February was a cruel, cold month for me, for my comrades in the 54th mechanised brigade and for Ukraine. Painful losses on the battlefield were compounded by the apparent defection of our most important ally, the United States.
I last saw Denys on December 23rd, 2024. He accompanied a pastor from his church and volunteers to my reconnaissance platoon on the front line in Donetsk. Denys sent a list of hymns and Ukrainian folk songs that he played on the guitar, so we could practice before our Christmas celebration.
The majority of Ukrainians are Orthodox Christians. Denys was a Baptist. As a joke, he chose the call sign Shtunda, which was a derogatory name for Protestants in Soviet times.
Denys was skinny and muscular, with fair hair and blue-grey eyes. He played football in his hometown in western Ukraine. He always smiled. We didn’t talk about religion, but I understood that he was happy because he believed in a God who loved everyone. He was 30 years old and had volunteered for the army when the full-scale invasion started. He was killed near Siversk, Donetsk, on February 5th.
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‘Denys was skinny and muscular, with fair hair and blue-grey eyes. He was killed near Donetsk in February’
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Denys had left the dugout to check a generator when a Russian first-person-view (FPV) drone dropped a chemical grenade next to him. It killed him almost instantly. Several men inside the dugout were paralysed for days after the gas attack. One remained in a coma for more than a week.
Denys had been in that dugout since Christmas. The area has been under constant bombardment and it was too dangerous to rotate soldiers. Ten days passed before we were able to send a truck to fetch his body and evacuate his wounded comrades, under cover of bad weather. We haven’t received the autopsy report, so we don’t know what chemicals the Russians used to kill him. On my map for future grieving, I placed a black heart on Ivano-Frankivsk, where Denys was buried.
Many Ukrainian soldiers post poems about their experiences on social media. I wish that someone would collect them, so these texts will not be lost. My late husband, Illia Serbin, made a distinction between mere soldiers and warriors, who have a more noble calling. Illia was killed in a Russian bombardment seven years ago. He was a warrior and Denys was a warrior. I wrote this poem when Denys died, and posted it on Facebook:
The warrior is the first to fall.
He does not carry yesterday,
He does not chase tomorrow.
The present is his only ground.
He does death –
He does it for love.
For love of the child
For love of the woman who bore his child,
For love of his mother and neighbour.
The warrior is not talkative.
What words could hold both life and death?
He grieves for justice that is stolen from us.
The warrior smiles
At the cat curled upon his chest,
At the rain falling softly on his unshaven face
At the hot coffee gripped between trembling hands.
He laughs when a child laughs
And kneels in gratitude
That only a limb was lost
That a life was spared.
The warrior loves and falls in love
And at the edge of dawn
He takes leave of us.
The truck we sent for Denys and his comrades was ambushed by four Russian soldiers who had sneaked into a destroyed crossroads village. We don’t know how they got there without our seeing them. We killed them with artillery shells and FPV drones.
Since I can’t wear make-up or beautiful clothes, I dye my hair blue, to be different. My commanding officer laughs and says everyone loses their mind in his or her own way in this war
A 24-year-old soldier from Kramatorsk, whose call sign was Gypsy, was killed in the ambush. The truck driver is called Flyer, because he has wings tattooed on his back. He stepped on the gas and tore out of the village. A bullet hit him in the lung, but the combat medic told me Flyer smoked a cigarette when they reached safety.
Denys’s platoon is called Tyson’s Group, because their commander is an amateur boxer. Soon after the ambush, the Russians bombed a house in the destroyed village, where drone pilots were working from a basement. It collapsed on top of them. The Russians think they’re dead, but we talk to them on walkie-talkies. We haven’t been able to get them out, with all the shelling and FPV drones. They’re running out of food and water, so we drop supplies by drone at night.
On February 13th, I decided to relocate my platoon, the Hellish Hornets, to a city 15km away from our previous position in northern Donetsk. We’d been shelled constantly for two weeks, with only occasional lulls. There were five of us in a cosy wooden house next to a forest, but the noise was driving us crazy. The walls shook all the time, and it was impossible to sleep. As the line of contact moved closer to our village, the Russians destroyed everything in front of them. I decided not to wait any longer. This was at least the sixth time we’ve moved in two years. It’s typical of the progression of Russian forces in Donbas.
My platoon already had one house in the city, so we’ve rented more. We are spaced out so the Russians can’t wipe out the unit with one strike. For the first time since 2022, I live in a billet that has running water and electricity. It’s more quiet than the village, so I sleep better. There are restaurants and grocery stores. I can order pizza, sushi or burgers. It’s almost like normal life.
I can wash my hair whenever I want to. Since I can’t wear make-up or beautiful clothes, I dye my hair blue, to be different. My commanding officer laughs and says everyone loses their mind in his or her own way in this war.
We do the same work as before, launching drones and watching the front lines. But our internet connection is better. We use the Starlink satellite system which is owned by Elon Musk and financed by the Pentagon. The Trump administration threatened to cut off us off if president Zelenskiy did not sign over half of Ukraine’s mineral wealth to the US. Zelenskiy limited the damage, but it still feels like blackmail.
Trump is just a crude businessman who recognises someone similar to himself in Putin. They respect only force; not inner strength, but brutality
Our general staff are working on alternative communications. Ukraine’s military industry has expanded a great deal since the full-scale invasion. Zelenskiy said in January that we now manufacture 30 per cent of all the weapons we are using. At least half my drones are Ukrainian made. After Hitler seized Czechoslovakia in 1939, he was able to use the Czech armaments industry to resupply the Wehrmacht. Putin will do the same if he is able to take the rest of Ukraine.
We have, of course, heard the lies which Trumputin is telling about us. (I call him Trumputin because he repeats everything Putin says.) He claims Ukraine started the war, that Zelenskiy is an unpopular dictator. I don’t know if he is serious or just being provocative. In any case, he’s talking rubbish.
Only Ukrainians have the right to judge our president. Trumputin says we must hold elections, but that’s not feasible in the middle of war. For now, I support Zelenskiy and what he is doing. It was clever of him to propose stepping down if Ukraine is allowed to join Nato. He called Trumputin’s bluff.
I was pleased to learn that the value of Trump’s crypto currency has plummeted, that celebrities like Stephen King and Madonna criticise him. Trump is just a crude businessman who recognises someone similar to himself in Putin. They respect only force; not inner strength, but brutality.
Trump slapped Europe in the face by excluding them from negotiations, because he thinks Europe is weak. I hope this will bring Europe and Ukraine closer together, because Ukraine is part of Europe. I would rather share our resources and military experience with Europe than the US.
Since university, I’ve known that Ukraine’s place is in the West. That was why we demonstrated on the Maidan in 2013/14. Now it seems there is some kind of rot spreading through the West.
Europe and Ukraine must decide if they want dignity or dishonour, totalitarianism or democratic institutions and values. I hope we can forge an alliance of principled people as an alternative to US-led Nato. These days, I often think of the quotation attributed to Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Each of the past three years has been harder than the one that preceded. I don’t know what to expect, but I do know that we will continue no matter how hard it becomes. I still believe there will be peace in 2025. It feels as if we are in a book or a movie, where the action is building towards a climax. If we are forced to capitulate, I and other veterans will continue to work for the defence of Ukraine, because the behaviour of our allies has taught us we can trust only in ourselves.
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.
