Ukrainian Soldier
Appearances
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
Definitely it felt like, and still might feel like, time has stopped. Time has stopped and something needs to happen.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
Definitely, definitely. Everything simultaneously, like this, everything is real. Everything might be real. Everything might happen. So there is no reason why tomorrow or in a week, like a whole Europe and UK and US... might not decide behind closed doors and just provide Ukraine with a decision to stop military funding.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
And of course, that would be a huge impact on our ability to keep on fighting. Oh, one second, one second. Let me hear if you'll hear it. So there is an air alert going on. If you can hear the signal.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
It kind of sounds like there might be some air attack, like drones or a missile or something like this.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
He went, like, oh, this guy wins, and if he wins, he will, like, earn all the help to Ukraine, and we are basically screwed. We went into a full discussion of how the American democracy works, like bringing up Wikipedia pages. We spent around three hours of our night time just by talking, talking, talking about what the president in America has power to do.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
Maybe calming in a way that I don't want my crew member to feel their heads with downgraded morale. For the next five days, we need to be going hand in hand for our missions.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
Oftentimes, we talk in the evenings while looking at the monitors because there's not much action during the night. The Russians usually start moving early in the morning before the sunrise. These conversations are meant to pass the time. Because now it's winter and the night is long.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
And you have a lot of time to kill, in fact. Because war is not always action.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
Sometimes we'll just be sitting there in our positions in the basements, and someone will say that Trump doesn't actually care about any of this, or us, and that he will make a deal with Russia at whatever price is most favorable to him. Then there's the people who will say that Trump actually understands everything and will try to talk to Putin, and Putin will not want to come to an agreement.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
And so, Trump will realize that there can be no agreement with Putin and will instead provide us with lots of new weapons thanks to which we can win.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
One day, I was sitting looking at the monitor, my phone next to it, just scrolling, and there was Trump's tweet. And then I turn and I tell my fellow servicemen, hey, take a look, there's Musk, who considered a visionary, but Musk writes such offensive things about Ukraine.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
And now he's going to be sitting in Trump's administration. And we were all like, shit, maybe he'll change. Maybe he'll be different as a politician when he gets some experience. One of the guys in the unit said, my brother has a Tesla. If I had known this guy would be a part of this, I would have convinced him not to buy it.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
In the evening, we went out to a hookah lounge and sat down to relax with our brothers-in-arms. We were sitting at the table together with Chish and Zaliznyak in this cafe, where we ordered ourselves some dinner, and the guys ordered a hookah as well. I don't smoke hookah, but they do. That was when our conversation began. When the waiter took our order, Zaliznyak looked up, deep in thought.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
He then turned his eyes to Chizh and began to ask him some questions.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
He asked, Chish, if the war ends, what would you do? He asked what he thought his future would look like after the war was over. They started to speculate what events would unfold, who would travel, who would do what, basically putting out their hearts to one another.