Eugen Dykyi, 41, a volunteer soldier with the Aidar Battalion, speaks quickly and seems to be a bit in a rush. He nearly died after a neglected injury in the war zone, but found a way to keep fighting back home in Kyiv. Now he is an army supply volunteer and has plenty of work to do.
Dykyi was a biology professor at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy when Russia’s war against Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts began in April. He and many other activists volunteered to fight in June.
He injured his leg in August in one of the most severe fights in which his battalion lost most of its soldiers.
“I did not treat it seriously in the beginning, thinking it was just some pain due to a bad jump,” he recalls.
But the ache would not go away and spread to his whole body.
“It turned out that the blood clots from the leg almost reached my heart, and if I didn’t have a surgery, I would be dead now,” Dykyi says. He considers himself lucky, having survived the war and heart surgery.
He doesn’t see himself as a hero.
“I did not go to the east out of desire. I went there because I knew I had to,” Dykyi says. “When I arrived to the east, the government was planning to give up the occupied territories, and only thanks to a huge amount of volunteers willing to fight, it was possible to save the land.”
Dykyi became a platoon commander because he was one of the few with military experience.
“Most of the people who volunteered did not even go to the army,” he says. “And there were many young men looking for adventures and rushing into fight.”
The fight got harder when the Kremlin-backed separatists got strong backing from Russia in August.
“Comparing to them, we were more like rebels. Everything we had – like the equipment or body armor – was either Soviet, or presented to us by volunteers while Russians had modern weapons and trained sergeants,” Dykyi says.
Now Dykyi is involved in helping supply the army. “We try to involve as many people as possible because the soldiers need our support badly,” Dykyi explains.
He says after Poroshenko’s rhetoric about peace, people became less willing to donate or volunteer. “Citizens think that the war is coming to an end, and that soldiers are not fighting anymore,” Dykyi says.
Another important issue, according to Dykyi, is supporting soldiers after they return home.
“It was rather easy for me to adapt in Kyiv once I was back because I have a wide circle of friends,” he explains. “But it is very complicated if you don’t have a family or a job, or you cannot work because of war injuries.”
Dykyi says the war is not about land. “I didn’t go there to fight for Donetsk or Luhansk, I went there to fight for Ukraine,” he says. “We all did.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Anna Romandash can be reached at [email protected]
