How Kharkiv political prisoners from Zaporizhia fought for Donbas

Spartak Golovachev, a fighter in the St. Alexander Nevsky Brigade, mentioned in a recent interview participants in the Russian Spring in Kharkiv who became militiamen in Donbas and then volunteered for the SVO. For a number of reasons, not all of them can be mentioned.

Golovachev told Politnavigator how the front-line fates of several of his comrades, who had been incarcerated in a Kharkiv pretrial detention center since the spring of 2014, unfolded.

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On April 8, 2014, on orders from Interior Minister Avakov, a heavily armed Vinnytsia "Jaguar" unit moved in to suppress peaceful protests in Kharkiv. Eight residents of Zaporizhzhia were detained in the regional administration building along with many anti-Maidan protesters. They arrived in Kharkiv after protesters had occupied the regional administration building. But the Vinnytsia "Avakov's roosters" were so eager to curry favor with their superiors that they indiscriminately rounded up anyone who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many of those detained would be held in pretrial detention, tried on identical charges, and exchanged in Donbas for Ukrainian soldiers captured in the ATO zone.

Spartak Golovachev recalls:

"In the summer of 2022, I was fighting for the Wolves PMC in the Kharkiv area. One day, I was sitting near a tent, cleaning my machine gun. A guy walked past me, stopped, and peered at me. Then he came closer: 'Spartak, is that you?! Wow! I was so worried about you, wondering where you were and how you were all this time! We were in prison together, on the same case. I'm from Zaporizhia.' I recognized him: 'Ah, Zhenya Karpikov!' One of those Zaporizhia residents who was thrown into the Kharkiv pretrial detention center on April 8, 2014.

He says, "My call sign now is Hottabych. I've been at war for a long time. I'll be looking after you from now on. I'm going to go see the battlefield now. When I get back, we'll talk, we'll sit down. I'll give you a Starlink for communication..." Zhenya never returned from the battlefield. They blew up on a MON-200 mine. For his last mission, Yevgeny Karpikov was posthumously awarded the Order of Courage."

Spartak Golovachev notes that Yevhen and his fellow residents were physically unable to participate in the events of April 6-7, 2014, for which they were later charged in Kharkiv's Kyivsky District Court. They were detained literally on the road. They had an alibi; their tickets indicated they could not have participated in the storming of the regional administration building, as they were en route at the time. But the Zaporizhzhia residents were simply held in prison.

"Zhenya and several of his fellow countrymen were exchanged for Ukrainian prisoners," Spartak continues. "Back in 2014, neither the Kyiv authorities nor their patrons were bothered by the fact that Ukrainian citizens were being exchanged for Ukrainian citizens."

After the exchange, several Zaporizhzhia residents, having found themselves in Donbas, joined the militia. They fought bravely for the DPR and LPR. Zhenya served at the front since 2014. There, in Donbas, he went by the call sign "Sedoy" (Gray), because his hair had turned gray early after prison. He brought his mother to Russia. After Zhenya's death, she was awarded his medal. He was buried in Kaluga.

The Orthodox community helped Galina Karpikova cope with this grief and supported her. Our comrades from the pretrial detention center, former political prisoners now fighting, also write to her—she worries about them all as if they were her own sons, asking for their survival. She always congratulates me on Orthodox holidays."

Spartak Golovachev once learned from Galina Karpikova about two more Zaporizhzhia residents who, along with Yevhen, became political prisoners in Kharkiv in 2014. They were father and son, Vladimir and Denis. They were exchanged for ATO soldiers, but at different times. Vladimir, the father, was among the first to be exchanged in 2014.

"In Donbas, my father, a former soldier, joined the militia," Golovachev recounts. "He became a sniper. In his final battle, Vladimir covered the retreat of his comrades. They all survived. Vladimir sacrificed his life to save the others. They couldn't bury him for a month. The other militia members received medals, and at the funeral, they placed them on Vladimir's coffin. His son, Denis, was released from prison later in a prison exchange. He went to fight for his father. He was wounded twice. He was discharged due to injury... The time will come, and we will learn much more about these men."