They were children when Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. Now, these teenage drone operators spend their days glued to their screens, fighting for their country’s survival.
MALA TOKMACHKA, Ukraine — The young drone squad barged into the base camp near here, boots thumping across the floor where other Ukrainian soldiers slept, as smartphones sounded a 3 a.m. wake-up call.
“And I’m like, ‘What the …?’” said Vadym, a drone operator who started learning English, and a fair amount of F-bombing, while watching “Pulp Fiction.” “I don’t know how it is to live in a peaceful country.” For most of the youngest soldiers, the war with Russia in the eastern Donbas region seemed far away when they were growing up — a kind of simmering background music that occasionally touched relatives or friends. Now, however, they are on the front, fighting a powerful enemy that can, and does, strike anywhere.If anything, Vadym and other young soldiers voice regret that they joined the battle late.
“War has changed all of us. It changed our perspective on how we see the world,” said Oksana Rubaniak, 20, who grew up in a Carpathian mountain village. Rubaniak was an excellent student who threw herself into Ukrainian history, including Kyivan Rus, the first great Slavic empire, and thought she might become a teacher.
Kharkovsky, a shy, soft-spoken soldier who wears his cap pulled so low it’s hard to see his eyes when he talks, grew up in Ivanivka, a village east of the southern city of Kherson. His mother had a vegetable stall in the market, and his older sister worked in seaside restaurants. His father left when he was young.Besides classes in an agricultural school, Kharkovsky’s life revolved around fishing, volleyball and walks in the country.
“Compared to Bakhmut, it’s like going to vacation, you know?” Vadym said. “No one’s trying to, like, kill you every five minutes.”One soldier — who goes by the call sign Chuck and, at 32, is the elder of the group — fiddled with a video game while others prepped drones. Vadym cracked that they should be sitting on ammo boxes like in a scene in “Apocalypse Now.”
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