I met Lieutenant Alexei Likuanenko in April 2002, two months after the start of the war. He appeared at the home of Katia Serdiuk in Kramatorks, an industrial and mining city in the Donestk province, shaken by a tragedy, one of the first of this war.
A few days before my arrival, the Russian artillery had bombarded the station, full of women, children and old people who were waiting for the train that would take them to the rear. Some 59 people died and more than 100 were injured. On some of the shells that did not explode the Russian artillerymen had written “for your children”.
That attack showed the survivors that there was no turning back, that the war, which began in 2014, would now be much more bloody.
I had settled in Katia's house and Alexei was her friend. She spoke good English and Katia thought that she could help me.
Alexei got permission from his unit to accompany me. He lent me a helmet and a bulletproof vest and for several days we visited different places on the front. We talk about everything, shamelessly. War facilitates trust between strangers. Freedom expands when death stalks.
I wrote a chronicle with those tours. I titled it Alexéi, gaviero en los campos salvajes and La Vanguardia published it on May 1. So I withheld his last name and unit from him for security reasons.
The wild fields is the name that history has given to those plains of the Donbass since the Mongols and the Crimean Tatars roamed them in search of slaves and wealth. Geography prefers the more technical term Pontic steppe.
The terrain is practically flat. Fir forests rise between grain fields that are like seas. The land is black and very fertile. The Donetsk river meanders.
Alexéi was a career military man, a veteran of the 14 war who, just before the Russian invasion of February 24, 2002, had gone to the reserve. It automatically re-engages.
He lived in Síversk, a town a few kilometers east of Kramatorsk, with his wife and young son. He had thought about starting a business. He wasn't sure which one. The war hadn't given him time to think about it.
He took me north, to the river that marked the front. We cross the bridge next to the Sviatohirsk Monastery. The railings supported the weight of the padlocks that the lovers had left behind.
Alexei looked for the one he had closed with his wife before getting married, but there was no time to find it. The Russian artillery had woken up. The shells fell in a nearby forest.
The next day he taught me how to make a tourniquet. How to place it on the arms and legs and how to tighten it. She lent me a pair.
We continue up hills, looking for high points from which to view the Russian positions. We visited their entrenched comrades. They wanted to talk, to show us the photos of their families, to find out what we thought of them.
They were tired, but encouraged, sure of victory. They measured the distance of the explosions by the noise they made. They hardly ever flinched. They said it was difficult to get hit, although we all knew it was also very easy. Chance took us.
Alexei feared for his wife and son. Siversk was too exposed, too close to the Russian advance. He wanted to evacuate them, take them away from there, but his wife didn't want to leave him. I went with him to see her on her first day of leave since the start of the war. She hasn't changed her mind and is still at her house. The Russians have not moved either. They are where they were then.
I said goodbye to Alexéi with a hug and a couple of photos. He thanked me for taking the risk and asked me to come back soon.
Three weeks later he announced to me via Telegram that his unit had had to withdraw from Sviatogirsk, the town next to the monastery. There was nothing left of it standing when Alexei and his men, the last to leave, blew up the lovers' bridge. It was the end of June.
In July he asked me not to stop sending him news, that our relationship was a lifeline for him. He insisted that he return soon.
The unit was his new family. He said it was a brotherhood, a Band of Brothers. He liked the stereotypes of American culture.
He sent me a video with his son, who had come to visit him at the front. He could see the two of them on top of a tank doing maneuvers in a forest clearing. Alexei wore a padded Soviet-era helmet. He was smiling with his son in his arms on top of the tank turret. I was proud of him and his army.
A few days later he announced to me that his unit was going to "enter the sector." He was returning to the front line, to a place he could not pinpoint. “I don't know how long I'll be there, but I'll be connected. See you soon friend".
It didn't take long for him to send me some photos of his new home, a trench in a very lush forest. One photo was of his legs and boots inside the ditch that was supposed to protect him from Russian artillery. There was one with his comrades and in another he appeared with his partner Víctor Pesadilla Plastovec. He looked happy. They were smiling in their camouflage uniforms and assault rifles.
Alexei told me that he felt like Brad Pitt in Hearts of Steel, a film about the suicide mission of an American unit on the European front at the end of World War II. "This is the best job in the world." He had no doubt. Defending his country, feeling the camaraderie of his companions, the conviction that, if necessary, they would risk his life to save him, filled him with happiness.
Almost two months passed until the next message on Telegram. I hadn't been able to go see him and he had been missing for the whole of August. On September 22, he sent me some photos of his legs. They were no longer at the bottom of a dark trench, but on the white sheets of a hospital bed. They were broken. “He's been a grad,” he said, referring to the short-range rockets the Russians fire from trucks.
Alexei felt physical and mental pain. The adrenaline of the previous weeks was gone. War no longer seemed the same. “The price of victory is enormous”, he admitted to me.
At the end of October he sent me the photo of himself with Plastovec again and gave me the worst news he could give me: "Victor died on September 30 near Lyman."
Plastovec, an infantryman, one of the many victims of the lightning offensive with which the Ukrainian army recaptured much ground in Luhansk and Donetsk.
Alexei had taken me to Lyman in early June, a few days before the city, which is a major railway junction, fell into Russian hands. From the last Ukrainian control to the center there was a straight of about two kilometers that we covered at almost 200 kilometers per hour. The Russian snipers were on the other side of the railyard. Alexei still believed that those risks were acceptable.
At the end of October, having lost Plastovec, Alexei was no longer the same. The risk was no longer outside but inside him. Post traumatic stress. The wounds on his legs had healed, but he had a hard time walking and he didn't sleep well. He longed for his unit, the days before the day he was wounded. Frustration washed over him. He felt useless and empty.
I told him about a project to give a voice to people like him and he wanted to participate. Every week he would send an audio of a few minutes narrating his experiences, the most personal and daily. He insisted that I go see him and asked me to write about Victor. “He publishes the photo in which we go out together. It will be a tribute and a memory for his family and his young son. Thank you for helping Ukraine. I do not forget it".
Alexei has gained weight and has learned to walk. He still doesn't do it slowly, but this difficulty doesn't stop him from visiting his fallen comrades.
On November 20, he sent me a photo from Ivano-Frankvisk, a city in western Ukraine, far from the Donbass front. He had gone to see the grave of Oleksander Korpan. "He was an aviator who was shot dead on March 2, 2022," a week after the invasion. "I am accompanied by Jan Hudid, who has just arrived from the liberated Kherson."
Alexei has been silent for a few weeks. I haven't heard from him since we bumped into each other. Congratulations on Christmas. He does not respond to my messages, but he did not stop insisting. Maybe he'll do it tomorrow.
Uncertainty is part of the war. Not knowing what will happen tomorrow is the anguish that millions of Ukrainians have been carrying for a year.
