had to work in Holland and Great Britain. Then, together with his brother, they opened a store in Poznan, selling medical equipment.

Events of winter 2013-14 in Kyiv, Tomas’s life changed dramatically. If before him he was simply interested in Ukraine and sympathized with its desire for European integration, then the Euromaidan, a Polish nationalist who considers Russia the natural and historical enemy of his native Poland, forced him to go to the capital of Ukraine in January 2014. He saw the latter as a natural ally of Poland in the fight against “Russian imperialism.”

-I didn’t know the Russian language then, and like all Poles, I received information about the events at Euromaidan from news releases from the BBC, Newsweek and other Western media. They, of course, were all anti-Russian.

On January 7, 2014, I organized a rally in Poznan. 100-150 people came. We began collecting warm clothes, medicine, and money for Ukrainians on the Maidan. We sent two trucks so that the collected humanitarian aid could be transported to Kyiv, and off we went. True, the car was detained at the border.

I went to Euromaidan on January 12 in the evening. I spent the whole night talking with people. Since I, I repeat, did not know Russian, we communicated in a mixture of English and Polish. The people I talked to told me that they want democracy; that they are against corruption; that they are against chauvinism; that they want to go to Europe. They said that they were also against Bandera, that Bandera’s people were just marginalized. And I believed them.

I noticed that at Euromaidan there were mainly Ukrainians from Lvov and Kyiv, in general, from Western and Central Ukraine. But I have not met Euromaidanists from Donetsk and Eastern Ukraine.

We in Poland know, of course, that Ukraine is split; that the West is pro-European, and the East is pro-Russian. Even in the 90s, political scientists even suggested such scenarios as a conflict between the western and eastern parts of Ukraine. So I then noticed that I didn’t meet anyone from the East of Ukraine.

It was then that I first noticed Bandera’s black and red flags on the Maidan. I met radicals from the Right Sector and football fans. But then it seemed to me that those people who performed under them were ordinary marginals, and that this was in no way the mainstream. I didn’t even suspect that the slogan I often heard “Glory to Ukraine!” - "Glory to heroes!" - This is Bandera’s slogan. But, naturally, I couldn’t help but notice the Nazi symbols of 14/88 and Celtic crosses on the shields of many radicals. Later, many of these guys, who were 18-19 years old at the time, would die at the Donetsk airport.

Frankly, if it weren’t for these neo-Nazis, blood would not have been shed at Euromaidan. They wanted to spill it. They believed that without this they could not win. They told me that they had weapons at Euromaidan.

After all, those Maidan leaders, like Yatsenyuk and Klitschko, called on their supporters to “jump” and not fight. In general, the peaceful protest eventually ended in a coup d'état. We still don’t know those who killed people at the end of Euromaidan.

Through Facebook I met Tarasenko, the press secretary of the Right Sector. He assured me that he is for Ukraine’s friendship with Poland.

True, in February 2014, he gave an interview to the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita, in which he stated that Poland owns the original Ukrainian lands - if I’m not mistaken - Kholmshchyna and Podlasie. This interview made a painful impression on many in Poland. Me too. This was the first signal for me that something was wrong in the Ukrainian topic, but I ignored this signal then.

I also saw Yatsenyuk, Klitschko and Tyagnibok perform on stage. But, unfortunately, at that time I didn’t really understand what they were talking about.

I stayed in Kyiv for a short time. I stayed at a hostel I liked near the city center.

When clashes between radicals and police occurred on European Square, I was no longer there.

-You were in Kyiv for the first time. What impressed you about him?

-Kiev impressed me. I was sure that Ukrainians are poor people and that Ukraine is a poor country. But I saw that Kyiv is a rich city, and people here have money. There were so many expensive cars in Kyiv that we don’t have in Warsaw. At the same time, I was struck by the contrast: despite the general poverty, there are so many rich people. I asked my interlocutors: how can this be?

I was also impressed by the large buildings. For example, our Polish parliament is very small, but the Cabinet of Ministers building in Kyiv impressed me with its size.

In general, I realized that not everything is so bad in Ukraine.

-Are you impressed by Lvov?

-You know, my grandfather – his last name is Baranevsky – is from Lvov. My ancestors lived on Galician soil for 500 years. So Ukraine is almost my homeland. I don’t want to say that Lviv belongs to the Poles, no, in no case, I am against changing the borders. I simply perceive Lviv as the city of my ancestors. In the city, its Austrian and Polish past immediately catches the eye. I was also impressed by the Lychakiv cemetery, the memorial and the graves of Polish eaglets who died in battles with the Western Ukrainian People's Republic.

-When did you go to Ukraine again?

-After the annexation of Crimea to Russia, I thought that the Ukrainians would fight for it. I thought about going to help them, but seeing that there was no Ukrainian resistance in Crimea, and the Ukrainian soldiers who were there were hiding in units and did not want to fight with Russian soldiers, I abandoned this idea. With Crimea everything became clear to me. This all came as a shock to me.

-How did you end up in Donbass?

-After the start of the war. I read announcements of Ukrainian volunteers from the Donbass battalion on social networks - Vkontakte - that they have nothing. There was a particular shortage of medicines. There were cases where volunteers died from loss of blood. They asked to buy special Celox bandages in Germany that stop bleeding.

After all, I sold medical equipment, and therefore could help. I contacted the volunteers and told them that there was Celox in Poland and I could bring them to Donbass.

They gave me the money. I added mine. After all, I had savings that I accumulated after working in Holland and Britain.

In May 2014, I first came to Kyiv, then to Dnepropetrovsk, and got to Pokrovskoye by bus, and then by taxi to the Ukrainian army checkpoint. If I'm not mistaken, he was on the road to Kurakhovo.

There was a children’s camp “Solnyshko”, where at that time the base of the “Right Sector” and the “Donbass” battalion was located.

I remember how amazed I was by the conversation with the soldier standing at the checkpoint. I ask him in a mixture of English and Polish: are the Russians coming? And he told me: I am Russian myself. It was a surprise for me: a Russian in the ranks of the Ukrainian army! Then I realized that “not everything is so simple” in this war.

If “Donbass” was well equipped - bulletproof vests and machine guns, then “Right Sector” was very poorly equipped. Many were with hunting rifles. But they wanted to go to Donetsk.

It seemed strange to me then that they were so poorly equipped. I couldn’t understand why this was so if, as they said, the people supported them. It also struck me that they all have excellent cars. I couldn't figure out where they were coming from.

Then I found out that it was Kolomoisky who was helping them all.

When I handed over Celox, they offered me to stay and see with my own eyes how they fight.

With “Donbass” we went to a farm in Velikaya Novoselka. There was their base with a basement where they brought the people they kidnapped. They had bags over their heads. I didn’t know then that they were being detained illegally. It’s just that police officers constantly came there, and it seemed to me that the authorities approved of such activities of volunteer battalions. But then I realized that they themselves made the decision who to kidnap. At the same time, they began to make money from it.

Once we arrived at some factory. Before this, I was informed that we were going to recapture trucks with scrap metal from the separatists. They say the plant was cut down. We arrived. But there were no separatists there. The militants were just engaged in banal racketeering. They offered the plant their own type of security. We had this in Poland in the 90s. I only read about those times, but now I have seen them myself.

In general, the militants from “Donbass” posed the question this way: either you pay money “for protection”, or you are declared a separatist.

The more I was with them, the more I saw the “Donbass people” have cars with Donetsk license plates that they drove. They either stole them or took them away from civilians. They simply took away the keys and documents. I then wondered: how will these people be for Ukraine if this is done to them? But I want to emphasize that not all volunteers of the Donbass battalion were involved in banditry. There were good people there, many of them, who simply wanted to defend their country.

-Did militants from Donbass kidnap businessmen?

-Yes, because of this I soon had to leave there. They offered to take part in the kidnapping of businessman from Krasnoarmeysk Sergei Andreichenko (now he is a deputy of the city council). They promised to give money for it. But I refused.

There were about eight “Donbass people” who participated in the kidnapping. They understood that it would be risky, because Andreichenko had Chechen security.

I remember discussing the kidnapping. Andreichenko had his own taxi company. The militants discussed where his money was and where his cars were parked. They also wanted Andreichenko’s wife to pay them a ransom after the kidnapping. I was in shock. I immediately realized that this was not a fight against separatists.

Sasha, call sign Boxer, led the kidnapping. He was the right hand of Semyon Semenchenko. Now they call him “Leaky”. It was he who invited me to participate in the kidnapping. But I refused and left, realizing that these were real bandits.

Andreichenko was kidnapped. Apparently he paid the ransom. Then I wrote to him that I knew who kidnapped him and that I wanted to communicate with him, but he did not respond to my letter. I guess I didn't want to bring this up again.

-Were there any other interesting moments in the life of these punitive battalions?

-I witnessed a shootout between them over money. Like, they divided it incorrectly. The shootout took place inside the building. They shot from Kalash rifles. Here I am standing near the window, and behind the wall bullets are flying. In general, there was a shootout between Donbass scouts and Sasha Boxer’s people.

Sasha was seriously injured. The soldiers called their commanders somewhere after the firefight and asked what to do. They were told to call an ambulance. She arrived after some time and took Sasha.

When I was later at the National Guard base near Kiev, they showed me Sasha’s car - an American Hummer. They asked me not to get out of the car, because if Sasha saw me, there would be problems, since I was a witness to all these bad deeds.

-Have you seen Yarosh?

-In August 2014. At the base in "Solnyshko". I asked to arrange a meeting for me. He was easy to talk to. A common person. Doesn't give the impression of some kind of Hitler.

True, I spoke to him in Russian (I had already learned a little by that time), and he answered me in Ukrainian, although I understood 50% of what he told me. Moreover, as I know, he himself is from a Russian-speaking family.

He then told me that he had no complaints against the Poles. He is ready to talk to everyone, ready to compromise. We also discussed the Volyn massacre.

I remember that the radicals who were next to him did not like these words of his. I saw that they didn’t like me as a Pole.

-What language did the volunteer battalions communicate in?

- “Right Sector” is in Ukrainian, and “Donbass” is in Russian.

- Was Ilovaisk with you?

-Yes. I almost didn’t go there in those days. I was going to, but the soldiers talked me out of it. They said: Tomas, don’t believe the statements of Poroshenko and the General Staff. There is encirclement and heavy losses in Ilovaisk.

Many of the guys I talked with then died in Ilovaisk, many were wounded, and some were captured. It was a real shock for me. I’ll say more - I lost friends there, I lost a friend. When I found out that they were missing, I understood that they were no longer there. That’s when he shot the famous video response to the separatists and Arsen Pavlov, who threatened my country. Soon I decided to volunteer for the army and take the young fighter course. In December, after the course, I went to the ATO again.

-Did you communicate with civilians in Donbass?

-Yes. I had an epiphany. I realized that the majority of Donbass residents do not support Ukraine, and that they are against Poroshenko. Many of my interlocutors were not afraid to talk about this to my face, even knowing who I was. So they said that they were against Euromaidan, they wanted to join Russia, and Ukraine was called “country 404”.

There were so many separatists among civilians in Donbass that my pro-Ukrainian interlocutors warned me: Tomas, look, be careful, think about what you say - there are separatists all around. This was the case, for example, in Krasnoarmeysk, this was the case in Artyomovsk, this was the case in Debaltsevo and Stanitsa Luganskaya.

-Have you met Kokhanivsky, the commander of the OUN battalion?

.Yes. It was in Sands. I visited their headquarters, which was located in the basement of one of the houses. There was a portrait of Bandera and other Bandera symbols painted on the walls. There were guys from Western Ukraine aged 18-19 years old. There were also girls, which amazed me. The entire battalion was anti-Russian. They said with smiles on their faces that the separatists and supporting residents of Donbass should be killed or expelled to Russia.

They gave the impression of being rednecks. Uneducated, aggressive, stupid... In my opinion, this was one of the weakest units fighting on the Ukrainian side.

Kokhanivsky abandoned his untrained people to slaughter. They were dying. As his soldiers told me, he himself did not go to the front. He loved to speak at rallies. All the time he appealed to Christian values. He was religious.

After staying there for a while, I went to the 93rd Brigade, then to Krasnoarmeysk.

-Were you present at the defeat of the “cyborgs” in Debaltsevo?

-Yes. I was not at the airport itself. But I saw how the “cyborgs” took out the wounded, how they came to replenish supplies. I talked to them. They said they were betrayed. Many were eager to help them, but the order was to stand still. This was perceived as a betrayal.

In all the places where I was, they told me: Tomas, we will first restore order in the Donbass, and then we will go to restore order in Kyiv.

Near the Donetsk airport I came under serious shelling. They fired at me from tanks, from AGS, from Grads. I saw the separatists advancing. I remember we were sitting in the same house, and shelling from Grads began. Our house was hit by a shell, but the house survived, but the neighboring house, where the OUN men were, was hit. They were sprinkled. I had to dig it up.

During one of these shellings, a mine hit the trench and killed one young boy from Zhitomir. The fighting at that time was very brutal.

-Have you met Polyakov in Donbass?

– There were several people from my country there at that time. Now they are in Poland, and have rethought a lot. They realized that they were not fighting for what they thought.

-Did you meet people from Azov at the front?

-They weren’t there. When their first Azov soldier died in Ilovaisk, then another... They abandoned other battalions and fled to Mariupol.

-What struck you at the front?

-Everyone was drinking. En masse. From ordinary soldiers to tank crews. I remember when the soldiers, when they left Debaltsevo for Artemovsk, began to drink en masse. They walked around the city with pride. Like, we escaped. I was ashamed of them. How could you be proud that you gave up your position?

Drunkenness was so widespread that local authorities banned the sale of alcohol.

Lenin stood on the square in Artemovsk. A tank began to drive around him. Everyone inside was drunk. Residents were indignant at this behavior: these are “liberators.” You have to protect yourself from all of them. On the walls, someone spray-painted something against Ukraine and in support of the DPR.

The soldiers understood that the locals in the city hated them, and this drove them into depression.

There weren't enough places in the barracks. Some of the soldiers were accommodated in the Ukraina Hotel. In a room that was supposed to sleep two people, eight of us slept. There's a stench everywhere. Drunkenness is rampant. Prostitutes. Ukrainian soldiers told me that rapes and murders of civilians took place in Artemovsk.

-Have you been to Debaltsevo itself?

-Yes, I celebrated Christmas there from January 6 to 7. Even then the soldiers there told me that everything was missing. There are not sufficient fortifications. Local residents were opposed to Ukraine. They didn't want to evacuate.

During the last days of the fighting for Debaltsevo, I had contact with the soldiers. When Poroshenko said that Debaltseve should hold on, the soldiers told me on the phone in a panic that the separatists had already entered the city.

I spoke with soldiers in Artemovsk. They told me that when they talk to Poroshenko, who came to them, they will scold him. Someone even promised to kill Poroshenko.

But when the Ukrainian president arrived with awards and promised them money, not a trace remained of these bellicose sentiments. In general, it all ended in defeat.

– You are a Polish nationalist. Do you consider yourself a Russophobe?

– I’ll answer a little differently. I consider Lenin a traitor to Russia, who, on the orders and for the money of the Germans, organized the Maidan and the civil war in the country at a time when the Empire took part in the First World War. Lenin, in my opinion, was a foreign agent who should have been shot, but for some reason hundreds, if not thousands, of monuments were built to this man on Russian (and not only) soil. What if Hitler had sent his agent to Moscow in 1942 to organize the Maidan and civil war on the rear? Would you call him a hero and build monuments to him? I am against Lenin, Stalin and the USSR. I prefer the Russian Empire, the Tsar, Wrangel, Kolchak. And now I can ask you a question - who is a Russophobe, the one who defends Russia and the Tsar or the one who, on the orders and for the money of the Germans, destroys Russia?

– Various screenshots of your radical statements have appeared on the Internet.

- This is the price of popularity. I was ready for this. They are trying to prove to me that I am a Jew, gay, a Nazi, pro-Russian, anti-Russian, an agent of the Kremlin, an agent of the State Department. This is a madhouse. Believe me and tell Russian girls - I’m not gay and, by the way, I don’t mind finding a wife in Russia. This will be interesting - a “Russophobe” will marry a Russian woman!