‘Waiting is the choice that none of us made’. The story of a family with three men at war

Marharyta: rebirth

In 2014, 22-year-old Marharyta Mudryk came to Maidan because of rock star Viacheslav Vakarchuk's performance. After the concert, she went to warm herself by a barrel. There was a woman in her 70s standing there with a Pekingese. The young woman thought she lived on Khreshchatyk and was walking around the center. "I, my dear, came from Rivne Oblast because my children were beaten here. But I have no one to leave the dog with, so we are here." After these words, Marharyta's life turned upside down. She stayed overnight to help the Maidan protesters, and then another night.

And on February 18, she got caught up in a scuffle. On Instytutska Street, she was digging out cobblestones and carrying them in her fashionable leather bag to the barricades. And then the unarmed people were chased away by Berkut riot policemen. They were trapped in a narrow passageway near the barricade and piled on top of each other. The girl was also there.

"Everyone is crying, floundering about, bones are cracking, lungs are constricting, there is nothing to breathe. No one can get up, grenades are exploding nearby. At that moment, I felt the most terrible smell in my life: sickening, terrible. The smell of fear. It was all of us releasing enzymes of insane fear for our lives. We lay there for about 20 minutes. I had a feeling that everyone was dying and I was dying with them," Marharyta recalls.

Eventually, one of the Maidan protesters managed to pull her out by the arm. The rest of the people were also gradually pulled out of the trap, but they were immediately attacked by Berkut officers. Mudryk, who was bandaging the wounded, was also hit on the head with a baton.

Two older people's hearts stopped there. Since then, Marharyta considers February 18 her second birthday. And the moment of rebirth: "My thoughts and values changed, I started breathing instead of sniffling. The Maidan gave me guidelines: strength, truth, love for the country."

In the spring of 2014, she started working for the Self-Defense and volunteering at the front.

Dima: love like lightning

Dmytro Babych, 17 years older than Marharyta, was also on the Maidan in the Fourth Cossack Hundred, but they did not cross paths during the Revolution of Dignity.

When the war in Donbas broke out, he volunteered for Aidar. When he was guarding the Luhansk thermal power plant in Shchastia, Marharyta brought first aid kits.

"I saw Dima for the first time when he was sitting on his bed. He said something. And I felt that I had never met a more handsome man, with such a beautiful voice, with such a knock-you-off-your-feet smell. And those snow-white teeth, that dashing earring in his ear. I have never seen such a masculine handsome man in my life or in a Hollywood movie. Daring, sociable, cheerful. A perfect man. It was as if I was struck by lightning, such a crazy love at first sight. Such vibrations went out that I was shaking. In the spring, we will be together for seven years, and I still look at him like that," she admits. "He sometimes pisses me off, but still," she laughs. "Even though my love has become deep love, I still have these butterflies in my stomach. And it's so cool."

At first, however, the girl decided that the handsome man would not even look at her. She continued to live her life, but always remembered the man of her dreams. She spied on him on social media.

Later, Dmytro would admit that he followed her around the power plant.

Only a year and a half later, when he had already been demobilized, he found her himself. He left comments on Facebook under a photo.

One day he wrote: "It's time to get married." And she thought that he was saying this not so much to her as to himself for the future. As if he was going to be the one.

In 2017, Marharyta, as always, went to the Maidan on sacred, energizing days: February 18-20. On the morning of February 19, following an unexpected call of her soul, she went with her grandmother to visit the monasteries of Kyiv. In one of them, the Holosiyivskyi Desert, there is the grave of Mother Alipia, to whom many pilgrims turn with prayers. Marharyta also knelt down and put a note asking the nun for mutual and great love.

"I hadn't had any relationships for a long time but I really wanted to, I dreamed of love and a family," Marharyta says.

On the same day, an acquaintance took a picture of her on the Maidan and posted it on Facebook. Dmytro immediately wrote back:

"I look at you and remember school. There was a portrait of Lenin on the wall. And no matter what desk I sat at, it seemed that he was always looking at me. And so are you in this photo. You are looking at me."

After this strange comment, their relationship took off. First in correspondence, then in daily meetings. And in a few weeks, the lovers started living together. At first they lived in an apartment, and then they bought a house in a village near Kyiv.

"This is the first serious relationship in my life," Marharyta says. "I felt comfortable at once, my heart sang: this is my man.”

The Great War: father, stepfather, and husband serving

For more than five years, the young woman lived in the safety of a stronghold:

"I constantly felt that I was with an adult, mature person. I'm not afraid of anything with Dima. Because he will handle everything, he will think of something, no matter what happens, he is not afraid of anything or anyone.

When the invasion began, we organized ourselves in the first days and went to buy gasoline. I was telling Dima about my emotions, and he suddenly said: ‘Listen, I'm so scared. For the first time in many, many years’. And it hit me: if my Dima is scared, then something is wrong in the world."

She continues:

"I realize now that these five and a half years that we lived together before the great war began, he was subconsciously preparing for it. He knew it was coming.

He actually aired out his military uniform. That is, he didn't start going fishing in it so that it would wear out. He had a compartment in his garage where he kept his ammunition. I said: ‘At least give the first aid kit to the guys!’ - ‘No, I'll need it’. I wanted children, and he said: ‘It's not time yet’. And I understand that he felt that something was going to happen.

And when the great war happened, I had no options that someone would not go somewhere. Obviously, everyone will go where they need to go."

Marharyta's family, in addition to her husband, who returned to his guys with whom he had been fighting since 2014 (now the 118th Cherkasy Brigade), has a father and stepfather at the front. Her mother is a volunteer, and there is nothing she can't get: from a thermal imager to a car or a drone. "She volunteers alone, like a good foundation."

Last summer, Dmytro was defending the Bakhmut district. A terrible story happened there: Marharyta still gets goosebumps whenever she thinks about it.

"Back then, Bakhmut was still ours and our positions were just beyond it. There was an observation post on the spoil heap. From this dugout, the area could be observed rather well. And so the guys gave their artillery the coordinates where to engage. They were constantly being shelled. His good friend died there in front of Dima's eyes.

The group changed every three days. For three days the guys were at the positions, and for three days they rested in Kostiantynivka. And once he was given four days of break instead of those three days. So he was driving home at night, in the morning we were having breakfast, and he was constantly looking into different chats to see what was going on with his brothers-in-arms. And just at those moments, another shift was struck by artillery. All the guys were killed. The next day, the Russians were already on the spoil heap. They did not even get the bodies of our soldiers. That is, if Dima had stayed there for one more day, he would have died."

Another time, her husband also miraculously sidestepped death. He was at the base, going to the canteen to have breakfast. Two aerial bombs hit the base.

"He said that the guy next to him had his head blown off, there were many dead and wounded. He was the lightest one – he had a concussion."

I ask her how she copes with worrying about her three relatives at the front.

"I came up with this idea: all the men of our country fought in World War II, and millions did not return. One of my great-grandfathers, a hero of the Soviet Union, came home. Another, an ace pilot, did too. And I believe that it is written in our family: men from our family will come back alive and healthy from all wars. This belief keeps me running," the woman says.

She says that grounding helps her a lot: physically planting plants in the ground. She also does the simplest work with her hands: her mother knits, and she makes "jerky" - dried meat for the soldiers.

Self-support: by charging others, you charge yourself

A self-support group also helps. Marharyta has three jobs to donate more. The first and main one is a guest editor on the ICTV channel, and the second is a Maltese kennel. She donates part of the proceeds from the sale of puppies to the Armed Forces of Ukraine and gives them to children from military families. At the Veteran Hub, she works as a co-trainer in groups for women waiting for their husbands from the front, where she is a member. The purpose of the groups is to be a support.

"Our family has been living and breathing this since 2014, our whole bubble has been touched by the war, so I'm used to the state of waiting. And there are girls who have recently gotten married. In their town or village, everyone lives a normal life. And girls have no one to share their pain with, to discuss their experiences. And these groups were created to help them speak out. There are painful topics that are not very tolerated in our society. For example, full families in which men do not go to war and do not help. Or about those who went abroad. You can get angry in a group. You can talk about relationships between men and women that have changed during the war. Many girls do not understand their niche in society. Who are they? They are gnawed by the feeling of some kind of non-existence, of being unnoticed. Although the burden of a waiting wife is very heavy. Waiting is a choice that none of us made and cannot influence in any way. And when you say it without fear of being judged, when you see a dozen pairs of understanding eyes, it becomes easier," Marharyta explains.

Mudryk herself found a definition for her members - "women of war."

These groups help her as well. When she directs the girls to check their health and rest, she checks her own. She decided to be a positive person in the groups. She makes the girls laugh and shares her experience. Charging them, she charges herself.

Recently, one of the participants shared her fear that her husband had not been in touch for a week. And everyone was reassuring and supporting her, and then – magic: her husband called!

Love united by grief

Marharyta also wanted to go to war. Not to the trenches, but to the headquarters. To do something useful, like search for the dead.

"But Dima asked me – and I'm grateful that he didn't punch the table – but did it quietly and firmly: ‘It is extremely important for me that you are at home. I need to have a home base so that I can be effective there’."

Once, she recalls, she felt ashamed that she had nothing to tell her husband. The washing machine was broken, but how can you tell that a man in the trenches? So she wrote a message saying, “I'm so embarrassed”.

"And he replied: ‘On the contrary. I've seen enough corpses here. I'm scared, cold (it was winter), and you're talking about our house, our dogs, the broken car, and how you're coping with it. It's so important to me, it offers a change’," says Marharyta.

She was uncomfortable going on vacation (she chose the Ukrainian Bakota), but she was so tired, so eager to exhale. He answered her the same way: "I am happy when you are happy. Go, I will see your happy smile. That's what I'm fighting for."

And she left. And she showed me via video link where she was walking, what she saw. And she smiled. And he smiled back. It felt like a honeymoon. And now, whenever they call each other, she tries to look good: she lets her hair down, puts on makeup. She may wear a dress with a low-cut neckline. On these mini-dates, she tells him something funny and sweet.

I ask her if she could love a man who does not fight?

"Probably yes, you can't predict that in advance. But I would definitely not look at him as Dima. I would look at him as a man of honor and dignity, a man who I admire immensely for his actions. We can talk about the war with him and both of us can stop talking at once. We can think about something. And I know that he thinks about his fallen friends. And I do too, because we have a lot of them in common. I sent them to war every week from Maidan, and Dima fought with them.

This feeling about the fallen guys and the appreciation of their feat unites us. I feel that no other person would have understood me as well as he did.

Since 2014, we have been made up of pain. Only now there is much more of it. My family knows this price, understands it deeply. And Dima and I know, we don't need to talk - we exchange thoughts. We are already one, this realization is in our blood. And I love him even more for this shared feeling."