My husband is Tamik Zakaev; callsign Bomber. We met in 2010 in Russia. He’s Chechen and I’m Russian. We married in 2013 and have a niece who lives with us who is 12. She keeps asking me where is Tamik at? I don’t know what to tell her.

We live in England since 2013. Covid came along and he couldn’t find work, so he decided to go fight in Ukraine. He started out in Kharkiv with a Finnish army unit, who got called home when Russia started things up on their border. They left him in Dnipro, and he met some border guards.

They ended up in Mariupol and headed for Azovstal, where him and one of these border guards, joined in with Azov battalion. I think the proudest moment for him was when Comrade Redis asked him if he would like to join Azov full time. He always called me when he was in there, at midnight.

So every night I sit up until midnight, and wait for him. His niece starts high school in September, and he should be there to walk her to school on the first day.

He knew if he got captured the Russians will kill him, because he is considered “One of them” but he was so calm about it. He always told me everything, even all the bad bits. One day I asked him why he never covered anything up, and he said, ‘Its a war, not a flower show.’

⁃ Oksana. Wife of Azovstal soldier. August 6th

Documented by Battles and Beers