Yulia on Vitalik

Previous: Yulia on a ghostly warning

Українською мовою: Юлія розповідає про Віталіка

Ivan: And what’s the second story?

Yulia: My boyfriend — my ex-boyfriend — was supposed to go on a mission. We were constantly in touch, because I was very worried.

At some point, he was called away. He left me with a fellow soldier. We were talking — I knew him from before, from the time when he served in the ATO. That was a long time ago.

Ivan: A long time ago?

Yulia: Not that long. Not ten years. No, you misunderstood. They went to the ATO right before the full-scale invasion.

Ivan: Ah, I thought you meant 2015 or something. Okay.

Yulia: When my boyfriend came back, he said he was being sent on a combat mission. I felt that something was wrong, very heavy in my soul, but I didn’t say anything, because those worries are unnecessary.

When they were already supposed to leave, the fellow soldier I was talking to — his call sign was “Dragon,” he had a very beautiful dragon tattoo — he stopped my boyfriend and said, “Don’t go. I’ll go instead.”

Of course, my boyfriend said, “How can that be? You’re not the commander.”

But Dragon said, “It has to be this way,” and he went instead of him.

Literally two hours later, a message came that there had been an ambush. They were shelled, and no one from that group survived.

Ivan: Oh my God… that’s brutal. How did Vitalik react to this? What was his reaction afterward?

Yulia: He was very depressed, and me too I think. Dragon was a very good person. He supported me as well when Vitalik was in the ATO.

That was all new to me back then. I had just started dating him, and he was already there.

It was already 2021–2022. Vitalik was very upset. He was grateful that they had switched places, but he was broken by the fact that his friend and brother-in-arms died instead of him.

These mixed feelings stayed with him for a very long time.

Ivan: It’s very hard to go through something like that.

Yulia: Almost every soldier has stories like this — someone covering someone from a bullet, someone saving someone.

My ex-boyfriend carried his wounded comrade for ten kilometers to get him help.

Later, when my ex was wounded himself, other soldiers carried him, because his legs were injured and he couldn’t walk anymore.

But a little earlier, on adrenaline, he still carried his comrade out of the danger zone.

So soldiers don’t just rely on each other — they know for sure that each of them is ready to protect the others.

Ivan: Is Vitalik still serving?

Yulia: Yes.

Ivan: Do you know if he plans to fight until the end of the war, or how does it look now?

Yulia: After recent events, when his brother went missing, he stopped serving as a combat soldier.

They had an elite assault-clearing unit. He went to study further at a military academy.

Basically, it’s the same as service, just not on the battlefield.

Ivan: She asks whether it’s okay for you to sit here a bit longer, because we’ve already been talking for about an hour.

Yulia: It’s okay for me. I’m on vacation, so I can talk if there are questions.

Ivan: Do soldiers often talk about stories with ghosts like the one you told earlier?

Yulia: If the story really stays in their memory, then yes.

Usually, they need to explain these things somehow, to simplify life for themselves.

But in general, they don’t think about it much.

They think only in simple, clear terms: eat, complete the task, come back, survive. That’s it.

They are very practical people.

Ivan: Do soldiers share these stories with civilians, or mostly with other soldiers?

Yulia: In general, soldiers want to come back and just breathe out.

Very often, these things don’t let them go — they return to them in their thoughts, they can’t sleep.

They usually try not to talk about it, to immerse themselves in more or less normal civilian life and forget for a while.

I think that, just like the “Ghost of Kyiv” and other superstitions created by civilians, all of this exists more so that families feel calmer letting soldiers go to the front, even with the risk that they may not return.

That thread I talked about earlier is more important for civilians than for the soldiers themselves.

Ivan: Interesting…

Ivan: She says that soldiers don’t buy “Ghost of Kyiv” patches themselves.

Yulia: Well, sometimes they do.

But soldiers who have seen real horrors usually don’t spread these stories.

For them, it’s difficult.

Ivan: Do soldiers talk about their fallen comrades who died doing something heroic?

Yulia: Well, soldiers, 50-50, because for some it’s difficult, maybe because they were the ones who were protected, or because they were their friends. Usually, when it comes to death, well, they see it a lot, so sometimes they can’t share it so openly. Usually, they only tell the relatives of their fallen comrade so that they know what happened to him.

Ivan: Yeah..

Ivan: So Victoria says that maybe you found out the Dragon story because Dragon was your friend too, and if you hadn’t known him, maybe you wouldn’t have found out that Vitalik kind of covered by him there… well, not exactly covered, more like replaced him…

Ivan: And why do you think this story even reached people in the first place — about this woman who appeared at night?

Yulia: First of all, people here are very talkative, let’s put it that way. And according to the story, the soldier went around telling it, asking people about it.

Ivan: So then it spread further, right?

Yulia: Yes, yes, yes. Around here stories like that get retold and passed on.

Ivan: Like a game of broken telephone, right?

Yulia: Yes, yes, yes. Something like that happened, and maybe that impressionable soldier just… I don’t know, maybe he got a bit excited.

Ivan: Maybe he had a few drinks the night before and started seeing things.

Yulia: Maybe, maybe it was just the Belka that came to him — who knows.

Ivan: We call it Belka…

Yulia: Just explain to her that soldiers on duty aren’t allowed to drink, because she’ll think….

Vic: Yes, I’ve heard that.

Ivan: And what, they don’t drink, Yulia? Never? (laughs)

Yulia: Let’s skip that question — let people in Britain think we’re normal people.

Ivan: She says British soldiers drink a lot too, so it’s fine.

Yulia: Our soldiers — if things get really hard for them and they do drink, it usually turns into a binge. It means they’re struggling emotionally. But usually the soldiers who are actually serving try not to drink, so alcohol doesn’t mix with those thoughts.
You know how it is with thoughts… the things you don’t want to remember are exactly what stay in your memory. So they usually try not to drink.

Ivan: So that, you know, the madness doesn’t start — when you keep thinking about it and replaying it in your head a million times. (yeah)

Ivan: Superstitions. She says that basically her questions are finished. Do you have any other superstitions? Maybe you remembered something while we were talking?

Yulia: Well, I just remembered a story connected to Vitalik. It’s not really mysticism, more about reaction speed. They were standing at a checkpoint, on duty, and a completely unfamiliar man approached them. There were locals walking around there too — our people who had stayed — and also a lot of soldiers from the Armed Forces and the National Guard, a lot of them.

And this man just comes up, and Vitalik asks him for the password. The man doesn’t answer. And at first Vitalik didn’t even think it was some kind of danger, that he could be Russian. But suddenly something just… clicked in his brain.
He realized it in a second. He turns around — because he had turned his back to him — and the guy is already standing there with a grenade, trying to pull the pin out. And Vitalik reacted very quickly.

Ivan: So what, he shot him? Yeah… sad…Or well… I don’t know… okay…

Yulia: I’m actually very glad he killed him — I mean, yeah, we’re not sorry.

Ivan: She says she very much agrees with that guy.

Ivan: Was there some kind of password used to identify people from the same battalion or unit?

Yulia: People from the same… well, if they’re going on a combat mission or they’re from the same battalion, in theory they know each other by face. But they also have passwords — certain words.

Ivan: Like palyanytsia, right?

Yulia: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but just for one day. They didn’t have palyanytsia though.

Ivan: I’m joking, just as an example.

Yulia: Yeah, well… usually they were very afraid. In Donetsk we have people who support the “Russian peace”, and they were giving away the positions of our soldiers. They would come to our guys and say, “Oh, we’ve been waiting for you, you saved us,” look around at everything…

And then they would go pass that information on. There was such a situation with Vitalik, and there was an order to kill a person.

Ivan: Like a civilian?

Yulia: Yes.

Ivan: Wow… that’s harsh…That was another guy though, right? Not the one with the grenade?

Yulia: No, that was a different person. But I still don’t know whether he carried out that order. Talking about deaths — how many people were killed there — it’s not really a good topic for conversation, so…

Ivan: Not the nicest one.

Yulia: Not very romantic. So I don’t know whether he carried out the order. But I was very upset about it… At first I was angry that our own people behave like that. And secondly, it’s unclear how such an order could even be given. Maybe…

Ivan: Like, maybe they could have tied him up somewhere, detained him somehow, instead of immediately…

Yulia: Maybe they had already tried things like that, or maybe he had already caused quite a lot of damage to our soldiers.

Yulia: Well… it makes sense.

Ivan: Did Vitalik tell you anything else about the guy who didn’t know the password? Any other details?

Yulia: Hmm… no. At that time we didn’t communicate much, so it was mentioned more in passing. Like a fun fact, a funny story. (yeah, the guy got shot). You know, like that.

Yulia: Soldiers have a very specific sense of humor. For them… well, for example I had a video somewhere where Russian prisoners were being led with trash bags over their heads.

Ivan: Is that a typical dating strategy — telling a couple of stories like that?

Yulia: Well, we lived through it — I lived through it with him. I wanted him to share it with someone. He didn’t want to go to a psychologist. I wanted to at least share a little bit of it with him so he could talk about it and feel a bit lighter. So sometimes those topics did come up between us.

Ivan: She says it was kind of therapeutic for him to talk about it.

Yulia: Yes.

Ivan: She says it’s hard for many soldiers — they can’t talk to therapists about things like that, it’s difficult for them to discuss it with people at all.

Yulia: Yes. Our men, especially soldiers, think psychologists are “brain fixers”, as they call them. In some way it’s considered shameful. And on the other hand, they see themselves as strong men who should deal with everything on their own.
So they try as much as possible not to go to those kinds of specialists — like, “What, am I sick or something?” That’s how they see it.

Ivan: Yes yes

Vic: Good. Thanks a lot. Very much thanks to the interview(for the interview). For.

Yulia: It was a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for helping us, and for coming. (You are welcome)