‘Happy with my wife, but need my brothers’: Ukrainian men caught between Russia and a war of attrition

— “Kick the door.” The soldier drinking tea on a makeshift seat in the anteroom of a Ukrainian Railways train car could only watch so many unsuccessful attempts to latch the door between carriages, whatever the language barrier. Instructions and clarifications ensued; the obstinate door yielded to the prescribed “arm-kick,” and we got to talking about the

“We rescue our country, our tradition, language, our families, wives, children,” said Leonid, whose last name is being withheld as a security precaution. “That we fight.”And yet, not everyone who can — or, by law, must — does. In the early weeks of the war, Ukrainian men raced to volunteer for the fight. More than two years later, volunteers are much more difficult to find.

“If we get Lend-Lease and all support, many people will come to army and say, ‘I want to serve as a soldier,” Fr. Sergiy Berezhnoy, a military chaplain and Kyiv-based priest of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, said in a reference to the Second World War-era program thatused to supply the British to fight Nazi Germany. “How can serve as a soldier if we don’t have enough weapons?”

People stream into Odesa National Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre for a Sunday matinee performance of Carmen, by French composer Georges Bizet, July 16, 2024. Photo credit: Joel GehrkeAway from the front lines, Ukrainian cities are bustling with the day-to-day activities of civilian life. If a uniformed solider passes by, he is liable to enjoy some impromptu courtesy, like a gift bag of baked goods from a woman at an open-air stand or, more simply, free passage into a paid bathroom.

“I think a lot of people are ready to fight, but a lot of people are simply tired of it,” said Oleh, who has not fought in the war. “All the men you see here dream of winning, but they are very afraid of dying for nothing.”

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