Ukrainian soldier vows to ‘fight to end’ after 365 days of war 

Ukrainian soldier vows to ‘fight to end’ after 365 days of war 

A Ukrainian soldier who took up arms on the first day of the full-scale invasion has said his unit is ‘tired’ after a year of war but will ‘see it through to the end’.  

Valentyn Ilchuk swapped civilian life with his family in Kyiv for a small task force which is currently undertaking missions in the south-eastern Zaporizhzhia region. 

Since Russia launched the all-out attack, he has found himself in the midst of a tank battle and taken part in the morale-boosting liberation of the Kherson port city.  

The former University of Warwick exchange student, who has been sharing his story with Metro.co.uk, said he and his comrades are ‘here for the win’ as the war reaches the one-year point today. 

Speaking from the frontline, he told Metro.co.uk that while his wife and seven-year-old daughter are out of harm’s way in Estonia, the only true way to secure their future safety is to restore Ukraine’s 1991 borders.  

‘On a personal level I’m tired, I’m missing my family and civilian life a lot, and I’m definitely realising there is a long way ahead of us, especially after Kharkiv and Kherson,’ Valentyn said. 

‘We were winning and winning and winning and I would describe the Zaporizhzhian front as definitely less intense than what we had in Kherson, not because of the lack of trying but mostly because the Russians have concentrated most of their efforts in Donbas.

‘You can feel the fatigue in the air but the morale is there, I don’t think anything has changed in this regard, we are here for the win.

‘If there is no win for us, there is no life for us afterwards, we’ll lose at least a portion of our country.

‘That’s not acceptable after all the victims, losses and destruction. 

‘Most of the guys around me are like myself, we want to see it through to the end.’

Once Russia is done with us, there won’t be a place in the world to hide

Valentyn, 39, is a veteran of the Donbas war who had been running a digital agency in the capital, where he lived with his wife and daughter, before hostilities began on February 24 last year.  

He and other veterans of the pre-existing conflict who had remained friends met at his house the night before and then helped to repel the advancing troops before being redeployed to the southern front. 

The volunteer squad is one of the small, highly mobile units that has been used to devastating effect against Russian forces — including columns of armour attempting to advance on key cities.  

Valentyn is now due to be redeployed to the high-intensity conflict in the Donbas, where heavy fighting has been raging with Ukrainian forces reportedly inflicting huge losses on the Kremlin’s troops. 

‘It’s mission-based, we sting where it hurts, and then we roll back.’ he said of his unit, where he is a planner and gunner.

‘We barely ever man the positions, although there have been times when we have had to do that either to bring the Armed Forces of Ukraine onto the position or to hold the lines with them when the lines are running thin, which happened a couple of times in Kherson.

‘It also happened a couple of times here when we had to back up a position which was in danger.’

The infantryman has taken part in operations including a fierce battle to liberate Lukyanivka on the northern outskirts of Kyiv.

He found himself 100 metres away from a Russian tank as Ukrainian forces recaptured the settlement in the early phase of the war.  

The ‘Thor Squad’ was then redeployed to the south, which included a spell in Mykolaiv where they read about the sinking of Russian warship the Moskva on Metro.co.uk.  

They then joined the fight in the Kherson region, where Valentyn described the milestone liberation of the city and nearby settlements as one of the happiest days of his life. 

While he has prior military experience, the year of all-out war is far removed from his life in Kyiv when he was the boss of Zgraya Digital, which specialises in websites, apps and branding.

The web entrepreneur previously studied International Business and Marketing at the University of Richmond in the US, which included an exchange term at Warwick in 2005. 

Despite the exhaustion of frontline service, the volunteer is adamant that victory means Ukraine reclaiming borders it began with as a newly independent state after the fall of the Soviet Union, which includes Donbas and Crimea.

He views the fight as an extension of the Donbas war and Russia’s annexation of Crimea, both of which began in 2014. 

‘Nothing has changed,’ Valentyn said. ‘For me, victory is us rolling back to our borders circa 1991.  

‘I’m fighting for my family and it’s become more obvious to the rest of the world that if we are taken over this is not going to be the end.

‘Once Russia is done with us there won’t be a place in the world to hide.

‘Not only in the sense of them having an opportunity to come back home but also in the sense of the war not spreading to where they are.’ 

The UK Ministry of Defence said yesterday that in the prior 48 hours heavy fighting had continued in the Bakhmut sector and further south in the same Dontesk region.  

The intelligence update raised the ‘realistic possibility’ that Russia was preparing for another offensive effort in the area despite previous ‘costly failed attacks’.  

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