Volodymyr Maksymiv, Commander, Independent Battalion, Territorial Defense Forces, AFU

Our guest for this Victory Commanders series interview by Ukrinform is Volodymyr Maksymiv, call sign Max, the Independent Battalion commander at the AFU’s Territorial Defense Forces. He was among the first volunteers to stand up to defend Ukraine, was taken into Russian captivity, and was the only one of his group to have survived the Ilovaisk “green corridor” massacre.

Commander Max is one of the first Ukrainian soldiers to start implementing NATO interoperability requirements in the Ukrainian army back in 2016. Over the time of the Great War, Volodymyr Maksymiv was among those who liberated Kyiv Oblast from occupying Russian forces and took part in fierce battles for Bakhmut.

We discussed his path as a warrior, the loss of his comrades, release from captivity, as well as what a military commander should be like, and what should be changed in the Ukrainian army.

- You were among the first volunteers, and very young at that, to stand up to defend the country back in 2014. How did the decision to go to war come about, because the war was far away from you at that time? You are from the Ivano-Frankivsk region, a thousand kilometers away from Donetsk or Luhansk.

- That decision was not spontaneous at all. It was very simple: the Maidan protest had got started and, as you say, Ivano-Frankivsk is far away even from Kyiv, let alone Donetsk and Lukansk... But when Berkut [riot police] started beating students on the Maidan, I just couldn’t believe that one can go and beat children like that, just for nothing. There was a dissonance with the way I was brought up, with what my parents had always taught me, that you can't grudge against the weaker and so on. I could not understand it, but here it was just happening across all of the country. That was the first time I went to the Maidan with my brother. As for the war, everything seemed to be happening like in a fantasy, like it’s impossible.  But when it was reported on television that Russian troops had entered the Crimea peninsula... And on the night following these events, my father and I consulted - what should we do? He says: what should we do? – Let’s go. We had just packed our bags in the evening, went to the train station and arrived in Kyiv the next morning.

- Who were you and what did you do prior to 2014?

- I was born in the glorious city of Kalush, the Ivano-Frankivsk region. Why glorious? Simply because it’s my home town, a town native to me. I studied, then after my studies I moved to Siberia, Russia, to earn money. I was felling forests, was a forester for several years. Afterwards, I decided to go to the Lviv State University of Internal Affairs. I really wanted to be an investigator, because events that took place in my youth made me think about justice, and I wanted to find it somewhere. I passed the exams, got the passing score, but they told me they could enroll me, but in the Faculty of Criminology rather than the Faculty of Criminal Investigations. I didn't want to. On the way back home, I called a military enlistment office. I arrived the next day, went to serve in the army at about twenty years old.

- Have you succeeded in finding answers to your questions about justice? And what is justice like for you?

- I never found them. Well, you can talk a lot about it. Justice is here somewhere, but is not there somewhere where it is needed; that’s the justice as it is.

- You mentioned your father, that you went to war together. Wasn't it scary for him, let alone you yourself?

- At first, no, because none of the people who were there knew what a war is like. Maybe someone fought in some other countries, but nobody expected what happened in our country in 2014. When in a training center, waiting for departure for an assigned deployment, it all seemed a little different. When we arrived in Slovyansk, experienced first shelling attacks... Then a lot of people ended their military careers, lost their romanticism.

I served in Intelligence, and my father was a sniper. Once we all were riding in a bus heading for Lysychansk, if I remember it right. Our bus came under fire. Then all of us in the bus sustained injuries, all the eight or so people. Afterwards, I had a serious talk with my father, and I immediately found for myself arguments in favor of going to war -- that I am young, have military service experience, know what and how to do. My father too served in the military, but I told him: you have grandchildren, you have children, go back home, take care of everyone. Well, that was what we had agreed upon.

- How did you end up in the Donbas volunteer battalion? In what positions did you serve, on which frontlines? What tasks were you assigned?

- When in the Donbas battalion, I served as a scout. At the beginning, there was no hierarchy in the volunteer battalion. That is, there were intelligence and reconnaissance units, there were companies, some defined themselves as an assault company, others set themselves up as just a company. It didn’t matter, because almost everyone performed the same tasks. My comrades and I came together ourselves, because many of us served with the 8th Khmelnytsky Regiment. So we united into a team of veterans and served as scouts.

- In 2014, you survived the Ilovaisk cauldron, lost lots of your comrades. This is such a trite question -- but what was the hardest thing you went through then, the one you will never be able to forget?

- In Ilovaisk, I lost everyone, was the only one who’s left alive from my group. We organized ourselves into a small team, were together all this time. After 3-4 months, a man with whom you fight alongside, share a place to sleep -- you begin idealizing him, because he becomes your closest friend, comrade, father, brother. I don't know how to describe it, but he is the closest person who is by your side when and where your are in trouble, can't do something, are sick. Where you are on the battlefield doing the shooting, he will stand behind you to support and give you ammo. Whenever you need to ride somewhere, he will get behind the wheel because you are tired. That is, this is a man who complements you, replaces you, it’s a synergy of some kind, a synchronization, I don't know how to call it correctly. You just have this connection. And when they are no longer there, when they die, when they just cease to exist, the hardest thing is for you to accept it, you don't realize it all at first.

I recall calling them by walkie-talkie, but and there was silence at the other end. I laid there for a few minutes, ten or so, wounded in the head (my right eye is blind). I was bandaged up, then I passed out, recovered and called the guys by the walkie-talkie, was calling them again and again, but the answer was silence. You are walking among people: someone is lying, someone is digging, someone is shooting back, everyone are looking at you, they all heard you calling out your men over the walkie-talkie, and they already know what had happened, know that your guys are no longer among the living. But no one tells you, wary of telling you that they are no longer alive. You just walk looking into these faces that surround you, you understand everything, that they are all dead, that that's it, that no one will ever answer your call, any longer. But you go on walking, looking for them by inertia, because you have to see and become convinced with your own eyes. The hardest thing of all is, perhaps, to live with it, knowing that you are helpless to change anything.

So I come to see the mother of my friend who died, she hugs me and says: "Oh, you smell like Zhenya..." (and we are about the same age). And you understand that you will not help her with any words, you will not tell her that everything will be fine. She would like her child to be remembered, so that the boys have not died in vain. She has it in her head. I think so. I don't know how they feel about it. It’s the hardest to overcome. It is the most difficult to speak to them, difficult to attend the funeral. There have been more funerals than birthdays in the past 10 years. I don't think there is any cure for this. You are just living with it.  These events must all be remembered, the people who defended, never gave up the defense. Their heroic deeds. Now I explain to my soldiers that an act of heroism is not in getting out of a trench and shooting the last bullet at the enemy or taking out a tank. This is not heroism, it’s easy, anyone trained can do it. Heroism is surviving against all odds, coming back home alive, creating a family, raising children properly.

- The Ukrainian army as it was in 2014 and is now in 2024. How has it changed?

- It has changed enormously, made a huge progress leap. In 2016, if memory serves me correctly, I served with the National Guard, and we were implementing NATO interoperability requirements and procedures, that is, we were perhaps the first brigade in Ukraine to hire instructors. We were teaching people from the Armed Forces, from the paramilitary formations who wanted relevant standards implemented. We introduced our own unwritten rules for handling weapons, training personnel. Recruiting, which is a common thing now in the armed forces, we began introducing it back in 2016.

For example, we invited a sergeants corps from America to visit and teach us about how sergeants are selected. There are, say, 80 men to be selected from; there are given no ranks, no surnames or first names, nothing, they just took T-shirts with letters and numbers on, i.e. T-shirts of different colors, they divided them into different groups, also in a chaotic order, took them to a training ground and did all the assigned tests alongside them. There were log runs, cross runs, push-ups; they looked at how they slept, behaved in emergency and stressful situations. Mostly physical activity and tests. In the middle of the night, they could wake up the personnel and, for example, make them solve some elementary problems or recite poems to see how a person behaves in a stressful situation. Then grades were given. We had a group of highly proficient psychologists. That is, we went through this all, supervising these warriors. And most of these soldiers are still fighting. They serve with different units. Many of them have been conferred the title Hero of Ukraine.

You probably know of the saying that goes: There are many critics, but there is no one to do it. So we decided we’ll do it... The Brigade leader was an adequate man, perfect as a Commander; he understood the importance of this all too well, allowed us to implement it... We saw a lot of officers who even organized international training exercises. They served with us, instilled these standards into us – the understanding that a man is a resource, that not only he can do something, but also knows how to think independently.  We tried to change this all, because the Soviet-style approach is like this: there Are Service Regulations, which must be followed precisely. Instructors from Israel also came to us.

The past two years have seen sweeping changes, because war has its pace. You have time, you respond to changes, to the events taking place. Today the focus is on UAVs, tomorrow on artillery, the day after tomorrow on tanks; there have emerged mechanical means of some kind for conducting surveillance, remote controlled robots that drive, shoot, lay mines... That is, the war is changing, and we need to keep up with it. And we are doing well with it, praise God. Therefore, changes are taking place for the better, indeed. Procedures for combat logistics have been made more focused on requirements. Our troops now respond to the needs, unlike in previous times where other factors mattered more. The focus now is on the needs. There arose an understanding that it is worth listening to what lower-level field commanders, such as Battalion leaders, Company leaders have to say, because those guys are fighting, the guys are facing something new. As early as last year, for instance, we didn’t expect we would get pounded with drones. There were no drones deployed yet, but everything is changing. When a soldier comes and says: "Commander, I can't raise my head because they’re flying all the time," you need to employ creativity of some kind, which is not prescribed anywhere. We are self-developing, implementing changes.

- What do you think needs to be done further? What else should we learn and adopt from the experience of the United States and other NATO Allies?

- I have many thoughts in my mind. I would divide this all into several stages, questions, because they are all different. This could be made linked to the encouragement of military personnel. How to encourage a military serviceman? We should have in place an institution focused precisely on members of the military. There should be a high respect for the military. There should be a high level of perception among the country’s citizens, an understanding that without these people, there will be nothing to succeed. Who will defend us but the military, who are now sacrificing their lives so that their relatives and loved ones could live, they sacrifice the most valuable thing they have, their lives. And that is why they need to be provided with everything we can do here with it.

The army should not be conscript-based, but be staffed only by professionals serving under contract, I believe. That is, it is about the level of professionalism, the level of pay, the level of training. Therefore, we will educate professionals who will perform work at a high level of proficiency. They should know what will happen to them after they retire from military service. But they themselves should be ready to take part of responsibility, because once you put on a military uniform, but behave inappropriately, you have to be made accountable for your actions. There must be in place an institution that will explain to everyone, set responsibilities for everyone, so that everyone, at their level, do what they are supposed to do.

- Regarding recruiting, what needs to be changed with respect to mandatory conscription for war in particular? This is about the situation we have now, about people’s complaints about the military enlistment authorities’ actions. What do you think has not been done to avoid this situation?

- People should be explained in specific terms that, yes, I go to serve in the military and will get this, that and the other thing. If something bad happens to me, I will get this thing. If I get my leg amputated, I will be provided with a prosthesis. If I get my arm torn off, may it never be, they will give me a prosthesis, life will not stop there. If I’m killed, heaven forbid, I am sure my family will be provided for. These are all reasonable things for everyone to understand and accept. People come to you to serve, and they have to ask such elementary questions, unfortunately.

At the bureaucratic level, we often encounter situations where a man is willing to serve in a specific unit a comrade, for example, invites him to serve. And we are faced with the fact that he has to go to a military enlistment office to join. They send him to a training center for basic training or retraining. After completing a training course, it is not always the fact that he will be assigned to serve in the unit he is willing to join, because everyone has own vision of who should serve, where and how. This is appropriate on the one hand, given that there is a personnel distribution plan, a mobilization plan of some kind, which both enlistment authorities and military personnel recruitment centers must adhere to. And they do what they are supposed to, because they know where the situation is most critical and where people are needed most.

But on the other hand, there are situations where an arrangement has been reached, where you, as a commander, have decided that yes, you will go to serve in my unit, at such-and-such a position, we have agreed on everything... But that man is taken away and sent to serve in some other unit, people began complaining on Facebook... And talk like this gets started; you cannot explain to wife, family, to anyone, that such is the law, that is, read it, and there you have it, sir. And I, as a commander who made an arrangement with a soldier, can’t take him for service. This situation undermines my authority as a leader in the eyes of my subordinates. Because what kind of a commander are you if you can't deal with a problem like that with a man brought to you? There is already some mistrust of you. Alternatively, the man who went to serve ends up in some other unit and tells everyone that, you see, we’ve agreed like this but they did it otherwise.  

Killing the enemy does not mean that you go into a trench and die. No way. Thousands of people go into trenches, kill, return, they defend their land. They have no intention to die when they go there. We have to look a little bit further. Bring everyone together, build up a unified strategy for all military units. If you are willing to recruit people into your unit, okay, do and recruit them, but you should do it like this or like that. There is a plan, an order has been communicated to everyone, OK, go and do it. If it’s a matter for military enlistment authorities to deal with, well, let them do it this way or that way. But recruiting everyone indiscriminately or those who are unwilling to be recruited - we won't be able to build things up that way.

- How would you describe the mentality of the Ukrainian defender?

- As one soldier told me (I will quote his words here): You are my commander, I will do whatever you tell me to do, but what is the goal to be achieved? Something like that. This is how the Ukrainian mentality should be perceived. We are capable of doing anything. But what is the goal, what end result should be? We dig in at a position, we are retreating from a position, or what are we doing? I can do anything you’ll tell me, he says, but what is the goal?

- Thank you for this answer, for the clarification. Let's retrospect to the events of 2022 that we haven't touched on yet. How did the all-out invasion begin for you?

- At home, at my parents' home in Kalush. It was morning, a call came in on my phone, a friend of mine called and asked, “How are you doing there?” I replied, “I don't know. What is it? He says, “There are missile strikes”. So I started looking for news, the whole family are awake, I saw the news and went to pack my bag. That is, the first missiles came in, and I was already on my way up at lunchtime.

- Tell us about your part in the liberation of Kyiv Oblast.

- In 2022, a friend called me, we all came there, gathered together. Well, not gathered together actually,  everyone were calling all the time, asking where are you, where are you going, where to go? We brought together a group of veterans and military retirees, consisting of five colonels, five majors, five captains, as it was like before, a group who know what to do, while others knew that we can get together and do a specific job. We all came together at the airport, spent the night there, waited, we still did not understand the overall situation, what was going on, we needed a source to get information from. A commander who was there at the airport briefed us, more or less, about the situation of the country. So the following morning we departed (many had not yet had weapons).

We arrived with what we had with ourselves; everything is clear, everything is cool, everyone have uniforms, I think, almost everyone had bulletproof vests and helmets at that time, but we had to look for some for the guys. We began searching among people we knew for the things we needed, because we had to somehow provide for ourselves, to clothe ourselves; we still did not understand what was going on. It happened so that we were passing by the Solomyansky District Administration building [in Kyiv]. I saw people standing in line outside, so I just thought, why not come up here, see what all the fuss was about. There I saw an acquaintance of mine, then the second, the third, and, finally, the commander of them all. “What are you doing here?”, he asks. I reply, “Here we came”. “No more questions, come and serve with us, we will give you everything, we have everything, will arrange everything as it should be”. Because a question arouse before us: if we are killed, no one will even know what and how it will be further, although it did not matter much then. We thought it over, I called back, asked if we had to go there to get registered officially and do the formalities, we decided to join, to at least get some official status, they would give us weapons and ammunition, that's fine.

It took a day for us to complete all the formalities, we were organized into a separate company, actually were all enrolled there, something like that. And we departed from there immediately, if I'm not mistaken, toward the Zhytomyr Highway. That’s where we encountered the enemy for the first time, found out where they were deployed, flying, what areas were flown. When there already, we got a call saying that -- in the areas of Lyutizh, Horenka, Moschun, where the 72nd brigade was deployed -- helicopters were flying there, that the enemy was assaulting, seeking to force across the river of Irpinka, and the situation was very ‘hot’ out there. We got together, consulted with the headquarters about what to do and how, and we were sent there. We had done our tasks there, were fighting for about a week, working along the axis from Hostomel to glass factories, we were there at crossroads, were at crossings helping evacuate civilians, conducting combat operations alongside military units. It was tough a little bit, because the forces were stretched out, scattered over a long line. For example, we arrive at some new site, immediately enter into interaction, finding out who is standing and where, because there was some kind of disorder. We came somewhere, took a map to find out who was standing where, spoke with everyone, did it like we did in 2014, clarified everything: this is where we’re working, we will reinforce you, we will not give up, we are standing here.

After Hostomel, we were ordered to come into Irpin. We crossed across the river, ran across the fields, were fighting for Irpin, mopping up building after building, the battles were heavy... And even later, when I was fighting as part of a platoon, I didn't know yet the Battalion Commander... And later on we were discussing the same events, recalling them, but from different sides. We helped them attack the enemy from flanks, and they stood there in threes... They did a good job, brought the enemy advance to a halt, stopped enemy columns in Irpin.

That is, all these events, day after day, when recalled from the one side, from the other - well, we tore the enemy off where we could, went forward, did the work, because our  team had a lot of experience in how to do it all. There were also people who did not fight, but there was always a use for them: you lie here, look over there. That's it, you know he's lying there, doing one small task, and you're already talking to the boys, setting them up, going around. And then, you know, you arrive at a place, set everything up, set up your perimeters, your posts, where you mop up building after building, knock out the enemy. And everyone are already joining you; one battalion has joined in, one company has joined in, those guys have come, that's it, you speak to everyone, and in this way the enemy was being knocked out, little by little. I just can't reveal all the names, I don't know if those people talked about it or not, there were so many, very many famous people fighting out there...

Take Irpin, for example. The situation is like this: here's a colleague driving a tank; we stopped, hugged, shook hands, we're already driving alongside that tank, because a tank is cool. A tank can inflict more damage than all of us can, although we too had a lot of weapons, whatever you want, we fired from everything at the enemy back then. But they already have a plan, tactics, actions, and here we are already running with the tank... And so, little by little, the enemy was pushed out, attacked from different sides.

Civilians were coming in, even at the time the town was still under occupation. They were coming in, we  pulled them out. Lots of families lived under occupation. Irpin was under attacks. We come, there is a man and a woman aged 55 or so, we tell them: We will take you out. And they say: We have nowhere to go, I don't want to go anywhere. That was before the building started burning, a nine-story building; a tank fired its weapon toward it, the building caught fire, I said: Go and look into the corridor, the third floor is already on fire from below (she was on the seventh), it is already ablaze, you are going to get burnt.  And she says: No, I will not go anywhere, I would better get burnt home. The panic was such that people even had to be taken out of their homes by force, taken out under the shelling, which complicated the process at that time.

That’s how we recaptured Moschun, Horenka, Bucha, Irpin, Hostomel... We did raids like this everywhere where we were. Then, after a few days, we were redeployed to Zaporizhzhia (the guys with tanks were there already), and later sent to fight in Kharkiv Oblast.

- Tell us more about your path as a commander, and about what it means to you to be a commander.

- A man must pass a certain path to become a commander. That is, there are good managers, people who are born good, born to be leaders, and there are people who just lack the ability to command others. It is possible to be good, cool, but just not know how to manage other people. And there are people who are attractive to many, but they are unable to lead, to undertake responsibility for saving lives or anything else, because they are just inapt for this job. There are very different types of personalities among commanders. To characterize myself, to which type I, for example, belong, or how it happened... I don't know whether I’m a cool commander or not.

I passed the path of Platoon commander, Company commander, chief of intelligence, Battalion commander. I went through all these stages not in peacetime, not in the sweetest times. Somewhere you can do your service at a position where you have few responsibilities or do not lose people. When faced with this, not only do you need to find appropriate words, an appropriate approach, but to be on the same wavelength with the soldier, whatever the size of the unit you command -- a squad, a platoon, a company, or a battalion. Becoming a commander involves gathering your personnel, teaching them, training them, performing tasks alongside them.

I have junior officers under my command, for example, platoon leaders, company leaders, and we do the following: we come together and undertake some commitments. That is, when one becomes an officer, he comes, introduces himself, says that a directive promoting him to a higher rank has arrived. We then bring together all the officers in our unit, and I say to him: You are becoming a leader, you have a huge responsibility. First of all, you are already an officer, that is, it’s not that you just have been promoted to a higher rank or position, but you need to feel that there is a huge responsibility on your shoulders.  You are now responsible not only for your own life, not only for your relatives and friends, but also for those who are next to you, for their relatives and friends. That is, a huge responsibility falls onto your shoulders. And once a new commander realizes this all, he then becomes able to make appropriate decisions.

Is the path to becoming a commander difficult? Yes, it’s very difficult.  Is it hard to be a commander? It’s more difficult than being a soldier, of course, because you have to manage everything. Are there any privileges? I don't know yet, probably no. Because when you are not a commander, you watch how someone else is working, and you always think: if I were a commander, I would do it this way. When you are promoted to a Commander, you think: did I do everything in such a way so that to save personnel’s lives, to perform the task and achieve the goals set before me? This is the only thing that pleases you, to know that you have everything; go and do it, that’s your responsibility now, this is your area, your zone, and you can manage it as you want, in the way you were taught to, for what you came here, took this position, you always wanted to change something. Here you are, welcome, take it and change it.

- In your biography, there is an episode when you were in [Russian] captivity.

- Not for long.

- Tell me how you were able to escape from out there.

- I don't talk much about it, because everyone expects: oh, he escaped from captivity, took captives of war, killed them all. That isn’t the case. This is a common situation, a common cold mind, perhaps it was more of a healthy apathy at that time. I just got up and went in the right direction, slept somewhere, watched something somewhere, listened to something somewhere, just went where I needed to go, and that was it.

- How many times were you wounded during the war? Six times?

- Seven times, all the wounds were penetrating...

- Is it difficult for you to recall this period, or is it because of what you’ve said off-record, that you are a timid man?

- No, this is not about timidity but more about respect for the comrades who passed away, who did not leave with me. Some may think that I left someone, some think that I didn't take someone with me, some think that I could have returned to bring more people back. This is what this is about. I don't want to, it doesn't make me any better, a different man. I'm telling you, without any special examples... It was just a successful trip to collect watermelons from a field and nothing special, I just went because I knew where to go, because I learnt for it, I knew the way. There was nothing special about that.

- We know that you were in Bakhmut, fighting  as a commander. Tell us about that period, about the battles you fought and decisions you had to make.

- Bakhmut, when it was still standing, when our checkpoints and observation posts were still there in Bakhmut. Then followed Ivanivske, Klishchiivka, and then the other way around. That is, difficult decisions had to be made. It is not difficult to make a decision in general, nor is it difficult to give orders. What is difficult is to make wise decisions, give appropriate orders. Where you are faced with a task, it is not a task for you personally or for your soldiers, but a task for everyone... There is a plan, right? There is a strategic level, they have a plan, a vision of their own. And you understand that you are just a part of it, that is, if you fail to succeed in something, fail to hold out, then the whole plan, the whole idea collapses, there is no sense if you fail to complete your task. You understand that now you fail out here, the neighbor on the left-hand side will fail too, you are in for a problem, a serious trouble. And you explain to people that they need to change the direction of fire, enter into interaction.

I remember the question; it was about the decisions I had to make when in Bakhmut. When you are assigned a task specifying that our troops will withdraw from Bakhmut alongside Russian troops, you need to find out where our troops are and where the Russians are, so as not to miss that moment the Russians will be withdrawing, to keep the road under our control. In this situation, there is no way you can set tasks for your servicemen. You just go out, take a sit next to them, work, explain: guys, the situation is such and such right now, you must not do anything without an order from me... And you are sitting there, observing, watching what and how things unfold, speaking to those who are withdrawing, who are the last to stay. Once you withdraw, let me know so that no one else is allowed in there. Because the enemy is already on the right-hand side, the enemy is in front of us, our troops are on the left side, that is, we need everyone to get out through us and we will then be able stop this course of events.

Was it difficult? Well, difficult or not is hard to say. I don't know actually. There is no such thing as a difficult task. A task can be interesting, it can be stupid or non-fantastic, that's it. Regarding difficult tasks, well, what does difficult mean? Difficult means that a man needs this to be done, he understands what he will need to carry with himself to get it done – the equipment, a helmet, a bulletproof vest, and he would also take some food with him.

Take Bakhmut, for example. He needs to walk 4.5 km across forest belts. These forest belts are not connected to each other, meaning you have to run 600 m across the field, where something flies in every hour, every minute, and these are not just mortar rounds -- none of the infantrymen are scary of mortars -- but also first-person-view (FPV) kamikaze drones or drone-dropped grenades. For example, I’m sending a group of soldiers for a mission in a forest belt. We are tasked to occupy this forest. The group of four goes out, but only two of them reach the destination. Then another group, also of four, goes out, and, again, only two get there. And your task is to take and keep control of this forest area. You say to the higher leader: Commander, look, let's do this and that. Maybe you can invent an alternative. He says: No, people must be there for the mission. You say: Do you see what is going on? He replies: I do see, but I was given the order, I must comply with it. Well, I guess that’s understandable, but people are dying. The most difficult decision is to say: I won't send people there anymore. And he says: what do you mean you won't send people anymore? And you: no, I won’t, that’s it. This is probably the most difficult decision to make...

- You are currently training new recruits...

- We are doing this, among other things, as part of our job. We are training newcomers all the time, because the lack of personnel is huge, or, rather, not that huge actually, but personnel are in short supply. And you need to teach them properly and quickly. Accordingly, one may think he will be get trained to pilot a drone, will begin flying, and everything will be cool, he can fly it. If one doesn't understand what it's like to sit in a trench, where every second matters, where each your fail, each delay (because something fails to fly or you have wrong setups for a mission, or for some other reasons) can make the mission pointless, because it will be too late. But after you have been in the trenches, knowing that you may become the target for each piece of the ammo that comes in, and then you become a pilot, you understand how hard it is for a soldier, how hard it is for a warrior. And this is what you try to convey to the trainees, that guys, jokes aside, the shovel is your friend, because to dig yourself in a hole means to survive, to protect yourself; you also need to wear personal protective gear all the time, because it will help you survive if under shelling. That is, this all needs to be expounded, because a man may be aware of something but does not fully understand it until he feels this through and through.

Therefore, that’s where the training should be focused on, I suppose, because it is not difficult to train one in digging in or shooting. Some are difficult to convince that thy need to perform tasks, need to do what they are told, because they are not the smartest people, that everyone have already been through everything they are going through, that everyone know everything, have seen everything. And so we need to improve teamwork, improve coordination, because a team, if properly coordinated, is easier to manage, it performs it tasks better. Well, in principle, where training is concerned, I don’t think it a problem to get people trained in shooting. Other aspects of training matter more, I believe.

- Finally, the question we invariably ask our guests is about what we all believe in, about our victory. How do you see the victory of Ukraine? Do you have plans, dreams about what you will do after victory?

-- Of course, I do believe in our victory (it’s even not up for discussion), no matter on which terms it may be achieved, but the victory should definitely be ours. This must be precisely a victory, not an interpretation of some agreements or something else. That is, there should be the victory that will be universally recognized, everyone should admit that we have won , have done this all, because we fought so much to achieve this victory, and that should be a victory for us. It does not matter if it ends up with the destruction of someone or with a surrender of some kind. It matters that the victory should be ours, that the final word will be ours. It should be ours, of the Ukrainians, not partners’ nor someone else's help. It should be ours because we fought for it. Regarding my plans for after the victory... I don't know, let's do at least something first, consistently. If and when we win, then, of course, there will be some plans, lots of plans... I just hope I have enough time in my life to see them through.

- Great! While this interview is slowly coming to an end, I would like you to answer a series of blitz questions. I ask you brief questions, you answer just as briefly and succinctly. What qualities do you value most in people?

- Honesty, probably.

- What motivates you to wake up every day?

- Unfinished work to be done.

- What are your biggest achievements or pride?

- My child.

- What is your favorite quote, a life credo?

- He is a fool who never changes his mind.

- How do you usually cope with stress or difficulties?

- Sports, reading books. Oh no! This is rather to go out somewhere, drive somewhere, achieve something.

- What are your main values ​​in life?

- Family, probably.

- What matters more to you, achieving goals or moving towards them?

- I cannot choose between these two, because one does not happen without the other. Achieving a goal is great, but moving towards it is an interesting process in itself.

- What does happiness mean to you?

- Happiness is where no one is sick, no one needs anything, people from my circle -- friends, the loved ones, relatives – are secured, no one have problems in life.

- What has made you happiest in life?

- The birth of my daughter.

-- The victory, which we have already discussed, in a word, is...

- Honor.

- Thank you for this interesting talk! I wish you and your daughter good health; I wish her to grow up in a free country to the joy of the parents!

Interviewed by Diana Slavinska

Watch the full video of the interview on the Ukrinform TV YouTube channel