“Actually, I’m an ambulance doctor by profession and I came to Ukraine to work as a paramedic on the front, but during the battles I was itching to take up a weapon myself, so I went through special training and became a sniper and a ‘drone operator,'” said the guy.
Spock worked as a paramedic in 2014, when he first arrived to help the Ukrainians fight against the Moscow occupiers, and then and until now he combines all his specialties depending on what kind of support the squad needs at that time.
When asked why he joined the war in Ukraine in 2014 when he was only 23 years old, Spock stated that he had dreamed of fighting since childhood, and he also wanted to avenge the wrong done to his grandparents. After the war, the occupiers sent by Moscow took away all their property and exiled them to Siberia.
“As a child, I also experienced various insults from Russians, I was beaten several times because I lived in a Russian-dominated neighborhood in Riga. Here they felt like masters and despised Latvian speakers, they attacked Latvian schoolchildren, and if they got caught, then they attacked and beat us one by one in gangs,” the soldier recalled.
If you don’t learn Latvian, you won’t be able to live in the country
Spock regretted that after the war, more Russian-speakers came to Latvia than to Lithuania, they made up almost half of the country’s population, they dominated in the capital Riga, and in Daugavpils they were as much as 95 percent. Therefore, even after the country regained its independence three decades ago, Russian speakers continued to behave inappropriately and did not learn Latvian.
Therefore, when the 80-meter-high monument to Soviet soldiers was finally demolished in Riga in August 2022 in Uzvara Park, near which Spock lived, the soldier at the front rejoiced loudly.
“It was only after the war in Ukraine that the authorities in Latvia finally started treating Russian-speakers harshly – those who do not know our language, they do not extend their residence permits in the country, and those who openly support Russia in the war are deported from the country,” said the Riga resident.
In Spock’s opinion, the government should implement these measures even more strictly and widely, because the country must prepare for war with Russia and get rid of possible collaborators.
Spock is also angry that the restoration of the Soviet-era munitions factory has been postponed for a year due to the Greens’ protest. The soldier guesses that people under the influence of Moscow are hiding under the cover of the Greens.
He went on five missions
The man from Riga admitted that he hides his identity and rarely communicates with journalists because he is afraid that Russian speakers who learn his name may do something bad to his relatives.
Spock learned about the fact that in 2014 there were protests in Kiev against President Viktor Yanukovych’s intention to link the country not with the European Union, but with Russia, while serving in a military mission in Iraq.
“I couldn’t stop the mission, so when I rushed to Kiev, there were no demonstrations here, but the fighting with the separatists had started in Donbass, so I went there,” said the Latvian.
After two years of fighting, when the battles subsided, the man from Riga signed a new contract for service in Iraq, he went on as many as five missions. There, he was nicknamed Shadow by his colleagues after one battle, because all his comrades except him were injured during the combat operation.
“The most interesting thing is that we were walking in a spider, all the soldiers were holding on to the shoulder of a colleague who was walking in front, and I was walking first, in the most dangerous position, but the Taliban shots miraculously bypassed me. None of our people were killed, but everyone joked that the bullets passed through my body without causing any harm, and only they were bleeding,” Spock remembered this with a smile.
The Latvian still had to serve in Afghanistan, and during his service in private paramilitary formations he had to go on assignments in Latin American countries. The first enemy was shot in Iraq during heavy fighting with ISIS fundamentalists in the city of Mosul.
They left in fear of death
“The fighting in Iraq, even though Mosul was completely destroyed and the ISIS fighters were resisting very seriously, compared to what we are experiencing now in Ukraine, it looks like a cakewalk. There is a total war here, the enemy attacks with planes, drones, artillery and much more. In addition, Russian soldiers are second to none in terms of intelligence, and they are also assisted by foreigners,” the Latvian explained.
When war broke out in 2022, Spock arrived in Ukraine two days later. Then there were many foreign volunteers here, and there were as many as thirty Latvians.
“However, most of the compatriots changed their minds and went home without being at the front. Because when they were at a training base near Lviv, half a dozen soldiers were killed when Russian rockets suddenly arrived there. It scared a lot of the rest, because they realized that they might not come back from here,” said the man.
At that time, Spok was already defending the approaches to Kiev, fighting in Irpina and Bucha. After that, he took part in very difficult battles in Luhansk and Donetsk regions – in Rubizhne, Severodoneck, Bachmut, Avdijivka.
You don’t want to become a target of the enemy
Shrapnel injured Spock’s neck, legs, and broke a couple of ribs. The doctors were unable to remove the knees, so they remained in the body and sometimes painfully remind themselves of themselves. “I don’t count minor injuries, they happen almost every second outing, but I noticed that I sleep worse on a quiet night. When during the rotation they are taken away from the front for rest and no more explosions are heard, the subconscious mind reacts to it as an alarm signal – that the enemy is preparing something unusual, so I don’t sleep,” admitted the professional soldier.
Spock does not attach a sticker with the colors of the Latvian flag on his car or on his clothes specifically so that he does not become a target of the enemy, because they consider it a matter of honor to shoot foreign legionnaires.
Spock did not meet the Estonian legionnaires, but he saw a few Lithuanians, and Emil Zingeris provided the Latvian with the necessary medical equipment.
“If it wasn’t for the support brought by volunteers from Latvia, Lithuania and other countries, it would be bad, because everything is missing here,” said the Riga resident.
Spock had a few instances at the front that stuck out in his mind when he was only saved by sheer luck.
“Once the Russians surrounded us, so we could only retreat along the road, which they saw well and fired at. We decided that it was better to risk walking through a minefield than to become an easy target for the enemy. We are trained to spot mines, but all of them are very difficult to see, but then we got lucky,” said the soldier.
The next time, the territorial defense brigade, which fought side by side, did not warn them that they were abandoning their positions, so the enemies began to attack from behind. We barely managed to beat them. He was lucky to be saved when the bomb hit the house and killed the three comrades who were standing next to him, and the cement floor of the house fell down, but stopped half a meter from Spock, who was sleeping in the basement, and even lightly pressed another soldier.
He decided to fight to the end
A year and a half ago, the man from Riga married a Ukrainian soldier whom he met during the battles in Donetsk in 2015.
“She is brave like me, she grew up in Donetsk, and during the war she was a partisan in that city, blowing up the strategic objects of the occupiers. Now he works in military intelligence, he harms the enemy in other ways,” said the man from Riga.
Throughout the conversation, Spock smoked one cigarette after another, and when asked why he smoked so much, he said that he got used to it at the front, because the smoke helps to suppress the corpse fumes that waft from the battlefield, and which makes him very sick.
“I’m overworked, my hearing is worse, I’ve become more nervous, I have nightmares at night, I feel ten years older, so sometimes I think of returning to my hometown and getting a job in the ambulance brigade. However, I will not do that, because I have decided that I will stay and fight until the end and follow the saying of the people of rural Latvia: “If the neighbor’s house is on fire, you must run to help, and you can stop only after putting out the fire,” said the Riga native.
