U2, Ed Sheeran and Antytila release music video featuring Ukrainian soldiers and real combat footage

Irish band U2, British musician Ed Sheeran and Taras Topolia, lead singer of the Ukrainian band Antytila, have released a music video for the song "Yours Eternally" from their EP Days of Ash to mark the fourth anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February.

Source: 13th Khartiia Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine

Details: The documentary-style video was created by soldiers from the 13th Khartiia Brigade and directed by Ukrainian filmmaker and serviceman Illia Mykhailus.

"U2 and Ed Sheeran recorded this track and decided to create a tribute video dedicated to Ukraine, which has been heroically resisting Russia's full-scale aggression for four years," soldiers from the brigade said.

The main protagonists of the video are Ukrainian defenders

The music video uses real footage of Khartiia's combat operations on the Lyptsi and Kupiansk fronts in Kharkiv Oblast

The director's camera also captured training sessions and brief moments of rest between missions

The video features unit commander Vsevolod Kozhemiaka (left) and Dmytro Dienkov (right), the former editor-in-chief of Ekonomichna Pravda, who now serves with Khartiia

Emotional and symbolic scenes with a priest are also included

Earlier, the musicians said that in the chorus they sing the Ukrainian word "volia" ("freedom"). The track itself is written from the perspective of a soldier

"Eventually Bono and his colleagues contacted a friend of our brigade, Petro Verzylov, who advised them to reach out to Khartiia. That is how we met, and we immediately began bringing the idea to life," the brigade said.

Several scenes feature female service members

A still from the music video

"Some of the material had already been filmed, and we shot the rest in December. This is not fiction, as is typical of music videos, but real combat work by the brigade that has defended Kharkiv Oblast since the start of the full-scale war," Khartiia said.

The video also shows a wounded soldier

A still from the music video

U2 frontman Bono and his band have publicly supported Ukraine since the early days of the full-scale invasion. In 2022, Bono travelled to Kyiv and performed in the metro.

The pop rock band Imagine Dragons has also featured the war in Ukraine in its music videos, releasing an emotional video in which a Ukrainian boy shows how his village has been destroyed during the Russian occupation.

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