The Carpathians in southwestern Ukraine. Russian missiles and drones fly over here very rarely, but it is precisely in the middle of this natural idyll that the growing tension among Ukrainians can be felt particularly strongly. Because even in these places in Western Ukraine, the traces of the war are visible everywhere. Nearly 900 days after the start of the Russian war against Ukraine, the fatigue in Ukrainian society is palpable – even in the supposedly safe western parts of the country.
New graves spring up every day
There are already hundreds of graves of Ukrainian soldiers in the military cemetery of Lviv, and new ones appear almost every day. Desperate men who do not want to suffer a similar fate try to escape through the Carpathian Mountains to neighboring Romania. They hide in forests and cross dangerous rivers. In some cases, escape attempts end fatally. In a settlement on the border between Ukraine and Romania, we meet men whose task it is to prevent such escapes. We ask them if they understand men who do not want to fight at the front.
„We are all afraid. But while some find a way to overcome their fear and decide to fulfill their duty, others prefer to run. Why can some protect the country and others not?” asks Vasyl Maksimyuk rhetorically from the Ukrainian Border Guard.
Ukraine's dilemma is obvious: the country needs men to defend itself. And tightens conscription legislation. However, this gives rise to strong dissatisfaction, which increasingly divides Ukrainians. The border guard criticized the way in which recruits are now recruited for the army: “If someone is really scared to death of fighting, why should we send him to the front when he can be useful in the rear, for example taking care of supplies of the parts?“, Maksimyuk asks.
The border guards do their duty
And because that doesn't happen, border guards now have a lot more work to do than before. Maksimyuk and his colleagues patrol with trained shepherd dogs around the border region, looking for traces of fugitives. New fences, surveillance drones, additional personnel and thermal imaging cameras - Ukraine is being forced to invest more in protecting hundreds of kilometers of its southwestern border. Whoever of the fugitives makes it this far has almost made it – only a few meters remain to the Romanian border.
Then suddenly we watch a man cut through the barbed wire fence and run away, but the border guards manage to stop him before he crosses into Romanian territory. The man remains calm, does not resist – perhaps because he knows he will be fined just for trying to cross the border. However, he refuses to answer our questions about his escape attempt.
The border guards are just doing their duty: “I feel neither anger nor joy”, says Vasil Maksimyuk, who tries to remain indifferent.
Wartime laws restrict some of the fundamental rights that are inviolable in peacetime. However, how long can a democratic society tolerate this situation?
People save themselves as they can
Picturesque villages are deserted, people's suffering increases, and with it the understanding that not everyone will obey without a murmur when they are called to the army. “Everyone from our village signed up as volunteers. No one waited to be called first. But that was at the beginning of the war. And now people are saving themselves as best they can," Lyubov Popovich from a border village with 500 inhabitants told DV.
Dozens of men, residents of the village, are already at the front – including those who have families and children. Four of them were killed, many others returned maimed – who without an arm, who without a leg. “Of course, I don't want us to cede territory to Russia, but somehow everything came to a dead end. "People die, they die, and there is no result," adds Popovich.
And indeed - soldiers are buried every day in Ukraine. Funeral ceremonies have meanwhile become routine. The sympathy of the people is felt, they are united in their grief. And also in his hope for a just peace.
Author: Vasily Golod