Happy Birthday, Commander!

Today, the eternal commander of the Essence of Time unit, Lieutenant Colonel Yegor Gorshkov, would have turned 54

Today would have marked the 54th birthday of a hero of the Russian Spring, a hero of all the turbulent years of the Donetsk People’s Republic, someone who remained forever in the hard year of 2022: Lieutenant Colonel Yegor Gorshkov, call sign “Volga,” the eternal commander of the Essence of Time unit.

Unfortunately, we did not know him before the events in Donbass, but whole his life was shaped in in such a way that he could not have failed to come to Donetsk in 2014. Having served in the Soviet marines, he volunteered to take part in several conflicts, gaining experience, knowledge, and skills that he later generously passed on to everyone, including the servicemen of the unit and everyone who served alongside him.

He loved Russia and his native land, the Russian North, very much. He read extensively about it and could talk for hours about the Pomors or artifacts from vanished settlements. In general, he had a multitude of interests, and periodically Yegor would turn out to be a specialist in yet another field or area, and at a very high level.

But that was not what he was remembered for above all.

Volga was a man of an entirely different culture of thought and action, one that has almost disappeared today. He always strove for complexity, for understanding processes from within, for recognizing both the immediate and long-term consequences. He taught us to accept and carry responsibility for our choices and our actions.

Of course, most of our activities were connected with the war, so Yegor’s approach to conducting military operations was probably what left the strongest impression. He always placed maximum fulfillment of the combat mission at the forefront (and he often set that combat mission for himself without waiting for orders from his superiors), along with preserving the lives of his people and other servicemen.

The priority was always to ensure that all his comrades and neighbors had what they needed, within the possibilities available and often beyond those possibilities. These aspects of warfare are frequently overlooked by adherents of modern military culture, which is why they achieve the results that we can all see if we assess the current situation seriously.

Volga’s eyes were always open. Any attempt to “change the subject,” relax, retreat into a comfort zone, and just adapt to situation met with the harshest response from him. In such cases, a veritable hurricane would descend upon the person attempting to do something like that. And it was precisely these hurricanes that forced people to emerge from their everyday shells, wake up and begin acting, recognize their place, realize how little time and strength they had, move into an entirely different state and, as a result, accomplish things that much larger and better-resourced organizations would have been unable to do.

It was Volga who established the directions in which all the unit’s subsequent achievements were made possible. He was difficult to ignore, active, charismatic, and endowed with an enormous zest for life, and he taught those around him this as well, above all, of course, he taught us.

Now, almost four years after his death on the very front line, on the only sector where our Kherson Group of Forces achieved success and made advances in September 2022, we still love him and miss him, his precise, harsh words, his tireless activity. We miss our friend, our senior comrade, our Commander, who brought us together and kept us together throughout all these years.

His warmth and vitality remain present in everyone who communicated with him, worked with him, or fought alongside him. People like this are the creators of History; they are the foundation of society, even if society knows nothing about them. You understand the value of anything first and foremost when you have lost it, but even after his death, we are certain, the Commander remains in our ranks, although the pain of loss remains and does not go away.

Yegor’s example continues to lead us forward. It makes us strive to be, rather than merely exist, and to do what others consider unattainable or impossible.

Happy birthday, Commander!

The unit lives and develops. It does not retreat and does not surrender.

Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency