A vegetarian at war? MISSION POSSIBLE!

They came back at night; I didn't know them.

In general, since the battalion transformed into a regiment, there are few people left whom I know. So I watched their return from the frontline with a little distance. I heard them calling him “The Professor”. When I got up in the morning, he was gone.

“At the positions,” someone explained laconically.

“But they only got back last night,” I said, being confused and surprised.

“Right, and four hours later, they went back out, to the positions,” they explained to me again. Later, 45 years old Ruslan – “Professor”, a former head chef, would tell me, that this was not the first time, and certainly not the last.

The scene of their return was heart-piercing to the core. The men, who were still awake at that hour of the night, received them with boundless warmth: they walked toward them, carried all their things inside, took their backpacks from their hands, put them in the kitchen - and watching this scene, I thought that probably only a brother-in-arms can receive another brother-in-arms that way, returning alive and well from the trenches. Almost in silence, yet with an immense, palpable sense of relief - “alive”. I then also thought, that no wife would ever be able to receive her husband that way. And not because she wouldn't want to or couldn't, but simply because she will never be capable of understanding, what their husbands went through.

People often tell me: write texts specifically aimed at soldiers' wives, and every time I catch myself thinking that there is probably no person, capable of describing what they go through, because even for me, spending weeks or months beside them, together with them, it is difficult or even impossible to describe, to truly feel that horror, that fear they experience, that darkness that follows them.

And yet. War is a place that is full of laughter. Does that seem incompatible? Well, life, you know, is full of strange things. That's why with “Professor” we talked not only about terrible and brutal things, but also about funny ones.

In four years of war I have listened to many soldiers and their history. Not all conversations or interviews end up on real or virtual paper. Sometimes a soldier isn't ready for it; the conversation constrains him, so he tries to say what he thinks is “necessary” to say. Sometimes he thinks he needs to speak “the way everyone does”. In the “right way”. That is why, when I'm in a combat zone with soldiers, I try to devote a lot of time to conversations with them. So they get used to me, so they stop being afraid of telling their story. Sometimes you just have to listen to a soldier, and sometimes you have to lead him gently by the hand, if you want to find the more interesting stories. Sometimes the stories come immediately, and sometimes from one small joke, a whole story or even a whole interview emerges. That is exactly what happened this time.

Ruslan was sitting in the kitche. I'm not sure, whether he told me then, or had mentioned it before, but it was specifically at that moment, that we spoke about him being a vegetarian. Of course, my first reaction, like that of many people, was certainly not one of disappointment: “he?! A vegetarian at war?”. I definetely mumbled something, and “Professor” explained, that his whole family are vegetarians.

Well, being either vegetarian or vegan today surprises nobody. But at war? There, where meat is the primary and main dish - since a soldier needs enough energy to endure insane physical strain. So, I asked Ruslan for an unconventional interview: about humour and jokes, and about vegetarianism at war.

“You know,” he laughs, beginning to talk about the agreed topics, “yeah, it happens sometimes, the men rib me about it, than we just laugh all together. I remember once they started telling me a joke about how “normal” people, when they're grilling shashlik outdoors and waiting for the meat to finish, at the very end, from hunger and the mouthwatering smell, their mouths start watering, and then they just want to throw a piece of juicy, delicious meat in their mouth as fast as possible. 

But, my men asked me, what about vegetarians? When, for example, someone mows their lawn nearby, surely the same thing happens - vegetarians' mouths start watering too? And they began jokingly asking me, whether that happens to me too”.

I thank the Media Support Fund (MRF) for supporting the post series “War in Ukraine: The Gap Between the Military and Society”