This is the hardest (and heaviest) gift I have ever received.

And an award. In the truest sense of the word. An award, weighing 12 kg. I still find it very hard to accept gifts and awards. I always feel, I do not do enough, that I don’t give all my strength, that maybe I could do even more.

This award is not merely symbolic. It is part of a KAB, brought back from Donbas. The same KAB, that bombarded us last year, became an inseparable part of our daily routine there. Back then they bombed us several times a day; 500‑kg bombs rained down on us.

A lot happened in Donbas; there were many open, painful conversations with soldiers, conversations about things that people usually avoid. One of my soldiers clearly described what is happening on the other, enemy’s side: there are often situations when the russians attack themselves and knock themselves out.

“For example, in a situation I got into, one of their ‘little tanks’ drove onto their own mines, their assault troops jumped out of the vehicles, the vehicles ran over some soldiers of their own, a BMP drove onto a mine and burned, they panicked even more, started running around, not knowing what to do, running across the field, to those ‘ambushes’, and our drone crews burned another BMP, the remaining equipment drove back, the infantry, running across the field, were caught up by our artillery, and well, the whole assault - it didn’t even reach our forward corner. Some of them, of course, fled, but most burned in their vehicles, some remained lying out in the field.”

I ask him, if they remain lying there.

“Yes,” he confirms, “we don’t collect them, nor does the enemy ask. They don’t need them, they don’t ask. For example, we could exchange them for ours, we also have people lying there,’ suddenly the soldier’s thoughts slip from where we are, to Kherson: “There, it really was hell, it was very hard. In a week, one village received 460 aerial bombs, they literally flattened everything to the ground.”

Further he tells me about one case: one Russian soldier was taken prisoner there, nobody beat him or tied him up, like they do on the other side. Ukrainians simply led him to an evacuation that was only possible by boat across the river. Suddenly they came under mortar fire; two infantrymen were severely wounded and one moderately. And this Russian prisoner gave them first aid, bandaged them, dragged them into the boat, woke the least‑wounded one, to ask him where to sail, and, sitting at the motor himself, took them to our people, to evacuate.

While loading them into a car, one of the severely wounded suddenly opened his eyes and asked: where is the “pxxdor”? Where is that captured one? Nobody even realized that the man, sitting among them and hugging a weapon, was the captured enemy soldier. He just sat calmly and waited to see what would happen to him next.

The command arrived, thought, and decided not to hand him over to counterintelligence, so they left him to drive the boat, only, of course, now wearing a Ukrainian army uniform. Later, that russian explained his astonishment, that they had taken him prisoner and did not tie him up, blindfold him, or beat him. While walking with them earlier, he thought, “they just walk normally, humanely with me”. But if returned or sent back, the soldier would be shot immediately - the mission he had, hadn’t been completed.

“Yes, yes,” my soldier further explains, “on the enemy side everything is arranged clearly: you, having received an order, must carry it out 100%. If you do not complete the mission, you assault the last living person.”

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