By Simon Lewis
THE IZIUM FRONT, Ukraine (Reuters) – Barely a kilometer from Russian positions defending the captured eastern town of Izium, Ukrainian and foreign fighters are hiding in a damp basement. Artillery rains down on them most nights, shaking the plaster and filling the air with dust.
At the heart of efforts to halt the advance of the Russian army in eastern Ukraine is the Carpathian Sich Battalion, a unit of Ukrainians and foreign nationals who answered the call for help of Kyiv to confront the invader.
“Now it’s more of an artillery war. It’s a tougher war, a scarier war, where only people who are strong in spirit can fight,” said Dzvin, a field commander in the battalion who asked to be identified by his nom de guerre. for security reasons, because of his leadership role.
The fighters say they are bound by a fierce commitment to Ukraine that is now strained.
“Each of our warriors understands that at some point they will come face to face with a tank,” Dzvin said.
The unit recently captured one nearly intact. But he also has to contend with Russian drones – which fighters call “dark clouds” – which help direct deadly artillery fire at their positions.
“It gets a lot harder here. The longer it goes on, the more tiring it gets,” said Conor, a British volunteer and former army doctor serving on the frontline.
“They bombed at one, two and four in the morning yesterday, which obviously disrupts our sleep routine. But you have to stay positive.”
MOTIVATION
Whether of Ukrainian origin or a foreigner who answered President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s call for help, each fighter has his own reasons for being on the front line, aware of the risks of death, injury or capture.
“We all know the possible consequences of our being here and we have all made peace with that,” Dzvin said.
His battalion’s job in Izium is to prevent a Russian breakthrough that could overrun other Ukrainian units, he said.
“This is extremely important. Our deterrence makes it impossible to create a huge encirclement of our troops.”
Another fighter, Denis Polishchuk, said he hoped serving on the front line would give him a dignified response if children asked him that he still hopes to engender what he did in the war to help.
“I felt the only dignified response would be, yes, I was doing my part. I was fighting alongside everyone,” said Polishchuk, who was born in Ukraine but spent many years in Vancouver, this which earned him the nom de guerre. “Canada”.
Conor said images of wounded women, children and combatants who had not received adequate medical help motivated him to leave Britain for the front line, adding that “some of the knowledge I ‘have been trained’ would prove useful.
“And we helped set up field hospitals,” he said.
“THESE ARE OUR ENEMIES”
The Carpathian Sich is one of several paramilitary nationalist groups that began as volunteers in 2014, when Moscow annexed the Black Sea peninsula in Crimea and backed pro-Russian armed separatists in the Donbass region, in eastern Ukraine.
But since mid-May, battalion fighters have been able to sign military contracts that entitle them to pensions and treatment in military hospitals, a move Kyiv says shows nationalist units have been successfully reformed and integrated in the regular armed forces.
Russia justified its invasion by saying it wanted to “denazify” Ukraine and branding some of the former paramilitary groups as right-wing extremists – a charge they strongly deny.
“I’m not a Nazi, I’m a nationalist,” said Leo, 33, a new recruit from the Carpathian Sich who previously worked in video production in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.
“I respect other nations… I love all people with all skin colors – except the Russians. They are our enemies.”
(Reporting by Simon Lewis; Additional reporting by Valeriia Dubrovska, Natalie Thomas and Marko Djurica; Editing by Gareth Jones and Jon Boyle)