Note: Zane Zinkl is a former Santa Rosa Junior College student who traveled to Ukraine this last Summer to write about the war and the people, in the relatively short times in between getting so drunk that the people had to carry him home. Names have been changed, not because of privacy, but because these individuals are so perniciously degenerate that allowing their lives to spill too much into public view would be a crime against decency.
I crossed the Ukrainian border with no money, no smokes and no good ideas.
Luck, it seems, had finally turned against me. But as fate would have it, this would not be my last cigarette, not yet. That’s because throughout my travels in Ukraine I met some special people who gave me everything I needed: illuminated and inebriated Ukrainian artists, drunken degenerate volunteer soldiers, and two old brothers who smoked like the train they rode out of town on.
We smoked cigarettes in the morning. We smoked cigarettes in the evening. We smoked cigarettes in the afternoon. We smoked cigarettes drunk. We smoked cigarettes sober. We smoked cigarettes walking tall, sitting down, and standing still. We smoked cigarettes when it was windy. We smoked cigarettes when it was calm. We smoked cigarettes when it was cool and rainy. We smoked cigarettes when it was sweaty and hot. We smoked cigarettes when the air raid sirens moaned melancholy in the distance. We smoked cigarettes when we said goodbye to friends heading to the front. We smoked cigarettes and talked about art. We smoked cigarettes and talked about politics. We smoked cigarettes and talked about revolution. We told stories over cigarettes. We bonded over cigarettes. We shared moments over cigarettes. We cried over cigarettes. Cigarettes were always with us. Some of us had even fought and killed people with a pack of smokes in their pocket. We smoked cigarettes as pirates and poets, felons and fools, warriors and wanderers, vikings and the vanguard. It was a very special time and place to be alive.
So without further ado, here are the Top 10 quotes from these smoke-filled encounters.
But before we do that let’s take a moment to appreciate those incorrigible combinations of consonants that didn’t make the cut.
Honorable mentions:
“You’re a rusty sword in an ancient scabbard.” - Rod, one-armed Irishman, former British Army (L&M Blues)
“I mean I trained all the police here, what are they gonna do?” - Melvin, American former Marine turned military trainer, responding to question if it was legal to pass around a bottle of vodka on the street (Red Lucky Strikes)
“I’m a f*cking pirate.” - Vance, former US Infantry, volunteer supply-runner (Red Lucky Strikes)
“I’m a sick old man. There’s no honor in killing me, but still they try.” - Some random old American veteran who got kicked off my bus for being paranoid that Ukrainian secret service was after him (Marlboro Reds)
“I hate Chechens. The Chechens stabbed me in the leg in a bar in Iraq.” - Rod, responding to news about Chechen fighters and showing me his scar (L&M Blues)
“They told him 4-months-to-live, but this motherf*cker won’t die! Sometimes I’m just looking to dump him in a dumpster somewhere or bury him in my garden.” - Tom, American accountant talking about his brother Roy who lives with him in a house he bought in Ukraine during the war (Prima Reds)
“I would make good tomatoes or potatoes.” - Roy, retired American who settled in Ukraine with his brother during the war, replying to Tom (Prima Reds)
“Satan won’t take him.” - Tom talking about Roy’s miraculous survival after 4 years of a 10-percent blood oxygen level (Prima Reds and Chewing Tobacco)
“You do see how that’s worse right?” - Vato, American former Marine with a brain injury, responding to Rod explaining away his alcoholism by saying he’s not British, he’s Irish (Whatever cigs we bummed from people at the time)
“Man, I don’t want to go out into the sun, or I will insult you.” - Željko, Croatian Intelligence, possible assassin, making fun of Vato for being white but claiming Hispanic heritage (Silver Lucky Strikes)
“Can we not talk military stuff for one minute?” - Vato, trying to keep Rod and Željko from killing each other during a brutal process of fact-checking each other over their prospective military records (Silver Lucky Strikes vs. L&M Blues)
“In my case I was hit on the leg a couple of times. I don’t know how they treat younger people. But no one will beat me until I’m unconscious. After all, Ukraine is a European country.”- Anton, Ukrainian biker, painter and local drunk, living in Kyiv since 1966, talking about police brutality in Ukraine (Marlboro Reds)
“Stop the Earth. I want off.” - Vato, after Rod showed him a picture from a news article about an all-terrain, four-legged drone “deer” (Prima Reds)
#10: Why Anton is “Cowboy”
(Best Paired with Marlboro Reds)
Anton, artist, biker, drunk
Location: Porto Wine Bar, Kyiv
“Rock and Roll forever!”
I met Anton in a wine bar in Kyiv. All along the urban horizon, the tips of Orthodox cathedrals and Ukrainian monuments glimmered golden in the sun. He found out I was an American and started buying glasses of wine for me. We went outside to smoke cigarettes and I started playing the blues off my phone, the music spilling out onto the street. That’s when he said the legendary quote above, the quote which would come up in countless sessions of inveterate alcoholism across Kyiv over the course of my time there, a quote that would come to define, “Cowboy,” as he had come to be known.
“Sorry, my English no good,” Anton said, striking up a Marlboro.
“No worries! It’s good enough for me,” I told him, lighting up one for myself.
“You drink so fast man! Slow, slow, slow!” He said, noticing my near-empty cup.
The solution was obvious.
“More wine for my friend!” He called out to the bartender.
Anton would sing along with the music, loud voice booming, mingling with the blues in the street. Everywhere Anton went became a drunken scene. Eventually he got tired of having to use the bartender to translate, and he pulled some young guy off the street and invited him to drink with us, if he would be our translator. Anton had never met him in his life, and all of a sudden we were brothers of the bottle.
We would end up going to another bar, after Anton asked me, “Do you like Viskey?” cackling maniacally. I would end up puking in the bathroom, and then having another round. And of course, another cigarette. This would be the first time of many that I met Anton’s friends, a group of bohemians keeping it twisted on the streets and bars of Kyiv. They have a special affinity for bottles of vodka in the park, and smoking cigarettes ceaselessly.
#9: Kyiv, Land of Witches
(Cannot be experienced without Dunhill Whites)
Ivanov, regular face in the bohemian crowd on the streets of Kyiv, friend of Anton
Location: Park Landscape Alley, Kyiv
“Have you heard? Ukraine is a land of witches. They are dancing with devils on the full moon. Actually, Kyiv is a mystical place. But we need to feel it. This place has some pure energy from the center of our world.”
I actually went to Lysa Hora, one of the “most haunted” places in Kyiv. Meaning “Barren Hill” in Old Slavic, it is the name of many places across the Slavic world from the Czech Republic to Russia where practitioners of the Old Religion and other more Satanic elements come to worship at their altars.
Kyiv’s Lysa Hora is not only home to one of the most well-maintained Slavic religious sites in the world, it is also home to the ruins of an old Russian Imperial fort, where hundreds of political dissidents were executed far away from prying eyes during the 1800s. It didn’t feel very haunted to me at the time, but that was with the privilege of daylight. Who can know what goes on in the dark, except for those who go themselves?
Kyiv, after all, is a “mystical place.”
#8: Vance is a “F*cking Pirate”
(Accompanied by Red Lucky Strikes)
Vance, former US Infantry, turned volunteer supply-runner
Location: The Streets of Lviv
“Well you know there’s girls now who think they’re guys, and guys who think they’re girls… Well I identify as a pirate. Hahaha we’re the American Mafia. I mean it’s not true, but if we say it enough maybe it will manifest.”
I met Vance and his friend Melvin, along with some other volunteers in Lviv, just an hour after I got off the bus. He handed me a bottle of vodka and let me bum a Lucky, and we’ve been friends ever since. Vance and the other volunteers, to me, are just the next iteration of the Great American Outlaw, just looking for a place to make a final stand in a world that doesn’t believe in standing anymore.
In an immoral society, the criminal is the last bastion of righteousness. These men had traveled thousands of miles at their own expense to fight and die for a people they had never met, despite being from the fringes of their own respective worlds. Back home they were criminals or forgotten veterans. In Ukraine, they were heroes. The so-called “good” people were still sitting at home peacefully sipping Matcha Frappuccinos and binge-watching Netflix, slowly burning away their lives and the life of the planet, blissfully alienated from reality.
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, in some far-flung corner of the Earth, war raging all around him, Vance was living his best life. Sometimes, if I stop and look up at the sky, I know Vance is out there somewhere, lighting up a Lucky Strike like a “f*cking pirate.”
#7: Why Tom is not an Atheist
(Paired Nicely with L&M Blues and a side of Tom’s Kayak Chewing Tobacco)
Tom, American accountant, living in Ukraine
Location: The Mojito Bar on Kreschatik, Kyiv
“When you’re sitting on this street looking at that kind of a*s you should ask for forgiveness.”
This quote really encapsulates Tom’s worldview. Tom is an ultra-conservative American accountant, who according to his brother Roy, probably contracts for the Department of Defense, doing, “God knows what.” Tom fled the United States for, “racial reasons.” His older brother Roy and his two dogs are just along for the ride. Roy was supposed to die 4 years ago, and Tom is just counting down the hours until Roy, “goes to hell.”
Roy says, “I’ll be waitin’ for him.”
#6: Volunteer Degeneracy
(Red Lucky Strikes)
Vance, former US Infantry, turned volunteer supply-runner
Location: Streets of Lviv
“I actually have a key to the handcuffs the cops here use. I keep it in my back pocket for emergencies (laughing)! If I ever get arrested I’m gonna book it out the back of the cop car, bro. They don’t keep their guns loaded anyway (more laughing)!”
To say that all volunteers are criminals is an overstatement, but to say that all volunteers are insane is not. No one was actively committing crimes in Ukraine (except maybe crimes against decency), but it takes a special kind of person to travel halfway across the world to put themselves in the line of fire. It takes a special kind of person to be able to kill a person, and it takes an even more elite class of special to want to keep doing it. The hungry way they would describe firefights, versus their dispassionate feelings to the artillery conflict that the war has devolved into, clearly demonstrated this hunger for action.
Though adrenaline junkies and thrillseekers, these veterans with no place in society were just trying to seek out higher meaning in the only way they knew how.
#5: Bad Date
(Best enjoyed with a Hundred-Dollar-Hookah with a coconut base, to be followed by conciliatory L&M Blues with the boys to get the bad taste out of your mouth)
Katerina, OnlyFans girl
Location: Some Hookah Bar in Kyiv
“I don’t sleep with homeless.”
I met a girl in Kyiv on the dating app Bumble. We hit it off when I asked if she wanted to go out for a coffee.
She said, “I don’t drink coffee.”
I said, “What do you drink?”
She said, “Whiskey.”
I said, “You wanna get a drink sometime?”
She said, “Sure, but just so you know, I am an OnlyFans girl.”
This didn’t really bother me none. I’m a fairly open-minded guy.
So anyways I take her out to a bar that she suggested. We go in. We walk down into the basement. The vibe is dark, red, swanky-cosmopolitan.
“Do you hookah?” She asked.
I told her I did, and she ordered us a melon hookah. She got a few cocktails, and I got a beer. We started talking. Began to hit it off, kind of. Then all of a sudden she asked if I wanted to go back to her place.
I said, “Sure, let me get the check.”
So the waiter comes and hands me the check. I look at it. 4,025 Hryvnia (UAH). There must be a mistake. When all 8 of the guys and I drank all night at the Mojito Bar, which is fairly expensive for Kyiv, our total was like 2,800 UAH. Keep in mind $1.00 was approximately 40 UAH at the time. Keep in mind also that I’m almost broke. I had brought 2,500 UAH because I thought there was no way we would spend more than that on a, “couple cocktails.”
I asked the waiter, “Is this right?”
She translated for me in Russian. The waiter nodded.
“I don’t have enough,” I told her.
“How much do you have?” She asked.
“2,500,” I said.
“Well, I don’t have any money.” She said matter-of-factly.
She talked with the bartender and came to an arrangement. I would go with the bouncer back to my apartment where I had more money. I would leave my passport with the bartender, and then come back and pay. She left and she said she would text me. I walked back to the apartment in a huff with the bouncer on my tail. He was laughing the whole time.
When I got into the apartment I told him to wait outside. Rod, who was my roommate at the time, was sitting in the apartment with Gus. When I came in Rod said, “Oi! Is it okay if Gus spends the next few nights here so he’s closer to where we are training the unit, and he doesn’t have to get a taxi.”
I said, “Sure no problem, but I’ve got bigger things to worry about. Sorry.”
I reached into a drawer and pulled out my envelope of cash. I counted it out and said, “F*ck.”
I was 760 UAH short, and had no more cash except a paltry $100 in the bank that I couldn’t touch without wiring myself money through MoneyGram..
I was like, “Hey Rod.”
I explained to him the situation. He started laughing.