Fight for Survival: Ukraine Changed the Way I See War

Remembrance, Ukraine, and the distance between those who fight and those who look away

I feel that the importance of Remembrance Sunday is as poignant now as it was in the twentieth century, yet I still get irritated when people ignore its significance. As Trotsky once said, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”

While preparing for this year’s Act of Remembrance, I was following the weekly updates from the war in Ukraine, and I had an idea for a new book. Here’s a snippet. Draw your own conclusions about how the world sees the conflict.

Through closed eyes?

24 February 2022

01:30 GMT, Kyiv.
Elena Koval could not sleep. The 28-year-old had been awake for an hour. Anxious and restless, she was dreading the thought of the massed ranks of the Russian army advancing towards the capital city. She was a local police officer, and had once hoped to swim for her country at the Olympic Games. The Kremlin’s aggression in Crimea eight years earlier had been the catalyst for her to abandon her swimming career and do something else instead.

Her father, Vitali, had urged her not to join the army, encouraging her instead to join him in the ranks of the police. Proud of her heritage, Elena was determined that Russia would not fly the red, white and blue over her city.

Thirty-six hours previously, Elena had been discussing the failed United Nations Security Council and the seemingly weak diplomatic efforts of the United States and Europe to support Ukraine in their attempts to reason with Moscow.

During a team briefing, she raised the question of what to do in the event of a Russian attack. Her line of enquiry seemed to agitate her commander. Elena cited CNN’s reporting on the situation, explaining that the West had been monitoring mounting Russian troop movements on Ukraine’s border.

“Captain, these are the facts. Russia has mobilised field hospitals, blood banks and command posts in the east and to the north in Belarus. Russia isn’t planning on doing anything nice.”

The chain-smoking police chief was having none of it. He dismissed her narrative, telling the young officer not to unsettle the police headquarters, and that those working to protect the people of Ukraine needed good news, not bad news.

Elena shook her head in dismay.

“What will be, will be. But ask yourself why so many of our patriots are fleeing to Poland and Germany. The Russian president isn’t inviting us to a party.”

Feeling frustrated, Elena went about her duties, patrolling her regular route around Ukraine’s capital city. She wondered if her captain was a Russian sympathiser. Observant, Elena looked for signs of panic among her compatriots. To her, everyone seemed to be putting on a brave face. Be proud, stout and resolute were the words her father preached.

She thought back to the frost-covered trees swaying gently under the Kyiv sun. Few realised what true devastation would be brought down by the hammer and sickle, controlled by a ruthless former Cold War intelligence officer.

Elena sat smoking a cigarette and, like her father, she was trying to quit. She looked at her watch. It was 03:49. As her coffee went lukewarm, she considered returning to bed. She looked at the photo of her late mother on the kitchen table, and her thoughts turned to the bombing drills they had run in 2014.

Boom. Boom. Boom.
Three of the loudest noises she had ever heard shook the windows. Koval ran to the flat’s balcony. She paused, partly out of shock, standing in disbelief as she watched flames and thick black smoke rising from a block of flats some 500 metres away.

She could hear explosions in the distance to the north and to the east. Tears ran down her face. She cursed Moscow, then realised her cat was not home.

Russia had begun its long-anticipated invasion of Ukraine.

03:40, Belarus / Ukraine border

Elsewhere, in a dark, cold and wet North Ukrainian forest, Dimitri Savchenko stepped out of his sentry box painted in the colours of the Ukrainian flag. He held his lucky charm, given to him by his daughter. As he looked into the wooded area, he felt the ground shake. The rumbling of armour broke the silence and the deep groans of the Russian cavalry grew louder.

Appearing out of the woods was the distinctive shape of a Russian T-90 main battle tank, low and menacing with its 125 mm smoothbore gun.

Kaboom.

The armour-piercing shell struck a nearby accommodation block, and the brick walls exploded, sending shards of debris high into the air.

Four more rounds landed in Savchenko’s direction. The newly recruited 40-year-old did not stand a chance. As he took cover, a hail of 7.62 mm rounds raked his body.

“Forward,” the lead tank commander ordered. The huge hull of the T-90 accelerated, running straight over the injured Savchenko.

One of the first Ukrainians had fallen in defence of his country. Savchenko left behind a wife and two children.

03:43, Drawsko Pomorskie, Poland

Under the dark grey skies of western Poland, Jan Keller, a Polish Electronic Warfare (EW) Sergeant, sat at the wooden command table. A veteran of operations in Afghanistan under NATO command, his job was to monitor radio traffic and open source intelligence (OSINT).

Keller stood up, turning around in the cold command tent. His boots squelched in the mud.

“The Russians have invaded Ukraine. I’m watching social media, and it’s going crazy. Can anyone else confirm this?”

“Confirmed,” replied Lieutenant Michel Wozniak, the command post officer.

Radios crackled into life and Keller returned to his desk, reaching for his mobile phone. He opened his messages to send a broadcast to his family.

INVASION HAS BEGUN
UPDATES TO FOLLOW
SWITCH ON THE TV

Buzz, buzz. Isabella Keller reached for her phone. The message was clear. It was what they had been expecting. The Keller family home was in the small town of Chełm, 25 kilometres from the Polish–Ukraine border.

Isabella woke her mother and sister, telling them of their father’s message. Neither was surprised, but her mother told Isabella to grab her gear and make her way to the volunteers’ hut. Isabella quickly made her way down to the basement and switched the light on. Liczyć się (Be Prepared) was written in neat letters on the wall.

Three neatly packed military Bergens, or backpacks, leaned up against the wall. Each had a crossbow next to it, with twenty-five arrows for each bow. Crossbows were legal, quiet and cheap. Jan believed that when the power went out, simplicity would matter. Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Jan Keller had taught his family how to prepare for the worst case scenario.

Isabella’s mother, Irene, was the local commander of the volunteer group, known as Guardians of Chełm, or GoC. Irene had a great sense of humour, and she also liked to practise hand-to-hand combat. The group met regularly at the town hall, and this morning’s meeting would have a very different meaning.

04:30, London

Chris Salisbury stumbled through the streets of London’s West End. His thirtieth birthday celebrations had gone as well as they could have. He staggered through Leicester Square, a famous London landmark, and west towards Piccadilly Circus. Feeling hungry and very tipsy, he craved fast food. A burger and double fries would do the trick.

As Chris stumbled around Piccadilly Circus, large neon bulletin boards flashed the news of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Sitting beneath them was a homeless veteran of another conflict, asking for change. A London bus appeared from Regent Street. Like Chris, the dozen or so people walking the streets of west London paid no attention to the news that another war had broken out in Europe.

It was just another morning for the 30-year-old investment banker.

NEWS BULLETIN
Global News Service, 05:00 GMT
24 February 2022

Good morning. Here are the latest developments following reports of explosions across Ukraine.

Russian Forces Launch Full-Scale Invasion
Ukraine has confirmed that Russian forces have begun a full-scale invasion. Russia’s leadership announced what it called a “special military operation” in the early hours of this morning. Multiple cities, including Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa, have been struck by missile and artillery fire.

Explosions Reported Near Kyiv
Residents in Kyiv have described large blasts to the north and east of the capital, with emergency services responding to fires at several residential buildings. Ukrainian authorities are urging people to remain calm and take shelter where possible.

Fighting Reported on Belarus Border
Ukrainian border guards say heavy armour has crossed from Belarus. Early casualties have been confirmed, though details remain unclear. Ukrainian forces report intense fighting on multiple fronts.

Poland Raises Readiness Levels
Poland has convened an emergency meeting in Warsaw. Defence Minister Tomasz Rykov has increased readiness levels along the eastern frontier and warned of a potentially large movement of civilians towards the border.

NATO Condemns the Attack
NATO Secretary General Elias Hartmann has condemned Russia’s actions as a “serious violation of international law”. Alliance units in Eastern Europe have been placed on heightened alert, though there is no indication of NATO entering the conflict.

Global Markets React
Markets in Asia and Europe have fallen sharply this morning, while oil prices have surged above 100 dollars a barrel for the first time in several years.

Field Note: What Russia's Invasion of Ukraine Still Asks Of Us

When I watch footage from Ukraine now, it is easy to forget there was a first night. A moment when the war was not yet a fact, only a fear. That is what this scene is trying to hold on to. The hour when the glass starts to shake, the phone buzzes, the tanks cross a line on a map, and some people’s lives are split into a before and an after, while others carry on looking for a burger.

Elena hears the war as three explosions and the absence of a cat.
Savchenko feels it as a rumble in frozen soil and a weight of metal he never trained for.
Jan and Isabella see it written on a basement wall in neat letters. Be prepared.
Chris sees it as a line of text on a billboard he barely reads, then forgets.

The distance between those experiences is the distance that remembrance has to cross now. In the twentieth century, remembrance felt closer to home. Most families had a story. A grandfather on a ship. A great aunt in the Blitz. A name on a local memorial. Today, the names are Ukrainian, the places are harder to pronounce, and it is tempting to file the whole thing under “tragic, but far away”.

Yet Trotsky’s line still holds: you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. Energy bills. Food prices. Refugees in your town. Defence spending. Elections shaped by what happens on a frozen field near a border most people could not find on a map in 2021. Distance is not as distant as it looks.

When I wrote this chapter, I was thinking about that gap. On one end of the scale, a man in a forest who does not live to see the sunrise. On the other, a banker in London who barely notices there is a war at all. The rest of us sit somewhere in between, scrolling, worrying, switching off the news when it gets too much, then feeling guilty, then doing it all again the next week.

As talk of peace flickers in and out of the headlines, it is worth asking a hard question. If a ceasefire came tomorrow, would we quietly move on, grateful that the awkward story had finally ended, or would we remember who carried the weight for those years while we got on with our lives?

That, for me, is where Remembrance Sunday meets the present. The poppy is not only about trenches and Spitfires. It is about the fact that somewhere, right now, someone is hearing the first boom of a new war, while someone else walks past a screen that is trying to tell them.

So I will leave you with two questions.

Where were you when you first heard that Russia had invaded Ukraine?
And today, nearly three years on, are you looking at this war with open eyes, or closed ones?

If you feel like sharing, I would like to read your answer.