Minsk resident Gerard, commander of the "Tur" unit, told how he almost died once near Mykolaiv, and a second time near Bakhmut

Gerard, commander of the "Tur" unit of the 225th Separate Assault Regiment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Video screenshot: belsat_doc / YouTube

"My pseudonym is Gerard Gothfroid de Montreale. It dates back to 1998, from a knight's club," says the commander of the "Tur" unit of the 225th Separate Assault Regiment of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in an interview with Belsat.

According to the man, he is a third-generation Minsk resident. In 2020, he was detained several times. As a result, he decided to leave.

"I was imprisoned a couple of times for my political beliefs, and I got tired of it. In fact, I just fled from Lukashenka's regime. The day I got out of prison, I was already in Russia," Gerard recounts.

After spending a few months in St. Petersburg, the man moved to Ukraine, where he started working at a car service station. According to him, a month later, together with friends, they opened their own workshop. But they only managed to work for less than a month because the war began.

Gerard claims he was among those who didn't believe the war would start. On the very first day, he accompanied refugees to Poland. By March 9, he was back in Ukraine. After some time, the man joined the Belarusian volunteer company, which was part of the Azov Battalion.

"I didn't serve in the army, so I didn't know how I could be useful. But I tried to be as useful as possible. I drove cars there, repaired them there. (...) I practically didn't have to shoot," Gerard recounts.

The man recalls that his first real combat mission took place near Mykolaiv. It could have been his last:

"The first terrifying moment was when I feared that it was definitely over, that I would die, and that was near Mykolaiv when a mortar shelled us for forty minutes. And the mines landed in such a way that I was simply buried in the trench. The guys dug me out. I then thought that was it, they would keep hitting until they destroyed our trench and dugout."

A second dangerous incident involving the Belarusian occurred near Chasiv Yar when he was delivering paratroopers to the combat zone:

"With my soldier, El, at Chasiv Yar (Bakhmut district, Donetsk region - NN), we missed our landmarks on the MTLB and practically drove onto the second line of defense. This means, essentially, we were surrounded. All the paratroopers who were with us disembarked. We started driving back to exit. We hadn't gotten far yet. But later we were informed that they were all '200s' (killed in action). (...) We simply escaped from there by a great, great miracle."

According to Gerard, after that incident, he realized that he was a "fairly weak assault soldier or fighter" and asked his commander for a discharge.

"You could say I was a burden. I told Brest then that I was useless. He said: 'You're not getting discharged, I'll tear up your report anyway.' He said, you have many other talents. You just need to do other things," —

the man recalls a conversation with his commander Ivan "Brest" Marchuk, who died in June 2022 near Lysychansk.

As a result, Gerard started repairing and maintaining military equipment. After some time, while still part of the Kalinouski Regiment, a team of technicians formed around him, now known as the "Tur" unit.

However, after some time, the man still resigned and planned to leave Ukraine. According to him, he even obtained a Polish visa. But a few months later, the commander of the 225th Separate Assault Regiment called him and offered him to join his unit.

"I agreed. I received tremendous support, help, and approval. And in half a year, I was able to do so much work, more than I probably would have done in my entire existence, my entire time in the regiment," —

Gerard states, noting that his unit is considered the best in the Kursk direction.

"I don't regret coming to the war, fighting here. Because, let's say, some guys remember my phrase when we were just leaving Poland: 'Only I can do what I can do.' So I absolutely do not regret it," the man says, adding that if he had the opportunity to go back in time and faced the choice of whether to go to war again, he would go. But he would try to avoid many mistakes.

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