Ivan has been given the name Decent Man by his fellow soldiers, for being a decent man. As a 40-year-old teacher from central Ukraine and the father of three children, he would have been exempt from fighting at the beginning of the war. But he wanted to fight for his country. He has now spent 18 months on the battlefield and desperately misses his family. He might dream of returning home, but so far doesn’t consider being discharged an option. “The country has already spent money and resources on me. How can I leave?” he asks. Another soldier, who used to be a construction worker in a village in eastern Ukraine, speaks about his motivation to continue serving: “I’ve learned how to become a better and more helpful soldier for my colleagues.”
I spoke to troops from this squadron, which belongs to one of the most famous Ukrainian combat brigades, earlier this month. I wanted to understand the mood among soldiers on the eastern front, to find out what the troops care most about and also to discover whether political disputes reach the frontline.
My encounters came before President Zelenskiy went to the EU to plead for more support this week. Although the EU agreed to start Ukraine’s negotiation for EU membership, €50bn of financial aid was cruelly blocked by Hungary’s Viktor Orbán – Russia’s closest ally in the EU. This comes at a time when President Biden in the US is struggling to get an aid package for the country through Congress.
Most of the servicemen I spoke to had been serving for between 15 and 20 months. They had survived major battles; many were wounded and had witnessed the deaths of their closest friends. In that time, most had not had more than a week or two off duty. The squadron’s 26-year-old commander got married six months before the full-scale invasion in February 2022. Since then, he has been on the frontline for over 18 months.
Political life in Kyiv has now returned to some semblance of normality, including prewar criticism of Zelenskiy by his prewar opponents – sometimes fair, sometimes not. The national and international press persistently search for any evidence of a possible rift between Zelenskiy and Ukraine’s military leadership. Some people are concerned that the country is no longer united; others treat political confrontations as a sign of a healthy democracy, which Ukraine has preserved even under martial law.
Contrary to foreign media headlines, Ukrainian soldiers don’t talk so much about the lack of progress in the counteroffensive. Initially, those fighting had a sober view on the possibility of liberating the rest of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions without a decent air force and sufficient demining. (As one soldier, who lost his leg near Bakhmut this summer, told me, “For us, 200 metres of liberated land means a few dead and eight legs”).
Now, what Ukrainian soldiers really care about is physical tiredness. There is no procedure for discharging those who went to fight at the start of the invasion, including those who volunteered. They have a duty to serve until the end of the war. Last month, some servicemen’s relatives sent an appeal to the headquarters of the supreme commander-in-chief asking for clearly defined terms of service. “The assumption that experienced soldiers after 20 months of active combat remain motivated and have the physical and psychological resources to continue military service is false,” it read.
It’s become such a big issue that Zelenskiy has instructed the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the general staff, and the ministry of defence to find solutions, while factions in parliament are preparing a draft law that will change the rules for mobilising and discharging soldiers.
To wage a war of attrition, Ukraine needs more fighters, but it’s tricky to keep hundreds of thousands of troops in barracks, as they won’t have enough equipment. And Ukraine’s economy might not be able to sustain an army twice its current size.
Only males aged 27 to 60 are currently drafted, while a recent decision to lower the age for mobilisation to 25 is yet to be implemented. Conscripts (aged 18-20) are not allowed to be sent to the battlefield. But younger men can volunteer to fight.
The deputy commander of the squadron, who is in his mid-40s, prefers not to let the younger soldiers fight instead of him: “The newbies, especially the young ones, are the least careful. Often they do not understand what’s at stake,” he says.
The real issue is not so much about age, but experience. They can’t afford to let the experienced fighters go.
The Ukrainian army consists of men who went to fight not because they wanted to, but because it was the only way to defend their towns and families. “Unless the Russian troops are kicked out of Ukrainian territory, the probability that my city will be occupied remains,” one serviceman explains.
For those on the battlefield, the idea of a ceasefire sounds not just naive, but ignorant and detached from reality. The Kremlin uses any pause in the fighting to strengthen its capacity, and get more ammunition, they believe, while Moscow gives no hint of stopping its assault.
After almost two years of war, Ukrainians reflect a lot about the reasons behind successes and failures, but criticism and dissatisfaction must not be mistaken for surrender. The major question is whether casualties could have been avoided and how not to lose lives in the future.
“Nobody wants to die; we try not to, but it doesn’t always work” – that’s how the squadron commander summarises his everyday existence.
If the number of soldiers was the major criterion for success, Ukraine should not even be trying to defend itself. So far, all its victories have been the result of better technology, higher morale and more agility. But over time Russia has caught up, particularly by using drones.
Ukrainian soldiers now want a better equipped, more efficient army. What they don’t want is to give up.
This pragmatism is a far cry from the anxiety I heard in western capitals I visited last month, where some of the analysts, in a rather patronising tone, suggested that Ukraine should “prepare for the worst instead of trying their best”.
This suggestion may sound smart in London or Washington, but appears childish and irresponsible in Ukraine, like advising someone fighting a disease to abandon treatment. If Ukrainians hadn’t tried their best in 2022, the country might not exist now; the cities would be occupied, and society would be crushed.
It’s not just Ukraine’s armed forces that are tired of war; so are millions of ordinary Ukrainians. But being tired is not an excuse for a Ukrainian electrician not to fix the power grid, for a doctor not to treat the wounded, for a rescue worker not to save a person, or for air defence soldiers not to shoot down another Russian missile aimed at Ukrainian towns (like the one that fell less than two miles away from my housein the early hours of Wednesday morning).
The prospects of a long-lasting war have always seemed grim to the outside world, yet Ukrainians embraced this from the start, with doomed optimism. Two years on, we’re all much more tired. Yet, what we have also learned is that with weariness come experience and confidence.
Nataliya Gumenyuk is a Ukrainian journalist, and co-founder of the Reckoning Project