MARINOVKA VIOLATIONS

NON-FICTION

Today, August 22, 2024, a fellow recorded a video on his phone as he witnessed the Marinovka air base, on the Don river in Volgograd Oblast, Russia, coming under assault from Ukrainian drones.

The footage is handheld and shaky. The bottom of the frame is golden fields of grass crossed by a low fence. As the video pans back and forth across the scene, what may be part of a livestock pen and farmhouse comes into view. The top of the frame is a treed horizon, about two kilometres away, and a light grey sky filling with dark and billowing plumes from earlier explosions. New explosions are seen going off as the video is being captured.

In the background narration accompanying the visuals, the rich language of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky can be heard. An older man is almost breathless. He speaks slowly with long pauses as he takes in the scene. The man's words roughly translate to:

There it is flying by. Fuck. Fucking flying over again, fuck.

It’s all fucking fucked up! Everything. It’s fucked as fuck.

They’re fucking bombing it since 3:30 in the morning, and they still are fucking it now.

It’s a serious tragedy, folks.

This is serious stuff. Everything's fucking burning. There's fucking smoke. It’s all fucking exploding.

And it's still fucking exploding. [The camera focuses on a sudden fireball and the mushroom cloud that follows]

That’s it. The airfield is fucking fucked.

This is very serious fucking stuff.

Very serious.

It's just fucked up. That’s really something else.

And all the new hangars are blowing up.

Everything's exploding.