“This candy bar saved my life.” The lady with the scythe has eyed Gennadiy several times over the past year, a 26-year-old man in uniform who has asked that his last name be hidden for security reasons. He feels his skull, finds the mark in his hair and remembers the day the splinter miraculously took root only superficially. He was bending down to pick up a kit-kat when a bomb dropped by a Russian plane hit the base where he was staying in Barbvinkove, Kharkov region, in late April. The blast hit him inside the building. “Without a helmet,” he adds, grimacing. A blown out window miraculously flew overhead. Cadette, a colleague of his, was smoking outside. The attack led him ahead. This event is just one of the near-death episodes Gennadiy has starred in since Russia launched the major invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Like many others of his generation, born out of the Soviet corset after independence in 1991, no one imposed the mission he has been carrying out for the past 13 months. From his words, however, it is clear that he is doing nothing but obeying a script that others have previously interpreted in Ukraine. First during World War II eight decades ago, and more recently with the Russian invasion of Crimea and the war in Donbass since 2014. After quitting his job at a tech company out of patriotic impulses and responsibility, Gennadiy donned the camouflage uniform without previous knowledge It is considered one of tens of thousands of self-taught soldiers learning to be soldiers while fighting in the most extreme environments.
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At the same time, he also remembers less traumatic chapters, such as the day on December 20 when he was one of the few soldiers to receive President Volodymyr Zelenski on his first visit to the embattled city of Bakhmut. The abandoned factory where the President was photographed with Gennadiy and his companions was taken over weeks later by Russian Wagner Group mercenaries, who victoriously circulated an image in the same enclave. The young man tries to downplay the existence of this photo, which he claims not to have seen. In any case, he admits to being stationed in places where he was far worse off than on the Bakhmut front – he’s barely been in town – where the bloodiest battle has been fought in months.
Gen signs the flag that Zelenski brought to Congress during his visit to the United States in Bakhmut on December 20th. resigned
This young man, who volunteered for the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Corps, sometimes expresses doubts and even criticism in his speech. “What pisses me off the most is that they are sending the Territorial Defense Corps to the front lines [el suyo] and not to more experienced fighters,” he laments, referring to Bakhmut’s bloodshed. He calls it “hell on earth”. There, “the most paradoxical and most incomprehensible thing” is that there are still civilians. It does not hide the fact that the Ukrainian military knows that some defenders of the Moscow position are under bombs, waiting for the Russians to release them.
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However, he does not have the worst memories of this unfortunate city in the Donetsk region. Gennadiy first hardened in a place not far from there, on the Sloviansk, Dolina and Bohorodichne fronts, where he admits that things were already looking ugly. He took part in the liberation of Izium, but stayed in Kremina (Lugansk region) for two months. “Sometimes I thought I couldn’t take it,” she says. They weren’t looking at untrained Wagner mercenaries—thousands of them ex-convicts who Russia uses as cannon fodder and whose fate almost nobody cares about—but real army fighters who, after all, “were evacuating their dead.”
The table in the Kharkov canteen where the appointment with EL PAÍS takes place turns into a couch. Sometimes Gennadiy’s voice is barely audible under the music and conversations around him. With his head bowed, he rubs the fingertips of his hands, the remains of which help to understand what is behind his confession. Every now and then he goes out into the street to smoke a cigarette and comes back more keen to defecate further. It shows their emotions, their frustrations, and their hopes. His story can be summed up in this sentence: “I don’t wish hell on my worst enemy this year.”
Like an animal in a tabletop documentary, Gennadiy assures that his survival instinct has been triggered. It accompanies him as one of his weapons, although he has occasionally thrown in the towel while waiting to die in some cave while taking a few hits. “Fear is the most precious thing I lost in the war,” stresses this man, who also lost 25 of the 135 kilos he weighed on February 24, 2022 as a result of the conflict.
He dropped a few of those pounds along the way during his assigned mission, which coincided with the turn of the year. He remembers last December 31st as one of those days when he thought the end had come. The transport vehicle that took them to the agreed position broke down. They became isolated and enemy infantry advanced on their position. At the same time, the artillery played with them like puppets in a fairground booth while they fell dead and wounded.
Gennadiy narrates the entry of 2023 like this: “Exactly at midnight, shells began to fall on us and lit up the night. From the ditch you couldn’t really tell what it was. Someone panicked because they warned that they were phosphorus bombs. I figured if it was real, we’d just get burned. Even if he ran away, it’s possible he fell for a sniper. So I sat there and waited, smoking. I didn’t care anymore. Later we were able to verify that there was no match.” He examines every detail for minutes: “It was a terrible situation. I couldn’t understand how territorial defense was used at zero with the simplest weapons made 70 years ago. This situation lasted three days. Now January 3rd is my second birthday.”
Meeting with Zelenskyy
When their boss informed them on the morning of December 20 that they would travel to Bakhmut, Gennady did not expect to be one of the few who would receive Zelensky. It was the president’s first visit to this hornet’s nest in eastern Ukraine, where both sides count thousands of dead. Gennadiy is also one of those who put his signature on the national banner that Zelensky himself presented during the visit he made hours later to the United States Congress that marked his first departure from the country during the Russian invasion.
Volodymyr Zelensky addresses the US Congress after presenting Vice President Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi with a Ukrainian flag signed by soldiers. ALMOND NGAN (AFP)
Gennadiy assures that he and his companions were not notified by the commanders. In fact, these trips to difficult areas are usually organized with the utmost discretion. Even, the military says, minutes before the president’s appearance, Gennadiy greeted and hugged Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar without distance or protocol, whom he believed to be a reporter he believed had left to cover the awards ceremony been. How Zelenski got into “the most dangerous hole in the world” was very noticeable to the young man in uniform. “Not from Ukraine, from the planet,” he emphasizes. “He wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest. Nothing. Just three men from his security. And all of us with our weapons, with the ammunition, with the grenades…”.
Even then, three months ago, Bakhmut was “an absolute horror, but at least we thought he could save himself, force them to retreat. But now I just don’t see a way to continue it with so many sacrifices. I don’t think it makes much sense,” he laments. In recent weeks, the Russians have eaten away at the Ukrainians. Zelensky, without actually setting foot in the city, revisited this front last week to make it clear that he has no intention of ceding this place to the Russians. “I’m not a great strategist,” Gennadiy admits. For this reason, he adds, he may not be able to understand what is behind the decisions of those responsible at the Department of Defense “who are not stupid”. And he thinks again: “Maybe all these sacrifices are necessary to deal the final blow to Russia.” And he asks to send a message to Spain: “You have to understand that it’s happening to us today and that maybe it’s your turn tomorrow.”
It’s all part of a nightmare that started last year. On the night of February 24, Gennadiy did not sleep. He listened to music until the first missiles fell on Kharkov. Then her mother got up. They started watching the news. At first he wondered what to do, where to run… but in minutes he realized he had to be an active part of Ukraine’s defence. That was his job. A little over a year has passed since then, an eternity in which he had to learn strategy, weapons or tactical medicine on the fly. The conflict makes him feel like the protagonist of a film or like he’s been sent to another planet: “Sometimes I can’t even remember what my life was like before the war.”
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