“What do you want to hear? How can a relationship be defined as ‘normal’ when you can only see each other 15-20 days a year?” Juri is 35 years old and has been a Ukrainian soldier at war since February 2022. His is not the romantic love story and war that one might expect, but it is brazen and unfair, just as life can be.
Like thousands of other Ukrainian citizens, three years ago Juri left everything behind, his home and his family, to fight against the Russian invasion. He and the other soldiers are allowed a maximum of 30 days a year of “vacation”, “but no more than 15 days in a row”.
In that February three years ago, nobody knew that Russia would soon attack Ukraine and, before the war began, that same month, Yuri divorced his wife. A few days after the separation, Yuri was woken up by the sound of bombs being dropped by the Russian army on Vasylkiv airport, not far from his home: “I took my family and a friend’s family and took them to a safe place 160 km away”. On February 25th, Yuri will be on a bus heading to the military unit with which he will fight to defend the city of Kiev.
Three years of fighting, destruction and death begin. Three years of breaking with everything that was once a “normal” life. If a conflict destroys all that is normal, a pain as lacerating as that caused by the end of a love affair remains unscathed despite the progress of a war: “The situation in which we live has meant that my ex-wife and I have managed to build a sort of ‘restored’ relationship”.
The two have a 6-year-old son and the need to have an Internet connection for Juri’s role in the army means they can often talk on the phone: “He asks her every day if I’m going to die. He’s now old enough to understand where I am and what could happen to me”. At 6 years old, Juri’s son, after having fled with his mother to Sweden for a period of time, now lives in Ukraine and suffers from anxiety attacks: “Alarms and missiles don’t help”.
The same fear has been consuming an entire nation for three years now, but the people cannot get used to or surrender to the sound of the same sirens and missiles that frighten Juri’s son. It is “a form of love that I don’t know how to translate” that the Ukrainian people have embraced, despite the rest of the world having bet on a quick victory for Russia, and that makes it possible, after 3 years, to talk about what the future of Ukraine will be, however uncertain. “History is cyclical and destined to repeat itself. My great-grandfather was shot by the Russians during the Bolshevik revolution, my great-grandmother’s brother was also shot by the Russians. I treat war and combat as if they were a job. For me, the Russians have always been what they are now».
Yuri is the commander of his unit, a group made up of five other guys: «They are my family. When you have to go through so many difficult and dangerous moments, you can’t help but bond with each other.” They are now heading for Kharkiv: ‘We use drones to target the Russians.’ None of them were soldiers before February 2022: ”My civilian life helped me. Many military innovations have been made thanks to people who were not military, we have revolutionized the army». Yuri studied history, he is passionate about literature and the only moments in which he manages to distract himself are those in which, lying down somewhere, he can leaf through the pages of a book.
He and his unit are heading towards one of the cities most tormented by the Russian army. For three years, not a day or night has gone by that Kharkiv, located in the east of the Ukraine, has not been bombed. The city is 50 kilometers from the Russian border.
There, Ukrainian soldiers fight the war from the trenches. In the winter months, the average temperature in that area ranges from -8 to 3 degrees Celsius. Those who fight in the trenches sleep, wake up, eat, die outdoors, surrounded by the cold earth of the dug-out holes. The tunnel of Yuri’s cell has become a “morgue”. He can’t, he doesn’t want to talk about any of them, because all of them, from the first to the last, deserve to be remembered. “The only thing that gives me strength is thinking about my comrades who are in the trenches. They are the only thing that keeps me going. When I feel cold, I know that there will come a time, sooner or later, when I will be able to warm up. It’s not the same for them”.
The knowledge that the life or death of another soldier may depend on his every move means that Juri doesn’t let despair take over. It is the love for the life of another comrade that gives him the strength to resist.
“I can’t describe how war changes people. There are times when it’s difficult to control post-traumatic stress disorder, but I’ve started to value life in a different way. When you see death so close up, even life changes. I don’t need much anymore to be happy: getting up early in the morning, seeing my family. That’s happiness.” Love.
The name of the protagonist of this story has been changed to protect his identity.
