DONETSK REGION, Ukraine – The ground beneath the Ukrainian positions was blackened, burned by flares dropped from Russian jets. The green cornfields beyond were pockmarked with craters carved out of the earth by Russian artillery attacks.
“This was such a beautiful scene,” the unit commander said, looking out over the rolling countryside Friday morning, “and they’ve ruined it, the swine.”
The commander, wishing to be identified only by his code name, Kandalaksha, leads a volunteer unit camping in the hills of eastern Ukraine. The unit has been holding part of the line south of the city of Izium for two months, blocking a Russian offensive to encircle and take the eastern Donbas region.
Kandalaksha is something of an anomaly. He is from Russia and describes himself as a political refugee. An opponent of the government of President Vladimir V. Putin, he left his homeland in 2014 when Moscow annexed Crimea and started supporting a separatist war in the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.
“I fought the Putin regime,” he said, “and I understood that Ukraine was the best place to fight the Putin regime.”
Shortly after arriving in Ukraine, he moved beyond political activism and joined a voluntary military unit in 2015. “I was looking myself and I was looking for a way to be useful,” he said. “I thought the most fair thing would be to fight for the country.”
When Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, he volunteered again and fought for a month in the northwestern suburbs of the capital Kiev. When Russia withdrew from Kiev and concentrated its forces on the battle of the Donbas, its unit was also sent east.
“We don’t see them, but they are shelling us,” he said of his former compatriots, the Russians who are about 10 miles from his outpost. “Rarely does a day go by without shelling. They try to bite us, but our troops hold their positions and do not let them advance.”
Ukrainian forces are under increasing pressure in eastern Ukraine as the Russian military has changed tactics. It has focused its troops and firepower on a much smaller target with a narrower objective: to encircle a last crescent of towns and villages belonging to Donetsk and Luhansk.
Every few days, soldiers from this unit of the 95th Air Assault Brigade move to the front line, which they call ground zero, to give others a break from the pounding artillery. The soldiers are caustic about the kind of warfare they endure in the open country of eastern Ukraine. They describe themselves as cannon fodder and reduced to “cotton” or stuffing under the heavy artillery barrage.
But their morale seems high and, as volunteers, most said they were convinced of the need to resist Russian aggression.
One of the volunteer soldiers is a theater director, another is an assistant professor of economics.
“It’s much harder to sit and do nothing,” says the teacher, codenamed Academic.
Maksim Bulgakov, 40, the theater director, said he never wanted to join the army. “My father, brother and grandfather were artillery officers, but I never wanted to be,” he said. “But it’s such a time. You have a problem and you have to decide.”
The men and a woman lie low, sleeping in a farmhouse, out of sight of Russian drones during the day. They operate artillery guns from the tree line in the area, but did not allow visiting reporters to see them in use.
Russian planes bombed the area, leaving huge craters 10 feet deep and damaging some hamlets and farms. An artillery shell landed nearby, but the few soldiers at the outpost seemed unconcerned, cleaning weapons and chopping wood under the trees.
They sleep on wooden planks and camping mats and share the barn with two small cats; they named one of them Hitler because of a black spot on his face reminiscent of the Nazi leader’s toothbrush mustache. The cats clamber over the sleeping bodies, while soldiers come and go throughout the night, taking turns standing watch for a few hours.
The commander, Kandalaksha, also enlists. “Our spirits are high,” he said. “All the men fighting understand that the whole world depends on Ukraine right now. We will do what we can.”
The commander, a trained electrical engineer from Murmansk in Russia’s far north, became interested in politics around 2008 or 2009 when he saw a video of opposition activist and politician Alexei Navalny. The segment exposed the corruption and misappropriation of billions of dollars of state money by the Russian leadership.
“After that I understood that all this money goes to the president and the top people,” he said. “I started asking questions and got quite active. He began distributing leaflets and evading police roadblocks to participate in a major protest rally in Moscow during the 2011 parliamentary elections.
War between Russia and Ukraine: important developments
But he soon came under the scrutiny of the Russian secret service. He worked at a hydroelectric plant, but felt his political activity caused the leadership to deny him a promotion. “They wanted me to go,” he said.
He found a job in southern Russia in 2013, and when democracy protests began in Ukraine — eventually leading to the impeachment of President Viktor Yanukovych — he began considering leaving Russia altogether. Relatives were against his move, but they understood, he said.
He asked not to identify his relatives for their own protection.
He said he didn’t regret leaving. “I don’t think I’ll ever go back,” he said. “I feel very good here. I am home.”
He is both cynical and hopeful about the possibility of change in Russia. He said Mr Putin had calculated that the West would not oppose his imperial ambition.
“His suspicion was that he would get little response,” he said. “But if you fight him, anything is possible.”
“This is the time when many things will be resolved,” he added.
He does not believe that a change of leadership something would change. ‘If Putin goes, the system stays’ he said. “We have to change the system.”
He said he was shocked by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s recent comments suggesting Ukraine would cede territory in a possible peace deal with Russia. An editorial in DailyExpertNews was interpreted as implying the same.
“That’s a horrible thought,” he said. “The whole world must destroy the Russian cancer. It is the quintessence of evil and should be defeated by all mankind.”
He said large-scale Western aid to Ukraine would help change their minds in Russia as people would see the improvements and development of freedoms. The young people in Russia already understood how unjust their system was, he said.
“I hope Russia will change and not be what it is now,” he said. “It’s not that I want it destroyed, but I hope the Russians will change their mind.”
