Easter Sunday is slowly ending.

The deceptive, two-day “ceasefire” is drawing to a close. It was a lie, of course, as always when the enemy gives his “word”.

Holy Sunday is ending, but the war is not. My men's Sunday was no different from any day before it, they continued, with a few coffee and cigarette breaks, to glue, paint, and assemble. Somebody - standing guard at the positions. Yes, already for many months. Without rotation.

They will stand there tomorrow too. They will glue, paint, assemble, test, invent tomorrow as well. They will stand watch tomorrow too. Today I am here, together with them. Help me help them.

Perhaps simply because TODAY WAS A GOOD DAY FOR YOU.

We talked with him outside, day broke. The soldier lights another cigarette; where we're sitting, it is already sunny and bright. Were it not for the sounds around us, you could forget, you are at war.

“A person often doesn't see the full picture and, well, he feels, he lives perfectly normal. Such a person doesn't ask himself: what would it have been like, if those guys, who went to war, hadn't gone? What would have happened, if the enemy had been let into Kyiv, Brovary, or into his home? If the enemy were standing in the streets with assault rifles and body armor on his very street, entering his apartment, where his wife, his children live. Where his nest is... What would it be like then, if not for all these guys?” the soldier repeats all those questions. “A person doesn't ask himself that question, and it doesn't hinder his life at all. He doesn't understand or comprehend, that he has all the opportunities he currently has: to live his quiet life, to work, to be with the children, with his wife, to drink coffee in the mornings, to enjoy a film.

All the simple and most basic parts of human well-being he has only because there, somewhere, someone is standing firmly as a rock for him, for his family. You know, these are people of low moral and ethical quality. And unfortunately, there are very many such people. And the reality is that because such a long full-scale war, the number of those people, who rushed into the fight, who understood they had certain obligations to their friends, their loved ones, their women, those people are dwindling.”

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