“I thought I would have to drink my own urine”. 68 days in the encirclement and the body of a fallen comrade that helped him survive

“After I came back, I tried to tell my friends and family about my experience, but no one understood me. They listened and did not understand! I was angry, I wanted to cry, I was hurt, I was torn up inside, but there were no tears. Nastia came to Sloviansk to see me, and I was screaming at her: don't touch me, don't touch me! She said something, but it was not the right thing!”

… Vlad and I are talking in his rented one-room apartment in Irpin, where the electricity was turned off right on schedule, and because of this, the electric heating does not work. Vlad does not pay attention to such trifles. When there is a threat of Russian Shahed drone and missile attacks in Irpin, he simply shuts the window. It would be nice to have a vacation somewhere in the Carpathians — maybe the next time he returns from the front. For now, Vlad likes to look at the lake below the house from his balcony. “There, you see a duck, it's swimming away,” he says, happy that the duck appeared just when he wanted to show it to me.

Vlad’s phone is constantly ringing, and he ignores the calls because he's talking to me. But he does answer one, and it's one of his commanders. It seems to be about state awards.

“I'm being nominated for the Hero of Ukraine,” Vlad explains what exactly he has just been informed by phone.

From dentist to national guard

At 25 years old, his face is so young that even his beard does not add to his solidity. He has a very sweet smile when he tells us how he studied to become a dentist at the Zhytomyr Medical Institute, how he started working in a clinic right away, and how he signed a contract with the National Guard of Ukraine at the age of 20. Soon, his commander offered him to study to become an officer.

The full-scale invasion caught Vlad as a cadet at the National Guard Academy in Kharkiv. On the third day, he and his brothers-in-arms took up a position near the village of A village in the Kharkiv district of the Kharkiv regionMala Rohan. He had an assault rifle, four magazines, and a grenade, which he was ordered to put the fuse in only when the battle started. It took up to 10 seconds to screw in the fuse in the cold with unskilled hands. The machine gun fires more than 10 shots per second. That's how many times he could have been killed by Russian machine gunners while he was fiddling with that fuse…

At his first combat position, Vlad saw how miserable officers become if they do not know how to overcome their fear of the enemy. At Mala Rohan, he became a grown man.

… The cadets held those positions for a month. Then they were ordered to return to the classroom to finish their studies.

“Before the war, I studied haphazardly — I was at the humanities faculty, work with personnel, papers. We fired three rounds of ammunition several times a year — that was all the combat training we had. And after Mala Rohana, I realized what knowledge I lacked to fight effectively. I searched for this knowledge on the Internet and YouTube. My notebooks were full of notes. I'm an officer, soldiers will be behind me, they shouldn't die because of my stupidity,” Vlad recalls today.

He graduated from the academy in the spring of 2023. After graduation, he served in several units, dealing with both paperwork and training soldiers. It was only the following year that he joined the Svoboda battalion.

Assault, entrenchment and assault again

“Guys with the rank of officer don't go to fight with the soldiers on the position — it's not their job, they have to organize their subordinates to perform a combat mission. But I went. Because there was no one to go to those positions, there were not enough people. And how can you be at war and not shoot a Russian? How can I, a platoon commander, give orders to soldiers if I have not been in their shoes and do not know their work? That's why I went there. On the Name of the combat position that was geographically located in Donetsk regionAdolf, I was just a soldier, but on the Name of the combat positionPincher, I appointed myself as the senior officer of the position. There was a senior officer before me — I don't know what to say about him without swearing, but after Adolf I was ready for anything.”

On July 10, 2024, Vlad found himself at the Adolf position. The situation there had been difficult for several days. He found three soldiers at Adolf — he became the fourth. The commanders warned him that they would be at the position for about a month.

“American professional boxer. He is a former absolute heavyweight champion and the youngest boxer to win the WBC, WBA and IBF championships. He was the first heavyweight to hold the WBC, WBA and IBF belts at the same time.Mike Tyson's coach used to say that fear is like a fire that heats your house. If there is not enough of it, the house is cold, if there is a lot of it, the house will burn down. There should be enough fear to keep you warm and help you act. There is a battle — shoot, don't stop. Because if you start to be afraid, think about death during the battle, you are done.”

The intensity of the Russian assaults was insane. A few days later, two more soldiers were wounded on the Adolf. After the wounded were evacuated, Vlad and his comrade were left alone. Whether it was a day, two days, or an eternity —  he can't remember now. Then, one by one, two by two, reinforcements came to them.

“The Russians would attack, we would fight back, then we would fix our position, dig up this earth, fill sacks with it, and seal the holes, because if a bullet passed through such a bag, it would not kill, but only wound. Again we repel the attacks, again we dig, some of us are killed, some are transferred to other positions. There were always 3-4 people at a position, never more. We held the Adolf for 37 days, and during that time the composition of the fighters changed eight times. There were National Guardsmen, guys from the 54th Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. One after another, one after another. And I was there for all 37 days,” Vlad finishes his sentence with a luxurious swear word, which contains confusion, surprise, and delight.

Ready to drink his own urine

…Then came the moment when no more reinforcements could come to the Adolf. When power banks, food, and ammunition could only be delivered by drones. And a drone can deliver only 14 kilograms. What do you give up — water, grenades, communication? The drones either don't make it or drop the delivery so that the Russians shoot you a hundred times before you find it. Or they deliver it to a neighboring position, and the guys there just drink your water…

…Summer, heat, instead of air — dust, saturated with the stench of sweat, blood, urine, excrement. Instead of a toilet, they have balls and bottles, they pack them in white sugar bags and throw them outside. But the stench is still annoying, and the rats tear those bags and rummage through them. Four bottles of water will be dumped, and one will always break for some reason. There’s not enough water to use a dry shower. During his 68 days on the position, Vlad wiped his body maybe 4-5 times. He had nothing to brush his teeth with, so he rinsed his mouth and spit it out into a cup so he could rinse again.

“Sometimes we were without a drop of water. I texted the commander that we would really kill each other here if there was no water. And we were told that there would be no delivery for another day. When they said that, there were four of us in the dugout, and I saw the eyes of my soldiers, who are 20-25 years my seniors. They were the eyes of a hungry animal looking at a lamb. I think I looked at them like that too. So how do you keep the morale up? And I understand that if we give up morally now, we will die.

I told my soldiers to hold on, but I don't have the strength myself. I'm already mentally giving up, because if the drone doesn't arrive for another day, I'll be ready to drink my own urine. And I have three people with me, and I thought I would burst with a sense of responsibility for them. Because I need to make sure these guys survive. It's a responsibility like for children. A night without water, a day without water, and another night — and in the morning they dumped it on us. And we're drinking it… They sent us bread and cutlets. We ate and laughed. That was motivation!”

… Leaving the Adolf meant exposing their flanks. They held the position for a month and another week. The Russians came close. Their dugout, which resembled a real fortress in terms of its quality, had already turned into ruins. His partners, soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, received an order from their commander to leave the position. And they left.

Vlad was left alone.

“None of the commanders wants to take responsibility for the fact that it was his men who stopped holding the position. I began to prepare myself to hold the position alone. I dug a bed for myself so I could lie down freely on my back, made niches for ammunition. I thought about where I would put tripwires if the Russians started to come through the trenches.

And when I was ready for the defense on my own, I was ordered to make my way to the neighboring position — Pincher. This was the only way for me to escape, I could not reach the headquarters, there were Russians everywhere. The headquarters tried to send us help many times, scouts and sappers tried to reach us, but no one could get through.”

… He fought on the Adolf for 37 days.

Armored vehicle did not arrive

He managed to get to the Pincher unharmed. It was on August 18. There were four of them again. A cramped hole, where you can't stand up to your full height like on the Adolf, where you can't even lie down —you have to sit crouched down.

… They were told that they had to hold the Pincher until approximately September 4 or 5. But Vlad no longer trusted clearly defined deadlines. They weren't promised any help, and he realized that there was simply no one to replace them.

The Russians did not let up. One assault after another, sometimes fighting for 12 hours. Our drones later recorded 50 bodies of Russians around the position. No one counted the wounded.

“There was one fight, a very tough one, and we threw them back. I was sitting on my ass, holding my assault rifle under my armpit, realizing that everything would start all over again. I don't know what was happening to me, I was swaying sitting up, looking at the entrance to the hole, which was covered by Sashko's body, and telling some imaginary Russian: you're not coming in, you're not coming in, you're not coming in. I don't remember how long I sat there.”

The Russians' infantry assaults, their tanks, their drones, which were more numerous than clouds in the sky. And I thought: how can this be?

“There is definitely a God. I heard him at the positions — and He heard me. I knelt down and asked Him: please, please, make sure that water or power banks come today. I would ask and touch this bracelet that the chaplain gave me. And every time I asked God, the drone came. What is this? God saved me. Because how else did I stay there so long and survive? I survived even when my ammunition jammed in combat.”

On September 15, Vlad reported to the commander that there was one dead (Sashko) and one wounded in the arm, that there were two of them left in the ranks and that tanks were coming at them, and that they had very little anti-tank ammunition. There is indeed a God: those tanks exploded on mines, and they managed to deal with the Russian infantry.

But after the battle, Vlad told his commander that it was impossible to hold the position any longer, and that they had to withdraw. And if the three of them were not helped to leave, he would lead the guys on his own, at his own risk.

“The command said, ‘Okay, we'll pick you up tomorrow. What do you mean tomorrow? So that the wounded bleeds to death? Today! At first, they promised us that an armored vehicle would take us to a position one and a half kilometers to the rear of ours. But the driver refused to pick us up. I understand him — there are mines everywhere, he has three children. Would he have reached us? Or would we have gone back?

And the command told us to run to that almost rear position at night in anti night-vision coats. We had to run a kilometer and a half with our equipment and there were mines, Russians, and their damn drones everywhere. And I had to take everything valuable from the Pincher with me — power stations, batteries, accumulators. I was hoping to take Sashko's body if the armored vehicle had arrived, but we had to run — it was impossible with Sashko. I... He is still lying there.”

Vlad fought on the Pincher for a month — like one endless night with nightmares…

“God, help me cry everything out”

They ran that kilometer and a half. And came back to their brothers-in-arms.

“They gave us milk. It was crazy — milk! I missed it so much! There was a swing behind one house, and I sat down to swing on it. Milk and a swing. And I wanted to cry so badly. It was so painful. I can't… How can I tell you?”

He was then offered to talk to a military psychologist. Vlad agreed. Now he can't talk about that conversation without swearing.

“I'm sick to my stomach, and this... psychologist tells me how many guys he buried in 2014, and that there will be many more in this war. And all this with some stupid jokes, with laughter. He dragged me somewhere to the cemetery to talk. I wanted to take him like that and… with my bare hands, honestly. And he even asked me if I did drugs! I don't know how I held back. Is this a psychologist? This is a f*cking moron.”

… He was able to cry out only when he went to talk to Sashko's mother. The woman was convinced that her son’s brothers-in-arms had left her wounded son in a position to die and walked away.

“I could not look at her. I just sat with my head down, silent. She understood everything from my silence. She started crying, hugged me, and said: ‘Don't blame yourself for his death’. Now she knows that he was killed instantly. That he did not suffer, no one left him to die. I think she felt better after that.”

Vlad stops talking and looks up at me, his eyes tired and heavy. He looks at me closely, but I feel that it's not me he's looking at now…

“Why is this happening?”

... A few days after leaving the positions, Vlad was already in Sloviansk. He was terrified that he would receive another command to enter a position, and he did not have the strength to fulfill it, but he could not help but do so. He constantly asked his commanders when he was going to the position so that the order to act would not come as a surprise. But he was offered to work with the new recruits.

“Sloviansk is almost like a frontline, a bunch of soldiers, all of them are our own, some go to the position, some return. The city lives by the war, by supporting the military. I felt good there. And then I came home to Irpin. Nastia and I went to the Lavina shopping center, and there this lunk got out of his expensive car and looked at me like I was trash. Where is the justice? Why the hell are some people dying, hungry, going into battle without water, and here are those fat guys, narcissistic, driving such cars? This car could buy so many drones for the front line!

It hurts me, it drives me crazy. Why is this happening? Why do some people suffer so much, while others don't care? How long can we tolerate the government making fools of people like me, like my guys? They buy disabilities for themselves and their children to avoid going to war. They're bastards. I was on the Adolf with Call sign of a brother-in-armsZhostik — he had a limb amputated, he fought the Russians on a prosthesis, he took the wounded out under fire on an ATV, he did not hide behind his disability. And these… I can't… It's so hard…”

I ask Vlad how he rests and relaxes in Irpin.

“I don’t,” he answers. He goes to the gym — it relieves tension, and cooks. After the roller coaster, he really felt better, he was able to relax. He can't watch movies — those with a lot of violence he just can't stand, and “shooters” seem like a children's fairy tale.

His father is in the territorial defense, and Vlad can be frank about everything with him. He didn't tell his mother anything by phone while he was at the positions. And when he returned, she kept insisting that he tell her. So he told her everything. He said she wanted to hear, so listen. Vlad’s mom was hospitalized with a heart attack... Relatives? He asked them for donations for the unit, and they reposted the ad.

“Even my godmother didn't send any money — she said she was praying for me. My grandmother just sobbed too. How can this be? It killed me.”

... After a few weeks of rest at home, Vlad is now back at the training ground, where his company is forming and training. Of the 29 soldiers who took up their positions in early July 2024, four are still in service.