Two years later, many are still fighting. Some have lost limbs. Many of them barely saw their families. For everyone, their hopes and dreams for the future have changed, as the war that most expected to end quickly may continue for years. They long to return to their civilian lives.
Here are the stories of three Ukrainians who were drafted on February 24, 2022, after two years on the battlefield.
Vadim Bure, 44 years old, call sign Vasilovich
Bori cannot take a step without remembering what he lost during the fighting. In September 2022, while driving infantry and fresh supplies to the front line near the besieged Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, Bori's car was hit by an anti-tank missile.
He recently said that he was lucky that the missile did not explode. It caused a catastrophic accident but did not immediately incinerate everyone inside. The person with him knew how to quickly put a tourniquet on Bori's legs. However, when Buri woke up, he was an amputee, with both legs ending at the knee.
“If I had at least one leg, I wouldn't be bothered at all,” Bury said with a shrug. “And I understood very well that within some time I would be able to get back on my feet.”
He is one of thousands of Ukrainians who lost limbs in the war. What happened next was “purgatory,” Puri said. He was transferred from one hospital to another throughout Ukraine. Eventually, he traveled to the United States to be fitted with a prosthetic limb and begin rehabilitation. His desire to start walking again was stronger than his body could handle at times. Sometimes his stitches would bleed. Sometimes the prosthesis did not fit, or was broken.
He was never afraid of walking on snow or ice, but now he reviews every step to avoid falling. Bathing, which was previously a simple pleasure, became cumbersome because he needed to take a chair with him every time.
“I mean there are some inconveniences, but life doesn't end there, right? No, it doesn't,” said Bure. “Yes, it's uncomfortable. Yes, it hurts. Yes, it's not for you. Well, what can you do? What is the way out?
Bury remained deployed to eastern Ukraine with the 58th Mechanized Brigade despite being able to claim that he was “unfit for military service.” He appealed to the brigade leadership to remain in some capacity and serve as an administrative clerk at a rear base away from the unit's forward positions.
Before he signed up to fight on the first day of the war, Bure had a plan. He was careful with his finances to support his family – a wife and three children. He started his days with coffee at 7 a.m. before taking the kids to school. His youngest child, a girl, was only 3 years old when he was drafted.
He wasted time watching her grow up too. Another thing is that he can't come back.
“Everything was fine,” Bury said. “And now the order has been reversed. You already realize that it will not return to its original state – well, to its pre-war state.”
Oleksandra Ryazantseva, 40 years old, call sign Yalta
Ryazantseva was the type of girl who loved high heels. She drove a pink car. She was one of the best fashion designers in Ukraine, and had her own wardrobe studio for film actors.
But over the past two years, I've forgotten how to apply makeup. The clothes she used to love no longer fit her. She changed into a full camouflage uniform.
“I've been a fashion designer for 15 years and now I can't keep up,” Ryazantseva said. “I have 33 shades of green – both pixel and multi-cam.”
She thought about becoming a soldier long before she woke up in the morning to the sound of Russian missiles exploding in Kiev. She is from Crimea, which Russia illegally invaded and annexed in 2014. Her father was in the army, serving with Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
“I realized, ‘OK, this is it,'” she said. “I mean you're never going out like that again, on a date or something like that. So, on the 24th, when it was already daylight, I went to the military enlistment office.
She was handed a gun she didn't know how to use and sent to Hostomel, where Russian paratroopers descended on the airfield from waves of helicopters. Her teeth chattered as she cowered behind an armored personnel carrier. She and the Ukrainian forces she had just met were captured in an ambush.
“They say, ‘Look, kid, let’s probably bring you back,’” Ryazantseva said.
Women remain an overwhelming minority in the Ukrainian military and struggle to gain confidence in frontline duties, often serving in backline roles or as medics. After two weeks of helping patrol Kyiv's city center when the capital was still under threat, Ryazantseva was invited to join the Regional Defense Force brigade — which is how most Ukrainians with no previous experience and eager to fight were mobilized in the early days of the war.
She said she was killed for the first time days later: she shot a Russian soldier in the Kiev suburb of Irbin. “I was feeling nauseous then,” she said. She was later deployed to the Belarusian border on a reconnaissance mission, wearing adult diapers while lying in swamps because raising her head too much could mean giving away her location.
Ryazantseva's military life now seems more familiar than her civilian past. But this came after a great personal sacrifice. She said that Ryazantseva wanted a baby girl, a “silent and naughty” little girl who she would name Matilda. But dating and relationships are out of the question because she can't commit to the future.
“I think I will die soon,” Ryazantseva said recently. “Well, to fall into battle. But I'm not afraid of death at all.”
Taras, 24 years old, call sign Stoick
Taras was convinced that there would be no war with Russia, and he said so to anyone who would listen. The army was never part of his plan. He was an academic, working on a master's degree, and planned to pursue research “that no one really needs” on philosophical issues, he said, laughing.
He was only 22 years old, the kind of educated young man who represented Ukraine's future. Many of his generation had now been sacrificed in the war effort.
On February 24, 2022, before Taras volunteered to fight, he went to a cathedral in downtown Kiev to pray.
“At that moment, a missile fell somewhere,” said Taras, whose first name and call sign The Washington Post agreed to use only for security reasons. “I heard that and saw that smoke. And I said a few more words sort of to ask the Lord to save us or the defenders of Kiev.
Taras' faith has been the only constant in his life ever since. He and his comrades in the Bratstvo battalion, which focuses on subversive missions against Russian forces, pray together before each operation. There were some who thought it would be his last. Then there are the painful memories worse than the moments he thought he might die – the deaths of friends and brothers in arms.
“You live these things in a kind of vacuum,” Taras said. “Because it seems to me that if you look at all these things and losses in the same way as in civilian life – losing a loved one is of course a tragedy, you grieve for a long time and so on. But here, all the events are forced and a little accelerated. And if you go through all these things… “With the same approach as usual, you can go crazy.”
A dear friend of his died in the Zaporizhzhya region of southeastern Ukraine in July, during a failed Ukrainian counteroffensive. Taras said the man was planning to propose to his girlfriend the next day. But then he was asked to help with the assault.
Taras, a reconnaissance drone pilot, spent the next four nights monitoring his friend's body with other soldiers — one always hovering overhead with a drone to make sure the body didn't move and could eventually be recovered.
“There's this feeling of helplessness and screaming, and you can't do anything, and your friend is literally lying there dead next to you,” he said. “You can't go pick him up or comfort him. His girlfriend calls and she's broken.
The weight of that experience and others made it difficult for Taras to deal with the daily problems his loved ones suffered from. His ambitions to work as a teacher are gone as well. He said he probably won't finish his master's degree now. He couldn't imagine spending so much time in the library after the adrenaline rush of battle.
It imagines a post-war Ukraine where many veterans struggle to adapt to civilian life and are haunted by what they experienced in combat. But he said that's still so far away that he doesn't envision it as a possibility for himself yet.
He added: “I may feel sad about some adventures, but I will return calmly and plan to return to civilian life.” “strong will.”
