They "defend" their children AT SOMEONE ELSE'S EXPENSE (Kosts?).

He smoked a lot while talking to me. But honestly, show me anyone there who doesn't smoke much.

We spoke outside, already well into the day, though we had arrived at their place at night. This interview, or perhaps I'll simply call it a conversation, is probably the first in all my practice, where I don't want to skip a single sentence, a single word. It ought to be like a Bible for those of us who, believe that war will somehow pass us by, as we sit comfortably on sofas in our warm and bright homes.

Every sentence of his, every word, cuts like a knife.

“But there are also people who,” the soldier carefully chooses his words, thinks, then says: “who, to put it correctly, have not yet woken up. The fourth year of war is underway” Suddenly our conversation turns in a direction, I usually avoid with my soldiers - mobilisation. Most often, when it comes up, they just sigh, we all know, how hostile society's attitude toward it is. But this soldier wraps nothing in cotton wool; he speaks plainly and directly, as things are. And his words are like someone ripping a plaster off a wound.

“Something horrific would have to happen in their lives, to force them to change their paradigms, their attitude toward everything, that is happening now. So they 'wriggled out', I mean, dodged service. They did this in the first year of the war, they 'wriggled out' in the second year, they 'wriggled out' in the third year and managed to evade mobilisation. If earlier, lets say, at the start of the full-scale war, there were many people with a genuine desire to go and defend their loved ones and their country, and I say especially enormous respect for those people who were already conscious before that and had been fighting since 2014, 2016, or 2018 and there are many such people, who stayed and kept fighting afterward. They didn't say “I've already done my fighting, now it’s your turn, you must continue”. But those who haven't 'woken up' until now, you know, I very much doubt, they ever will. And to be honest, they genuinely aren't “asleep” - this is simply their true mentality, their attitude and relationship to what is happening.

I'm talking about fundamental, very simple, and deeply human values. About defending the future of your children. For instance, those who have children and are responsible parents, those think about their children's future: in what country those children will grow up, into what world you brought them, what conditions will be created for them to study or for their future businesses.

You think about whether they will be able to build their lives normally, to live in abundance, in full-fledged peace, and later, in the future, to raise their own children. Or perhaps on the contrary: will they have to fight something too? People, who have children, think precisely about that,” says soldier Falcon, adding immediately, that again, not everyone thinks that way. 

“Despite someone having children, not only does he not go out, to defend them, but all the opportunities he has for his children, exist only because someone else went, because here, at the frontline, there are people who fight. They are defending their own children, and at the same time, the children of the one who didn't go into battle.”

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