Interview: Two Ukrainian Soldiers on War, Drones, Exhaustion and the Future

By Matthew Parish

In Kharkiv, the Lviv Herald spoke with two serving members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces about their experiences of war, the transformation of the battlefield by drones, the psychological consequences of prolonged military service and their fears about what may happen if Ukraine’s Western allies tire of the conflict.

Both soldiers agreed to speak on condition of anonymity. We therefore refer to them simply as Soldier One and Soldier Two. One serves in military medicine and has been involved in Ukraine’s defence since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, initially as a volunteer and subsequently as a member of the Armed Forces. The other has served in a variety of roles, including with infantry units and as a combat medic, and now serves as a senior sergeant in a medical battalion.

Their answers have been translated where necessary and lightly edited for clarity and length. Their views are their own.

Matthew Parish: Could you each introduce yourselves, tell me where in Ukraine you come from and explain how long you have been serving in the Ukrainian Armed Forces? What were you doing before the full-scale invasion?

Soldier One: I am from Kharkiv. I have been involved in the war since the beginning and I have remained in Ukraine throughout. For approximately the first year and a half I worked as a volunteer. I have subsequently spent about two and a half years in the military, where I am part of a medical group.

Soldier Two: I have done almost everything one can do in the military, starting with infantry units and then working as a combat medic and a group medic. At present I am a senior sergeant in a medical battalion, doing the work that my health still allows me to do.

I would also like to thank everyone who helps us. We need that help. We have learned to adapt and improvise to an extraordinary degree, but nevertheless we have become tired. You are probably tired as well. We are all tired after such a long time.

But thank you for remaining with us, supporting us and motivating us. The human spirit is not made of steel. Sometimes it bends a little. That support matters.

Matthew Parish: What motivated each of you to join the army? Was it patriotism, a sense of duty, the need to protect your families or something else? Have your motivations changed as the war has continued?

Soldier One: What reason does somebody need to protect his home? What reason does he need to protect his family, his country or his language?

There does not have to be some special reason. You have to understand who you are. Once you understand that, you know what you have to do.

Soldier Two: Everything my friend has just said applies to me as well.

Matthew Parish: What is the greatest difference between the way civilians imagine life on the front line and the reality you experience as soldiers? What do you wish ordinary Europeans understood better about your daily lives?

Soldier One: Europeans need to understand that they are not prepared for this war. Ukrainians understand Russians in a way that many Europeans do not because of our shared Soviet history.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union our paths separated. Ukraine increasingly chose its own path, towards independence and Europe. Russia went in another direction. We nevertheless understand the way Russians think because we lived within the same system.

That is important for Europe. Europe needs to prepare much more seriously. This is not a joke. If Russia were to attack the Baltic states or Poland, I fear that European countries would discover very quickly how unprepared they are.

Soldier Two: I agree with much of that, although I would make one distinction. I do not think Ukrainians and Russians have the same mentality. Ukrainians have a much stronger desire for freedom and for the ability to decide for ourselves how we live in our own home.

We have the experience of a very long period of subjugation. Entire generations grew up being taught that somehow we owed something to Russia, that Russia was the dominant nation. But much of what Russia presents as its own history is actually the history of other peoples and countries it conquered.

We do not want that. My comrade is absolutely right, however, that we understand whom we are dealing with. We understand how they think. We have to keep fighting for as long as we have strength, and then somehow find a little more strength beyond that.

There is another fundamental difference. Russia has an enormous population and its system does not appear to place the same value upon individual human lives. On the Ukrainian front you find people from every imaginable profession: engineers, company directors, managers and people who previously had entirely different lives.

We are not fighting for money. We are fighting for our lives and for the lives of our children.

Is Russia a danger to Europe? Absolutely. This is a force that will not stop voluntarily before fulfilling its ambitions. Russia understands strength and it has to be stopped by strength. History has repeatedly demonstrated the weakness of agreements with the Russian state when those agreements are not backed by sufficient power to enforce them.

Ukraine is therefore not defending only itself. We are acting as a shield protecting the Baltic states and the rest of Europe. If Ukraine falls, the barriers confronting Russia become considerably weaker.

Matthew Parish: The nature of warfare in Ukraine has changed dramatically, particularly with the widespread use of drones. How has the experience of being a soldier changed during your service, and what has been the most difficult adjustment?

Soldier One: It has changed enormously. When I started serving in 2023, one of the first drones I encountered was a Mavic 3. Now drones are everywhere. Sometimes the sky seems to buzz with them.

Previously you might have thought about the front line in terms of five kilometres in one direction or another. Now the effective danger zone created by drones can extend 30, 40 or even 50 kilometres.

That makes it extremely difficult to perform ordinary military tasks in the ways we used to. The battlefield has changed completely.

Soldier Two: Everything has changed.

At the beginning we worried primarily about mortars, artillery and Grad rocket systems. Drones have transformed the battlefield so profoundly that they are now often the first element involved in taking a position. First come the drones. Then, gradually, infantry may move forward and occupy the position.

In direct infantry combat I believe we are better soldiers. We have demonstrated that repeatedly. We are fewer in number, yet we have resisted a vastly larger Russian military force for years.

Drones have changed that equation because both sides can use them extensively. We attack them with drones and they attack us with drones. Unfortunately Russia continues to possess a much larger pool of manpower.

And we are not talking only about sophisticated Iranian or Chinese systems. Both Ukraine and Russia manufacture improvised drones carrying an extraordinary variety of explosive payloads. Some are extremely difficult to defend against, whether you are protecting a person, a vehicle or even a fortified position.

I remember an incident in the Serebriansky forest in 2023. We had four layers of heavy wooden protection overhead, yet a relatively small munition penetrated them.

The drone war has changed everything. If anybody in Europe or the Western world wants to understand what future warfare will look like, they should speak to Ukrainians. We have experienced an extraordinary amount of it.

Even with all our experience, I am not sure that we ourselves fully comprehend how radically drones have changed warfare. A drone costing perhaps a few hundred dollars can travel tens of kilometres into enemy territory and destroy equipment worth millions.

Matthew Parish: Soldiers often describe the extraordinary bonds of friendship that develop between people serving together under dangerous circumstances. What does comradeship mean to you, and what helps you maintain morale during the most difficult periods?

Soldier One: War is like litmus paper. It reveals who people really are. You discover what kind of person somebody is, what is inside them and how they understand the world.

During military service you find genuine friends and comrades: people who are similar to you in spirit and endurance, people who want to do something rather than simply sit somewhere safely and wait.

You find people who genuinely want to help and who want to stand together. It is wonderful that we can find people like that. The sad part is that we have to discover those friendships under circumstances like these.

Soldier Two: I agree completely.

Matthew Parish: How has military service changed you as people? Do you think differently about life, death, friendship, family and the future than you did before the war?

Soldier One: That is a very difficult question. When you are there, you simply do your work. You keep doing your work.

But the war has changed everything. It has changed people. Some people whom you thought were your friends turn out not to be. Other people whom you never imagined would become close to you turn out to be precisely the friends you need.

It changes your relationship with your family as well. Maintaining an ordinary relationship when one person is in the military and the other is living a civilian life can be extremely difficult.

Soldier Two: A great deal has changed for me as well. Perhaps it was slightly easier for me at first because I expected the war and I had some experience going back to 2014. I understood that the conflict was going to continue.

But everything changed when people close to me began dying in my arms.

For a while things had gone comparatively well. Our group started to feel almost invulnerable. We ran around as though we were superheroes and somehow everything seemed almost exciting. Then came a period of very heavy losses, and something inside us broke.

I think that with every year many soldiers become harder. Eventually you stop thinking about the future because, psychologically, you have already buried yourself.

When you look back at the number of situations you have survived, you realise that in some of them you simply should not still be alive. You begin to think of yourself almost as a statistical error among the survivors.

Under those circumstances it becomes difficult to imagine a future involving a family or building an ordinary life. A dead man cannot dream. So you simply do your job. You burn out, recover, stand up again, experience another period of depression and then return to duty.

It becomes an endless cycle. At times it resembles a kind of hell: you are constantly moving between tragedy, some moment when something good appears to have happened and then another tragedy.

That gradually consumes part of your personality.

When this war eventually ends, God willing sooner rather than later, I think Ukraine will need years before the soldiers who have lived through this experience can understand themselves as living people again.

Soldier One: Perhaps five years.

Soldier Two: Yes.

Matthew Parish: What would you like to say to people in Britain, Europe and the United States who support Ukraine but may be growing tired of hearing about the war? What kinds of international assistance matter most to ordinary soldiers?

Soldier One: If you are tired of hearing about the war, I hope that the war never reaches you. But you need to be prepared for everything.

And imagine how tired we are of actually taking part in it.

Prepare yourselves. That is what I would say to our friends. We were not prepared for this. Life suddenly confronted us with it.

Soldier Two: I agree: prepare yourselves.

The more people believe Russian propaganda, or believe that Russia can simply be persuaded to abandon its ambitions, the deeper the eventual problem may become.

Perhaps people become tired of disturbing news. But imagine that everybody has some favourite place: a café, a restaurant, somewhere you met your first love or simply a place with which you have an emotional connection. Then one day you look at the news and discover that it has been destroyed.

It had nothing to do with the military. It was simply part of civilian life.

Britain should understand something of this from the Second World War, when British cities were bombed. Think about the psychological scar that left upon the country.

A soldier understands that he may have to fight, that he may die and that he may have to kill in defence of his country. But then he reads that civilians have been killed while sleeping in their homes. You ask yourself: why them? They had nothing to do with any of this.

So yes, people may be tired. But please prepare yourselves as well. Invest in drones, defence and whatever else you may need because I fear that eventually Ukraine may weaken. God forbid that we should fall, but if we do, you may be next.

Russia will not simply stop.

Soldier One: Exercise, eat your porridge, listen to your mother and love Ukraine. Glory to Ukraine!

Soldier Two: Glory to the heroes!

Matthew Parish: There is constant international discussion about negotiations and possible peace agreements. From your personal perspectives as soldiers, what would a just and lasting peace look like? What would make you confident that another Russian invasion would not follow?

Soldier One: We return to the same point: do not simply believe what Russia says.

I do not believe there will be a genuine peace merely because an agreement is signed. A ceasefire may simply become a pause during which Russia rebuilds its forces and then attacks again with renewed strength.

Ukraine has experienced promises before. We remember the security assurances given after independence and the surrender of Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal. Then came Crimea, the war beginning in 2014 and eventually the full-scale invasion.

We have become accustomed to promises of peace and promises of support. We are grateful for the support we have received, of course, but experience makes us cautious about promises.

Matthew Parish: When you imagine the war eventually ending, what do you each hope to do with your lives? Do you dream of returning to your previous professions, starting families, travelling or simply enjoying the ordinary pleasures of civilian life?

Soldier One: I expect to remain involved with the military, particularly military technology.

I want to continue protecting Ukraine and developing things that can protect the country and save people’s lives.

This kind of warfare will not disappear. What has happened here will happen elsewhere in the world. The technologies and lessons from this war will therefore remain important.

Soldier Two: If I were healthier, perhaps I would say something similar. But after five years of this, life will have to begin again.

My health is not what it was. Nevertheless I am trying to build some sort of future, even if at the moment it seems distant.

I would like to travel for a few years. Perhaps I would give myself a long psychological retreat and try to rediscover ordinary life. Then, if another invasion came, I would do whatever I could again.

I agree with my comrade that Russia will not simply stop. In my view there is no permanent peace with the Russia we know today, only periods during which it rebuilds its strength and prepares its population for another conflict.

One of the most disturbing things is what is being taught to children in occupied territories. Ukrainian children are learning how to hide and survive. Children on the other side are increasingly exposed to militarisation and narratives teaching them to regard Ukrainians and the West as enemies.

That makes me fear that this conflict could reproduce itself in another generation.

Matthew Parish: Finally, if you could deliver one message to the international readers of the Lviv Herald about Ukraine, its soldiers and its determination to survive as an independent country, what would that message be?

Soldier Two: Look after your health, including your psychological and mental health. Learn about new forms of weaponry. And love your country.

Soldier One: I will repeat what I said before: eat your porridge, exercise, listen to your mother, wear a hat when it is cold and love your country.

Soldier Two: There is a reason that expression matters to us. It is associated with a very young defender of Mariupol who was only eighteen and who later died.

To somebody outside Ukraine, the references to porridge and listening to your mother may sound strange or amusing. To us they have a deeper meaning. They remind us that people who were barely adults were forced to defend their country.

Matthew Parish: On behalf of the readers of the Lviv Herald, thank you both for your time and for speaking so openly about your experiences. I also want to thank you for what you are doing for Ukraine and for the defence of Europe. Thank you very much indeed.

Soldiers: Thank you.