Roman Hrybov
When Roman Valentinovich Hrybov of the Ukrainian Defense Force was stationed to defend 40 acres of uninhabitable rock off the coast of Romania, he wasn't expecting to become the symbol of his global resistance against Vladimir Putin and Russian Global Aggression. He was just there, hanging out with a dozen or so of his buddies, drinking vodka, eating MREs, listening to music, and doing his service to his country in one of the most remote places on Earth. It was cold, it was windy, he was far from his family, and civilization could only be reached with a decent wifi connection, but, hey, someone has to do the work, right?
52 days later, this 32 year old enlisted man from central Ukraine is being hailed worldwide as an international hero, a symbol of defiance against foreign invasion, the inspiration for the destruction of several enemy war machines, the rallying point for his country's heroic defense of their homeland, and, honestly, probably the most Punk Rock war hero in modern history.
Because he’s the guy who said this:
Ok – before we get too much further into this story, I got a lot of interesting (and unexpected) feedback on my Zelensky article, so, since this is tangentially related, I want to open with two prefaces to this piece.
One – I know that there's a lot of propaganda coming out from both sides about this war, and that "the truth," such that it is, is constantly changing as the fog of war shifts and the various military propaganda arms of both Russia and The West spin their shit like competing DJs in a nightclub duel. My respetful counter-argument is this – all war is fought through propaganda. Propaganda, disinformation, exaggeration, and storytelling always has been, is currently, and always will be part of warfare. That's honestly kind of the point of these articles. It’s what makes a lot of these stories awesome. Yelling "Russian Warship Go Fuck Yourself" ten minutes before getting blown up is not a military victory, it's a propaganda victory, but the single biggest thing that makes Roman Hrybov and his fellow defenders so amazingly badass is the fact that their defiance in the face of near-certain death provided a huge propaganda tool for the entire country of Ukraine to rally around, and the idea of these thirteen dudes staring down the barrel of twenty-five cruise missile tubes, shrugging, and going, "Fuck these guys, right?" was not only inspirational to the entire country, but it sparked the creation of a catchphrase that echoed throughout the world and strengthened the resolve of millions of Ukrainian people to fuck up Russia and defend their homeland from invasion. Propaganda has existed in war since the days of Ramses the Great, and every great war story ever told probably has a thin sheen of propaganda self-aggrandizing bullshit smeared across it – it’s an inescapable fact of reality, because all of reality is subject to human interpretation, and every human interprets things in the way they view most favorable to themselves. So yeah, it's propaganda. But so was the Alamo, and you can't tell me that shit wasn't important.
Two – I don't hate Russian people. I studied the Russian language for many years, minored in Russian Studies in college, read Solzhenitsyn in the original Russian, and have written about dozens of Russian heroes on this website and in my books. I am currently friends with several Russian people. They all think this war is bullshit as well. Badass of the Week has never been known for its overwhelming neutrality and bi-partisan objectivism when it comes to discussing various historical and current events – if you're looking for some wishy-washy dipshit in a beige room to calmly drone on at you with an incessant stream of qualifying adjectives aimed at ensuring that no reader has any of their delicate sensibilities offended and that the opinions of everyone involved are adequately represented, then, uh, sorry, but you're kinda in the wrong place. My official stance on this war is "Russian Warship, Go Fuck Yourself", and, if that doesn't work for you, you should probably close this browser tab now… because that's basically the thesis statement for this entire essay and you're only going to get more triggered if you proceed.
In the early morning hours of February 24, 2022, as the first advance elements of the Russian Army were awkwardly stumbling their way across the border into Ukraine at the spearhead of a massive invasion, a small radar station off the coast of Odessa picked up two contacts blipping towards them – the Russian heavy missile cruiser Moskva, the hulking flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, and the patrol boat Vasily Bykov, a heavily-armed support vessel named after a famous Belarussian writer who was vehemently opposed to the current president of Belarus and once collaborated on the creation a famous letter published in opposition to the 1993 Russian coup that opposed totalitarian dictatorships, extreme nationalism, militaristic regimes, violence, brutality, and bloodshed. Oh, the irony.
They were both headed full-steam towards Snake Island, a small 42-acre hunk of rock in the Black Sea that was home to a town of 30 people, a little military base, a lighthouse from the 1800s, and 13 members of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces, equipped primarily with small arms and radios.
Snake Island, Ukraine, shares its name with a place I also intend to write about on here someday -- Snake Island, Brazil, a terrifying hellscape that is so completely overrun with poisonous vipers that it's illegal to visit there without a permit – but the European Snake Island has a little bit less venom and fangs and is mostly just a wide-open strip of land with a helipad and a radar station. But, while it's basically just a chunk of rock roughly the size of Jaime Foxx's house, it is a strategically important chunk of worthless rock, in that it can serve as a radio and radar base capable of covering all ship and aircraft movement through the Black Sea, along the coasts of Odessa, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, and the Crimean peninsula. It was the site of a battle fought in 1788 between the fleets of Russia and the Ottoman Empire, saw plenty of action between the Germans and Soviets during World War II, and was the focus of a lot of international arguing between Ukraine and Romania in the early 2000s. If you are going to fight a war in this region, you need to control the intel, and that means you need to take this island.
So Russia sent a 12,000-ton guided missile cruiser, the Flagship of their only warm-water Fleet – the Moskva. 185 meters long, bristling with mortars, torpedoes, and both surface-to-air and surface-to-surface missiles, the Moskva also packed a half-dozen Vulcan guns and a massive 130mm twin cannon on the bow. Her escort, Vasily Bykov, was 1500 tons herself, equipped with a 76mm main gun and nearly a dozen heavy machine guns and full-auto grenade launchers.
32 year-old Roman Hyrbov and his fellow defenders had 13 men armed with AK-74 rifles, a few hundred rounds of 5.45 x 39mm, their service pistols, and, I don't know, probably a box of grenades or maybe a mortar or something. They were defending an area 0.06 total square miles, which was exposed to all sides from the water, without any natural cover whatsoever, in the face of the might of the Black Sea Fleet. The only other people living there were the 30 or so civilians living in the terribly-named town of Bile (maybe this means something different in Ukrainian?) on one side of the island, most of whom were family members of the guards or civilian contractors working at the lighthouse or on the military base anyways.
Long story short, it didn't look good.
There's a fun story I want to bring up here. Back in the days of Classical Antiquity, Snake Island was home to a small Greek settlement. The Greeks called the island Leuke, and the Romans referred to it as Alba, and Pliny the Elder wrote that it was kind of a Fortress of Solitude for the great Trojan War Hero Achilles after he returned from the wars. There was a big temple built to him there (this much is true, archaeologists uncovered it in the 1850s when they were building the island's lighthouse), but Pliny says that Achilles actually lived there, and he used to get visits from the Ajaxes, his boyfriend Patroclus, and even Helen of Troy. Pliny says that the Tomb of Achilles is actually below the temple, though, to this day, nobody has tried to excavate for it.
But, this day – February 24, 2022 – as Russian warships closed in on the ruins of Achilles' Temple, the most beloved and powerful Greek War Hero's inspirational gigantic warforged balls could still be seen on display among those heroic warriors tasked with defending his final resting place:
Staring down a firing squad of ship-killing missiles and cannons, armed only with his fucking service rifle, Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces soldier Roman Valentinovich Hyrbov listened to the most badass threats the Russian flagship could offer, and simply responded "go fuck yourself." (Well, I mean, I think I read somewhere that technically the literal translation is like "go to a dick" or "go sit on a dick" but you get the idea).
Try to imagine this for a minute – thirteen motherfuckers with AKs and maybe a handful of frag grenades, defending a generally-meaningless hunk of rock in the Black Sea, and the last communications before being bombed into oblivion was to defiantly tell their killers to go find a wiener to jump on. I love it.
The Moskva didn't see the humor in it. They opened fire, leveling the lighthouse and much of the town, and – at least as was first reported – killing all of the defenders, including Hrybov (the Russians claimed that they killed or captured 82 enemy soldiers and sunk 6 Ukrainian warships in the engagement, because fucking of course they did). When that video and audio was released, "Russian Warship, Go Fuck Yourself" not only immediately went down alongside "more weight" as one of the most badass last words ever uttered, it also served as a rallying cry for the entire anti-Putin movement.
I'd rank Russian Warship Go Fuck Yourself pretty high on the great phrases of all time. Sure, it has a similar vibe to "I have not yet begun to fight," or the Spartans telling Xerxes "come and get them" when he asked for their weapons, but I almost like this better not just because I love swear words but also because it has this real sense of Slavic Fatality to it. Like, the best part of the whole thing might be the little back-and-forth the Ukrainian dudes have before they respond. Roman Hrybov listens to this big intimidating fire-and-brimstone speech about how badass the Moskva is and how badly it's going to fuck up Snake Island, then he just looks at his buddy and goes "yeah, well, fuck these guys, right?" And his buddy responds like, "Yeah, I guess." And then Hrybov tells Moskva to fuck off. It's great. You can almost picture these guys with cigarettes still in their mouths as they're doing this. It reminds me less of "Remember the Alamo" and more of that old joke about the US Carrier Group confronting a Spanish Lighthouse on its way to Iraq. Interestingly one of the other greatest responses to a threat in history was also Ukrainian, when future Badass of the Week Ivan Birko received a threat from fellow future Badass of the Week Mehmet the Hunter and responded with a huge profanity-laced screed comprised of every insult and swear word Birko and his mates could think up. Though, even in that case, I'd argue Hrybov's response is better, because that Birko letter reads more like an angry YouTube comment and isn't exactly succinct.
Go Fuck Yourself soon became an inspirational Propaganda Rallying cry for the rest of the war, and, as a person who liberally applies swear words in every aspect of his life, I can really get behind this. Like this phrase appears on posters from Los Angeles to Finland, Ben Sasse said it on the floor of the US Senate, various ports and refueling ships across Europe are using it when they deny access to the yachts of Russian billionaires, and when a Judge approved an FBI warrant to seize the luxury yacht of Russian billionaire oil tycoon and faberge egg super-fan Viktor Vekselberg, the judge said that the seizure "echoes the message of the brave Ukrainian soldiers of Snake Island."
They even turned that shit into a postage stamp in the Ukraine:
Quite possibly the most badass postage stamp ever printed.
Except – and here's the thing – those motherfuckers on Snake Island didn't die. After a brief period of being revered as fallen Heroes of Ukraine who gave their lives in defense of their homeland with defiance on their lips, it turned out that a bunch of the defenders – including Hrybov – had been taken alive as POWs by the Russians. They were transported to Russia, where they were imprisoned under harsh conditions – beaten, starved, and left to sleep on the floor with no bed and no blankets in the freezing temperatures of northern Russia. They weren't given bathroom access, weren't fed, and were given very little water. For weeks, Hrybov and his comrades withered away in miserable conditions, losing weight, starving, and being beaten and tortured on an almost daily basis. Yet, still, the spirt of Russian Warship Go Fuck Yourself lived on in their hearts, and despite being thrown in the goddamned Black Hole of Moscow, these fuckers still didn't die, and still didn't break. They breathed every breath for their homeland, and remained defiant. After six weeks of brutal conditions that violate every Prisoner of War code in the goddamn book, Kyiv was able to negotiate their release in a prisoner exchange – and Roman Hrybov came home.
He received a medal of heroism from his city (Cherkasy, a 3-hour drive southeast of Kyiv), and President Volodymyr Zelensky described him and all of his comrades as true Heroes of Ukraine. But, like a true badass, Roman Hrybov didn't want all the glory and attention – he just wanted to get back out there, defend his country from the continued assault along its borders, and, eventually, break out the 72 other Ukrainian POWs still holed up in that prison hellhole he just escaped.
Roman Hrybov returned home last week.
Three days ago, he was present for the official release of the postage stamp bearing the likeness of his middle finger, and he signed the first envelope bearing the stamp.
Yesterday, that lead Russian warship, the Moskva, did go fuck itself:
whoops
On April 14, 2022, the Moskva was in rough waters off the coast of Odessa when a new airborne contact pinged their radar – a Ukrainian combat drone was circling and approaching for an attack run. The Moskva responded by repositioning and redirecting it's defenses towards this oncoming threat…
by the time they saw the two R-360 Neptune Anti-Ship Missiles skipping over the water towards them from their starboard side, it was already too late. The missiles, fired from a nearby land-based coastal position, slammed into the hull of Moskva, setting fire to the ship and igniting its ammunition stores. The ensuing explosions killed the ship's commander (probably the voice on that video above) and ripped a hole in the hull. Within hours the ship had listed, tipped over, and sunk.
The official story from Russia right now is that the Moskva sunk not because of a couple tons of explosive ordinance deployed from missiles that weigh about the same as a whale's right nut, but because there was a fire onboard and that it sunk for reasons unrelated to the prowess of the Ukrainian military. And, I mean, look -- the ship is at the bottom of the ocean, and whatever method of managerial incompetence that put it there is irrelevant. In fact, I'd argue that if they accidentally blew it up themselves, that's even BETTER, because then the ship literally did go fuck itself.
The important information here is that this thing blew up, turned over, filled with water and sank, and I'm not really prepared to buy the inevitable Russian State Media Facebook posts claiming that this shit was "actually just a submarine the whole time, lol you idiots, try reading a book about military technology some time rofl".
This is not the Moskva, it's a different Russian craft that was destroyed by the Ukrainians while back in port back in March, but you get the idea.
As a side note, it's worth mentioning that there were claims that the other ship that attacked Snake Island, the Vasily Bykov, had been blown up as well. There's a video of the Bykov being attacked by an MLRS system and the Ukrainian attackers screaming "Russian Warship Go Fuck Yourself!", but it's hard to tell what's happening there because it's literally a video of a shot in the dark. As much as I'd like to believe that we got ULTIMATE VENGEANCE and that Roman Hrybov not only survived after being pronounced dead, but that he lived to see both the ships that presumably "killed" him be destroyed by his comrades, as far as Vasily Bykov goes it seems that this is probably not the case. Yet. But I guess there's still time. The war is still on and the UK just shipped a bunch of anti-ship missile systems out there earlier this week, so, like everything else in this horrible war, we'll just have to wait and see what happens.
I realize now that it's taken me roughly 3,000 words to say what Roman Hrybov successfully communicated with just five, so I'll end here by saying I'm reminded of an old joke about lawyers:
What do you call 12,000 tons of Russian war materiel at the bottom of the Black Sea?
A good start.
Links:
Books:
Pliny the Elder. Natural History. United Kingdom: Penguin Publishing Group, 1991.
