DThe military priest has changed his olive-colored, long linen robe and is now wearing a red hoodie – from Puma, with the Puma cat. Drinks whiskey. Says: “You too!” I see him twice. Squeeze the right eye shut. It helps: the two priests now become one. We keep drinking. How did we get to this garden house in Ternopil Oblast? No idea.
It all starts seven days earlier, 500 kilometers away, with coffee and in a friend's kitchen in Kiev. She's working – typing something on her iPhone – and suddenly says: “Are you actually coming with me?” She talks about the awarding of the “Hero of the Nation” medal, which she's been planning for weeks – in a secret place, on a secret day: They're coming many commanders, it's about their safety – hence the many secrets.
“Isn’t it dangerous?” I say.
“What, are you scared?!” she says in the tone of a sadistic sports teacher.
“No, no, no,” I lie three times. Think about that day in early November 2023, when a Russian missile hit a ceremony where soldiers from the 128th Brigade were awaiting their awards. 19 dead. It looked as if someone had given away the coordinates of the ceremony. But the investigation is still ongoing.
“How? What does fear mean?!” says S. a day later, looking at me as if I had escaped from the prison. He himself has just come from the front. He obviously thinks my question about whether he was afraid under fire is crazy. Says: “You know, luck is with the stupid!”
Sirens wail like they do every day
S. is a car mechanic, a broad man with thick biceps and black workshop hands. We suddenly have to talk louder, as if we were standing in a train station, at the platform where a train is pulling in. But we're not standing in a train station. Standing in front of his workshop. There's no train coming. Sirens wail. Like every day. As always.
The day before yesterday, S. brought a car to the front and then took people away – wounded people. Now shows a video on his smartphone: A large, bright yellow plastic penis hangs on a small drone that rises into the blue sky. “I made it myself with a 3D printer! And there were two grenades in the shaft,” he says, as if he were a pubescent with too much self-confidence, too much testosterone. S. speaks so quickly that his words overtake each other, harsh swear words jump back and forth in his sentences, even when it comes to the Ukrainian government, more specifically a planned voluntary law. It is intended to capture frontline aid from volunteers in a system: bureaucracy that will make it harder for civilians to help.
Avdiivka in winter: the city is already called “the second Bakhmut”.
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Image: AP
Later in the evening I will read that the paragraph is directed against fraudsters. Fraudsters who imported cars into the country ostensibly for the front, but in the end for themselves. Because of course there is betrayal and fraud in Ukraine and in the war – and now perhaps even more than before, because there is perhaps less cohesion and hope than before.
He's here to die
At lunchtime and in front of his workshop, S. now complains harder and harder about politics. Then his workshop kitten comes – it is blue-gray and petite. “No no! We won’t mobilize my little chocolate,” says S. and laughs. Because everyone in Ukraine is now making jokes about cats that need to be mobilized: They should hunt mice during the war because a major plague broke out in the fall. The mice eat everything on the front – medicine, technology, soldiers' food. Actually, it's no laughing matter.
#war #Ukraine #changed
