Soldier Stanislav, 35, longs for home. He doesn’t want any more.
Every day he lies to his daughters, they have no idea what he does at work.
– I don’t want them to know that dad kills people.
DON BASS.
– Kill, kill, kill, kill…
35-year-old Stanislav mutters the word to himself as he scrolls. The screen is the only thing that illuminates his face in the compact darkness.
– Kill, kill, kill…
The clips he scrolls through are recorded by drones, from above, and show how he killed Russians with a couple of button presses. A “guy”.
The videos show the entire process: How the grenade is released, falls, and lands in an explosion cloud on a Russian soldier who writhes in agony for several seconds.
There are hundreds of similar film sequences in the cell phone, judging by Stanislav’s fast-swiping thumbs. The soldiers usually show off to each other with their most delicious hits.
– Man,… These are killed today, tomorrow new ones will come, he says.
– Kill, kill… here!
He stops at a picture of two little girls. Daughters Dasha, 8, and Anastasia, 3, in matching pink pajamas. The time is 23.03. At home, the children have probably already gone to bed.
– I miss my family. Thinking about them every night. Every day starts with me thinking about them. In the mornings I call my wife and say: “Everything is fine, I’m going to work”, in the evenings I say: “Everything is fine, go to bed”.
Stanislav, or “Stas”, as everyone calls him, sits on his sleeping bag in an underground room where he lives with 15 other soldiers. It stinks of cigarette smoke and fire from the stove. He is thinner than a surfboard, with sunken cheeks accentuated by the shadows.
Stas has been here for two weeks. During the day, he is a drone operator, hidden 500 meters from the nearest enemy soldier.
On the table next to him is his standard diet: grape juice, energy drink and nicotine. That’s two packs of cigarettes per day.
Next to the tent bed, Stanislav has his workbench where he builds the grenades for the death drones.
He digs among screwdrivers and scissors, takes out a heart-shaped eraser with Hello Kitty from the toolbox, studies it for a long time in the palm of his hand.
– When I got here, I put my hand in my trouser pocket, and felt “What the hell is this?”. It turned out to be the daughter who secretly smuggled the eraser down, he smiles.
Aftonbladet has had the opportunity to sleep one night with Stanislav’s unit in the secret basement at the front line. To get us here, all the lights on the car are switched off for the last few kilometres. We’ve driven through pitch-black terrain, with a soldier finding his way only with a night camera on the roof.
All so that the Russians will not reveal their latest sleeping place.
The house where the soldiers lived the other week has been bombed in recent days. Therefore, they have to move, from basement to basement, in abandoned houses at the front.
The firecrackers rumble on the horizon, a constant reminder that the contact line is never far away.
Ruslan, 45, climbs down the rickety ladder to the basement.
He fumbles in a coffee can and finds a picture of a multi-tiered cake with cartoon puppies from the children’s program “Paw Patrol”.
He is going to order it for his youngest daughter who turns four in a couple of days.
– I really hope I can go home then, he says.
He had his first child at the age of 16. Then he also married his wife, his school sweetheart. They were the youngest couple to marry in all of Ukraine at the time, and had to get special permission from the State Council.
Today he is the father of five children.
Ruslan retrieves the drawings he brought to the front. Holding them like they were Oscar statuettes. A yellow elephant from the five-year-old grandson, and a prince from his soon-to-be four-year-old, Kira.
Another soldier comes down the stairs and tells us that Putin’s army is bombing a nearby village. The news is mostly received with a shrug.
Ruslan turns to me with a serious look.
– We hear explosions all the time. Especially today, when I heard you were going to be here, and an enemy drone flew over us – then I thought you shouldn’t come. There is a lot of trouble here, they are coming left and right. Yes, I showed you the split right?
He roots out a piece of splinter, in iron, as big as a knife blade. They found it in the garden this morning.
According to the father of five, Ruslan, who is used to chaos at home, it works well to live with more than a dozen other soldiers in a cramped basement. Most are young guys. Sometimes they argue about trivial things, like the dishes.
– Sometimes we get angry, but we always support each other. There is hope for everyone here. Every shoulder is a brother.
The soldier Mykyta stands with his legs crossed, leaning against one of the bunk beds, and listens while Stanislav, “Stas”, preaches from the sleeping bag. Suddenly, the homesick father of two sounds rather excited, almost mad, when he talks about how the Russians are cannon fodder for Putin.
– They come to die in droves. It’s fun for us, like a game. Just kill them – let’s kill two, three. It’s like a fun game!
Do you count how many you’ve killed?
– It is impossible to keep count.
It’s getting close to midnight.
Milka the cat strokes the feet sticking out of the sleeping bags.
Toothbrush and toothpaste are thrown among grenades on a chest of drawers.
Someone is watching TV series on their mobile phone, another is calling home. The snoring increases in the room. But Stanislav is awake.
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion a year ago, he asked his wife Kate to take the children and go to Poland.
“Without you, we’re going nowhere,” was the answer. Instead, the family remains in the somewhat calmer parts of the country, while Stas fights in the east.
– My children miss me very much. I want to go home. But I can’t, because the Russian Federation is trying to screw us. They can’t, he says in English, every word laced with frustration.
His eldest daughter, Dasha, is having a lot of problems at school right now, he says.
– Because she needs me – she needs her father. Anastasia misses me too. She doesn’t understand where her father is going.
He pauses.
– I think they will understand when they grow up. Right now they don’t understand. How can you tell your children that you are going to war? I don’t want to say that. Instead, I say I go to work every day.
So they don’t know?
– No, they don’t understand. I don’t want my children to think “my dad kills people”.
– No one should really kill anyone. But I can’t not kill them. Because then they come to my house, kill my wife. Killing my children. Destroy my house. And fucks me up.
He doesn’t do it for money, he emphasizes. Money means nothing anymore. Before his time in the army, he ran his own business, bought a house, a car, saved a penny.
Now he kills, for his family and for the country, he says.
– Only we warriors understand each other, he says.
– People cannot help us. After the war we will have big problems; no psychologist, no therapy in the world can help us.
How do you mean?
– I am affected. It’s been…terrible, he says thoughtfully, carefully.
– We have to know how to live after this. Without killing, without artillery, without grenades and commanders.
Stas begins to rub his hands, looking for the words. Laughs nervously. Sighs.
– We must be able to move on. We have to live our lives, move forward. Forget everything behind.
Is there anything in particular you have in mind?
– I don’t know, I don’t know. No one can help us.
Long exhalation.
– When I start my life again after the war, the first thing I will do – or at least try – is to find a psychotherapist. Because I don’t know how to do this, and then return to a normal life again.
The time is 01:23.
In the stove, the embers are fading. Stanislav has three hours to sleep before he has to get up for more “kills”. It doesn’t matter, he says. When he was positioned in Kiev, he slept one hour per week.
– We hardly slept for a whole month. We work day, night, night, day. 20 minutes sleep, work, 20 minutes sleep, work again.
– Here! Here’s my energy, he says, grabbing the black bottle with a liter of black caffeine-pumped soda.
He gulps twice, then turns his gaunt face down into the red sleeping bag.
Three hours later, the first whispers are heard in the basement. It is still pitch black at 4:43 a.m. when two heavy boots thump up the wooden steps.
Father Stas goes to work again.