The Kazakh Banderite: a former marine from Kazakhstan joins the Ukrainian Armed Forces to defend Ukraine

A tattoo of an eagle and a trident splays across his chest. His back is tattooed with the flag of Kazakhstan: a soaring eagle and the sun.

Zhasulan Duysembin is 30 years old. He is a  former "black beret" of the Marine Corps of Kazakhstan. Since autumn 2021, he has been a soldier of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with a Kazakhstan-issued passport. Returning to his homeland would mean risking imprisonment for being a "mercenary".

Zhasulan was 45 kilometres away from Donetsk when Russia’s full-scale invasion in Ukraine began [on 24 February 2022 - ed.]. He took part in the defence of Volnovakha. He was wounded and awarded a medal.

Zhasulan first came to Ukraine in 2015; he says he was in a zombie-like state then. He was a fan of Nazarbayev [Nursultan Nazarbayev, the first President of Kazakhstan, who held the position from 1990 to 2019 - ed.] and his engagement with the world was framed by Russian narratives. And yet he bought a plane ticket and flew from Astana to Kyiv to have a look at all the "terrible" people the TV channels had depicted as scary during the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine.

As Zhasulan disembarked from the plane at Boryspil airport in Kyiv, everything in his life fell into its place.

"I realised that I was blind," Zhasulan says. "In Ukraine, I started to live, to breathe fully. Here I found freedom, friends, and a family: my wife and two children."

Today Zhasulan continues to defend Ukraine from the Russians. And he hopes that the Ukrainian officials will issue him a passport.

"Whenever I went to see them, bringing all the necessary documents, there would always be one obstacle or another," Zhasulan recalls. "And yet President Zelenskyy, and even the former president, Poroshenko, promised that everyone who fights for Ukraine will have the right to become Ukrainian citizens. But it’s still unlikely to happen.

If you want to fight for Ukraine – come and fight, die for the country, but we’d rather give a Ukrainian passport to some Russian journalist who said he opposed the war. So that’s how it works?"

In an interview with Ukrainska Pravda, Zhasulan Duysembin recalls his gangster youth and talks about how he learned to distinguish good from evil. He speculates on the outcome if Russia were to invade Kazakhstan and explains why Ukraine is so dear to him.

What follows is Zhasulan’s story, in his own words.

Volnovakha

For me, the full-scale war started on 17-18 February, when Russian artillery began to fire on our district. We were stationed in Novotroitske [in Donetsk Oblast - ed.] with the guys, at "ground zero" [the positions closest to the enemy - ed.]. Drones had been actively conducting reconnaissance and had been able to establish all of our positions before 24 February; the Russians had been ordered to refrain from firing until then.

Then the hostilities started. Given the balance of forces, we had to retreat and consolidate our positions in Volnovakha. We held the defence for two weeks, eventually retreating further, to the village of Volodymyrivka.

The enemy’s advantage wasn’t just in terms of military equipment and the large amount of ammunition they had. The locals did everything they could to help the Russians advance: they told them where our positions were and helped direct artillery fire.

Before we entered Volodymyrivka, our intelligence warned us that 80-90% of the people there supported the "Russian World" ideology [the concept of the total domination of Russian culture over other cultures; it gives rise to and "legitimises" Russia’s current expansionist, colonial politics - ed.]. It’s a wretched village. While we were stationed there, some men used to come up to us and swear right in our faces: "You’re toast!"

In Volnovakha, my guys caught a suspicious man around 03:20 in the morning. "Have you forgotten something here?" I asked him, and he said, "I’m going home to feed my cat." I replied, "Did you quarrel with your cat? Have you separated?" [Zhasulan laughs]

We checked his documents, took a picture of his passport, and let him go around 04:00. He was crossing himself and professing his love for Ukraine. And at 06:00 the Russians attacked us. No one else knew where we were at that point, as we’d just taken up those defence positions.

On our first night in Volodymyrivka, a 22-year-old guy on a bike came up to us and started looking at something – we weren’t able to catch up with him. He was back the following night. Earlier, I’d got some guys to patrol the area, so they were able to detain him this time. We put him in a cold cellar for a while, so he could clear his thoughts. He also declared his love for Ukraine. We let him go – and again our positions were hit.

Why am I telling you this? There are lots of people like that where I’m from. There’s a possibility that those b*****ds who are pushing the "Russian World" idea could organise something like what happened in Donbas in 2014 in Northern Kazakhstan. In every village where the Kazakh troops establish their positions, there’ll be some fanatics of Russia who’ll turn the Kazakh guys in.

It’s sad that people like that exist at all. I think we shouldn’t have tolerated them for so long. The life of every soldier defending their country is priceless. His wife and children who love their dad are waiting for him at home, and he dies just because some b*****d gave away his position.

A cog in the machine

Until 2015, I knew next to nothing about Ukraine. In 2014, I was following what was happening in the Maidan [referring to the 2013-14 Revolution of Dignity - ed.], but from a pro-Russian position. I found out about this country which had previously been unknown to me from some made-up information about unfettered nationalism, even Nazism.

In 2015 I bought a ticket for an Astana-Kyiv flight – I wanted to see those awful people for myself. [Zhasulan laughs] To talk to them and figure out what they’re really like, and whether they’d punch me for speaking Russian.

The older I got, the more I felt that something was wrong with my life. Like I’m just a cog in a machine. But before I got to Ukraine I still harboured a dislike for Ukrainians, because of all the propaganda. I was like a zombie when I arrived at Boryspil [the main airport in Kyiv - ed.].

It’s difficult to explain my first impressions. Maybe only creative people will be able to understand it. When I got off the plane, I was immediately stunned by the totally different quality of the air. It was as if the climate itself was indicating that I was finally in the place where I was meant to be all my life.

I met lots of kind, decent people in Kyiv. No one ever reproached me for speaking Russian. I found friends here.

To be honest, I didn’t want to go back to Kazakhstan. I realised that I couldn’t live there, that I don’t feel free there, or able to fulfil my creative ambitions. I find it more difficult to breathe in Kazakhstan.

I understand that anything I say today might be used against me. But I’ll use this famous expression to describe how I felt every time I came back to Kazakhstan: "After you drive a Mercedes, you’ll never want to drive a Zhiguli again." Something like that.

In Kyiv I saw developed infrastructure, lots of small things, convenient services. Everything’s different in Astana. The system is set up so that 70-80% of Kazakhs are up to their ears in debt that they’ll have to repay over the next 10-20 years. In Kyiv, in Ukraine, there are opportunities to grow and develop; you don’t have to fall prey to the bankers.

The Kazakh system is very similar to the Russian one, where lots of people are tied down by mortgages. In Kazakhstan, everything is copied from Russia. If a law is passed in Russia, Kazakh people always joke, "We’ll have the same one soon!" [Zhasulan laughs]

Battle wounds

I served in the only marines brigade in Kazakhstan. I was a "black beret" or whatever. There I was properly trained in military discipline: daily routine, tidy clothes, clean shoes…

I was taught to march and to stand in line. To disassemble and reassemble a machine gun. To aim and shoot. These are all standard Soviet skills. I only gained NATO-standard military experience during my training in Ukraine.

I came to Ukraine for the second time in 2018. I lived in Kharkiv and was building a relationship with my future wife. Everything was wonderful. Kharkiv is my favourite city now. I love it even more than Kyiv or Lviv.

Until 2020 I worked in construction, doing roofing. I wasn’t particularly clued-in on the situation in Donbas. But by 2020 I had two children in Ukraine, and for the first time I started to think that they might be in danger.

I started to think a lot, to analyse the situation, and asked a good friend of mine who had been on the frontline since 2016 a lot of questions. After a year of thinking, I decided to try to officially join the Armed Forces of Ukraine. I didn’t want to be in "dobrobat" [the voluntary construction battalion - ed.] or in territorial defence.

I’m an agnostic. I believe that God exists but that he cannot be grasped intellectually. Really, I’m a sinner. I swear, I drink beer, I smoke. My wife is more religious. At first, she would think about my decision to join the army from a religious perspective. After December 2021, when I went to the front line, all I heard was "This is wrong. God doesn’t want you to kill anyone."

But since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, after what those b*****ds did to ordinary people in Bucha and Irpin, my wife’s opinion started to shift. Now she fully supports me in my efforts to expel this evil from this great land.

I am Asian. When I was about to join the Armed Forces of Ukraine, I was prepared to face scorn and disdain. But the first thing I remember is how warmly I was welcomed by my unit. I quickly began to develop an authority. Everything was great, and this was another proof that I was on the right side.

On the front line, I was most surprised by how I was treated when I was wounded. A BMP-2 [a Russian amphibious infantry fighting vehicle - ed.] was firing calibre-30 shells at us. We suffered significant losses, we only had machine guns to fire back with.

I was severely concussed. Blood was pouring from my ear, and for the first few minutes I couldn’t think or move. Just stayed in the area that was being fired on. And then an older, grey-haired soldier, who had a family – grandchildren – waiting for him at home, managed to reach me. He grabbed me by the strap of my armoured vest and dragged me to safety.

Only 26 of us survived that time, out of 90. I never heard anything more about the soldier with the call sign "Syvyi" [Grey - ed.]. It’s possible that he was killed there.

Good and evil

I was born in 1992, in the city of Arkalyk [in Northern Kazakhstan], which is not dissimilar from Chornobyl: though it did not suffer from a nuclear disaster, there were just as many abandoned five-storey apartment buildings.

There were gangs and criminal authorities in Arkalyk. Just like anywhere else, the city was divided into districts. If you trespass, enter an unfriendly district, you’re done for. I lived in the sixth microdistrict, there were lots of serious guys there. They fought with bats and chains, kicked their opponents as they lay on the tarmac.

When I moved to Astana, I was still brought up by my Arkalyk family. My relatives were proud of this, and ever since I was a child they’ve kept reminding me that I hail from a gangster city. That I must insist on my rights wherever I go.

In 2001 I went to an ordinary school, School No. 16, in the Zhukovka neighbourhood, because my family was poor. Me and my classmates were probably the second-to-last generation that got involved in inappropriate stuff. 

Somewhere inside of me I always felt an urge to fight for justice. For example, I would spend all my money on food for homeless kittens. I did it secretly so that the other boys wouldn’t see me and make fun of me. In public, I had to maintain the facade of a cool guy.

After school I got involved with some really bad guys from the Privokzalniy [Railway Station - ed.] neighbourhood. They would just mug someone on the street and take their phone; it was called "gop-stop" back then. Sometimes I would join them on their "missions", doing things I don’t even want to talk about.

I returned from the army stronger and for a while I was involved in even more awful stuff. But later on I began to go to mosques and churches. I was trying to figure out whether God existed. I started reading, talking to educated, religious people. I started to be able to tell evil and good apart. Everything fell into place when I arrived in Ukraine.

How to tell good from evil? [Zhasulan pauses.] It is evil to destroy someone else’s world. Everyone has their protective layer, their personal boundaries. And I have no right to enter someone else’s life unless they ask me to. No right to impose anything on that person.

The Russians have decided that they have the right to enter anyone’s world. It doesn’t even matter whose. They want their tiny little world to become the one everyone else lives in.

To not do evil is to not destroy someone else’s world. It’s not just physically that Russia perpetrates evil. They can’t control their language, they’re not in command of their language, their thoughts and feelings. They are brimming with s**t and they want to share this s**t with others. Instead of doing something good inside their own country.

They have the resources they need to live as well as, say, the USA, which they’ve been jealous of their entire lives. But instead of solving urgent problems in their own country, they are spending billions every day to wage war on another country. This is what evil is.

Honour and dignity

When a soldier is serving, especially in a time of war, he has to be focused on mowing down as many orcs as possible. On liberating Ukraine from them and, if possible, surviving. Nothing should distract him from this great goal.

In my case, there is an irritating, distracting matter – I still can’t obtain Ukrainian citizenship. I can’t focus 100% on the war.

The Kazakh special services are trying to get me and threatening my relatives. I’ve become not only Russia’s enemy, but also the enemy of the Kazakh authorities. They’ve opened a criminal case against me and want to put me in prison for being a "mercenary".

In addition to fighting against the orcs, I support the opposition movement [in Kazakhstan - ed.]. I talk about the right to live freely in Kazakhstan. I’m trying to open people’s eyes – and more and more Kazakhs are listening to me.

I have heard words of approval and admiration, even from soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, for Tokayev [Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, President of Kazakhstan - ed.], who apparently gave Putin a figurative slap during a St Petersburg forum. I’m more down-to-earth. Like any other Kazakh, I just can’t forgive him for shooting at peaceful civilians. He was the one to ask Russian troops to intervene.

It’s no secret that Russia is able to evade sanctions with Kazakhstan’s help. I don’t have documentary evidence, but I’ve talked to a lot of people who’ve confirmed that all you have to do is replace the Russian number-plate on your truck with a Kazakh one, and you can take your shipment through the territory of Kazakhstan.

I think what Tokayev said to Putin is part of a well thought-out plan to prevent the West from introducing secondary sanctions against Kazakhstan. To avoid suffering the same blow as Russia. It was enough for him to say that he doesn’t recognise the "LDPR" [the so-called Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics declared by Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts - ed.] to create all this hype around it. Even though just a few years ago Tokayev said that he didn’t regard what happened in Crimea as an annexation.

If something like what happened in Donbas starts in northern Kazakhstan, it’s mostly steppe there – in the open field like that, the army of Kazakhstan has no chance of surviving a fight against the Russian army with its missile systems, artillery and aircraft. Even though Kazakhstan supposedly allocates billions to weapons spending. Instead of procuring NATO-grade military equipment, they’re buying themselves villas somewhere in the UK.

There’s a great hope that if Russia attacks Kazakhstan, it won’t be China but Turkey who will come to Kazakhstan’s aid. Erdogan dreams of creating a Great Turan, a union of the Turkic peoples and armies: Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

What’s happening [in Ukraine] now would have happened sooner or later. Russia has terrorised Chechnya, then Georgia and Syria. Dzhokhar Dudayev [President of Ichkeria, a breakaway region in the North Caucasus, from 1991 to his assassination in 1996 - ed.] was right when he said that Russia’s end would come when Ukraine’s sun rises.

What’s happening is a historic event. Russia will fall, economically and politically. Parts of it will be chipped away: China, Japan and Ukraine will recover their occupied territories, and so will Kazakhstan; Russia has also taken a lot from it in the past.

In the future there will be only free states. I hope that Kazakhstan will go through an awakening. That it will get rid of the Russian system and will live a civilised life, without dictatorship, relying only on diplomacy to build relations with its neighbours.

Right now I am on the battlefield. I have nothing to be afraid of. I’m only worried that I might cease to be useful for Ukraine when the war is over. That I will simply be forgotten, like many foreign volunteers were forgotten in 2015-16 in order to make things easier. They’ll find a reason - calling me a criminal or a looter - to surrender me to the Kazakh government.

I consider it an honour to be killed in battle. If I have even a small moment to think of something before I die, I will smile, knowing that my life was not in vain. That I sacrificed my life for something good and great.

Yevhen Rudenko – Ukrainska Pravda