A Ukrainian soldier's life and health are now 5.7 times cheaper

You can be a badass guy. 

You can prepare for an invasion and think through an action plan beforehand. Despite the speech and shashliks in May. [Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a speech a few weeks before the full-scale invasion that there was nothing to worry about and we would all be having barbecues in May as usual - ed.]

You can turn up at a military unit on 24 February, after visiting sleepy military commissars along the way who write down your phone number with a pencil and mark you down as having "shown up", then call you demanding that you come to have your documents checked when you’re lying down in the grey zone covering an air squadron during the battles for Oleksandrivka.    

You can go to the kill zone every day and detect enemy combat units 20-25 kilometres away from you. Because you can, you want to, and you know how. 

You can kill a division of "buksa" [towed artillery, such as 2A65 Msta-Bs, 2A36 Giatsint-Bs, D-20s or D-3s] - and it’s not hyperbole, it’s a fact confirmed by video - and a couple of BM-21s besides, plus an Arctic Tor-M2 anti-aircraft missile system for dessert ("no losses, but something’s wrong with your face"). [Here Roman is mocking Russian propagandists who claim the Russian army is not suffering losses while their faces say the opposite - ed.]

You can destroy tanks that are terrorising our advance groups, while being stressed out because others don’t care and they’re busy firing at civilian boats and sinking them. 

You can supply 95% of the accurate intelligence data while hearing for months on end that "drones are for assholes" and using drones is not acceptable. 

You can dismiss info from the local rag, saving your high-precision weapons for real intelligence data and confirmed targets rather than harmless cafeterias where Auntie Liusia is selling bread and water so she can somehow survive in the temporarily occupied territory.

You can spend up to 100,000 hryvnias [approximately US$2,700] every month to provide for your team: fuel, vehicle repairs, everyday expenses and toiletries. 

You can say no to supporting your friends and loved ones because you know that there are places where some things just aren’t available and they need that support more. And you don’t complain. Because YOU need to do this. It’s your choice and your vision of how it should work. 

You can work nonstop for a year with short, unofficial, five-day leaves and an education that you found, initiated and organised yourself by taking on all the associated expense. 

You can support your brothers-in-arms psychologically for a year, using all your MBA knowledge and psychotherapy knowledge and turning down Radio Evening Treason, dialling down the negativity as much as you can. Because now is not the time for treason. You need to do your job. You need to be combat-ready. 

You can say to yourself every day: you are this country, you are doing this for yourself and all the awesome people standing by you. YOU need to do this. No one owes you anything. 

You have come here yourself because you could not do otherwise. Because it’s a matter of your physical existence. Be glad that you’ve been lucky enough to stay alive. Be glad that all the parts of your body are there and you can keep working. 

You can smile quietly when the locals remark, "It’s been much quieter these last few weeks."

You can even stop yourself from saying to them, "Yes, I know - our opponents’ ranks have thinned out a little."

You can dream of how you’re going to be working to develop the economy after demobilisation, developing Mil-Tec military equipment and Lord knows what else, and think of the house in Spain that you can find for the same price as a one-bedroom apartment in Kyiv. 

Because you’re a badass guy. You have values. You can picture the people who wouldn’t do this, but you keep f**king working. And now you have to keep f**king working for yourself and for them. Because they have children, dreams and plans. And they have to live through you. Because they have to live, after all.  

Or you can do none of the above. 

Because someone at headquarters has decided that you’re not in a combat action zone any more. So, you can go f**k yourself without combat pay. Now, everything’s the same, but you’re doing it for 20,000 hryvnias a month instead of 114,000. 

In short, your life and health are now worth 5.7 times less than last month (without even taking the hard currency exchange rate into account). 

We’ll figure it out. We’ll find a positive for every negative, a victory for every treason. We’ll create a Patreon account. Or a monthly charity jar. A Google Excel file of expenses. We’ll report weekly to the people who provide the resources that we need to do our jobs. 

But how this genius management idea snuck into the heads of the bright sparks at the Ministry of Defence, I don’t quite understand. 

This is a hell of a result for a year. 

This is a hell of a "This is all thanks to you."

This is a hell of a "Kherson is ours."

How did we all end up here? © 

P.S. Somewhere deep inside, I do believe that this "unfortunate misunderstanding" can be reversed. So we’ll take our stance on alternative support after we get paid for January (because this is starting from January). 

I know that resources are finite. And I won’t hog the blanket for nothing. 

Roman Nabozhniak, soldier and co-founder of Veterano Brownie

Source

Translation: Myroslava Zavadska

Editing: Teresa Pearce