Thread by @Tatarigami_UA

Stories of undercover operatives who stay behind enemy lines and later fight in special ops units, through some of the war’s toughest battles, are usually found in movies or games. But this isn’t fiction. Here are key points from our interview with Artem "Skhidnyi" Karyakin 🧵:

2/ Artem, a native of Donbas, says he witnessed signs of Russian influence long before 2014. In his hometown of Kadiivka (formerly Stakhanov), a mining city in Luhansk Oblast with no historical ties to the Don Cossacks, a so-called “Don Cossack” group appeared in the early 2000s

3/ By 2014, the same “Cossacks” were seizing government buildings in Kadiivka - this time armed and operating under Russian flags. Many weren’t local; they had come from the Russian Federation, as had others who helped take control by force during the spring occupation efforts.

4/ In response, local residents organized rallies, distributed leaflets and stickers. The turning point came in spring 2014, when two schoolboys raised a Ukrainian flag atop a slag heap and were shot at. After that, many pro-Ukrainian residents began to flee the town

5/ Artem chose to stay. In July 2014, while under occupation, he created a Twitter account. What began as an effort to show life in the occupation soon turned riskier: he began posting locations of Russian troops, often including maps showing where equipment was stationed

6/ In the fall of 2014, Artem was contacted via Twitter by Ukrainian intelligence and army contacts, who urged him to stop posting details publicly and share them privately instead. From then on, he secretly tracked Russian troop movements and enemy positions in occupied areas

7/ Over the years, this also came to include information about factories and enterprises under Russian control, the socio-political climate, local sentiment, and data on collaborators - those who had joined the Russian side in combat or taken positions in the security services.

8/ After leaving Donbas in 2021, Artem found himself in Kyiv as the full-scale war began in 2022. He walked to the nearest unit — the TDF and took up a defensive position on the Bucha-Irpin outskirts. By summer, he had joined the 8th Regiment of Special Operations Forces

9/ Artem’s first combat deployment was in August 2022 in Bakhmut, then under heavy assault by Russian forces, including Wagner PMC fighters. Shortly after, he took part in the liberation of Lyman in Donetsk Oblast. His most recent mission brought him to Kursk

10/ The Kursk operation was unique in many ways. It was there he first encountered maneuver warfare - a style he found more challenging than fighting along a clear front line. In Kursk, Artem faced new Russian approach: fiber-optic drones operating up to 10–15 km deep

11/ Another key difference was that, for the 1st time, Artem and his unit were operating as a “foreign army.” He was careful not to mirror the behavior of Russian forces in his own hometown. In Russia, he told civilians they wanted to liberate Ukrainian cities, not to take theirs

12/ Artem’s also said that they faced the forces of two different totalitarian states. Engaging North Korean troops marked another distinction from the battlefield in Ukraine - though in a way, their tactics in Kursk closely resembled those used by Wagner fighters in Bakhmut.

13/ When it comes to Donbas, Artem believes liberation and reintegration are entirely possible - but not easy. Russia created conditions in which nearly every second family in occupied Donbas has lost a relative to the war - direct consequence of the forced mobilization

14/ But it’s important to understand, Artem says, that Donbas, especially the areas occupied since 2014,is a region where civic engagement is weak. People's views and actions are largely shaped by their immediate environment, not by deep-rooted convictions.

15/ Even now, many no longer view Russia in a positive light. After years under the Russian flag, they’ve come to see the reality - that there is little to gain, and the forced sacrifices were not worth it. Artem knows this firsthand; he lived among them for most of his life

16/ Thank you for reading. To follow more from Artem "Skhidnyi" - follow him on X @samotniyskhid. If you liked this thread, please like and share the first post to help boost visibility. You can also support him directly via pay_pal: [e-mail]

The full interview is available on Frontelligence Insight on stack, featuring more detail and nuance than we could fit here due to post length limits. Follow us there (it's free) for more stories like this one.

frontelligence.substack.com/p/slag-heaps-h…