ENUA

Bravery is when you are afraid, but you have something more than fear, something more important. And you are ready to die for it. And to live for it.

CHEKA.

The Story of Life and Death

of a Ukrainian Combat Medic

The Tuning Fork of Freedom.

This is the story of Iryna Tsybukh, codename "Cheka", a combat medic from the Hospitallers, a volunteer medical battalion. "Cheka is a small pin that has to be torn out of a grenade to make it explode. 

Ira died at 25, on a mission in the Kharkiv region. Before the full-scale invasion, Cheka was a media trainer, a journalist and a student of one of the best public policy and governance program in Ukraine. She had the ability and will to manage state`s processes and to improve the country.

Her death shook up Ukraine. This country had already seen too many funerals but never one like Cheka's. Ira planned her own farewell ceremony and left a unique will, which you will find at the end of the story. At the tale's start, the reader already knows that Ira is dead. Let us tell you the story of her life.  

On the shield, heroine.

01

The Heroine

I have been coming here to say goodbye throughout the full-scale war. I try not to miss the opportunity to hug my mother, father, brother, grandmother, and the family of my uncle Mykhailo, who is also at war. That is why I hate the battlefield so much. None of these people should have to experience that blood-curdling, cold, cutting, terrible fear of losing a loved one. Now, I've been on both sides, and I know exactly how easy it is to go to war to die. And how unbearably, superhumanly difficult it is to let someone you love do it. To let go into what is rightly called the unknown. To let them go to a place from which they may never return.

Ira is curled up in her parents' home. The little house is in the woods, with a small lake across the road. She sometimes lies on the grass near it, growing into the ground, trying not to think about anything for a few minutes. Her room is empty because her childhood is over— Cheka`s home is now by the Kyiv Sea.

Ira chokes back the tears she cries in silence. She does not cry to her mother about her fears. So many tears and so much love. Isn`t it terrible – to hurt your family with your possible death? But is it even possible – not to risk and not to save those she can save?There is not even a fight between the Heroine and Irynka, because Irynka has no place at the front; Irynka cannot handle the armor; Irynka has to stay forever in the room of her childhood, with her family – people who are the only ones who really love her for who she is.

My mother did not give birth to a Heroine in uniform. She gave birth to Irynka. Artistic, with thick hair. Plump and a bit cunning.

Cheka must go with her comrade Borsuk to Kyiv to collect humanitarian aid and then return to the frontline. The Heroine is always the one to win.

02

Che-ka

Instead of jewelry, she wears a rope with grenade checks and a small pagan solstice sun around her neck. One of the boys came up with the nickname "Amaga" for Ira - the young Queen of the steppe.But the cheques were given to her by the soldiers she's helped to - she's already got a little box to keep at home. Ira treasures everything she receives from the military: from the "trophy" stretchers, which she carefully washes of blood, to the little drawings. A soldier with the call sign "Picasso" left one of them to her. No one asks her how old she is. When she pulls out another infrared camera, no one thinks that this quiet, graceful girl with long wheat hair is still at school. It will be Che-ka, with an accent on the last syllable. Che-Ka. A friend to everybody, who needs her at the frontline.

The main thing is that no one knows she is under 18. At every military checkpoint before the front line, she looks the guards straight in the eye and says, 'I'm an adult, I can do this!In fact, Ira is still 17. This is her first time in Pisky, Donetsk Region, she came to visit the boys from the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

In 2020, Ira was training with the Hospitallers, a medical volunteer battalion that receives no money for its work with battlefield wounded. Here, she learned that applying a tourniquet is only the beginning of combat medicine. Now, Cheka knows that she actually knows nothing. She will research everything, every small piece of information, that can save the lives of the military.

When Ira travels abroad, she takes a printed QR code with her and sticks it everywhere – it will help foreigners to get acquainted with the stories of fallen soldiers, her friends. She still visits the parents of her comrade Moryachok (The Sailor) killed by the Russians. She brings gifts and, most importantly, she talks about him. When Ira talks about somebody fallen, they live on.

This is how Cheka receives her first military training – the sad habit of losing people. And the wisdom to remember them.

03

2022. Liutuy

When you clean your car with a rag, when you wipe off blood and other human fluids. When the flesh stinks, when you smell blood mixed with mud and shitty weather. There is freedom in that rag, and in that blood, and even in that mud.

Liutuy is 26. His Ukrainian call sign has two meanings: the name of the month of the full-scale invasion, which translates as "February", and the human character trait "fiery, angry". Liutuy is a surgeon. He holds pulsating life – and sometimes pulsating death - in his hands. The front line is mathematically simple. There are life-compatible injuries and incompatible ones. If they are compatible, there is a very good chance of saving a person's life.In civilian life, he works in a military hospital in Lviv. In war, he goes wherever he is needed.

Liutuy had his own crew. But he accepted Iryna's offer to join when her Fifth Crew has left without a surgeon. Before that, he and Cheka met once during the Hospitaliers training course. At the time, Yana Zinkevych, the commander of the medical battalion, vetoed Iryna's decision. She said that the Cheka team was already powerful and that a qualified surgeon should be given his own team. And so it was. For three months, Liutuy worked at the front with his 38th crew.May, June, and July 2022 were spent in the east of Ukraine. Liutuy was with his guys in the mud, blood, and trenches, wherever his duty took him. The surgeon was about to leave for his next rotation in August – Area B.

But one evening in August, the phone rang unexpectedly: Cheka was inviting Liutuy to join her crew again. Iryna warned him: "Don't go to that rotation this time. It's living hell there".

Liutuy generally describes his level of adventurousness and courage as follows: "When God gave people brains, I wasn't even in the queue." But this time, something made him agree to go with Iryna's crew.

Just a few days later, Liutuy found out that all the guys from Section B had died on the battlefield. Iryna's warning saved his life.

04

The Crossroads

At the end of the Dnipro region, we have the final check of the ammunition we traditionally put on. We have armor, a helmet, active headphones, ballistic goggles, medical bags, and medical backpacks.

Our guns and rifles' magazines are full. The moment we start our rotation, we put on our ammunition. It is a rule and a symbol – our fight has just begun.

There is a dead-end bend between Mariinka and occupied Donetsk – a perfectly shot crossroad punctuated by the burnt mechanical guts of the cars. The place of death. Liutuy`s first rotation with the Fifth Crew.

Medics are fiercely wanted here: someone needs to harvest the seriously wounded. The flashes of the guided aerial missiles and the artillery squeeze the throat of the road ring. The constant barrage of fire makes it impossible to approach the military. Everyone is telling the medics to wait for the end of the shelling; otherwise, they could die with the soldiers. But time is never on the side of the wounded: every minute they don't get help, their life drains out of them. Those who are "light" will become "medium"; those who are "medium" will become "heavy." And those who are "heavy" will never see the light of dawn again. 

Imagine a relatively poor village of four streets somewhere in the middle of nowhere, on the outskirts of the Donetsk region. The military settled down all the empty and abandoned houses here.

They come and go, stay and leave the village for a long time. This village is a kind of base between hell and heaven, a place where time stands still, the place where the legendary phrase of our crew appeared.

We're fu***d, but we're in the countryside. Which directly describes our reality. It's as if we're living in a small village house and behaving like people who have come to weed the beds and harvest the autumn crops.

We use the toilet in the yard, fetch water from the nearest well, and eat red currant, Donetsk apricots, and apples. We live in very, very questionable conditions. We cook on fire. That one thing is for sure — we cook deliciously.

On the first Liutuy`s rotation with the Fifth Crew, they stop at a house where nobody had lived for a long time. In fact, the house already had an owner. And he is not in the mood for guests. 

Aggressive and vicious, fighting rooster is locked in a shed. The rooster's level of aggression made it clear to the medics that the bird was ready to fight for its private property, and it is an open question who would loose in this unequal battle. An elderly neighbor, who had been throwing food over the fence to the evil bird, gave the guys a clear task: kill it, because there was no strength in the village left to fight the bird. After checking her medical vials, Ira overhears the conversation and looks at Liutuy carefully – he is still on probation. 

"You said you could do anything, right?" the girl raises an eyebrow. "Go ahead. Kill it". 

Liutuy is a village boy. From the age of five, he helped his grandfather to roast a pig that he had petted half an hour earlier. So the roaster was neutralized, gutted, burnt and brought to the crew leader with all due triumph. 

Ira jumps in surprise. 

"What's that?" the girl asks with big round eyes.

"The roaster. You said it yourself: slaughter it," Liutuy proudly carries the huge bird.

"Are you out of your mind?!" the girl laughs in amazement and takes a picture of the bird for her Instagram.  

And so the rooster became two things at once: the supper and a story that stayed with the crew for the rest of its existence. 

Cheka has never had any particular preferences when it comes to eating at the rotation. Just sometimes she could leave a gentle sticker-reminder on a Sprite soda that says "don't touch, or I'll rip your hands off".

Ira always takes books with her on a rotation: from Viktor Frankl to Francis Fukuyama. She reads between evacuations, meetings, and training sessions.

Liutuy, who took several medical treatises and Latin to pass the time in the trenches, once lent her one of his books – 450 pages long. The surgeon doesn't expect to get it back for a while – the next morning Cheka, with the eternal feeling that she isn't medical enough, finishes the last page.

Tetyana Pylypets, director of the Roman Ivanychuk Regional Youth Library in Lviv, has known Ira since she was a little girl. Years have passed between the serious nine-year-old who used to come to the library to read books about the history of Ukraine and the tired combat medic, hospitaller.

It soon became impossible to force her to read anything she was not interested in.  But when little Iryna had to prepare for a project or, as an adult, convince a benefactor to donate money to an initiative, she could not be distracted anywhere or in any way. Ira doesn't really believe in inspiration and musing – she believes in an iron arse.

The Fifth Crew's everyday life was very well established: wherever the medics went, the house of any degree of abandonment had to be cleaned to perfection. Sometimes, they had to literally fight for the right to live in an abandoned house: for example, with eight stray dogs who were determined to fight with the medic on duty for the opportunity to sleep in the old kitchen."

What a perfectionist Galician," mutters Liutuy and the other guys as they obediently scrub the floor with Cheka. Galicia in Ukraine is a traditional region that pays great attention to cleanliness and domestic comfort. 

When there are no evacuations or other tasks, the crew has to keep the place spotlessly clean. For Ira, cleanliness is the basis of everything on the rotation. Guys are not even against it, but some old houses are literally hanging on by these two pillars: a herd of mice and their rubbish. "Clean up here, clean up there. Maybe a rocket will come here tomorrow," the boys sigh, dutifully sweeping away the mouse droppings. The Fifth Crew mercilessly demolishes this support structure every time. Ira is afraid of mice. Or at least she was before the war.

I don't clean so that I can come home to a clean house and feel comfortable. I clean so that if I die here, my parents can come to a clean place where everything is tidy. At least they will have one less problem.

Ira prepares all the medicines with military precision. Lyutuy, a professional doctor, is surprised by her knowledge. He knows for a fact that doctors often use outdated medication because universities are still stuffing students with unnecessary soviet pharmaceutics. Cheka, who has no medical education apart from her training in Hospitallers, manages to understand medicines perfectly. Ira reads evidence-based medical portals; she knows what a prolonged effect of a drug is; she understands what indications and contraindications are and how a drug can interact with another medicine. 

If she misses something, Cheka writes it down in one of her millions of notebooks. She doesn't sleep through the night, but in the morning, she knows exactly what she missed. The crew does not know that she often receives insults and mocking accusations on Instagram, and she does not dare say anything about the medical field without medical education. Cheka studies even more and sleeps even less. 

Ira is strong and calm during her rotation. Only occasionally she records a video for one of her friends, in which she allows herself to complain briefly—until the duty call them by military radio: We have a wounded soldier.

05

The Work

The first one is wounded with several surface fragments. He sits beside the driver because he has the "lightest" injury. The second one, with more shrapnel, is seated behind him, but he is a medic and can take care of himself well. And the third wounded man is lying down. You will hear his voice most often.

Soldiers are evacuated from the battlefield by a case carrier (case evac), a specially equipped vehicle that takes the wounded from the hottest areas of the frontline to a stabilization point and from there to hospitals or clinics. The crew usually includes medics and a driver. Their task is to take the wounded to the stabilization point and do everything possible to ensure the person survives.This time, there are three wounded. Ira is ready to help.

"Dear, why do you need those boots? They're ugly, covered in blood," the girl says gently to the wounded man while quickly shouting instructions to the driver."I'm driving very gently," Borsuk calls out from the front seat, handing a thermos of tea to a lightly wounded man beside him.

We had a guy with a medium concussion. And this oxygen that we could give him, thanks to the oxygen concentrator, really saved the situation and improved his medical indicators. I've worked with a few such guys in this caseevac, the most difficult wounded: with multiple fragments, injuries, and poor indicators.

The wounded are often transferred to us with their belongings: body armour, backpacks, weapons. Leaving their weapons on the battlefield is a serious problem for the soldiers. Sometimes they ask about their guns even when they are semi-conscious, with amputations and blood on their hands.

Now, Cheka has a place to put all this stuff because she and Borsuk have modified their evacuation car, despite all the criticism, skepticism, and often her own doubts.

A few months ago, the "kung" (unified sealed car body) became Ira's fix idea. The crew is super skeptical and gives Cheka 500 reasons it won't work. But Ira stubbornly sees a picture in her mind: a seriously wounded man lying warm, without the risk of hypothermia, as often happens in a frosty "coffin truck" on the way to the stabilization point, and a "light one" has a place to sit with a thermos of tea, because now he is safe, is taken care of.

Cheka ignored her comrades' skepticism, no matter how insecure she felt then. She switched on her usual "I can get anything from anywhere" mode. Sometimes, Liutuy jokingly regrets that Ira does not need nuclear weapons.

One day, he told Cheka that the hospital lacked a good dermatome (a skin grafting tool) to heal burn victims. A few days later, Cheka called him with the money she had already raised somewhere and a clear request for the model he needed.

In the same way, she finds the guys who are ready to fit a wide kung into an old Nissan. Ira wants a wide and long stretcher to fit in the car, space for all the medicines she needs, a stove, and a high-quality oxygen concentrator, thanks to which she has stabilized many wounded with moderate contusions, multiple fragments, and poor health indicators.

Now,  "suchka" ("the bitch") (as the Nissan has been nicknamed) is able not only to pick up the wounded like a taxi but also to provide quality assistance at the first stage of evacuation.

"Now we're going to give you a nice squeeze of your wound. I know it hurts. Please forgive me. But pain is an emotion. You have to understand that this will stop your bleeding," Ira reassures the wounded man, boldly tightening the turnstile."

Give me the phone, please. I need to call. To my wife," the wounded man wheezes. The very first thing a wounded soldier asks his wife is: "How is our baby?"

Ira decides to call her mother, too. She turns around to pick up something and breathes a sigh of relief: everything worked out.

Two shelves are under the wounded man's head. They contain medical tools, power tools, a fire extinguisher, jacks, and Iryna's medical backpack.

There are drawers with clips, medicines, and pills. There used to be special antiemetic fentanyl lollipops, but a drug-addicted mouse ate them. This is another reason why Ira hates mice.

Ira knows in detail how many things are in each pocket sewn into the walls of the car and what purpose they serve. She counts every tourniquet, every occlusion, and every syringe. Before Ira, Liutuy thought he was the perfect process administrator. Now, his critical assessment of his managerial skills has dropped to the level of "old uncle from the meadow."

All the wounded were taken out alive in this car. For Ira, this is a symbol: if you work hard, even in very difficult tactical conditions, with shelling, with poor indicators of the wounded, you can pull a person out.

Liutuy knows that not everyone can be pulled out, but only those who want to survive.Recently, one of the women in the city, occupied by the Russians, wished him dead.  Liutuy`s explanation that her grandson with acute appendicitis needed to be evacuated immediately fell on deaf ears because they were "Banderites"  and would kill him. (editorial note –  Banderites, members of the OUN-B, a faction of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, have been intensively vilified by Russian propaganda for years)Three hours later, the same woman went to fetch water –  came under the Russian shelling and lost her leg. This is the fastest karma Lyutyi has ever seen in his life.One day, after the mission, he and Ira went for ice cream. Suddenly, they saw a Red Soviet star on an old World War II stele – Liutuy had chopped it down with an axe. Ira was laughing and wished she had taken a picture. Ira laughed so beautifully: kindly, lightly, as if she had scattered into myriads of light rays. Liutuy  regrets that he never dreams about her. And she doesn't laugh anymore.

After one of the missions, the Fifth Crew went to help wounded prisoners. 

The so-called Luhansk Public Republic people, raised by Russians in the banana republic, show a level of IQ similar to that of these fruits. One boastes that he attended a concert by Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, a famous Ukrainian singer. Cheka huffs - obviously, it didn't help him much. Another one is lamenting the fact that he opened a shawarma outlet in Luhansk at the wrong time: 

– We'll have to close, won't we?

Ira looks at him almost pitifully: "Yeah, man. Seems like you'll have to." 

But, regardless of grief, hatred, contempt, and disgust, no one lays a finger on the captives. Cheka has rules. Cheka's rules are the crew's rules. 

06

The German

The German meets Ira in May at the distribution of crews after the Hospitallers' training. Cheka walked into the classroom as if she is the boss: she lookes around the room and take her seat behind Commander Yana Zinkevych. She talks to the instructors and begins to choose her "kittens" for the new crew. It is the turn of the German. Ira takes him out of the classroom. She introduces herself and says – in a week, they will work in the Avdiivka area for the 503rd Marine Battalion.

"It will be very dangerous. You'll love it," Cheka says. The German had yet to learn how right she was.

Baptism
‍
‍The German and Cheka stayed together as part of the Fifth Crew for over six months.

He is responsible for the entire medical part of the work and making decisions about evacuating the wounded. The German needs to know precisely how his vehicle looks and works. Ira's philosophy is that everyone should be as interchangeable as possible.

The German remembers their first evacuation together very well.

Avdiivka Coke Plant. Ukrainians are storming the occupiers. Almost the entire company is mechanized; they are marching in a column, with medics closing it down.

Ira drives in front of the case carrier. She points out the evacuation points to her crew, asks them to stay put, and wait for further instructions.

Half an hour later, she radioes that they had a wounded man.

In fact, there are five of them, and all of them are confused. Their condition ranges from moderate to severe. One has a complex traumatic amputation below the knee. Another has an abdominal wound from the back, with intestines and internal organs visible. Another group of Hospitallers supported the fifth crew. In total, they managed to evacuate 13 people.

For everyone except Cheka, that is the first time they've worked on the road. So, in addition to fatigue, everyone is struggling with shock.

The German is lying on the grass. Ira walks over to him and lies down next to him. "Congratulations on your baptism of fire," the crew leader says tiredly. 

The German agrees with her with all his heart – it was like a second baptism. It was as if he had been initiated into something new and higher than he had been before. And now he is a new person – not quite what he was before.

In war, special forests grow, or maybe grow is the wrong word for these places. In war, forests stand, chopped trunks, without crowns and leaves, stretching into the sky, no longer covered by thick branches, because they were cut off by enemy shells.

Serebriansky Forest is one of the most striking places of the war in Ukraine. If you take photos of this front line in black and white, they could easily be mistaken for photos of the Verddon forest during the First World War.

For our evacuation team, this is one of the most difficult areas to work in. It took more than an hour to evacuate from the trench to the medical unit. The forest's sand and clay road, completely broken by tracked vehicles, made it very difficult to provide assistance, especially when we were taking a seriously wounded soldier. This time it was Myroslav. His body was literally riddled with multiple fragments from the shell explosion, shrapnel in his arms and legs, chest, lower abdomen, and above his eye. When we took him, he was already in a confused state, trying to sit up and begging us to loosen the tourniquet because it was causing him significant discomfort.

We did everything we could to stabilize his condition, and at some point I had an overwhelming belief that we could save him and that Myroslav would definitely live. This faith was much more than a responsibility to Myroslav and his commander. It was rooted in Myroslav's firm decision to live because his pregnant wife was waiting for him at home.

The camera on my body armor recorded this moment, the moment when the wounded man seemed to decide that he would definitely live on. At this moment Myroslav said, My wife is in labor. We will have a son. I then promised Myroslav that he would definitely pick up his wife from the hospital and asked him what they would name the child. Either Vohnedar or Orest, he replied. These would be the last words Myroslav would say while conscious. From that moment on, several grueling days of fighting for his life in hospitals began.

Myroslav will be buried in the Sumy region on the eve of his first child's birth. The baby will be named Vohnedar, and he will be the only reason for Yulia, Myroslav's beloved wife, to continue living.

The Fifth Crew never just rested after the evacuations. There was always a working meeting afterwards. No one in the Fifth Crew resolves conflicts during the work – this is another of Ira's rules. Only during those meetings could guys from the crew have some wind of democracy.

During these meetings,, Cheka analyzes their every move, deed, and action of the medics. The guys learned in practice that after this analysis, they want to be better and not repeat the same mistakes.

If it's not a meeting, then it's training. If it's not training, it's re-equipping evacuation cars or discussing/debating how to do the work better. The Fifth crew never sits idle.

In one of the huts in the yard where the crew stayed, there was a place that looked like someone was buried there. The German called it "The House with the Grandmother" because the guys found a photo of someone's grandmother in a coffin. One day, he and the Surgeon from the crew had too much free time. They rummaged through the house and found a Christmas tree in June. They put it at the grandmother's possible burial place and decorated it with household items and used medical supplies. And when Ira returned, they acted as if everything was fine. Until she noticed and "realized how foolish  we were."

"My idiots," Ira laughs. Sometimes, this rare laugh somehow eases the Fifth Crew's shared PTSD.

Ira tells the German that she is a theist. She believes in Something above, but this Something does not have a clear name or behavior. This Something is not tied to any religion. It is not Christ, not Allah, not Buddha. Ira knows that a higher being exists and influences us. However, Ira does not know His/Her name. And she does not name it. But Cheka wants to name all the dead. If Ira has a religion that she follows, it is to remember all the fallen soldiers by name. To write them all down.She bows her head and puts her hand to her heart wherever the Ukrainian anthem is played.  

07

Ira for Ira

"You always smelled like a clean house. The kind of house where you are always welcome and everyone is happy that you have arrived. You also smelled like a nice hotel with white sheets – like I was on holiday by the Italian sea," writes one Ira to another in a chat that will never be answered.

Lviv was too small for the Cheka. When she was 19, she switched to a part-time course at her university and moved to Kyiv. At the time she had not much money and no job. Ira lived with her friends for the first few months and desperately searched for work. She found a job at a small magazine called "Krayina" ("The country"). The pay was not high, but it gave her the opportunity to go to the front from time to time and report from there.

At this stage in her life, Hromadske Radio, one of Ukraine's respected independent media, invited Ira to work there as a guest editor. She quickly outgrew her position and joined Suspilne – the largest Ukrainian national broadcasting team.

Ira has a brother, Yura. He is 20 years old. Yura studies architecture and is already a licensed tour guide. He knows historic Lviv by heart, from the opera house to the Lychakiv cemetery. Before the full-scale invasion, Yura had only managed to go abroad on an architecture school exchange. He wanted to do much more for his education, but is currently unable to do so – because of the Russian aggression, men over 18 are not allowed to leave Ukraine during martial law unless they have an exemption from the military commissariats. 

The future architect may not look much like Cheka on the outside, but on the inside they are very much alike. Ira gives him advice, recommends books, introduces him to cool people and takes care of her brother in every way. He grows up with her and supports her initiatives: raising money for the military and combat medics. 

Once they were sitting in an airport in a European city. The siblings agreed - they would always meet like this: to see each other between travels, work and projects. They will always respect their tradition of being home for Christmas and painting pysanky (special Ukrainian eggs for Easter) with their mother. 

Last April, Ira and Mrs Oksana, Cheka's mother, went to Verkhovyna to give a special Easter egg painting masterclass for the widows of fallen soldiers.

Ira embeds the national idea here, as she does everywhere, because it is a symbol of tradition, symbol of the country she is defending. Cheka drove her mother in a car that was a small home for a combat medic – with a bulletproof vest, a first-aid kit, a pile of wool from Cheka's dog (her friends said they could make another one from that wool) and a special stove to cook food in the field. Ira made Oksana coffee in the drip, looking out at the Ukrainian Carpathians. The girl also promised her mother that they would definitely go again - just the two of them. Cheka contacts her family at rotations as often as she can. She tells them she is always well, always safe and well rested. And it is almost always a lie. Ira can't can`t show them how heavy is her burden – she brings flowers and gifts to family and friends, and cherishes every memory in the family pavilion. Cheka knows that "always" always comes. But not for everyone.

08

Suspilne

"Buy a yellow jeep. Make sure it's yellow. When everything in life is not going well, at least the car should make you happy," Irina's words are etched in Maria Frey's memory as an echo of her past life. It was much more optimistic, positive and joyful – now the joy has shriveled up, dried up and crawled away somewhere far away; inappropriate and untimely, like everything else that does not relate to the war.

Maria met Cheka at the end of 2017. At that time, Frey was responsible for Suspilne's regional television content. Ira listened to radio programmes and analysed whether they met journalism standards. And that was not easy.

Checka joined Suspilne when it was undergoing a transformation. The broadcaster was abandoning toxic content and ceasing to be a free press service for politicians. Young specialists wanted to work according to BBC standards and had to find a common language with "honoured workers of the Soviet Union, announcers with three special soviet journalist prizes of Princess Olga". The content of local teams did not meet the requirements of Kyiv office. The tension between the centre and the regions was growing, and it was this tension that Ira was sent to work with.

Sometimes, Frey, originally from Mariupol, is surprised by Iryna's incredible love for the East of Ukraine – her native region.

One Christmas evening, Maria and her daughter come to Lviv at the invitation of Iryna's family. Maria, from Mariupol, feels that the people of Lviv expect her to sing a carol—it is as much a natural part of Christmas for them as it is for her. After the Soviet occupation and the repression of religions, Christian traditions were not rooted in the east of the country. Western Ukraine has been geographically fortunate to retain more. 

Ira smooths the situation, and everyone laughs. Cheka knows how to make the atmosphere pleasant and leave light behind her—she cares for the garden where her values grow.

Ira "finds" Frey a husband. After a difficult breakup, she simply registers Maria on a dating app and gives her a "blessing": "Here you have more chances with some adequate people." And Maria does find love there—unexpectedly, even for herself.

Ira goes ice skating with Frey`s children, which means she has a first aid kit. A combat medic bandages a small scratch on her daughter's finger before Frey can even react.

Maria could not find Ira a proper office on the Suspilne floors. "Now your desk is in Donbas," Maria says, and Cheka goes to organize UA:Donbas branches in the east. "Your desk is in Dnipro," Ira goes to reform UA:Dnipro.

Cheka is "I can do everything" troubleshooter: quickly changes work dynamics in the regions, fires and recruits new teams. There is no place for paid journalism: only facts, no value judgments – only balance of opinions.

Ira Melnyk goes on one of these professional trips with Cheka. For three months, they have been reforming Suspilne Donbas.

Cheka doesn`t compromise. She will not soften her tone if a person's position contradicts her values. Ira challenges her opponent with arguments and facts. 

2015-2016. The girls work in Sievierodonetsk. They need to get to their destination quickly and call a taxi. Cheka speaks Ukrainian everywhere. Suddenly the driver makes a mocking noise: "Girls, what village are you from? In Russian propaganda, which was very widespread in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian was portrayed as a rural, "low-culture language". The taxi driver gets five minutes of very clear explanations from the Cheka about her "village", a tour of Ukrainian history and a short guide on how not to talk to customers. The driver keeps his valuable comments to himself for the rest of the journey.

Cheka works at Suspilne Radio, the Donbas is closely woven into her programs. Ira often invites Tetiana Pylypets, who organizes literary festivals in the Donetsk region, to appear inher programs; she also gives a voice to all the Ukrainian towns and villages: today, Shkliar is giving a reading in Sievierodonetsk and in Kramatorsk or Bakhmut, a performance to mark the anniversary of the Holodomor (the artificial famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians, ordered by Stalin).

Ira is convinced that in the information space of a conventional Kyiv or Lviv, Donbass should be heard constantly – the war is not just somewhere in Popasna; it should be in the minds of people living all over Ukraine.

One day, after the invasion had begun in earnest, Frey came to Lviv to launch one of the Suspilne programs. At seven in the morning, Ira asked her to pick up a parcel for the military. Instead of a parcel, it turned out to be the Cheka itself. As always, it was a surprise. "

The worst thing we could have expected happened. We must prepare for many years of struggle," she simply says, embracing Frey in this somehow light and warm morning.  

"Everyone should do what they do best," says Cheka. "Maria is good at managing people, and Ira is good at saving soldiers' lives. Projects and quality school lessons about defending the homeland will happen. For now, Cheka will stay on the front line as long as she can save someone's life.

"One patriot from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions is worth dozens or even hundreds of those with an easier geographical location. Suppose you study on Lomonosova Street and live on Hromova Street. In that case, it is a little more difficult to become a patriot of your country than if you live on Ukrainian Insurgent Army Street and study on Stepan Bandera Street," says Ira, returning to the east.

For Ira, the employees of UA Donbas must understand that they are essential and that their voices should be heard. She is here to tune that voice and make it visible. 

Together with regional teams, Ira creates several important "eastern" programs. In Dnipro, "We've Switched" is about Ukrainians who have consciously started to speak Ukrainian, changing language from russian. The programmes in the Returning Donbas series are important to her personally: Popasna, Lysychansk, Bakhmut, Kramatorsk. The Cheka really wants to make two main series from the cycle: "Return of Donetsk" and "Return of Luhansk". But great things take time to happen. Checka doesn`t have this time.

09

The Sower

And for me, the people in Donetsk and Luhansk, who were lost mainly due to Russia's propaganda, are about the efforts to become what they are now.

This is about the effort to feel Ukraine and our nationality. To do this, it is not enough simply to put on an embroidered shirt or to be born in such circumstances as I was in Galicia. You need to show willpower to go against the grain.

"What do we need this Europe for? We lived well," the teenager blurts out aggressively in Russian, lazily stretching his words for the greater effect of contempt.

Sofia looks curiously at the blonde girl he said this to. 

On her day off, at her own expense, this strange person from Lviv comes to visit them in the Donetsk region. With the calmness of an Egyptian sphinx, she tells the teenagers about European integration, Russian propaganda and Ukrainian history. The young maximalists, indoctrinated by their parents in the kitchens and by Russian content on the Internet, are openly hostile to her.

Despite the criticism, Ira continues to visit schools in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The class, sometimes against their own resistance, listens about the ATO (Anti-Terrorist Operation Zone, defending the Ukrainian territory of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions under the control of Russian military forces and pro-Russian separatists), the historical past of Donbas, stories about the Cossacks palanquins and the burning of the Cossack Sich (The Zaporozhian Sich was a semi-autonomous polity and proto-state of Cossacks, free Ukrainian warriors, destroyed by the Russian Empress Catherine the Great)

When I talk about the Donetsk region as a Cossack region, I have the impression that I am part of the soul of the land, that I lived here before. Maybe a life before I was a Cossack or a Cossack girl, and it comes back to me at this age.

I used to return from the marches to live with my wives or my husbands on horseback here in the Donetsk region for the winter.

Sofia likes the strength of Cheka's spirit: "You must have a great love for what you do to go into a new classroom every time and explain everything to everyone from scratch, seeing all those skeptical faces. 

Ira has indeed managed to develop a certain Zen. For three years, she and her friend have been traveling around Donetsk and Luhansk regions, giving talks about the Maidan, the revolution of dignity, and media literacy.

She started in the frontline town of Kostiantynivka, which had been abandoned by so-called DPR fighters only a few months earlier. Cheka wanted to understand how Donbas "breathes," and she had the opportunity to do so entirely. 

Stories like "one ruble for 8 hryvnias", "the referendum was legal," and "you overthrew the government," lovingly nurtured by Russian propaganda, are repeated both by children in lectures and by teachers in Shevchenko's rooms. Ira doesn't give up, and each time she explains the principle of filling the state budget talks about the benefits of European integration, possible scholarships, the possibility of studying abroad, and argues with the local teachers, who come up with a hundred arguments why this is impossible and why the students will never be able to go anywhere.

I was 17 years old. And it was the brightest, most naive time when I thought that we would come with friends to schools in the Donetsk region and everything would be easy.We will just show that America did not feed us drugs, did not pay us money on the Maidan. And that's it, we'll be loved, we'll get along with everyone here and so on. That was not the case.

During the three years of lectures, Cheka managed to get to know dozens of children and adults. Gradually, they moved from completely rejecting their own Ukrainian identity to doubts and faith in the national idea. They catch up with Ira during breaks and write to her on social media—the young people begin their own research of who they are. Cheka becomes the first beacon of light that they follow, shyly but with curiosity. 

My work is to sow doubt. Once I met a girl in one of the schools in Kostiantynivka. She said, she would have drowned in the russian propaganda without us. And she would never have made it out if she hadn't heard all our personal stories about taking part in the Revolution of Dignity, about having values and ideas.

That there are people who can do something simply because they have dignity, not because of money or political bias

In Donbas there is a sunrise and sunset like no other: hot and pink, spreading across the sky, far and wide, all over the horizon. Ira loves this land so much that she jokingly tells everyone that she is a "chick from Makiivka". 

Sofia, five years younger than Cheka, meets the Lviv girl at one of these lectures in Makiivka. She finds Ira on Instagram and never stops talking to her afterwards. Sofia needed a beacon to help her grow and move on, to be more than a child overshadowed by Russia. 

Ira sees how isolated these teenagers are: the Russian aggression, even after it has crept away for a while, has managed to gnaw away at their links with the world and cut off their bridges.

The year 2014, when Russia first invaded the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, has cut off the old social lifts. For children from remote villages of Donbas, it was science fiction to go to Kyiv.

My impulse at the time was very childish.

It was very maximalist. I had no idea what was going on in those regions. And was not ready for it. And this is one of the traumas that I had to work through later with a therapist. When the Ukrainian teacher in the Ukrainian literature class tells me in Russian that the Maidan is a pimple on the arse: "Why are you doing this? Why are you talking about this revolution? It was the Maidan that started the war!”

The window of opportunity in the east used to be Luhansk or Donetsk. There kids from the distant villages could go to university and find a job. After the war started, Mariupol was the only place left. But it was expensive, time-consuming and questionable: you had to go to the city via Zaporizhzhya.  Moreover, Mariupol could not be a source of opportunities in terms of infrastructure. 

And these children, who respond so quickly to the spirit of freedom and opportunities, remain here, abandoned and confused. Ira desperately wants to do something for them.

 And then Cheka meets Ilya Vdovychenko.

Pro bono

‍"I'm up for anything that isn't a hunger strike", – says Cheka. She`s just been offered the chance to be one of the media literacy trainers in a project run by the Ministry of Information Policy. More than 500 schools and almost two thousand people have already joined the project. The aim is to change the institution of school media by removing its Soviet vestiges.

The lack of pay does not deter Ira. Everyone here works pro bono – for the public good. This is how the Youth MediaLab project was born – a large media community of Ukrainian students from distant villages who create local newsrooms, their own texts, videos and podcasts. 

Ira speaks only Ukrainian in her lectures, and the audience automatically catches up. Some of them speak with an accent, a surzhyk (a mix of Ukrainian and Russian words) – for some reason everyone around Cheka wants to speak the state language without being forced to. 

Ira asks kids about the history of their region, how it survived the repressions and what it was like before the Soviet Union. The children begin to explore and are often surprised at how much they don't know about their town.

All these stocked rivers, this landscape, these endless birds in the plantations — these are very objective reasons why the Cossacks settled here. After pro-European industrialisation began here, a wave of people fled these lands, escaping dekulakisation.

And these people have a very strong ethnic code, strong traditions. And that's why everything here has been so actively destroyed. If we look at the statistics that tell us how people identified themselves, the number of Russians here was the smallest.

There were Ukrainians here, Greeks here, and a lot of people who just wanted to build their lives and their future. But people who want freedom, responsibility and the ability to build themselves are always a threat to Russia.

Project manager Ilya Vdovychenko is often surprised by Iryna's perseverance. He has always been convinced that his political views are far from radical. But he is often incredibly annoyed by the "things were better in the USSR" that creeps from school to school.  Ira, despite her very clear pro-Ukrainian views, can articulate them calmly and lovingly to people who cringe at the phrase "national idea".  

Cheka works with teachers as much as with children: from the Soviet-style lecture of "quickly do what I said", she diplomatically steers the editorial work in a more civilised direction. Teachers in Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts, accustomed to criticism from others as well as criticism of themselves, feel respect and gratitude for their work. Perhaps for the first time in their lives.

10

Bus stop Donbas

23 February 2022. Kramatorsk. Ira is trying on high-heeled shoes – a rare occurrence for her, as it is almost impossible in her rhythm of life to go out in heels. A beautiful, tight dress awaits its finest hour on the hanger. Cheka is about to show her film at Zhovtnevy, one of the biggest ukrainian show hall. She hopes it will be the first highlight of her career. Ira is writing a long speech and is very excited: the Deputy Minister of Education and other politicians involved in the topic of childhood and schools have been invited to the screening in Kyiv.

"Our store receives groceries on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. The situation is the same as with the school bus. But in the spring, when the road is washed away, we don't get fresh food for a very long time." 

"I want the internet to be connected. And I want a computer. I also want a plasma TV so that my mum can watch movies."

"The church bell in our village is made of melted shells. So that we always remember how we were liberated from the occupation."

The children's lines from the film Distance, which Ira created and produced with the Youth Media Lab team, play over and over in her head.

Initially, the film was called Donbas Stop: in most of the villages where the children come from, the bus stop was the only important place apart from the local grocery store.  

The idea of making a film came to Iryna after years of travelling, lecturing and coaching in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Like all her ideas, it came to life gradually, with the support of donors, a personal soundtrack and, finally, a thick line of five screenings across Ukraine. From Kramatorsk to Kyiv, Cheka carries the message that children in small, abandoned villages need prospects and support, that the state has a duty to them. And the state is us. 

Zelene Pole, which means Greenfield, is a fitting name for a village in the Donetsk region. It is a small, cozy village far from industrial centers, mines, or factories. I would like to provide a more detailed description of this place, but after several days of fighting, there is no longer any beautiful rural aesthetics to depict. Russia has almost completely destroyed the village, showing no regard for civilians. Russian artillery relentlessly bombarded the houses and stables of this small village, and we ourselves barely survived. But this memory is not about our crew, the wounded from the marines, or Zeleny Pole.

It is a story about sound. It is about the sound of cows wounded by shrapnel. The cows were dying for quite some time. We lacked the tactical capability to venture out and help them. Even if we could, what would be the next step? How could we evacuate them? How many people would risk their lives to save the cows? War is cynical, but the death of animals that never had a choice, their suffering before death, is particularly memorable because it is audible. This is what a grueling, long death sounds like. I didn't see them lying dead. Instead, we listened for a few minutes between the shelling, hearing the cows' relentless cries.

They had been grazing somewhere in a pasture 200 meters away from the barn, where we sought shelter from Russian drones. Animal despair sounds helpless, and this is how injustice always sounds to me. It echoes the sound of a grueling, drawn-out death. The story of each animal killed in agony and war warrants a separate trial against the Russians, who committed this atrocity against humanity and compassion.

"The Sorting Hat from Harry Potter would definitely send Ira to Gryffindor. The Phoenix would choose her to fly," says Maria Kozyrna, communications and PR manager for the film "Distance".

On 23 February, the streets of Kramatorsk are abuzz with a pro-Ukrainian rally in the square. Maria and Ira had just presented a film at the local cinema. The children felt like stars, and the place was packed with journalists. Their triumph is hard to describe. 

The girls ran to the sound of Ukrainian music. The square shouted: "Donbas is Ukraine, Putin is a ***hole".  

Ira and Maria buy funny face masks and have a hen party. On the 25th they have a screening in Zhovtnevyi. Everything is going so well, as if there could be no trouble. 

But there will be – in the morning, full-scale invasion broke out. There were explosions. The first tactical medical training in the corridor of the Kramatorsk hotel. Foreign journalists, pompously dressed in armour and reporting on the fighting from a safe distance, with no regard for journalistic standards, irritate Ira. An attempt to cram in breakfast at Lviv Croissants; then – to get into evacuation train, which the girls miraculously catch.  Cheka go straight to the Hospitallers. Maria joins her later.  

At the beginning of the war, while the world was waiting to see how much territory Russia would capture before starting to supply weapons, we were losing our homes, our territories, and our loved ones. We were losing our state. Those were days of fighting to the death.

At that time, I wanted to believe that this fatal scenario could have a happy ending, that we would withstand the defense of Kyiv so that our deaths would not be in vain. My evacuation crew operated near Irpin, not far from Bucha.

You might have seen some scary photos of people's bodies in the street from there. We also worked in Baryshivka, which is close to Ukraine's largest airport, Boryspil. Each trip, each evacuation, tore at my soul due to its proximity to the city outskirts.

The inevitability of Russian occupation loomed over me. Only later did I realize that this is a typical state for medics in our war. We only witness the wounded and the dead. Amidst this, it's difficult to perceive any chance of success in the confrontation. Perhaps the scariest memory from this war will be that day captured in the photograph. It was then that I had to come to terms with the fact that Ukraine was facing its end. Just a few days prior, I was presenting films in high heels, living a comfortable life without pretense, and very frequently traveling across Europe. 

Yet now, in the heart of Kyiv, near St. Michael's Cathedral, within the premises of a law enforcement agency, we were handed Kalashnikovs to defend ourselves in street battles and evacuations near the capital. This weapon of last resort was not the most chilling sight in that yard. I found myself grasping an assault rifle, struggling to recall its operation, as charred ash descended upon my shoulders like delicate snowflakes in late February. 

In the courtyard, there was a massive fire and our statehood was burning in it. It was a fire of the most important Ukrainian documents of this state institution. Workers without jackets or uniforms, dressed in whatever they could find, simply took the entire most important archive of Ukrainian documents to the courtyard on special carts and threw them into the flames to prevent the Russians from getting them. As each page, bearing the name of a state body, and the emblem of Ukraine, turned to ashes one by one, the sense of finality became undeniable.

Never again. These words have proven to be a loud falsehood. Fascism has returned, and windblown ashes from the pyre where our emblems burn are falling upon my head. Where is everyone? What are they waiting for?

If it weren't for the strength of our special services and the ordinary people who joined the ranks of territorial defense, we might never have known. We would have perished in the Kyiv region, much like those state documents near St. Michael's Cathedral.

The Rhythm
‍In early March 2022, Ira Melnyk arrives in Kyiv. She is afraid to be alone in her apartment. She goes to Cheka to spend the night at the Hospitallers' base in the basement of a Kyiv church. They had been preparing for a full-scale invasion for several months. They had formed teams, a plan of action and evacuation. 

It's ten o'clock at night and Melnyk is exhausted, trying to persuade Cheka to go to bed. Her arguments about the need of rest fall to deaf ears – until three in the morning, Ira checks her medications for the medevac, puts together a first aid kit and moves the car to make it easier to leave in the morning.

At six o'clock, Cheka leaves for Kyiv to evacuate people from Irpin and Bucha. Non-stop is a normal rhythm for Ira. She pays for it with her health.

Melnyk feels that she cannot live this life at the Cheka's pace.
‍
‍The full-scale invasion put a wall between them: the first Ira became a combat medic and a heroine. The second changed jobs and started earning more. It hurt both of them: the wall and the difference in their experiences. 

Cheka's service with Hospitaillers is voluntary and free. Her only income is a 13,000-hryvnias help from Suspilne. Whatever she earns from her freelance projects, she invests in the Fifth crew and evacuation processes. 

Civilian life is a trigger. Everyone around her seems to be living as if there were no war: people are building houses, families, careers. And Cheka stands in a supermarket wondering which of the most basic things she can afford today. Even the sterilisation of her dog Efka (Cheka named her dog like a grenade) was made possible thanks to Ira's social capital on Instagram. It was too expensive for a combat medic to pay for the operation.  

Recently, Cheka was turned down for one of the short-term projects she was really looking forward to. They said: 'You are a great media trainer, but unreliable because you often go to war". In all her life, no one has ever called Ira unreliable. This rejection is like a slap in the face. It seems that this country is biting the hand that is trying so hard to feed it. 

‍The war does not leave Ira when it leaves her for a short time. The war remains in the black tangles of depression that she tries to unravel with a psychotherapist. 

With each new session, Cheka is surprised to be alive. She feels uncomfortable and ashamed that she has not yet joined her fallen comrades and Bizon, her ex-boyfriend who fought at Donetsk airport. But the therapist stubbornly reminds her: "You are alive, which means you have to live".

11

The Fatigue

Natalka Shchuka knows how tired and exhausted Cheka is when she returns from her rotations. No rational arguments could influence her. The recommendations of the doctors who are highly concerned about Iryna's health went unheeded. Cheka doesn`t complain about her problems. She ignores her pains and illnesses. Ira and Natalka often fight because of Cheka's behaviour. 

"Don't grumble like a grandmother," the combat medic waves Natalka off and drives back to Donbas. Ira likes to drive boldly and always drives the car herself. Sometimes Natalka and Cheka are just silent for a long, long time when they can get away to the Kyiv Sea with Efka.

Natalka is a journalist who became a combat medic and tactical medicine instructor with the start of the full-scale invasion. She was filming a story about Ira, which was the beginning of a very tender, unexpected friendship between the two media people.

Once Ira gifts Natalka a trip to the Carpathians as a present. In the mountains, the girls accidentally came across a local uncle who was selling his house in the highlands, with a fantastically beautiful blue Hutsul stove.

Cheka immediately came up with the idea to buy the house. She wants to turn it into a budget retreat centre for the military, so that they and their families could come to the Carpathians for a minimal amount of money. Ira did not have time to do this.

Every time on the rotation, the situation was the same: Natalia's "How was your day?" is answered by Iryna's tired one: "I don't know how we survived". 

Cheka considers the part of her mission to talk about the realities of the frontline on Instagram. Because of this, she receives an incredible amount of hate from her comrades-in-arms and the military, who do not support Cheka's public policy. This criticism hurts Ira a lot, but she endures it in silence and continues to tell the truth about the front.

Natalka has always wanted to be an actress: in addition to 15 years on television, she has also acted in films and played in the one of Kyiv theatres. After the start of the full-scale invasion and her work at the front, Shchuka lost the capability to feel any emotions at all. Why does Natalka need the theatre if she is needed as a medic and tactical medicine instructor? In the midst of misery and pain, art seemed like something from her past life. So, when Shchuka was offered a once-dreamed-of role in a play at the Lypky Theatre, she almost refused. However, Ira, who had played in an amateur theatre as a child and supported Ukrainian artistic initiatives in every way, insisted: Natalia must act, she needs it.

For four months, Shchuka is preparing for the premiere – there is no trace of her former joy in her work, as if the frontline had washed away all her emotions. Natalka is almost convinced that she won`t be able to cope, but Ira supported her steadily, taking an interest in the process and rehearsals at every stage.

Natalka didn't wait for Cheka for the premiere, knowing that she was on rotation. But Ira came to Kyiv. For one day, because she drove all night to get to Natalia's performance, and then drove again in the evening to return to Donbas in the morning. Cheka knows – only those of us have good friends, who know how to be a good friend.

12

Don Quixote

Let's say you and I wake up in the morning and it's dark. We don't know who we are. We don't know where we're going. We don't know who is standing behind us to keep us breathing and alive. What would be our first reaction? Panic and shock. So for us, the politics of memory is a compass and a map to help us move. As a nation, as individuals, as a community. 

© Anton Liagusha, researcher on the culture of memory, professor at the Kyiv School of Economics

Ira sits comfortably on the floor – not in Turkish style, but in armour, with a helmet on her head. The shrapnel hits are very close. 

Today she has no new tasks, so she asked to print out scientific articles for her diploma at the Kyiv School of Economics. Before the full-scale invasion, Ira entered the Governance and Public Policy programme. She wants to learn how to change the state for the better, however pretentious that may sound.

Ira is friends with Yuriy Bilous, an Odesa lawyer who works to collect evidence of Russian war crimes. The Cheka tries to understand why it is still important for him to speak Russian. The girl doesn't pressure, doesn't humiliate - Yuriy remembers this tolerant, calm attitude. Yuriy also remembers how beautiful Cheka's smile is: warm and sunny, as if she had never seen war, trouble or death.

At KSE, Ira studies public policy with the former Prime Minister of Ukraine, Oleksiy Honcharuk, and lawmaking with the former Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Oksana Syroyid. The list of leaders who have become her professors goes on. 

‍Cheka dreams of a large-scale study of national memory in Ukraine. Like all of Iryna's dreams, this one is very practical, with a to-do list and far-reaching plans.

The truth is that this need to do research does not come from a great desire, but rather from a fear of falling out of the world in which I want to be.

It makes sense to be a social person not only in civilian life. We are still aborigines, capable of anything, as long as our pack does not consider us useless and get rid of us. We are even prepared to betray our beliefs to stay in the community.

In order to... To do what? Protect ourselves from a tiger attack? And here I am, in the 21st century, in a real war, trying my best to escape the tiger and prove to people that I am worthy of their social group and worthy of being among them.

Cheka studies the state organism from head to toe: from political regimes to public communication. Ira learns to understand the nature of laws, how they are drafted and written, to analyse the media from a politician's point of view, and to quickly understand how to make this large and clumsy state body move faster. 

This clumsiness greatly annoys Cheka. Haphazard, poor work with memorialization, non-institutionalised and disorganised remembrance policy – this is not what it wants for this country.

In the Soviet Union, the format of the unknown soldier was convenient for non-human-centred policies. A  significant number of peasants did not have documents, and this is an important fact of the USSR's occupation policy in Ukraine. An undocumented peasant cannot move to the city and find a job; he is a slave to the collective farm. Thus, in the Second World War, the Ukrainian peasantry became a nameless resource for bloody commanders who never valued their personnel. Therefore, by definition, these dead were unknown soldiers to the Soviets.

Ira says: there are no unknown soldiers in Ukraine. Country has the military commissariats. The problem could be solved by taking DNA from every soldier before they go on at the front, or by obligatory wearing badges. But the state is slow, while Cheka wants quick solutions and quick results.

At KSE, Ira meets Anton Liagusha, who has created the only programme on memory and public history in Ukraine so far.

Lyagusha looks at Ira with respect, at her young radical Don Quixote-ism: She doesn't understand why there are people who don't want to think about their history, their past.

Ira is looking at options. One of them is a national digital platform for remembrance policy, where all information and stories about fallen soldiers would be collected. She also wants to set up professional commemoration teams in local communities across Ukraine. Cheka does not believe in amateurism, she believes in good work. Otherwise, what is the point of doing anything at all?

Ira loves this red land, scarred by shapnels. This greedy, insatiable, bloodthirsty land has taken many from her. Cheka has a special list where she writes down everyone so that she doesn't forget them:

You, a close friend at the positions near Vodiane;

You, the father of two girls, killed by a Russian sniper's bullet, I am still helping your family as much as I can;her gaze stops on the runway of the ruined Donetsk airport, which is so close - you, my ex-boyfriend, the cyborg Bison; Bison was not taken by you, the broken terminal; it was taken by the Kharkiv land. 

...this list is so long, she can't read it without tears - she won't have the energy to do her job.

Ira`s doing her best of making sure – everybody will be remembered.

One rotation later, Cheka passes the village where she printed her materials for KSE. Where there used to be almost untouched village, now everything has been destroyed: the roof of the house has collapsed and the village has been burned to the ground by shells.

There is so many death everywhere, and so close, that I had to return to the essentialism and concentrate on getting the team home alive and well.

I haven't written a research paper on national or collective memory, but I hope to do so after the war. Not because life begins after the war, but because I am living life even now.

13

Two P`s,
two F`s rule

I want children. I want a house. I want to plant tomatoes... but the most important thing is to end the war.

End of spring 2024. Vovchansk. Direction – Kharkiv.

Cheka and Bambi have come to work as combat medics in an aerial reconnaissance battalion. 

Bambi's real name is Ivan. His call sign was given to him after his favourite character from the TV series The Clinic. 

Bambi meets Ira after she gives a lecture about the renovation her evacuation cars. Bambi sees Cheka's rule of "warm" evacuation as an example of best practice that should be shared with others. Ivan offers to film her presentation in the form of a video explainer. And this is how the video "How to Make a Case Evac" is born. 

Bambi and Cheka are comfortable with each other. That's why they came to the place where they can help the evacuation process together. The main principle of the Hospitallers medical battalion is that they work where there is a crisis, where they are most needed. This is the freedom and effectiveness of the Hospitaillers. And this is their weakness.

A few months earlier 

"Where are the expendables?" the commander asks irritably as he enters the meeting. "Expendables" because the Fifth Crew is not officially part of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. As a volunteer unit, they are not officially employed by the state.  A ruthless commander can throw them into the hardest battles without support or planning, without even worrying whether they will come out alive. 

"Here," Cheka says abruptly, stepping out of the shadow. The commander, unaware that the Hospitaillers were already in a meeting, bites his tongue and mumbles something to himself. Had he known Ira was here, he would have kept his words to himself. Liutuy is here with Cheka, and the combat medics look at each other tiredly: they have worked for so long, fighting this indifference. 

Once the Fifth got into one of the marine brigades, where the chief doctor was a "incredibly stupid". Ira takes great pains to explain what the first aid team should be effective and helped in every possible way. She builds up the correct order of interaction with the medical unit. She explains - people are not resources. People are a combat unit. They should not die, they should be saved, they should be pulled out. If one person is not saved, five will be afraid. If five are afraid, the platoon, the company, the brigade, the battalion will be afraid. Medics are people, people. And she is here to save every one of them.

The "Two P's rule, Two F`s" rule applies at the front: "poor planned – fooly f***cked". That's why Cheka tries to convey the importance of organising and medical evacuation to the battalion in a tolerant way - she doesn't want to come across as a bully and make people feel like idiots. 

And Cheka is in love. And she is happy. As all lovers are.

Captain
‍Ira knows – you shouldn`t fall in love in war. All the people who pass through her hands, wounded or dead, tought her this rule very quickly. It is better to be able to do your job impartially than to make mistakes on emotions when you are trying to save a loved one.

When Cheka meets Captain, a local intelligence officer, she maintains a strictly professional approach. They don`t even speak on a first-name basis. Ira very clearly positions herself as a professional and a combat media. There is no place for frivolity.

But something is changing between them: they both find themselves increasingly unable to take their eyes off each other. And it scares them both. On night duty, they talk for a long, long time. Captain doesn't even notice what he tells this reserved, blonde-haired girl. He shares with her things he has never told anyone else: how he lost his closest friend and how motivated people naturally run out of steam in war; how unpleasant it is for him to go to Kharkiv or Kyiv and see that for many civilians there is no war, but you have seen so much grief that it is very difficult, almost impossible, to believe in God.

Ira listens, never interrupting or saying "but I...". Cheka seems to consist of understanding and warm light. Captain is naturally drawn to it, never expecting this to happen at the frontline.

After one of these duties together, he finds himself watching Ira while she curled up, sleepy, defenceless. Something warm and bright warms him from the inside, as if someone very close and dear were next to him. Captain shakes his head – what the nonsense, he's not 19. He doesn't know that Ira is very media-savvy. Nothing in her behaviour reveals this popularity.

Before this rotation, Ira gave an interview saying that she would like to have a house, a husband and tall tomato beds so that she wouldn't have to bend her back. For all of her friends and family, the interview was a revelation: ambitious and 100% invested in the fight, Cheka had never said such things before.

"But ending the war is the most important thing," Ira still says, and plans to go to Sweden for training in memorialising heroes after this rotation.

Ira had already been there once before, on a short retreat organised by Repower, a charity organization that restores the health of military medics. The Swedes surrounded the Ukrainians with an incredible level of care - for this short trip, Ira's faith in two things was restored: allies and normal life.  

The warmth between her and the Captain is like a warm sea. Once he touches Iryna's hair lightly with his nose, and she smells like flowers.

On the night of 28 May, the Captain and Ira sit together on top of a pick-up truck. Tea is steaming in their hands, the starry sky is so close, and the war seems so far away at this hour. Nothing has been said yet, the words hang in the air and both are too ashamed to say them out loud.

The captain really didn't want Cheka to go on this task. 

"Let me follow you with the group," the man insists. 

Ira immediately switches to "pro" mode: no, you can't mix personal and work life. She is leaving alone and will definitely return. For the first time in a long time, after burnouts and depressions, she wants to live.

Bambi opens his eyes.

Cheka gets to her sleeping bag almost at dawn and glows as if she brings the dawn with her. 

Before 28 May, Cheka and Bambi are given an evacuation route.

Bambi drives the car, Cheka is the navigator, tracking the road. They are on their way to a combat mission at dawn, at the safest time. The captain has been trying to talk Ira out of this trip, but she shrugs: work is work and it's not in her nature to refuse.

A week before the girl's death, two black doves flew into the room of Oksana, Ira's mother. In Ukrainian culture, it`s a bad omen, that predicts death. At the time, the woman could not get the black butterflies out of her office: no matter how hard she tried, they would reappear the next day.

The medics' car hit a mine. The girl could not be saved. Bambi managed to crawl to the military with his legs damaged.

At the 1 a.m. night, Captain drank tea with Ira and stroked her hair. At five in the morning, Ira passed away.

14

Krut

Maryna Krut has never been afraid in Donbas. It's not as scary to be on the head of a shark, than than to be within bite distance.

She is scared now, hugging the bandura, crying with the bandura. Krut extracting sounds from it and from herself – extracting the songs Ira asked for. Maryna twists the last string of her instrument into a ring and puts it in her friend's coffin.

People are like oceans around it. They migrate between the yellow and blue flowers to lay their hands on the coffin. What does it mean, Ira in a coffin...?

Cheka said – no wreaths, instead, donations to the battalions. No wake in a café – Ira asked everyone to sing Ukrainian songs from a special list she made before she died (the selection was made by Ira's friend, DJ Dara Kolomiets). Cheka willed – at her funeral she wants people burning a tall bonfire on the Champ de Mars in Lviv, drinking tea and soothing their grief with Ukrainian songs. Ira loves to sing, she loves Maryna and her songs. Ira loves, because it is unbearable to say that Ira "loved" – this past tense cuts Marina's tongue like glass. She loves, she loves. Ira is a synonym for "love". 

The year before, Krut and Cheka met on social media. At the end of June 2023, Krut, famous ukrainian singer and musician, comes to visit Iryna and her comrades for a rotation in Konstantynivka. Maryna brings bandura, songs, and flowers to the military and combat medics.

They jokingly teach a singer how to throw grenades. Once, the ammunition almost exploded. Cheka arranged a grand fiery debriefing for her guys. No one should risk idiotically on her guard.

Until midnight, under the Donbass sky, everyone sings Ukrainian songs together: from UPA uprising songs to modern boombox and Okean Elzy and "Draw Me a Night" - an old Ukrainian classic from the 60s.  Some smoke, others invite each other for a visit after this rotation. Cheka takes Maryna around her favourite units with mini-concerts. 

In one of the steppes, the guys have removed the tyres and Ira and Krut are sitting on them, recording a duet. They sing to the words of the famous poet Lesya Ukrainka:

‍"Yes, I'll smile, indeed, through tears and weeping
Sing my songs where evil holds its sway,
Hopeless, a steadfast hope forever keeping,
I shall live! You thoughts of grief, away!"

‍Cheka perceives Maryna as a member of her family.

Such a sudden love, out of nowhere, but both – the artist and the combat medic – feel so good about it.

Beauty

‍Attention to appearance is part of Iryna's identity. On the most difficult rotations, the Cheka would find ten minutes to put on make-up. After the most difficult evacuations and meetings, the men go to bed and Iryna goes to find water, wash her hair and braid her long hair. She gets a lot of flak on Instagram for this - people from the couches are convinced that they know better what medics and soldiers should look like at the front. 

Maryna already knows how to take photos with Cheka: how to cover her with her body or a bandura to make Ira feel good.

Once Ira was invited to do an interview for Elle, the women's magazine. She was asked to wear something that exposed her arms for the photo. Cheka hesitates, tries to refuse, thinks they are too much: the military man she loved when she was 16 comes to mind.  The story is typical for teenagers – she loved him sincerely, he tried to remake her according to his standards. The relationship never really happened, but words leave scars – and those scars hurt. 

However, Ira has been in contact with this guy all her life, even though they have not been together for a long time. 

At the start of the full-scale invasion, he was in Kherson on a mission. One of the incoming shells stuns him. The soldier woke up alone in an occupied city, his comrades having retreated. 

For several months, the man was a guerrilla in occupied Kherson, working with Ukrainian intelligence. 

He was wounded and lost his leg. After the liberation, he returned to the Lviv region and fell into a deep depression, unable to accept his injury. Ira comes to him with food, friends and support; she teaches him to love himself despite his wounds and scars. 

Cheka tells this story to the Elle photographer. She convinces her – you save people`s lives with these imperfect hands; hands that have seen blood and bullets; hands that have saved lives – and more than one.  Ira rolls up her sleeves for the photo and feels beautiful. ‍

‍4 reindeer of St Nicholas

You have given genuine joy to people who did not expect it at all. People with a reality that has no place for festive, bright paper. There is no winter miracles here, no ceramic pigeon like the one in Home alone, no pillows knitted from coarse yarn, no "Tiger Catchers" with a heartfelt letter, or a collection of Simonenko's, poems

"The miracle of 5 a.m.? I get up at four!" – Mima, Ira's uncle, looks at the book in his hands with a mixture of resentment and indignation. 

Mima is actually Mykhailo, the brother of Cheka's mother. "Mima" because little Iryna couldn't pronounce such a long name, so she made up her own. Her uncle has been volunteering at the front since 2014. First he was on the Maidan, and for Iryna he has become a symbol of principles in action. There are a hundred such internal beacons within the Cheka. The girl's great-grandmother survived tortures in Lviv's Lontskoho prison, used by Nazis and Soviets to torture politically active Ukrainians. Little Ira was told stories of UPA rebels and fighters for Ukrainian independence, both at the Christmas table and around the campfires of children's camps in the Volyn region. The Cheka does not understand how it can be different from what her family has.

I love Christmas at home, and no, I didn't start appreciating it more because of the war. Because I always did. But now I'm afraid that safe, kind and pure Christmas our family will never happen to us again. That this war will be there for eternity. And all we will left for us to do is to create an alternative simulation in a dug-out on the edge of the world under the bombardment of aircraft and artillery. Only that stimulation would remind us of home, mum and winter holidays.

I don't want to romanticise the war with Christmas lights: it's scary here, the mice are really fu***g bad, and recently there was a shelling that would not have left a dust after us or these lights. I'm already in pain from the pain of the wounded, and I'm even more in pain, almost vomiting, for the injustice of the fu***g world, which could stop this war, give us weapons, but there is not enough blood of the best people of our country on the altar.

"Stop pretending to be a good person. Because I am not a good person. And you're not a good person either," Maryna and Cheka once had a very serious conversation while watching stupid TV-show and eating crab salad. Silly reality shows with psychics and competitions for the best mums with their level of absurdity, relieve the girls of their difficult lives. 

Cheka is openly irritated by men who do not serve in the army. She records detailed videos on Instagram about how the military are not special people made for war. Every soldier she tries to bring from the battlefield to the stabilisation centre alive needs to be replaced by someone who drinks coffee in Kyiv or Lviv. Now this wounded man has other challenges: whether he has a disability or an amputation, whether he will fight the ghosts of his comrades who come to him at night, or all of the above. 

Cheka tries not to get attached, not to be friends with the soldiers. Maybe like that  it won`t not be so painful to write to their families, not to think about their children, wives and parents who are waiting for their dad/son/brother from the front. Ira can't. All these people, for who had to stitch up their wounds and close their eyes stay with her and burn under her heart.

The baton should be taken up by civilians - for Cheka, this is clear as day, and she methodically communicates this through social media, interviews with national media, fights with friends who think otherwise. She receives hate and aggression. Sometimes it drives Cheka to fight on, sometimes it burns her skin.

That is why returning to the front is both painful and peaceful. Here, everyone thinks like her, and no one needs to be told why black is black and white is white. Iryna has no shades when it comes to serving the state. 

‍Mykolajky
‍The rules of the game are: love is action. The Cheka always acts. Yulia Kochetova agrees with this rule; it suits her view of the world. 

Kochtova is a photojournalist and correspondent. The Guardian and BBC News have published her work. Yulia has been documenting the war since 2014. She even had some fun watching the Fifth Crew prepare for their first rotation. The future highly alert and professional combat medics dropped a "test" wounded at their first training session. They make some hilarious mistakes. "God, what a shame. You're filming it," complains Cheka. 

The front does not forgive mistakes, so they learn quickly. Soon the Fifth Crew had three generations of experience. 

War is a space where there is no sense of tomorrow, ownership. Reality is fragile and may not begin tomorrow. That's why Ira and Yulia are well versed in the art of sudden joy - at the front, cold Coca-Cola or fresh bread for sandwiches say "I love you" louder than words.  The girls quickly realise that they have become friends. This kind of love unites them without any effort. 

One day, a few weeks before the New Year, Cheka writes to Kochetova that she and Maryna Krut are starting a "gift for the military" campaign. People from all over Ukraine would wrap their love in shiny New Year's paper and send it through the post.

Yulia wants to take a picture of this gifting procession. She knows that she has to be there, she has to film it and be part of it. The photographer respects her intuition. 

The day before Kochetova's departured for training, she is still at Aspen seminar in the Carpathians. Yulia gets to Kyiv by car and then jumps on a night train to Kramatorsk to be in time, to become a Mykolayko (St Nicholas) with the girls. Kochetova will not sacrifice comfort for anyone, but for Iryna, and with Iryna, it is worth it. 

So the trio – a singer, a photographer and a combat medic - are travelling to Donbas in a car full of presents to bring joy before Christmas. They even have a Christmas reindeer – Iryna's dog Efka.

Efka - Efencion, Efencia - is a 15 kg stray dog that flies towards people on all four legs and gives them wet kisses. The Vetevac initiative evacuated Efka from the Sumy region. Ira was looking for a dog to rescue. And so it happened: Efka got a home, and Cheka got a reason to come out after hard rotations, when she didn`t want to see civilians at all.

But now she, Maryna and Yulia are somewhere near Yampil in the Donetsk region, passing a small shop. Next to it is an armoured car, where tired and dirty soldiers get out after a mission. For them, this shop is the first point of civilisation. They reach for the local instant coffee as if it were manna from heaven, with no strength left. 

The girls look at each other, stop the car and open the boot for the soldiers. Well, gentlemen, have you been good boys this year?

And Yulia knows that life is this second. This special moment of concentrated joy, surprise and pleasure. The concentrated love created by Cheka. 

The soldiers randomly choose their presents, unwrap them and examine what has been sent to them. In these few moments of Christmas wonder, there is no war. It is not there when Maryna takes out her bandura and plays Leontovich's "Shchedryk" ("Carol of the bells", famous for all over the world by that name). The big, grown-up, tired, sooty and wounded children in military uniforms stand still, listen, hug their presents.

Cheka gets a call on the radio: they have to find a mortuary, one of the soldiers is dead. The war is already here, biting into the girls' hearts with its long claws, sucking out their joy. The holiday is over. 

In March 2024, Ira became a laureate of the Ukrainian Pravda award "UP 100. Power of Women" in the category "Defenders". The award was given to 100 Ukrainian women who bring Ukraine's victory closer through their work.

That evening, Cheka is happy. Yulia, who came to the ceremony with Oksana, Chekas mom, sees how unusual it is for Ira to feel that she is being shown open love.

People take pictures with Cheka; military men with whom she worked on rotations approach her; she receives so many compliments that Ira bathes in this love. On social media, combat medic often receives a lot of negative feedback because she says uncomfortable, unhappy things. Until that evening, Cheka was absolutely convinced that she was hated in many places.

Already in the car, driving her mother and Yulia home, Ira is sincerely, genuinely surprised: "You know, it turns out that I am loved. Cheka gives Kochetova the bouquet she was given—she doesn't want her to return home without flowers.

Yulia knows that Ira is a tuning fork. She shows what is pure sound and what is false, even when the whole society around her does not listen to these sounds. In English, there is a concept called "to celebrate somebody" - when people around you celebrate having such a person around.

That evening, Cheka was celebrated.

Ira taught Marina that you have to love people with all your might. Spontaneously, with all your heart. One Marynas birthday, Cheka came to Krut's house at midnight, wished her a happy birthday, and literally an hour later, she took off for Kyiv. She always had things to do, and they were always urgent."

You have to be responsible for the people you love," Cheka says, and goes to visit a soldier, the mother of a fallen comrade, her parents, her brother – anyone who needs her. 

Ira gives everything away. She takes antidepressants on and off. Depression rolls over her in waves, bringing her a desire to die, despondency, and longing. 

Krut noticed that Ira writes about death before every rotation. It's as if she declares war on it every time so that it doesn't attack her first.

Ira in the "forest of wonders". Before the full-scale invasion, the Serebryansky Forest was home to 200 Red Book animals. Now the whistle of guided aerial bombs and the red flames of explosions live here. Now death is very close, Ira can feel its stinking breath.

Cheka is scared. She writes to Maryna: "Today I was one step away from death. I will make a list of songs. Will you sing them at my funeral? I want the people to 'think outside the box' a bit, to learn something other than 'Chervona Ruta'(one of the most famous Ukrainian songs)"

Ira didn't write anything about her death only before her last rotation.

Maryna was planning to surprise Cheka and go to Kharkiv for her birthday on the first of June. She had to go to Kyiv and Lviv for her funeral.

‍Hundreds of people came to say goodbye to the heroine. With her death, Ira rewrote the ritual of farewell.

Maryna hugs the bandura as she used to hug Ira.

So much love, Cheka, which you have multiplied. It feels as if you were here, among us, and split into a thousand atoms of love. These atoms are in the air and still floating between us. You became fire, water, wind. You remained in this space. It can be called love.

15

The Freedom

The maternity ward windows where Ira was born overlook the Champ de Mars in Lviv, where she is buried.

People who knew Cheka and those who didn't brought flowers, small gifts, sweets, and notes. They cried and laughed and talked to her as if she were still alive. Someone brought a jar of planted tomatoes, which soon bloomed. An avalanche of flowers attended Cheka's funeral in Kyiv; she was very fond of wildflowers and often gave them to people. These flowers would not have made it to Lviv for the second part of the funeral. Iryna's friends decided to leave them on the Maidan, near the monument to the Heavenly Hundred. Where it all began.

‍Nine in the morning - The Minute of Silence for the fallen heroes, which Ira advocated, is slowly becoming sacred for the whole country. Schools, hospitals, and shops stop for 60 seconds. The Moment of Honour organisation, created by Ira and her like-minded people, is actively working on this: Erika Kabaeva, Anton Lyagusha, Yelyzaveta Ilyushchenko, Kateryna Datsenko, Anastasia Zhukivska. 

Ira was born on 1 June 1998. She was two days shy of her 26th birthday.

Brother Yura published his sister's posthumous letter, which she wrote on 8 April 2023:

"Hello, I'm sorry, I don't like it when you are sad, but time will pass and this despair will dissipate, you will have to get on with your life. So don't waste your time suffering, move on.

It's 19:19, Saturday 8 April 2023, my 5th crew and I are working for the 80th Brigade reconnaissance, Dream on by Aerosmith is playing in the background, and I've decided that this year I've had so many opportunities to die that I can find at least one to write a posthumous letter.

Sadly we live so weak, dependent on public approval of life, that only death allows us to live in absolute freedom.

However, the trouble is that life is over and this freedom no longer has any meaning. Today and forever, I don't care what people say about me, you, this text, anything.

Whether these sentences get likes or not, I'm not interested in anyone's opinion, I'm dead.

Freedom is the highest value. I spent all of my soon-to-be 25 years in complexes and fears. But more often than not, this noise had no place in front of my freedom.

Most of all, I would like to thank myself, my parents, brother, family and friends for allowing me to be free, to live the life I want.

The full-scale war forced me to stop being a slave to fears, and today, unfortunately, I have not been able to free myself completely, but I hope I will succeed, and this letter will help me.

To have freedom, you need to have other values. You need to understand yourself, know who you are, what personal happiness is and how you can get there. Having answered these questions, the most important thing is to keep going. Today, here in the Donetsk region, I am on my way. Here I am myself and doing what I want.

In fact, nothing else matters, so this letter is attached so simply - at this moment, as well as when it happens, I don't regret dying, because I am finally living the life I would like. I will not lie, to feel this indispensable, true freedom, I will have to go through more than one more session of therapy, fears and tears.

Today, everything is over, my life is over, and it was important for me to go through it with dignity: to be an honest, kind, loving person.

Today, we work for heroes, and this is a good opportunity to confirm our values - to be that person.

Thank you to everyone who loved and supported me.

Don't miss me, life is too short, if it continues after death, I'll see you.

Brother, don't feel bad, I stopped worrying about you when you were 17. Today you had your first tour of princely Lviv, and I am proud of you. Whoever you decide to be today, trust yourself, listen to yourself, love yourself, live your happy life. If I have the opportunity, I will support you from the sky. But it doesn't matter, as long as I'm alive, we loved each other, we were a great brother and sister, it was a good time, let these memories warm you, motivate you, but never make you sad.

To have the strength to be a free person, you have to be brave.

Only the brave have happiness, and it is better to die running than to live rotting.

Be worthy of the deeds of our heroes, don't be sad, be brave!

Kisses, yours. 08.04.23 Donetsk region".

In September, small tomatoes grew in a jar on Iryna's grave.

The team

Alyona Martyniuk

The author of the text, translation from Ukrainian into English and voice in the audio

Maksym Skalatskyi

Illustrator of Iryna's portrait from the "Bus stop Donbas"

Maria Skliarova

Main illustrator (chapters and elements of the main screen)

Sergiy Fedorov

Author of the portrait on the home screen

Marta Onyskiv

Editing

Olga Poluda

Designer

Serge Viushkov

Layout designer

Audio used in the landing page: podcast Cheka`s diary (in collaboration with Svidomi); Chaos in infopolitics / Can we Lose the War / Love for the East — Tsybukh | UP.Interviews.

Kharakter.Media is a media outlet about Ukrainian military and veterans that reveals all facets of military experience.

We are talking about rehabilitation, socialisation and adaptation after the war; we work for veterans returning to active life after the frontline and injuries and their families who support their soldiers in extremely difficult circumstances.

The Memorial platform is creating a new culture of remembrance in Ukraine by turning the numbers of death statistics into the names of the real heroes. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, "Memorial" has collected over 8,500 stories of fallen soldiers and killed civilians. You can support the team's work with "Donation for the memory" initiative. This will allow us to continue to name heroes, tell their stories and preserve the truth about the price of our freedom in Russia's war against Ukraine.