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He spoke to us from the southern front, between the nuclear power plant which the Russians seized at Zaporizhzhia, and the Sea of Azov. The most intense fighting is occurring there, as Russia attempts to secure a land route to the Crimean peninsula which it seized in 2014.
The first lieutenant is a 26-year-old career soldier who abandoned plans to become a software engineer when the war started in Donbas eight years ago. He paints a chilling picture of mass casualties, vehicle breakdowns, panicked civilians, marauding criminals and Russians disguised as Ukrainian soldiers to commit a massacre. Yet the officer’s patriotism, even optimism, shines through the horrors he recounts.
He agreed to the interview only because I was a friend of a friend, and asked to be identified by his nickname, Stalevar, which means steel man or smelter. “Those who know will know this is me,” he says. He is from western Ukraine and his real name is known to The Irish Times. We talk for three-quarters of an hour on a shaky WhatsApp link. A blurred image of a young man in helmet and camouflage uniform flickers on the laptop screen.
Stalevar begins by expressing resentment at the long indifference of the West. “The war has been going on for eight years, but people only took interest on February 24th. Now, because the Moscow Russians captured two nuclear power plants and put explosives in them, the whole world pays attention, because they fear a nuclear disaster.”
He decries western double standards. “When Osama bin Laden destroyed the World Trade Centre on 9/11, the whole world was against him. But when the other idiot [Vladimir Putin] took 14,000 civilian lives [in Donbas since 2014], he was invited to summits and conferences and everyone wanted to negotiate with him.”
Deaths
Stalevar says Russia has sent reinforcements to the south from Crimea, as well as from Luhansk and Donetsk. Has he lost many comrades? There is a long pause on the WhatsApp line. “Thousands of our people have died, not including civilians,” he says.
On Saturday, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said 1,300 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed, but Stalevar implies casualties are much greater. “I don’t know the full picture,” he says. “But at least half our battalion of 700 people was destroyed. Men from the Territorial Defence Forces came to replace them. These are simple guys who were just given guns and they don’t know what they are doing and in two days we had two trucks full of corpses.”
In recent days, Russian helicopters have attacked civilian cars “and are just killing people”, Stalevar says. Could his unit shoot down the helicopters? “No,” he replies. “We were in a regular car which was provided to us by civilians. We had only rifles with us. We were trying to escape as well.”
Then Stalevar seems to rally. “We can stop them. We can defeat them. Their army is not as strong as they think. They are not organised. They are poorly trained. We are very strong at guerrilla warfare. We have a lot of intelligence on their movements. Our people are providing fuel mixed with sugar to Russians so their vehicles stop. People put poison in the food they give to the Russians. I am teaching them the proper ratios.”
Over the past eight years, Stalevar says, “I have seen people burned until there is nothing left but bones. I saw people turned to fried meat in seconds. I’ve seen people blown into many pieces. My commander stepped on a mine with his colleagues in 2015. The pieces were 20 metres apart. We couldn’t find much of them. It would take me forever to tell you everything.”
Civilian behaviour
The behaviour of some civilians has been the most disheartening thing he has seen since “the escalation” started on February 24th, Stalevar says. “In one of the towns that was shelled by Grad [truck-mounted multiple rocket launcher] missile systems, they sent three buses that could contain only 30 people. There were 300 people waiting for evacuation; women, children, elderly and some men. People pushed to get on first. The stronger people pushed women and children because they wanted to survive. When people are desperate, they will fight for a place on the bus or for food. They lose their humanity.”
By contrast, the military “have discipline”, Stalevar says. “We make jokes to keep our spirits up. We are waiting for warm weather. Our fingers are cold, our hands are cold.”
The US and Europe are pouring weapons into Ukraine. “We have received bullet-proof vests. We don’t have a problem with weapons, but we have really bad vehicles from the 1980s. That is why we are relying on civilian cars,” Stalevar says. “They are not bullet-proof. They are defenceless, but they are mobile and they don’t break down… Our soldiers are giving up salaries for the army to buy tools and spare parts for military vehicles.”
The Russians are mostly using Grads, “but also helicopters and cluster bombs that they drop from aircraft”, Stalevar continues. He is the deputy commander of an anti-tank unit which has “killed” three T-80 tanks using Ukrainian-made Stugna-P anti-tank guided missiles. “[US-made] Javelins are really cool, but we don’t have enough of them and we use them sparingly.”
What happened to the three Russian tank crews? “One crew survived, but they lost the tank. The two others luckily burned to death.” Did his unit take the surviving tank crew as prisoners? “We used an anti-aircraft gun as a machine gun to kill them,” he says.
“We learned a lot about how to adapt and modernise our weapons. Our field engineers can put an anti-aircraft or anti-tank system on a pick-up. We weld weapons and do a lot of modifications.”
Ukrainian criminals
On February 24th, the Russians released Ukrainian criminals who were prison inmates in Crimea when Russia annexed the peninsula. “They gave them back their documents and guns and sent them out as refugees to many regions of Ukraine. These are criminals and bandits who were serving long prison sentences. They are marauders and they are taking uniforms from dead soldiers of the Ukrainian army. They are killing people and trying to give a negative image of the army.”
A friend of Stalevar’s from military academy told him that a Russian unit disguised as Ukrainian soldiers infiltrated an army base and killed about 90 people. “This is why there is not a lot of interaction between brigades,” he said. “We use different passwords at checkpoints, different systems of entry for each base. You have to prove that you are from the Ukrainian army. This slows us down when there is a request to move quickly. It is also scary, because when you approach a checkpoint they may suspect you are a Russian and shoot you.”
Stalevar does not want to end our conversation on a down note. There is, he says, “a lot of good news. The problem of alcoholism [in the military] has stopped. And the attitude of the people towards soldiers is very good. They are helping the army as much as they can.
“Many old officers, veterans who fought at the beginning of the war [in 2014] have rejoined the army and that is increasing our ability to fight, because they have a lot of experience. We are very united and we understand each other…. Even during active fighting, the veteran soldiers are fearless. They are not afraid of anything. They say, ‘If I have to die, I will die’.”
Stalevar knew that “sooner or later the big war was coming. We are ready to fight because if we don’t stop Russia, it will swallow us up and we will have no independence.”
He hopes this will be the last year of the war, that the Russians can be defeated by winter. “Thank you. Don’t worry,” he says, ending our conversation with the wartime salutation that is on everyone’s lips here: “Everything will be Ukraine.”