In Kiev there are about 7,000 veterans since the Donbass clashes began in 2014
Ahmad is 28 years old and has lived through two wars. His father is Syrian and his mother Ukrainian. They fled Syria at the outbreak of the war and settled in the Ukraine. He says that his brother was killed by the Russian army in that confrontation and that, for this reason, years later, as an adult, he did not hesitate when the Donbass war broke out. “I was motivated. I felt it was my obligation,” he explains.
Ahmad fought on the front lines against the ‘pro-Russian’ separatists between 2017 and 2020. And he was not exactly in the rear. He was part of the special operations group. With training in medicine, his mission was to care for the wounded. If there was no one to heal, it was part of the missions that included going into “occupied territory to kill enemies”.
– How many people have you killed?
Ahmad doesn’t hesitate for a second. In three years on the front he has killed 15 people. Then, he adds that he has seen 6 of his friends die.
Ahmad had to leave the front after falling into a hole. A colleague activated a booby trap hidden in the trees and several Ukrainian soldiers were seriously injured. One lost a leg. He came out of it unharmed and carried one of his friends on his shoulders as they quickly fled from there, between bursts of gunfire. This caused a back injury. But the worst was yet to come.
In the war he was afraid. But his mind was only focused on surviving. The psychological problems began when he returned home, already safe with his wife and children. You need sleeping pills. And when he does, he usually remembers some of the worst scenes he experienced on the front. “I often wonder why my friends have died and I am alive,” he confesses with a lost look.
Ahmad passionately recounts some of the missions he took part in. Now he works at the hospital and as an instructor for civil groups defending the territory. I would go back to the front. But his family doesn’t want to and his back won’t let him either.
Anton Kolumbet is the deputy chairman of the Kiev war veterans’ association. They are dedicated to helping people like Ahmad. In Kiev alone there are about 7,000. Anton was in the war between 2014 and 2015. He enlisted shortly after the invasion of Crimea, because since he was a child he had been taught that “if someone enters your country, you have to go and defend it”.
He was not injured. But when he returned, he realized that the veterans had many difficulties in being able to reintegrate into society. And he began to work to get better conditions for ex-combatants, especially for volunteers, who are the ones who encountered the most difficulties when returning home because many did not have papers to prove that they had been in the war. He now works as a security guard in public buildings.
Anton was part of the units that fired from a distance. He doesn’t know if any of the bullets he fired killed anyone. But he insists that he would not have had a problem taking the life of an “enemy” either. “You Europeans don’t understand. We are just defending our homeland. And if we doubt, the dead will be us».
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