A warm applause for the murder of Sergey.

Summer is over in Kruglyakovka.

The barren field stretches as far as the sharpest eyes can see, to a horizon so straight, you could hold a ruler against it.

This landscape that til mid-September still mirrored the Ukrainian flag, with its upper half of azure sky and lower half of waving grain, now forms a desolate grey above exhausted grass and brown clumps full of stumps and stalks.

The rasputitsa, or распутица, has just begun. That leaden-grey rainy period between summer dust and winter ice, which turns the fertile clay into a sticky mush in which horses drown and tanks sink, hangs like a veil over the endless land.

An interminable swamp of bone glue that has previously caused so many reputations of German generals and French commanders to perish, swallowing their ambitions in its quicksand.

Now we look down on an arrow-straight road that cuts through this desolate landscape, as rainwater fills its potholes and cracks in its asphalt.

A road like so many others in these parts, running straight through the endless fertile farmlands that in better times make Ukraine the breadbasket of Europe. A lifeline along which, in four years of fratricidal war, everything on wheels limped, rattled, and roared past.

From dirt bikes and pickup trucks full of deathly tired and gravely wounded soldiers, to crusty Lada’s with shattered windows, far too pristine NATO equipment, completely unsuited for this hell of dust and mud, and bizarre contraptions that —with their steel nets, iron spikes, and welded rusty plates— look more like the menacing wheeled monsters from Mad Max than actual tanks or armored vehicles.

Steampunk abominations, protected as best they can by their crews, against the insane tricks and killing jokes, of a postmodern war which resembles the battle of Passchendaele as well as John Connor’s war against the Terminators.

Thousands of men raced along this point, at full speed, with the devil on their heels and true contempt for death. To and from the erratic, ever-shifting front around Kupiansk in Kharkiv Oblast, kicking up suffocating clouds of beige dust, mixed with sooty exhaust fumes, slaloming around the many charred wrecks, strewn around like toys—the black mirrors of fate for every soldier who dares to ventures onto these desolate roads.

A cynical fate with little propellers, hovering like a hawk, patiently waiting for prey in the silver-grey autumn sky. “Ptitsa,” as the soldiers cynically call the FPV drone. A word that sounds like a friendly chirp and indeed means “bird” in Russian.

But these ptitsi—or ptakh in Ukrainian—do not sing cheerful songs. 

These are not blackbirds or nightingales, but vicious buzzing hornets packed with explosives that identify anything that moves. And once it turns out that targets are hostile, these ptitsi relentlessly pursue them into their holes and basements, into their cabs and cargo holds, to blow them up without mercy.

A fate, left to the mercy of a drone operator who holds power over life and death from miles away.

Now it is the third of November. And we look down again on this utterly forsaken road near Kruglyakovka, Completely baren, except for two elderly men. And a little white mongrel dog.

Clearly non combattant. On foot. Civilian coats, woolen caps.

One of them is 87-year-old Sergey, who once worked for the Ukrainian railway workers’ union. Walking beside him is his 67-year-old neighbor; together they frantically wave a sheet that serves as a white flag.

For seven months the old men hid together in a damp basement; for seven months they kept each other alive and dragged each other on through the war, but their food supplies had run out. So when it seemed like the grey zone around Kruglyakovka had fallen into Russian hands, they risked the perilous journey on foot, through no-man’s-land to be evacuated to safer ground.

We now see from the air how Sergey’s neighbor suddenly disappears in a cloud of dirty-grey smoke and collapses on the muddy road like a ragged heap of rags.

Then Sergey sinks to his old knees and makes the sign of the cross. And again. And again. The little dog, not understanding, stays silent by his side.

We now see a drone approaching old Sergey. The contraption turns, flies off, then swiftly dives back towards the old man, and mockingly starts circling old Sergey, like a giant mosquito getting ready to sting, before veering upwards again, as if the operator is granting him his mercy.

Then we see the drone drifting, drifting, excruciatingly slow, toward Sergey and finally we see it explode right in his face.

It is Tuesday, 16 December.

And we look down on a hall, filled to the brink with well-fed men and women. All dressed up. 143 men and women who govern a country.

My country. 

I watch them as they give a standing ovation. Some openly and enthusiastically, others timidly and ashamed, wary of the cameras and the judgment of the public.

I see these 143 people, clapping their little fat hands, till they are red, like seals in a circus, as they applaud the murder of Sergey, his neighbor and a mongrel puppy that wanted nothing more than a warm basket, a cuddle and perhaps a juicy bone.

Things will never be right again in the Netherlands.

My country.

My guilty country. 

Writing this piece has taken me days and nights. And tears of shame. If you find it beautiful or important, please support me .