Veteran who beat cancer now inspires hundreds of schoolkids

His fiancée left him

Danylo is from Zaporizhzhia and has been at war since 2014. His motivation to defend the country was simple: descendants will ask what you did during the war. Sitting on the couch writing comments was not his choice. He joined the Skif battalion and fought as an infantryman until 2020. That was when he learned of his diagnosis.

He underwent chemotherapy and radiotherapy. As a result, he lost his hair, weight, and sense of taste.

Everything already weighed on him heavily, and then came the betrayal: the woman he had lived with for three years and with whom he had planned a wedding left him. One day he returned from chemotherapy in the capital, and she was gone.

“I thought, well, maybe it is hard for her. Let her live separately for a while. When you love someone, you hope everything will work out. She came once to support me, and I was already glad that things would go back to the way they were. But no… That was the end. It hurt for more than a year. The sediment washed out of my soul for a very long time. And it is clear that this did not help my recovery,” the soldier recalls, sighing.

After the breakup, the man called his commander: “Hryhorovych (Mykola Hryhorovych Kulchytskyi), if I sit at home within four walls, I will go crazy. I need communication. I want to join the guys.” He understood: “Danylo, come to the battalion. We will put you in a different position that is easier.” And he kept his promise.

After several months of treatment, the soldier entered remission (by the way, five years will soon have passed since there have been no signs of cancer. It can be considered that the disease has been overcome, although risks remain — ed.). His condition improved. The military medical commission declared him unfit for military service. Danylo was removed from the register. He has the third disability group. It was granted permanently, meaning forever. The veteran retired on a military pension at age 34.

He had barely grown accustomed to civilian life when the full-scale invasion happened.

He became a boxing coach

“It sounds wild, but I was glad. Inside, something sparked that I could again take a step back to where they had sent me away from. Even though I understood that I could not sit in a trench for a month, I still wanted to be involved somehow. Military service is my thing. I know everything and can be useful. And I went to the commander,” he recalls. “Everything at the unit was bustling, loading, carrying in and out. I had already prepared to receive a weapon, but Hryhorovych asked: ‘Wait, I will find a place for you later.’”

A few days later, detachments were forming at the battalion base from volunteers who had been discharged due to health problems. Danylo ended up there.

The men were brought together and given weapons. They patrolled Zaporizhzhia and at night drove 20 kilometers outside the city because the front line had not yet formed and saboteurs could slip through. And indeed, in the groves and shelterbelts they found suspicious wanderers. The soldiers would radio their own. If they heard, “Those are not ours,” they would open fire.

In the fall of 2022, the Skif veterans turned in their weapons. Their service ended.

Three weeks later, Danylo Kachura fulfilled his childhood dream — he went to work as a boxing coach at a sports club. At the same time, he developed a desire to volunteer: to tell schoolchildren about patriotism.

One hundred meetings a month

“I remembered how World War II veterans used to visit my school, and I thought: Would that fly today? I saw how teenagers in Zaporizhzhia tore down a flag. And I thought that something needed to be done to counter their perception of what is Ukrainian, that this choice with the flag, where they turned the wrong way, could take root in life, and they would go on like that.

It is too late to prove anything to 30- or 40-year-olds. But a child can understand that being Ukrainian is good, humane, and patriotic, that soldiers are normal people you can talk to and — look — something in their perception will change. A seed will sprout. Tomorrow or a year from now, they will meet a soldier and understand that you do not have to shy away but can approach and talk,” Danylo shares his idea.

In 2024, he decided to take it to one of the principals of Zaporizhzhia schools. The principal gladly agreed to have the soldier speak at one of the events. And then… then the requests poured in by the dozen. Up to a hundred in the first month. Danylo had three meetings a day. Now he has slowed the pace to 70-80 per half-year.

The first few times, Danylo was very nervous. From nerves, his uniform jacket would get soaked. He had to wash it every time.

“I take such meetings seriously, not just to rattle something off and leave. It is better not to come at all then. I need to be in good form and energetic. A person who fought and fights cannot be like a dead fish. Besides, the children should not be bored or scared. I try to build a format that is both deep and friendly. I can tell a joke. I strive for soldiers to be perceived as friends and to convey that there are hundreds of thousands of such friends, and they are the same people as these children. And the main thing is that these soldiers are not somewhere far away but are part of our life,” Danylo says, inspired by his mission. He can talk about these meetings for hours.

"Have you ever ridden in a tank?"

Everyone can Google “what it is like in the war,” but asking an eyewitness is something else entirely. Questions vary by age group.

Fifth-graders (the youngest; Danylo calls them “fivers”) are interested in: “What are you afraid of?” “Have you ever ridden in a tank?” “Why are Russians mean?” “What are the conditions like in the war?” “And tell us, please, will we beat the ‘orcs’?”

Older students ask about life in the army. Danylo does not recruit for service:

“I explain that it is not a total meat grinder, as our enemy tries to portray the topic, not drunk guys, as they show on TikTok. It is like a state within a state. There are many specialties, each with its own life, but different from civilian life. Good and not-so-good people are everywhere, and it is wrong to automatically brand someone or cast the activities of military commissariat officers in a negative light.”

High school students ask why he went to war, whether he had dreams, and how his approach to life changed after his experiences. He answers that he learned to value simple things and to feel happy about little things, even things like charging his phone and using it.

They also ask about funny incidents. Danylo tells this story:

“At the permanent base, we slept in one place, and those who snored were moved to a separate room, but one free bed was left. The commander said, ‘Snore here and do not bother anyone. And whoever messes up, I will not punish with money because that will hit his family, but he will sleep here.’ And in Mariupol, it was forbidden to go into the city without permission. But someone decided to run out quickly for cigarettes. So he slept with the snorers for a week or two. After that, he quit smoking altogether.”

There are questions the veteran avoids answering: “How many people did you kill?” or “What does a corpse look like?”

“And from myself, I always add that support for the fighters is a great force. All these gifts from students — trench candles, camouflage nets, children’s drawings we took to positions — show appreciation, which gives defenders joy and inspiration to move forward. I say that these drawings are a contribution, and it is significant.”

"If you call yourself a pot, you’d better be ready for the fire"

There are difficult meetings when children say that their father is in captivity, missing or dead. Then Danylo will also shed tears. He admits that volunteering is not easy for him, sometimes he is overcome by fatigue and burnout. But: "If you call yourself a pot, you’d better be ready for the fire. A volunteer going to war knows it’s tough, but that’s just how it is."

I ask what this activity gives him personally.

“I have a civilian profession, and the war continues, and I am driven by the same feeling as 12 years ago: I cannot sit on the couch. I do not have children of my own, but if my brothers-in-arms ask (and if they do not ask, they will think): ‘We are here fighting, and what are you doing?’ Yes, I am not in a trench, but I am doing something for the country. My weapon is not a machine gun but a word,” he answers.

Danylo Kachura would very much like his work to scale into an entire program because it is needed by children and needed by the state. He modestly assesses his contribution and will be glad if even a small percentage of schoolchildren listen to his words and remember them when they face a choice.