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Codename Hrek, Khorynzhyy Artem.

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If there is a war being waged in your country, and you are a healthy man, who can physically hold a weapon, you should go and fight.

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I remember lying there, and it’s still summer.
So the story goes: summer, scorching heat, everything around you is scorched, but there is green grass too.  Really, not a bad summer day.

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There are always bullets whizzing overhead, shrapnel, mortar shells.
And you’re lying there thinking: “Maybe I should get some sleep?” Because in this exact situation, there’s nothing you can do.

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The Russians’ attitudes towards us, basically, individually, was normal.
Truth be told, Russians themselves were also scared to death..

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“Bro, where shitting bricks here ourselves”.
Regarding DNR folk, here too was a wide range of people… from outright savages to totally normal humans.

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We all vividly imagined what it meant for a soldier from the Donbas Battalion to become a prisoner of war.  No one imagined it was possible to emerge from that captivity alive, un-maimed. We had no illusions.

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However, captivity was a quiet hell. Every day they beat someone, broke their bones.
The sanitary conditions were deplorable. No one knew when it might end.

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Secondly, you’re always feeling like you’re hanging, hoping that tomorrow they’ll trade us for someone. Or maybe the day after tomorrow.

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Regarding food… we were given 10 plates & 10 spoons for 100 men. Obviously it wasn’t enough, we really were very hungry.

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They fed us porridge with pieces of bread. I happily ate boiled barley. Imagine… happily! I hope I never have to eat it again, but then I ate it happily.

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In the school, where we had repaired the roof and everything else, they initially treated us very badly. They cursed us and tried to hit us, and stuff like that.

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But quietly they would whisper: “Boys, we love you and are anxiously waiting for you to return.”

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Women worked there. From Chop to Vladivostok, these women in music schools and libraries are all basically the same.
Just average, good women… normal people.

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We spent 1.5 months with them, and they saw that we’re normal people; they started treating us better.  When we were leaving, it felt like we were leaving family.

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My family, of course, helped me very much. Very much. As did my own desire to drag myself out of that state.

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But it was there that I understood that if I continued serving, I would never get out of there. Never. That is truly one of the most sacred truths about war, it’s almost impossible to leave it behind.

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There, everything is so black & white, that it’s just plain impossible to leave it behind.

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Passion, belief that you’re doing the most important job on the planet…