‘Give the baby the phone’: Love, war and a pregnancy on the front line

Maryna tried to explain that their unborn child, then barely the size of a poppy seed, could not hear him yet. Andrii was undeterred. He told her to put the phone against her stomach anyway.

“I told the baby that we were very happy, that we were waiting for him and that we had been trying for this for a very long time,” Andrii recalled. “And that when he is born, we will have a very strong family because we love each other and want to pass that love on to our children.”

Maryna and Andrii Pleshcheiev are both soldiers with Ukraine's 93rd Separate Mechanized Brigade. Their son, whom they plan to name Levko, began his life while both his parents were serving near Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine. For more than a week, Maryna remained at her position before her pregnancy took her off combat duty.

Their story is a love story shaped by a war that has erased many of the ordinary boundaries between military service and family life. They met while volunteering, married after Andrii joined the army, later served together in an electronic warfare unit and learned what it means to hear over the radio that the person you love is under attack.

They had once planned to wait until after the war to have a child. Then Maryna's father, who also served in the military, was killed by a Russian Iskander missile on the day she arrived at her unit. His death changed the couple's calculation: waiting for life to return to normal no longer seemed like an option.

“Death is real. Let's live now,” Maryna recalled telling her husband.

From volunteering to the front line

Before the full-scale war, neither Maryna nor Andrii Pleshcheiev was a soldier.

Maryna, an economist by training, spent the first months of the Russian invasion with her parents in their village in the Kharkiv region. By late 2022, she had returned to Kharkiv and joined friends doing volunteer work - delivering humanitarian aid, transporting vehicles for military units and helping wherever she could.

But over time, she began to feel that it was not enough.

“It was very important for me to feel that I was part of the resistance,” Maryna said. “At first, I donated to the Armed Forces, helped displaced people and traveled to military units. Then all of that stopped feeling like enough.”

She first tried to join the military in 2023, but health problems discovered during a medical examination delayed her plans. In the summer of 2024, after treatment, she mobilized and joined the 93rd Brigade as a finance specialist.

Andrii's path took longer. He had known since his teens that a spinal condition could make him medically ineligible for military service. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, his immediate priority was getting his two sons from his first marriage to safety.

He evacuated them from Kharkiv to Chernivtsi and then became a volunteer, including making trips abroad to bring humanitarian aid back to Ukraine. Eventually, he said, he realized he did not want to leave the country.

In January 2024, Andrii voluntarily joined the military despite his back condition. He initially served as a driver transporting infantry to and from positions, then worked as a videographer with the brigade's press service before eventually transferring to an electronic warfare unit.

Maryna would eventually join him there.

The day Maryna joined her unit

The day Maryna arrived at the 93rd Brigade to meet her commander, her father was killed.

He was also serving in the Ukrainian military. A Russian Iskander missile struck the building where he was stationed.

“I had completed basic military training, and on the day I arrived at the unit to meet my commander, my dad was killed,” Maryna said.

She had to identify his body and bring him home to her mother.

Until then, Maryna said, the possibility of dying in the war had remained something she understood intellectually. Her father's death made it immediate.

“It showed me that death was real, that it could happen to me too,” she said. “For about the next six months, I don't think I felt a single happy emotion. It was a kind of emotional numbness.”

But his death did not make her reconsider serving.

“On the contrary, it became part of my experience,” Maryna said. “There had always been fighting, deaths, people dealing with loss. I began to understand that context much better.”

She described the first year after her father's death as “a very dark time” for the family - one that Andrii helped her endure.

Maryna initially served in finance, but within months the same feeling that had driven her from volunteering into the military returned: she believed she could do more.

She asked to transfer to the brigade's electronic warfare unit, where she began intercepting signals from Russian drones so Ukrainian troops could jam them and bring the drones down.

This time, she and Andrii went together.

‘It was very romantic’

О так. 😭 Тут я навіть не хочу вигадувати надто розумний підзаг, бо Марина вже написала його за нас:

‘It was very romantic’

Serving in the same electronic warfare unit meant Maryna and Andrii could finally spend more time together - although the military had its own definition of “together.”

At first, they took turns at the same position and barely saw each other. Eventually, they asked to be assigned to different positions on the same shifts, allowing them at least to rest together afterward.

It also meant each could sometimes hear, in real time, when the other was under attack.

“We have one radio network for the unit,” Maryna said. “I can hear him give the name of his position and say that it's being hit by artillery or drones. I understand that he's being shelled right then.”

Sometimes, she said, she could see a Russian drone heading toward Andrii's position and know what was about to happen before hearing his confirmation over the radio.

The same worked in reverse.

During one attack, a strike destroyed the Starlink terminal at Maryna's position, leaving the radio as her only means of communication. Andrii's radio was the only one on her frequency that could reach her.

Their conversations remained strictly military.

“We're service members. He calls my position, I call his. We're so serious: ‘Plus. Copy,’” Maryna recalled.

Then she laughed.

“But it was very romantic.”

Andrii draws a firm distinction between the two parts of their lives.

“At home, we're husband and wife,” he said. “On duty, we're soldiers. Each of us has our own task.”

Yet both say serving together has made married life easier in unexpected ways. They understand each other's experiences without having to explain them and share the same problems. Even when they have nothing to say, Maryna said, they are silent about the same things.

The war has also stripped many ordinary disagreements of their importance. Their priorities have narrowed to life, health, their role in Ukraine's resistance - and, now, Levko.

A charity run, a background check and a wedding

Maryna and Andrii met on Oct. 1, 2023 - exactly three years before this story was published - at a charity run in Kharkiv.

Andrii noticed her immediately.

“I saw Maryna at that run - beautiful, athletic,” he recalled. “I didn't think then that she would become the love of my life. I just wanted to meet her.”

He maneuvered closer to her for the group photo and later found her on social media. Maryna had noticed him too, although her first assumption was less promising: she thought he was married.

He wasn't.

Once Andrii messaged her, Maryna told a friend: “God, if only I had a husband like that.”

Their first conversations were about the charity run, volunteering and the military. By their first date, Maryna had already told Andrii that she intended to join the Armed Forces. By November, he had proposed.

There was, however, one more person Andrii had to pass inspection with.

Maryna told her parents about the relationship and explained that Andrii was divorced and had two sons from his previous marriage. Her mother immediately wanted proof.

“My mom checked Andrii through every registry to make sure he was officially divorced and didn't owe any child support,” Maryna recalled, laughing.

He passed.

Andrii introduced Maryna to his sons, and the relationship quickly became a family rather than simply a couple. He said the boys were drawn to her ability to talk to them openly, invent games and activities, and treat them as people rather than an extension of their father.

“She's a wonderful mother, friend, sister and woman,” Andrii said. “She loves my children, she loves me, and she understands how important my sons are to me.”

On March 1, 2024, they got married.

There was no elaborate wedding. Andrii came from Kramatorsk for a single day, and the two went to the registry office wearing tracksuits - a nod to the charity run where they had first met.

“We love being together,” Andrii said. “Closeness is our love language. Closeness, openness, honesty.”

‘Death is real. Let's live now’

For a long time, Maryna and Andrii had planned to wait until after the war to have a child.

Maryna's father's death changed that.

“There was a moment while I was grieving when I thought about how much my dad had wanted grandchildren and how he never got to see them,” she said. “He didn't even have time to really get to know Andrii and see what a great marriage we have.”

Eventually, she asked her husband why they were waiting.

“Death is real. Let's live now,” she recalled telling him. “And that's when we started trying for a baby.”

Trying, however, proved difficult. Doctors told Maryna that the constant stress she was under could be preventing her from becoming pregnant. Life on the front left both of them physically and emotionally exhausted.

“At a position, you're running on adrenaline, and when you come home, the crash is very hard,” she said.

Then came a vacation in Italy with Andrii's sons - and, finally, a chance to relax.

Maryna later joked to her fellow soldiers that she had brought “an Italian” home from the trip.

Weeks later, she was back at a position with the 93rd Brigade when she took the pregnancy test she had deliberately packed with her.

Two lines appeared.

The fellow soldier sharing the position with her immediately decided that certain things were now off limits - including helping carry 20-kilogram fuel cans for the generator. When Maryna informed her commander, he took her off combat shifts and moved her to lighter duties supporting the unit, raising money and purchasing supplies.

Maryna misses her position.

But her priorities have changed.

“When you decide to bring an entire human being into the world - that's quite a decision,” she said. “Of course, everything else becomes less important.”

Pregnancy, she added with a laugh, has brought its own challenges.

“Fighting a war is much easier than being pregnant.”