Seen from afar, Ukraine is a land of heroes all ready to fight in defense of the homeland. They had already warned me when I arrived in the country, in the border city of Lviv, that there was a sector of the population that was not, that there were young people who would prefer not to risk their lives for the flag, or for democracy.
Hours after arriving in Kyiv, the capital, I went to St. Michael's Square, where they displayed war trophies, four semi-destroyed Russian tanks and a couple of armored vehicles. Families milled around the square, children climbed into the tanks with ice creams in their hands: an ordinary Sunday scene, if it weren't for the shadow of war.
The shadow approached me in the person of a 19-year-old boy named Stepan. He spoke to me in excellent English, but he betrayed nervousness, as if he wanted to vent to someone, better perhaps to a stranger, confessionally, with me.
"It's just, it's just... I haven't volunteered," he told me. "Many boys my age do, but I... I don't want to go to the front to die."
Stepan was a pale, skinny, educated boy. Rambo, nothing. He told me that he had a good job with an international logistics company, that he was comfortable there, that he dreamed of being sent to the headquarters in England. But he couldn't because the government had prohibited all men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country.
"From time to time I see myself in a bar with soldiers my age who have just arrived from the front and they reprimand me," he tells me. "That I am a coward, that it is outrageous, scandalous, repellent that I continue with my normal life as if nothing had happened."
Just at that moment, a uniformed soldier passed by behind us, not his age, but in his forties or more. He had heard us. He understood English. He looked at Stepan with contempt. “You are shit!” He said (you are shit). “Shit!” And he turned his back on her and left.
“See?” Stepan said to me. "So every day".
He didn't know quite what to say to him. I didn't scold him, that's for sure. Who knows how I would have reacted in his place, at his age. Not all of us are made to fight.
Neither did another guy I started talking to, curiously in that same square where the Ukrainian war victories were celebrated. I didn't write down his name, but he was about 30 years old. He was with his girlfriend. The two had managed to flee in time from the devastated city of Mariupol, in the southeast of the country. They hated the Russians, they told me. Everyone, not just Putin. But to risk dying for the cause, no, no. Not that. When I told them I lived in Barcelona they told me: “What luck! What a desire to be able to leave all this and escape to Spain!
The next day I went to visit one of the five centers that exist in Ukraine to treat soldiers who have suffered post-traumatic stress disorder at the front. It was in the town of Ivánkiv, in the north of the country. The boss was a psychologist named Irina Prevor. She told me that hundreds of soldiers had passed through her hands since the start of the war, 14 months ago.
She was about 50 years old, Mrs. Prevor, a very educated woman, sweet of character and appearance. Here is my surprise to discover after an hour of talking with her that her war had put iron in her soul.
Before, he told me, his job had been to help normal people face the difficulties of life in peace. To adapt to wartime conditions she had studied the works of Israeli and American psychologists, and then applied their therapeutic methods to the circumstances of her Ukrainian patients.
“All soldiers feel stress, of course,” he told me. "They refer me to cases of boys who basically suffer three symptoms: panic attacks, extreme aggression and serious difficulties sleeping."
He told me that before they were sent to his center they were given a test with 200 questions and, based on the result, the heads of their military units decided whether they really needed therapy or not. What was the therapy about? I asked, imagining long sessions in which the soldiers told stories of their childhood, problems with their parents, recurring nightmares and such.
Nothing to see. The therapy consisted of practical exercises to get the soldiers back to the front lines as soon as possible. He told me, for example, of a complicated exercise focused on identifying an imaginary picture on a wall and at the same time controlling the breath. Techniques of this style had very good results, he explained to me.
But, I answered him, thinking of Stepan, were there not cases of boys who were not really fit for war? Shouldn't they take the 200 questions test before recruiting, not after?
"Look," he replied, with a certain impatience. “My job is not to determine who should or should not go to war. My job is to provide therapy to reduce stress for soldiers and help them become more effective combatants.”
But not all of us were born to be heroes, I replied.
It's sweet, Mrs. Prevor, I repeat, but she was getting fed up with my questions, since I, coming from happy Barcelona and its optional little problems, didn't understand anything about the context in which she and her country found themselves.
“All Ukrainians must do what is necessary in this war. If I spent my time worrying about the exact psychological profile of each guy, if the main issue was each individual's mental well-being, then what would happen in the meantime? The Russians would eat us alive."
All soldiers suffer from stress, he repeated to me. She intended to help those who suffered from it a little more than usual to get over it and continue to function. Nothing else. I stopped thinking about Stepan and shut up.
"I'll explain," he told me. “My job is to support my country's military campaign, to help make the armed forces stronger. Yes, sure, I want to help individuals, but at this moment in history the priority is to save Ukraine."
