He used to work for the Belarusian Defence Ministry – now he fights as a volunteer with Ukraine's Armed Forces. The story of Immortal
Andrii Tratsevskyi, alias Immortal, is a Belarusian volunteer who is well-known in Ukraine. Having worked as an engineer for the Belarusian Defence Ministry for several years, he is now fighting on the side of Ukraine.
After escaping the repressions of his home country, the fighter joined the ranks of the Belarusian Volunteer Corps to fight against the regime that deprived him of his home.
Immortal’s story is told in a new video from the Ukrainian Witness project.
"Andrii has been at the front since day one of the full-scale war. He is a Belarusian who is fighting, together with compatriots of his, on the side of Ukraine as part of the Belarusian Volunteer Corps," Ukrainian Witness writes.
Before moving to Ukraine and fighting in the full-scale war, Andrii worked as an engineer at the Belarusian Defence Ministry. After resigning, he worked as a taxi driver.
"People kept suggesting that I become a policeman or a soldier – I refused. This goes against my worldview. I once saw a Belarusian army major force a young soldier to cut the lawn with ordinary scissors.
I recorded it on my smartphone, and then I wrote my resignation letter," Andrii says.
Immortal suffered from the repressions in Belarus: on 14 August 2020, he was arrested for taking part in protests against the dictator Alexander Lukashenko. According to Andrii, over 20 people were held in the same cell, and the detained protesters were given no food.
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Andrii also said that his native Belarusian is the language of teachers and oppositionists, because essentially it doesn’t exist in Belarus.
"Everyone speaks Russian. If your neighbour hears you speaking Belarusian, they might call the police and report you for being an 'oppositionist'," Immortal says.
He moved to Kyiv in 2020, and two years later, he went to fight for Ukraine.
"Here we are fighting the enemy that took my country too. If I die, I’ll die fighting for the truth, for people, and for absolute goodness," Andrii says.
At present he is mainly fighting on the Zaporizhzhia front.
"The Russian dugouts on the second line of defence are filled with concrete and fortified five metres deep. You can only get the enemy out of there by entering these fortifications on your own two feet," he says of the fighting.
Previously:
- Immortal, together with the Yakovlev sniper twins and other military personnel, is also involved in the TrO Bavovna project, a Telegram channel where Ukrainian soldiers can communicate amongst themselves.
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