Their interwoven tales reveal how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exactly one year ago changed their lives, their neighborhood, their country.
BUCHA, Ukraine — In the cemetery where Oleksii Zavadskyi and Yurii Stiahliuk are buried, the women they loved take drags on the men’s favorite brands of cigarettes. Clouds of smoke are exhaled in silence.
“This war is not just about soldiers,” says Anna. “It’s about everyone connected to them, and their pain.” Anastasiia fled the area for another. Anna remained in Bucha until March 10. She spent nights in the shelter as Russian tanks rolled past her neighborhood of Sklozavod, soldiers ransacked shops and ran over a man sitting in a car. All this, she witnessed.
Stirred by the massacre in their hometown, they joined the army in the spring of 2022. No one could afford to fold their arms and watch the war happen, said Vadym.It was her way of telling him he could count on her to wait for him. They had been together for seven years, a relationship sparked the day that Yurii, the boy she had met as a child and known only as her brother’s friend, reappeared in her life with an innocuous greeting on social media.It was a no-frills ceremony.
The night before Ukraine’s Independence Day on Aug. 25, Yurii said he expected the Russians would mark the occasion with missiles. He made her promise to sleep in the corridor, away from windows. Oleksii was Anna’s first kiss at 15, but there was no relationship to speak of until Yurii’s death. That changed him. Oleksii revealed he had loved her his entire life but had stayed away because she had been with one of his friends. Now he didn’t care anymore.
In the east, gains were harder to come by. Russian forces, with Wagner mercenaries, unleashed human wave tactics to exhaust Ukrainian defenses. On January 11, Oleksii was deployed to a position near Bakhmut, very close to the same front where Yurii was killed. “You have to fight every day, every minute,” Vadym says. Russian attacks seemed endless; their soldiers walked passed the corpses of their own comrades in their relentless push toward Ukrainian positions.
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