When it comes to a huge invasion of Ukraine, Denis Anysymov (26) will not be surprised again. When Russian-led separatists took over his hometown of Donetsk eight years ago, it was impossible for him to defend it. Anysymov had just left eastern Ukraine and, as a first-year law student, had been completely overwhelmed by the war. This time he is ready. “Myself and the whole country have learned hard lessons,” he says, now a lawyer at a state-owned company in Kiev. “We are smarter, stronger and better prepared than we were in 2014. Putin will not just rage over us again.”
Anysymov, armed only with his car keys and a thick army green coat for the time being, just walks out of the office of the Ukrainian reservists in the capital. He has undergone a medical test and prepared paperwork that will allow him to be called up for battle at any time. He immediately responded on Wednesday to President Volodymyr Zelensky’s call for all healthy men between the ages of 18 and 60 to apply.
The so far philosophical question whether you as a Ukrainian are prepared to defend your country in the event of a Russian invasion has become an acute one with Zelensky’s appeal.
Not every young man on the streets of Kiev is thrilled. The camouflage shirt and militant jacket that Gleb Zolotoechyn (19) wears suggest otherwise, but he refuses to fight for Ukraine. “I’m a pacifist,” says the student and post-punk musician. “I’ve already packed my bag: two guitars, my X-box, my laptop and chargers.” They will join the flight to Poland as soon as Russian soldiers approach Kiev.
Since Zelensky’s admonition, Zolotechyn has doubted whether he can wait for an actual escalation of violence. “I read on the internet that the state plans to just pick men off the street and force them into the army,” he says with an angry look. It is one of the rumors circulating about complete mobilization in Ukraine. Something Zelensky excludes in his appeal — for now. Report: If Russia does invade Ukraine, it will mentally find another country
Flee again
Nikolas (27) also plans to flee if things really go wrong. It won’t be the first time for him. “Fortunately, I don’t have to be afraid of Ukrainian mobilization, because as a Belarusian I do not qualify for that,” he says. Rather, it was a personal and coercive order to serve dictator Lukashenko’s army after the crushed 2020 revolution that forced him to flee from Minsk to Kiev. For fear that his family who stayed behind in Belarus will suffer from his statements, he does not want to use his last name in the newspaper.
He came to Ukraine because the language and culture appeal to him more than an asylum procedure in Western Europe. Here he could easily get a residence permit and a job in IT. Now he walks with his passport in his pocket in case he has to make another drastic decision. “It’s unreal that I can end up in chaos, violence and oppression again,” says Nikolas.
It feels, he admits, like another version of the same post-Soviet compulsion to crush freedom and democracy in this region. In that respect, the countries where he can still easily go with his passport (Moldova and Georgia) do not sound welcoming.
Most young men who walk around Taras Shevchenko Square in front of the university in Kiev on Wednesday afternoon, say with some hesitation that they are willing to fight for their country. Or at least see it as their moral duty. “Everyone who can must defend their country,” says Mikita Likhachev (20). “But I don’t want to kill anyone.” When asked whether he is prepared to go to the Eastern Front tomorrow, the bespectacled economics student answers in the negative. „I will be honest, it is only when I am attacked on Kiev that I really feel called to action. Then we have no choice.”
Motherland lost
Some men have devised a contingency plan in which they first try to get their families to safety in western Ukraine or even across the border of the European Union and then return to take up arms.
Artoer Dydenko (26) works for an app development company that offered him a transfer to Lviv, Riga or Warsaw. “I told them I will only go if I can bring my family.” He foresees a scenario in which he himself then goes back to fight. He has already completed military training.
Like Denis Anysymov, Dydenko comes from a region that has been fighting for eight years: Luhansk. “I have already lost my motherland, my roots have been cut. Still, I want to defend the rest of this country.”
afraid to fight
Most in Kiev can hardly imagine what their contribution to a war could look like. “Of course I have a fantasy that I can reclaim my family’s house and hug both my grandmothers who stayed behind in Donetsk after years,” says fresh reservist Anysymov. “But I don’t really see myself lying in the mud with a gun. This is a hybrid war, an information war with cyber-attacks.” He hopes to be able to contribute something there, instead of with a gun.
Is he scared? “Of course I feel fear to fight. But I am even more afraid of the alternative: complete Russian domination.”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of February 24, 2022
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