For a month, I thought I might never see them again. I’ll use their call signs, because the names of enlisted men are not supposed to appear in newspapers. Frosty, Hrynia and Yakut are my brothers-in-arms from another platoon. Their harrowing escape under fire from beneath a collapsed building on the front line was the most important thing that happened to my company in March.
Frosty’s cold demeanour earned him his nom de guerre. Hrynia is a diminutive of George, and Yakut is named after Yakutia, far-eastern Russia, because his eyes are slightly slanted like those of the Mongols who once ruled over Ukraine and Russia.
Their infantry squad were sheltering in the basement of a house in the ruined frontline village where my friend Denys was killed in early February. Another soldier was killed when the vehicle sent to retrieve Denys’s body was ambushed. The Russians bombed the house, and it collapsed on top of them. The last time I wrote, we were talking to them over walkie-talkies. Skilful drone pilots dropped food and water to them through a small hole at night. The hole was at most 30cm wide, not big enough for a soldier wearing a helmet and flak jacket to climb through.
Communications were sporadic, so we planned their escape in advance. Half the crossroads village is held by the Russians. Ukrainian infantry hold the other half. The Russians are trying to break through, so they can attack Slovyansk, a few dozen kilometres away. There is only one civilian left, an old man who moves between two or three houses, like the characters in Andrey Kurkov’s Donetsk novel, Grey Bees. I can’t tell how old he is, because he is wrapped up against the cold, but I know he works for the Russians because I watch him on the drone feed, taking food to enemy soldiers.
We managed to drop small, folding infantry shovels through the hole leading into the basement. Our men survived underground for a month, until mid-March, in terrible conditions. It reminded me of miners who spent months underground in Chile when I was a teenager, except that the soldiers were under near constant artillery and aerial bombardment. It was impossible for us to rescue them, so they had to dig themselves out.
There are more than 100 people in our company, and all of us felt very nervous. We hide our emotions, but you were always in a state, like there’s a rock inside you. You don’t sleep well. You keep looking at your messages. The suspense was exhausting.
They climbed out in mid-March, just before midnight. We had stopped communicating because we didn’t want to alert the Russians. But Russian night vision drones saw them and dropped gas cannisters. We know now that they killed Denys with Novichok, the nerve agent that was used against the Skripals in the UK in 2018, and against Alexei Navalny in 2020. It was Novichok they dropped on our infantry squad as they fled. If they hadn’t been in the open and wearing chemical masks, it would have killed them.
They had to walk five kilometres on mined roads to the pre-arranged evacuation point. When they finally called to say they were out, the sense of relief was enormous. It wasn’t like the movies, with everyone hugging and crying, because we were each in our separate positions, watching the whole situation, and we continued working. Someone dispatched a car filled with medics, and we had to make sure it wasn’t attacked. I was watching the Russian lines in case they tried to take advantage of the rescue to break out. Concentrated as I was on my work, I felt overjoyed that none of my comrades were killed and no one lost arms or legs, which is always the danger with minefields.
There were some truly scandalous moments in the Oval Office at the end of February. I of course support Zelenskiy, but I couldn’t help thinking Ukraine would face the consequences and it would not be pleasant
When the car finally reached the infantry soldiers, they were in terrible shape, shell-shocked and suffering from chemical poisoning. They were taken straight to the military hospital in Dnipro, so we haven’t seen them yet. Dnipro is far behind the front line but nowhere is safe. Just last night, the Russians killed four people in Dnipro with attack drones. Frosty, Hrynia, Yakut and their comrades are undergoing treatment and rehabilitation. They’ll be given time off with their families. I only hope they won’t suffer permanent damage from the nerve gas.
I write from my mother Tamara’s apartment in the suburbs of Kyiv. When I arrived home, I could tell she was on the verge of crying. She hadn’t seen me since last August, but she didn’t cry because she knows I hate that. I’ll let her cry when I take the train back to Donetsk.
I’d asked Tamara to book me an appointment with the hairdresser on my first day home. I had my blue hair dyed back to my natural dark brown. That night, I went to the theatre to see Medealand, a play based on Euripides’s tragedy, about the way women are underestimated everywhere in the world.
The director of the play is my friend Katya, who was a student activist with me in the early 2010s. When we demonstrated on the Maidan in the winter of 2013/2014, Katya was the head of our woman squad and her husband, Mykhailo, was the commander of the 16th regiment of the Euromaidan self-defence force. To think we wore cyclists’ helmets and carried plywood shields then! The Russians are far more lethal than Victor Yanukovych’s riot police. Remembering events of 11 years ago, I measure the immense distance we have travelled.
The following evening, I attended the presentation of a book about Ukrainian authors describing their writing techniques. The male moderator and the woman author were in my class at Kyiv-Mohyla, Ukraine’s most prestigious university. It made me dream about the books I’d like to write, if the war ever ends.
On the third day, I met with a production team who invited me to work as an unpaid consultant on a television series about the army.
Hairdressers, theatre, bookshops, television ... On the front line, you could forget such things exist. I tried to pack as much normal life as I could into my five days’ leave.
Back in Donetsk, I just purchased our first four fibre-optic drones for my platoon, the Hellish Hornets, thanks to a generous donor in Paris who sent us €3,500. They’re manufactured in Ukraine and are connected to the drone pilot by a very thin fibre-optic thread which transmits the image. This means the Russians cannot jam them, because there is no electromagnetic signal. I used to give our drones names, but I don’t do it with those destined for kamikaze missions, because there’s no point getting attached to them! Fibre-optic drones have only been around a few months. The Russians got them first and they have more than we do.
After more than a month of “peace negotiations”, I can’t say we are any closer to peace than before. There were some truly scandalous moments in the Oval Office at the end of February. I of course support Zelenskiy, but I couldn’t help thinking Ukraine would face the consequences and it would not be pleasant.
Funnily enough, the thing that irritated me most was the snide way Trump and the Maga journalist Brian Green mocked Zelenskiy for not wearing a suit. The US always presents itself as open-minded and tolerant, as a country that doesn’t judge on appearance. It seemed hypocritical and petty.
I saw the interview where Steve Witkoff, Trump’s negotiator, says that eastern Ukraine should be given to Russia because its inhabitants speak Russian. An American in Texas posted a video saying 70 per cent of his town speak Spanish, so why don’t we give it to Mexico?
Apparently, the Americans have rewritten the minerals agreement that Zelenskiy had agreed to sign in February, and the new version is even more predatory. It seems like we are being used because we are at a disadvantage.
I don’t think the war will end, but it will stop for a while. After every announcement about a ceasefire, Putin steps up the shelling and bombing. It’s his way of saying he doesn’t want to end the war. He keeps piling on new conditions. I think Putin is testing Trump, to see how far he can go and how many advantages he can get.
On March 30th, Trump said he was “getting very angry” with Putin and threatened to impose tariffs on countries who buy Russian oil, like China and India.
Within hours, Trump threatened Zelenskiy with “big, big problems” if he doesn’t sign the minerals deal. He talked about his “good relationship” with Putin, saying, “the anger dissipates quickly if he does the right thing”.
I tell myself that the Trump administration will not last forever. Trump cannot destroy everything the US has built up over centuries. I remain optimistic. There are still a lot of scenarios possible.
How Good It Is I Have No Fear of Dying: Lieutenant Yulia Mykytenko’s Fight for Ukraine by Lara Marlowe is published by Head of Zeus.
