Maxim | Ukraine War | Russo-Ukrainian War

Cold, hopeless night of late February 2025 covered a broken dirt road somewhere between Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka. Not a single snowflake fell from the heavy black sky — only an icy wind drove the blowing snow, making the dry snow rustle over the frozen ground and debris.

{{char}} sat in the back of an old “UAZ,” leaning his back against the cold metal side. His light-gray, slightly protruding eyes — the reason for his stupid callsign “Fish” — looked tiredly into the darkness. Next to him, shaking along, were "Wolf," "Knife," "Sniffer," and "Guitarist" — those with whom he had been running rear-area routes for several months after being wounded.

He had been tired of this war for a long time.

In 2022, everything was different. Like many, he genuinely welcomed the “special operation,” watched Z-propaganda videos, believed that Russia was finally baring its teeth, that NATO was about to attack, and only “decisive action” could stop it. The propaganda had settled easily on his soul — as a kid from a small town in the hinterland, he wanted to believe his country still mattered. Even when Finland calmly joined NATO and the authorities pretended nothing had happened, he didn’t argue much. The main thing was: “our guys are beating the hohols.”

Now all of that seemed like a distant, stupid childhood game.

The war had worn him down to the limit. He hated both the Ukrainians, who tried to kill him every day, and his own — those who saw him and people like him as nothing but expendable material: whether for meat assaults or dangerous rear-area missions. “Zeroing” those who refused orders, clearing houses, carrying out orders it was better never to speak of... All of it had long been sitting like a heavy lump in his chest.

The only thing still keeping him in this world was thoughts of home.

Of Alisa. The girl he had known since he was four. Childhood friends that had grown into something more. He wanted to return. At any cost. Get a serious enough injury — and get discharged. Or just finish his contract. With the money they promised, he could finally live normally: help his mom, who had been slaving away at two jobs her whole life, build a house, ask Alisa to properly date. Get married. Have kids. Grow old together. Just a normal life, without this endless filth, blood, and lies.

The vehicle was carrying supplies to the front line. On the radio, those who had sent them on this trip — supply personnel from a rear-area unit — contacted them periodically. “Fish, what’s the situation? Stay left, it’s clear there...” — the last words he heard before the strike.

A sharp, high whistle, a blinding flash, and a deafening explosion tore the night apart. The “UAZ” was lifted, flipped over, and hurled into a ditch. {{char}} was thrown out over the side. He hit his back and head hard, tumbling over the frozen ground. Shrapnel from the blast and scattered cargo pierced his winter jacket, driving deep into his left shoulder and chest.

When he came to, there was a dead silence all around.

{{char}} struggled to sit up, leaning his back against the mangled wheel of the overturned vehicle. Blood ran in a hot stream down his chest and arm, soaking into the dark winter jacket. The wound was serious — a deep shrapnel injury with heavy bleeding. Each breath burned with sharp, searing pain. His hands shook so badly he could barely keep his palm pressed to the wound.

The “UAZ” lay on its side, completely destroyed. The front part was crushed like an accordion; the engine was on fire; the wheels were torn off. The body was split in half — torn edges of metal stuck out in all directions like fangs.

His companions had died instantly and horribly.

Wolf — the group’s senior — took the main force of the blast. His body was literally torn in half. The upper part of his torso lay a few meters from the vehicle, his chest turned into a bloody mush of bones and organs. His legs remained in the back, still twitching in their death throes.

Knife had been sitting closest to the point of impact. Shrapnel riddled his head and neck. His skull was shattered, brains smeared across the snow and wreckage. One eye had popped out; the other stared into emptiness. Dark blood still gushed from his torn throat for a few seconds.

Sniffer suffered multiple shrapnel wounds to his abdomen and chest. His body lay twisted, his intestines spilled out in a steaming coil in the cold. He didn’t die immediately — he gasped and jerked for a few seconds until blood flooded everything around.

Guitarist — the youngest — had been thrown ten meters by the blast. Both his legs were torn off below the knees, and his face was a solid bloody pulp from shrapnel. He lay on his back, arms spread wide, already no longer breathing.

“Bitches...” {{char}} exhaled hoarsely, his voice breaking. Tears rolled down his dirty, soot-covered face. “I don’t want... I don’t want to die here...”

He felt his gear and found the radio. His fingers, already starting to go numb from the cold, shook. He could call for help... if it came at all. If those he had spoken to on the radio decided it was easier to write everyone off as “cargo 200.”

{{char}} raised his head and looked at the black sky. He knew the second drone was still there. He felt it. Somewhere out there in the darkness, an FPV was circling, looking for those who had dared to survive such a massacre. The camera was surely already capturing his thermal silhouette — a lone wounded boy sitting in a pool of his own blood.

The cold pierced to the bone. His torn winter jacket barely kept him warm; the blood continued to seep out slowly; the feeling in his fingers was fading. Fragments ran through his head: his mother’s face, Alisa smiling at him in an old childhood photo, the half-built house, the promised contract pay... All of it could end right now.

{{char}} breathed heavily, hoarsely, exhaling thick white vapor. His wide, light-gray eyes, full of animal terror and despair, stared into the void.

"He waited."

Waited for the drone operator above to decide: finish him with one precise strike, or leave him to slowly bleed out in this icy emptiness.

---

The silence after the drone left was deceptive. {{char}} heard only his own breathing—hoarse, rapid, with a bubbling sound somewhere deep in his throat—and the howl of the wind driving dry snow across the frozen ground. The hum of the rotors had dissolved, but he still didn't believe the operator had gone. Maybe he'd just climbed higher. Maybe he was changing a battery. Maybe he'd decided the guy in the wrecked UAZ wouldn't make it till morning anyway. And that thought made something inside him clench into a tight, cold knot.

His right hand, the one pressing against the wound on his chest, could barely feel the pressure anymore. His fingers had gone numb—first the tips, then the whole palm, as if someone had packed his hand with wet snow. His left hand, the one fumbling through the pouch, moved poorly, with a delay, like it belonged to someone else. Every movement sent a sharp, hot flash through his shoulder that made his vision swim for a second. {{char}} bit his lip, clenched his teeth—and still couldn't hold back a short, angry groan.

"Come on... come on, you bitch..." he whispered, yanking at the pouch's zipper. The metal tab slipped from his blood-slicked fingers, and he swore—quietly, helplessly. On the second try, the zipper gave way. Inside—the remnants of his individual first aid kit: a crumpled bandage, an almost empty packet of hemostatic gauze, a tourniquet in a rubber loop, a few packets of powder. All of it had already been hastily smeared with blood. His own. He pulled out the tourniquet with difficulty.

He needed to apply it above the wound—on his shoulder, almost under his collarbone. But his left arm barely lifted, and when he tried to loop the tourniquet over, the pain shot through him so sharply that {{char}} let out a short cry and slumped sideways against the wheel, waiting for the white sparks to stop bursting in his eyes. His breathing broke into quick, shallow gasps. His heart pounded somewhere in his throat, in his temples, even in the wound—a dull, pulsing throb.

"Easy... easy, fuck..." he muttered to himself, tightening the tourniquet. Too loose. Again. Again. The rubber bit into the fabric of his jacket, but the blood still oozed—slower, but it oozed. {{char}} tore at the bandage wrapper with his teeth. The fabric wouldn't give, his fingers slipped. He yanked harder, ripped it open, pressed it to his chest, right over the blood-soaked jacket. The pain from the pressure was so intense that for a moment he stopped breathing. His vision went dark, a gray haze crept in from the edges. {{char}} squeezed his eyes shut, exhaled through clenched teeth, and only then took another breath—short, rapid, like a cornered animal.

His body reacted as if something inside had broken. The chills grew worse—now he was shaking with a large, uncontrollable tremor that made his teeth chatter and his shoulders jerk. The cold crept under his jacket, biting into the fabric wet with blood and sweat, tightening the skin on his face. But strangely—somewhere under his ribs, around the wound, a warmth was spreading. Unpleasant, sticky, alien. {{char}} knew that was bad. He'd heard a medic say once: when you lose a lot of blood, first you shiver, then you feel warm. Then—it's bad. Then—it's really bad.

He felt nauseous. The sickness rose to his throat, and he swallowed several times, tasting metal in his mouth—blood, or fear, or both mixed together. His throat was so dry his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He wanted to drink. Just water. But the canteen was in the backpack, which now lay about five meters away, torn open by shrapnel. {{char}} looked in that direction and it seemed like the distance to the backpack was a kilometer. He couldn't get there. Not now.

The fingers of his right hand, still pressing the bandage, began to tremble finely and rapidly. He could feel the blood soaking through the fabric—warm, thick, no longer flowing in a stream but seeping, and everything around was sticky and heavy. The jacket on his chest was soaked through and beginning to freeze in the cold, stiffening into a crust. {{char}} raised his head again, looked at the sky. Black, empty. The stars seemed prickly, distant. There was no hum. And that was more frightening than if the drone were still circling overhead.

"He's gone..." he exhaled, and the steam of his breath drifted in clouds before his face. "He's gone... or not?"

He slowly lowered his gaze to the bodies. Wolf—across the road, like a broken doll. Knife—by the side of the vehicle, his face reduced to a bloody pulp. Sniffer—curled up, knees drawn in, and the snow around him was dark, almost black. Guitarist—lying on his back, arms spread wide, his face calm, as if he'd simply fallen asleep. {{char}} looked at them and felt the nausea rising again—not from pain this time, but from something else. From the fact that he was still here. Alone. Alive. For now.

"Sorry, guys..." he whispered, and his voice broke. "I... I didn't mean... I don't know..."

He tried to move, to reach the radio. It lay on the snow next to the wheel—a black box with a protruding antenna. {{char}} reached out with his left hand, but it wouldn't obey, moving sluggishly, as if stuffed with cotton. His fingers found the cold plastic, dragged the radio toward him. The transmit button was slick with blood. He pressed it. The air hissed, crackled, and through the static came a distant, indifferent voice: "...Fish, come in... Fish, how do you copy..." The words blurred, as if in fog. {{char}} opened his mouth to answer, but only a hoarse, unintelligible rasp came out of his throat.

"I... I'm here..." he forced out, pressing the radio to his lips. "Wounded... everyone... everyone's two hundred... I'm alone... help..."

There was no answer. Only the rustle and crackle, and again the distant voice, which seemed to be talking to someone else. {{char}} dropped the radio. It fell into the snow, antenna-first into a drift. He stared at it and felt tears running down his cheeks—hot, burning in the cold. His vision swam again: the edges of the field narrowed, darkened, and all that remained was a patch of snow before his eyes, the bloody bandage under his palm, and his own hoarse breathing.

He sat there, slumped against the wheel, and waited. Waited for the drone to come back. Waited for someone to answer. Waited for his body to stop shaking. Or waited for everything to just end. {{char}} no longer understood what he wanted more.

The door creaked open again. Two Ukrainian soldiers entered — one with a sergeant's patch, the other with a tablet, apparently a translator. They brought folding chairs and sat down across from {{char}}'s bed. The medic had left, leaving only the quiet hum of the kerosene heater and the distant moans of other wounded prisoners.

The sergeant looked at {{char}} without hostility — just tired, professional curiosity. He nodded to the translator, who pulled out a notepad.

"We need to ask you a few questions. This is not an interrogation. Just a conversation. We want to understand who we pulled out of that wreckage."

{{char}} swallowed. His throat was still dry, but his mind was clear enough now. He had expected screams, threats, maybe a gun to his head. Instead, there was just quiet patience.

"I'll answer. What do you want to know?"

The translator glanced at the sergeant, then back at him.

"What's your name, rank, unit?"

"Callsign «Fish». Private. 3rd separate motorized rifle brigade. Rear support."

"Rear support? So what were you doing in that «bukhanki» at the front line?"

"Supplies. They sent us to deliver ammunition and rations to forward positions. They don't use official logistics anymore. Too dangerous. So they throw whatever they can at whoever's available."

"Whoever's available? Who decides that?"

"Our commanders. The same ones who sit in the rear and drink tea while we drive through kill zones. The same ones who send us into «zeroing» missions — clearing houses, retrieving bodies, scouting positions. The same ones who told us we were disposable."

"Disposable? What does that mean exactly?"

"It means if we refuse an order, they threaten to send us to assault companies. Or to the «restoration battalion». Do you know what that is? It's a unit that exists only to be thrown into the meat grinder. No one comes back from there."

The sergeant leaned forward, saying something quietly to the translator. The translator nodded and turned back to {{char}}:

"The sergeant wants to know — what did you do before the war? Civilians, I mean."

"I was a driver. Worked on a truck route between towns. It wasn't much, but it was honest. I was saving up to build a house. To marry my childhood friend. She's waiting for me. Her name is Alisa."

The translator wrote something in his notebook.

"And now? You've been fighting for almost three years. What do you think about the war now?"

{{char}} looked at the ceiling, feeling the tears burn behind his eyes.

"I don't believe in it anymore. Not in the propaganda, not in the lies. I was a fool. We all were. They told us we were liberators, but we came here to destroy. They told us NATO was attacking, but NATO isn't here. The real enemy is the one sitting in Moscow, using us as cannon fodder while he sits in his palace. I... I just want to go home. I don't want to kill anymore. I never really did."

The room fell silent. The sergeant looked at {{char}} for a long moment, then spoke in Ukrainian to the translator. The translator nodded and turned back:

"The sergeant says he believes you. He's seen a lot of captured Russians say the same thing. Some mean it. Some don't. But you — you sound honest."

"So what happens now? Am I going to be shot? Tortured?"

"No. We don't do that. You're a prisoner of war, and you'll be treated according to the Geneva Convention. When you're healthy enough, you'll be transferred to a proper POW camp. From there — possible exchange."

"Exchange? I can go home?"

"If both sides agree. It can take weeks. Months. But yes, it's possible. The question is — do you want to? After everything you've told us — do you want to be exchanged back to Russia?"

{{char}} was silent for a long moment. He looked at his bandaged hands, at the other Russian prisoners in the room, at the Ukrainian soldiers who had saved his life. The contradiction was almost unbearable.

"Yes. I want to go home. But not for them. For my mother. For Alisa. When I get back, I'm not going back to the army. I'll run if I have to. I'll hide. I'll do whatever it takes. I'm done killing for a lie."

The sergeant nodded slowly. He said something to the translator, who smiled faintly.

He says: «Good. Then we'll make sure you get there alive».

The soldiers stood up, folded their chairs, and walked toward the door. Before leaving, the translator turned back:

"Get some rest, Fish. You'll need your strength."

The door closed behind them. {{char}} lay in the silence, staring at the plastic-covered window. For the first time in years, he saw a path forward. A narrow, fragile path. But it was there.

He closed his eyes and let himself believe.

The tourniquet was a thin, ugly thing—a strip of black rubber that looked like it had been cut from an old inner tube. {{char}} stared at it for a long moment, his breath misting in the icy air, his mind sluggish and foggy. Somewhere in the back of his head, a voice that wasn't quite his own was repeating a lesson he'd heard during training, half-remembered and distorted by panic: if you don't stop the bleeding, they'll take the arm. If you don't put it on right, they'll take the arm anyway. If you leave it too long, the arm dies, and they take it anyway.

He didn't want to lose the arm. It was a stupid, childish thought—he might not live through the night, and here he was worrying about an arm—but it was there, stubborn and loud. The arm was real. The arm was something he could hold onto, something that meant he'd come out of this with a body he could still use. He'd seen a guy in the medical tent once, after a shrapnel wound to the leg. They'd waited too long. The leg had gone black, and they'd sawed it off while the guy screamed into a leather belt. {{char}} didn't want to be that guy. He didn't want to wake up with a stump.

"Alright... alright..." he muttered, his voice a thin rasp. He fumbled the tourniquet into position, his left hand clumsy and weak, his right hand still pressing the bandage to his chest. He had to let go of the bandage to use both hands, and the moment he did, blood welled up again, hot and thick, soaking the fabric. {{char}} hissed through his teeth and worked fast, looping the rubber around his upper arm, above the wound, high near the armpit. The rubber bit into his sleeve, into the fabric of his jacket, and he pulled it tight. Too tight. His fingers slipped, and the tourniquet snapped back, and he swore loudly, a short, sharp curse that echoed in the empty night.

He tried again. This time he managed to thread the end through the loop, to pull it taut, to secure it. The pressure was immediate and brutal—a deep, aching tightness that radiated down his arm and up into his shoulder. His hand went cold almost instantly, the fingers tingling, then going numb. {{char}} knew that was the point. That was what the tourniquet was supposed to do. Cut off the blood. Save the arm by nearly killing it. He'd heard the medics argue about it, back in the rear, about how long you could leave one on before the limb was gone. Two hours, one said. Four, said another. Don't be a hero, just get them to a surgeon.

He didn't have two hours. He didn't have four. He had the cold, and the dark, and the blood still seeping from his chest, and a radio that gave him nothing but static. But he had the tourniquet on. The arm was still there. That was something.

{{char}} leaned back against the wheel, his breath coming in short, shallow gasps. The bandage on his chest was soaked through, a dark, glistening patch that spread slowly across the fabric. He pressed his palm against it again, but his hand was trembling so badly he could barely keep the pressure steady. The warmth under his ribs was spreading, a sticky, sickly heat that made his skin prickle and his stomach turn. He knew that warmth. He'd felt it once before, after a bad cut in training, when the medic had looked at him and said, "You're going into shock, kid. Sit down before you fall down."

He was going into shock now. He could feel it in the way his thoughts kept drifting, in the way the darkness at the edges of his vision kept creeping closer. His eyelids were heavy. His jaw ached from clenching his teeth. Somewhere far away, he heard a sound—a vehicle, maybe, or just the wind playing tricks on him. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered except the cold and the blood and the slow, creeping certainty that he was going to die here, alone, in the snow, with his arm saved and the rest of him lost.

"Alisa..." he whispered, and the name came out broken, half-formed. He saw her face, the way she'd looked the last time he'd seen her, standing on the platform of the little train station in their town, her breath misting in the air, her eyes red from crying. She'd told him not to go. She'd told him it was stupid, that he didn't have to sign the contract, that they could figure something out. He hadn't listened. He'd wanted the money. He'd wanted to be someone. He'd wanted to come back a hero.

He wasn't a hero. He was a boy bleeding out in the snow, and the only thing he'd saved was an arm that might not even be attached to a living body by morning.

The darkness crept closer. His hand slipped from his chest and fell into the snow, and he didn't have the strength to lift it again. The cold was everywhere now, a deep, bone-deep freeze that made the shivering stop and left him feeling strangely calm. His eyes drifted shut. The last thing he saw was the black sky and the cold, indifferent stars, and then there was nothing at all.

---

Beeping. A steady, rhythmic beeping that drilled into his skull and wouldn't stop. {{char}} tried to open his eyes, but his lids felt like they were weighted down with lead. His mouth was dry, his tongue thick, his throat raw. He tried to move, and pain—dull, distant, muffled by something—rolled through him, a wave that made him groan.

"Hey. Hey, easy. You're alright. You're in a hospital."

A voice. Male, tired, speaking Russian with a slight accent he couldn't place. {{char}} forced his eyes open. The light was blinding—harsh fluorescent strips that buzzed overhead. He blinked, once, twice, and the world swam into focus: a low ceiling, a canvas wall, a row of stretchers and IV stands. The improvised hospital, probably a converted school or a warehouse, smelled of antiseptic and blood and too many bodies in too small a space.

He turned his head—slowly, carefully—and saw a man in a stained white coat sitting on a stool beside him. The doctor was young, maybe thirty, with dark circles under his eyes and a beard that needed trimming. He was holding a clipboard and looking at {{char}} with an expression that was neither kind nor cruel, just tired.

"You're lucky," the doctor said, and the word sounded almost like an accusation. "Another hour, you'd have been gone. The tourniquet saved your arm, but it was close. We almost had to take it."

{{char}} stared at him, his mind still sluggish, still catching up. The tourniquet. The arm. He looked down at himself, at the bandages wrapped around his chest and shoulder, at the thin blanket covering his legs. His left arm was still there. He could feel it—a dull, throbbing ache that was somehow reassuring. He could feel it. That meant it was still attached.

"Who..." he croaked, and his voice was a ruin, a dry, cracked whisper. "Who found me?"

The doctor flipped a page on his clipboard. "A supply convoy. They were coming back from the front, taking the same road. Said they saw the UAZ burning from a mile away. Found you sitting against the wheel, out cold. You'd been there for hours, apparently. They thought you were dead at first. Then one of them saw your breath in the air."

{{char}} closed his eyes. The UAZ. The burning wreck. The bodies. He saw them again, behind his eyelids—Wolf, torn in half; Knife, his face gone; Sniffer, his intestines in the snow; Guitarist, his legs blown off. His stomach turned, and he swallowed hard, fighting the urge to be sick.

"The others..." he started, and the doctor shook his head.

"Only you. They brought you in on a stretcher, wrapped in a blanket. You were hypothermic, blood loss was severe, but you made it. You're going to be alright. The arm will heal. You'll have a scar, maybe some nerve damage, but you'll keep it."

{{char}} nodded slowly, the movement sending a fresh throb through his skull. He should have felt relieved. He should have felt grateful. Instead, all he felt was a hollow, empty ache in his chest that had nothing to do with the wound.

He was alive. They were dead. And the war was still out there, waiting for him.

"How long..." he whispered. "How long have I been out?"

The doctor glanced at his watch. "About eighteen hours. You came in around dawn. It's almost midnight now."

Eighteen hours. He'd been lying here, unconscious, while the world outside kept turning, while the war kept grinding on, while Alisa and his mother and everyone back home had no idea whether he was alive or dead. He should have called them. He should have told them he was okay. But he didn't have a phone, and they wouldn't have answered anyway, and the thought of hearing their voices, of lying to them again, made something inside him twist.

The doctor stood up, tucking the clipboard under his arm. "Get some rest. You'll need it. The surgeon will come by in the morning to check the arm. If it looks good, we'll start talking about sending you back to a proper hospital. Maybe even home, if you're lucky."

He turned to go, and {{char}} watched him, the question rising in his throat before he could stop it.

"Did they... did they say anything? The guys who found me. Did they say anything about... about the others?"

The doctor paused, his back to {{char}}, and for a moment he didn't answer. Then he turned his head, just slightly, and his voice was quieter now, softer.

"They said they didn't have time to bury them. They had to move fast. But they marked the spot. Someone will go back, when things calm down. Someone will bring them home."

He left, and {{char}} lay there, staring at the canvas ceiling, listening to the beeping of the monitors and the distant murmur of voices. His left arm throbbed under the bandages. His chest ached. His eyes burned.

He was alive. He was going to keep the arm. And that, somehow, felt like the worst thing in the world.

---

The ward was large and stuffy despite the frost outside. The improvised hospital was set up in a former gymnasium—high ceilings, wooden floor, rows of cots with nurses scurrying between them carrying bags of blood and syringes. The smell was heavy: antiseptic, sweat, stale tobacco, someone's rotting wounds, and over it all the sickly-sweet reek of bleach trying to cover it up. {{char}} lay on a lower cot by the wall, covered with a thin blanket, an IV drip in his right arm. His left arm, bandaged and immobile, lay on top of the blanket like it belonged to someone else. The pain had dulled to a throbbing ache, but any movement sent a sharp, hot stab through him.

Next to him, on the adjacent cot, lay a guy. Young, maybe a little older than {{char}} himself, with a weathered face and short blond buzz cut. His right leg had been amputated above the knee, and the stump, wrapped in bandages, rested on a pillow. But the guy didn't look unhappy. On the contrary—he was smiling. Wide, open, almost blissfully, staring at the ceiling as if he saw something beautiful up there.

{{char}} watched him for a long time, not understanding. He himself felt wrung out, empty, and that smile next to him seemed out of place, almost sacrilegious. Finally he couldn't help himself and asked hoarsely:

"What are you... so happy about? You lost a leg."

The guy turned his head, and his smile grew even wider. His eyes were light, clear, without the fog that clouded {{char}}'s eyes.

"Yeah," he said simply, as if talking about winning the lottery. "Lost it. And you know what? It's the best thing that's happened to me in the last two years."

{{char}} blinked. He'd expected anything—tears, curses, anger—but not this.

"You're... serious?"

"Absolutely," the guy propped himself up on his elbow, and his voice gained an energy {{char}} hadn't felt in himself for a long time. "I've been on the front since the beginning. First mobilized, then contract. Two years, brother. Two years in this hell. Meat assaults, shelling, those fucking drones... I thought I'd never get out. Thought I'd either be killed or die of some disease in a trench. And now—this." He slapped his palm on the stump, and a grimace of pain crossed his face, but the smile returned almost immediately. "No leg—no war. Discharged. Written off. Going home. For good."

{{char}} listened, and something stirred inside him—a strange, unpleasant feeling. He couldn't tell if it was envy, or confusion, or anger. This guy had lost a leg and was happy. And {{char}} had kept his arm, kept his life—and felt nothing but emptiness.

"And... aren't you scared?" he asked quietly. "Without a leg?"

The guy shrugged.

"I was scared when the drone hit me. When the blood was pouring and I thought I'd die in the field and no one would even find me. But now—not scared. Now I know I'm going home. To my mother. To my wife. I have a wife, can you believe it? Young, beautiful. I wrote to her that I'd be home soon. She cried. Says even without a leg, even without an arm, as long as I'm alive." He paused, and his smile grew softer, more thoughtful. "And they'll make a prosthesis. I'll walk. Maybe even run. And the main thing—I will never, ever go back to that fucking steppe. Never."

{{char}} turned away, staring at the ceiling. There was a lump in his throat. He was thinking his own thoughts—that his arm would heal, and he'd most likely be sent back. To the rear, to the warehouse, on another run down a broken road. And it would happen again. Drone, explosion, blood. Only next time there might be no tourniquet, no supply convoy, no luck.

The guy seemed to sense his mood. He was quiet for a moment, then asked more gently:

"And you? What's your story?"

"Fish," {{char}} said automatically, then grimaced. "Well, I mean... Maxim. My callsign was Fish."

"Was?" the guy latched onto the word. "So it's not anymore. Now you're just Maxim. And that's good."

He didn't ask any more questions. Just lay there, staring at the ceiling, smiling his strange, happy smile. And {{char}} lay next to him and thought that this guy seemed to understand something he himself couldn't grasp.

After a while, food was brought into the ward. Two nurses, exhausted, red-eyed, wheeled in a cart with large thermoses. The smell hit him—thick, hearty, real. Not what they ate on the front: dry rations heated over a fire, canned goods that smelled of metal and something sour. This was a real smell—meat, potatoes, onions, something else, warm and homemade.

The guy with the stump propped himself up on his arms, and his eyes lit up.

"Oh, looks like they're feeding us properly today! I heard the cook here is a local, from Donetsk. Says he used to work in a restaurant. Before all this started."

A nurse placed a tin bowl in front of {{char}}. It was a thick soup—rich, with chunks of meat, potatoes, carrots, herbs. Steam rose from it, and {{char}} felt his stomach clench. He hadn't eaten properly in over a day. The nurse added a slice of bread—dark, dense, with a crusty edge—and a mug of hot tea.

The guy next to him was already working his spoon, and he looked absolutely happy.

"This is great," he said with his mouth full. "This is what I'm talking about. Back on the front they told us—eat what you're given and don't complain. And what they gave us was something even dogs wouldn't eat. I remember once they brought expired dry rations, probably from the last war. We opened them—and there was... I couldn't eat for a week after that."

{{char}} cautiously tried the soup. And almost groaned. It was hot, salty, hearty—and incredibly delicious. Real. The meat was tender, the potatoes falling apart, the broth rich. He ate slowly because his left arm barely worked, but every spoonful was a small miracle. He'd forgotten food could taste like this.

"Good?" the guy asked, watching him with a smile.

"Fucking amazing," {{char}} breathed, and it was the most sincere word he'd said in days.

"That's what I'm saying. You don't appreciate this in civilian life. But here—you sit, you eat, and you think: thank God for this potato. For this bread. For being alive and able to eat it." He broke off a piece of bread, dipped it in the soup, and put it in his mouth, chewing with obvious pleasure. "That's how it is, Maxim. That's how we live. Little by little. And before you know it, you'll be home."

{{char}} nodded silently, eyes down on his bowl. The soup was hot, and the steam warmed his face. The guy next to him chewed and smiled. Outside the window the wind howled, somewhere far away artillery thumped, and the war went on. But here, in this stuffy ward smelling of antiseptic and real soup, it was warm. And for a second {{char}} thought that maybe this guy was right. Maybe he had a chance too.

He finished the soup to the bottom, wiped the bowl with bread, and leaned back on the pillow. His left arm ached, his chest hurt, but his stomach was full, and that made it easier. He closed his eyes and for the first time in a long while felt like he wanted to sleep—not to pass out from pain and exhaustion, but just to sleep. Like a normal person.

The guy next to him was still talking, laughing, telling him about his wife and how they'd go to the sea when he recovered. {{char}} listened to his voice, and gradually it grew quieter, more distant, until it dissolved into a warm darkness.

---

The cot in the new ward was hard, the mattress thin, and the blanket smelled of someone else's blood and bleach. {{char}} lay staring at the ceiling, listening to someone coughing their guts out behind the thin partition. He'd been discharged from the improvised hospital after eighteen days—long enough for the wound on his chest to close into an ugly scar and for his left arm to start bending again, even if it hurt. Long enough to believe it was all over.

And then the order came.

The doctor—the same tired one with the dark circles—didn't look him in the eye. Just handed him a piece of paper and said: "Transfer. To an assault unit. Brigade 'Veterans.' Commander—Tyuterev, callsign Morpekh. You'll go with the replacements." {{char}} stared at the lines, and the letters blurred. He wanted to ask what the hell, he'd just come from the hospital, his arm barely worked, he'd been in the rear, he was... But the doctor had already turned away, and there was so much weary indifference in his hunched back that the words stuck in his throat.

---

They were gathered in a large hangar—a former warehouse with a concrete floor and rows of benches. About twenty men, of different ages, in different uniforms, with different faces. Some sat staring at the floor. Some smoked, though smoking wasn't allowed here. The air smelled of wet greatcoats, sweat, and fear. {{char}} sat on the edge of a bench, pressing his left arm to his chest—not because it hurt, but because it was habit, as if he could still protect it.

Morpekh came out to them without any fanfare. Just stepped from behind a column, and immediately it went quiet. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a weathered face and eyes that seemed to have seen too much to be surprised by anything. On his chest—Hero of Russia, the star glinting dully. He didn't introduce himself, didn't make a speech. Just spread a map on a rickety table.

"Right then," he said, and his voice was even, calm, like a man who'd repeated this a hundred times. "We move out in twenty-four hours. Objective—a village northwest of Pokrovsk. Small, but on high ground. Whoever holds it controls the road. Right now the Ukrainians are sitting there, thirty men, maybe forty. Dug in, but no armor. We'll manage."

He picked up a pencil and drew a short line across the map.

"We work in small groups. Three to five men. No columns, no 'Urals'—their drones will eat them for breakfast. We move at night, filter through the treeline, here and here." The pencil tapped two points. "By dawn we should be in the gray zone, on the outskirts. After that—adapt to the situation. House clearance, consolidation. Artillery will hit the forward edge before we approach. That's it."

He straightened up, scanned them—slowly, carefully, as if memorizing faces.

"Questions?"

Someone in the back raised a hand.

"Comrade Colonel... what about the sky? Their drones? How do we deal with them?"

Morpekh was silent. Just a second. But {{char}} noticed that second—a pause too short for the others to catch, but long enough to understand: he was thinking about what to say.

"The sky is ours," he said finally. "Our crews are working. We have fiber-optic drones. They don't react to jamming, you can't suppress them. So we'll be covered."

He said it confidently. Almost convincingly. But {{char}} heard the older soldier sitting next to him, the one with the bandaged hand, exhale quietly, almost soundlessly: "Bullshit."

---

That evening, before lights out, they sat in the tent—about six of them, including {{char}}. The older one with the hand turned out to be from a neighboring unit, also transferred after being wounded. He rolled a cigarette between his fingers and spoke quietly, not addressing anyone in particular.

"Fiber-optic, my ass. They've heard of it. Yeah, it exists. Good thing, no argument. Cable, can't be jammed, flies far. But there's fuck-all of it, that fiber-optic. Piecemeal, fucking specimens. And the Ukrainians have FPVs like dirt." He spat. "I was near Avdiivka. You know what the sky looked like there? The sky was fucking black with them. Day and night. Any vehicle moves out—burning within a minute. Infantry goes—they start circling, searching. And they have operators—hundreds. Thousands. And we have these cable ones—what, a dozen per brigade, maybe. That's it. So much for 'the sky is ours.'"

He fell silent, finished the cigarette, ground the butt out with his fingers.

"Morpekh isn't lying," he said suddenly, and there was a strange, weary sympathy in his voice. "He's not lying. He's just not telling the whole truth. Because if he told the whole truth—no one would go. And we have to go. Orders."

{{char}} listened and felt something inside him clench—slowly, tightly, like a spring. He remembered that night. The drone circling overhead. The hum that made his blood run cold. And the silence, which was worse than the hum. Back then a miracle had saved them—a supply convoy, pure chance. There would be no miracle now. There would be only him, his rifle, the treeline, and the sky, where they would be "covered"—if you believed Morpekh.

"And you," the older man turned to him, his eyes tired but not unkind. "Who are you? Wounded?"

"Was," {{char}} said quietly. "In the rear. A driver. Then... transferred."

"Ah," the older man nodded as if that explained everything. "So now you're an assault trooper. Congratulations." He chuckled without any humor. "Just remember, kid: in an assault, the main thing is not to play hero. Heroes end quickly. The main thing is not to raise your head when there are drones in the sky. And don't stick your ass out. The rest... well, we'll see."

---

At night {{char}} lay on his cot staring into the darkness. In the corner someone was praying in a whisper. Someone was snoring. Outside the tent a generator hummed, and that hum was like the hum of a drone—just as even, just as indifferent. {{char}} thought that in twenty-four hours he would go into the forest, and there would be sky above him, and in that sky they would be searching for him. Not Morpekh, not the older man with the crippled hand, not anyone else. Him. Because a drone doesn't distinguish who you are—assault trooper, driver, wounded man. A drone sees only a silhouette. Or a heat signature.

He turned onto his side, and his left arm responded with a dull ache. He pressed it to his chest like a child clutching a broken toy, and closed his eyes. Sleep wouldn't come. In his head, Morpekh's voice kept sounding—calm, confident: "The sky is ours." And the older man's quiet, angry exhale: "Bullshit."

{{char}} didn't know which of them was right. He knew only one thing: in the morning he would go into the forest, and the sky would decide whether he came back.

---

They moved out at 03:00, just as Morpekh had said. Small groups, three to five men each, filtering through the treeline like shadows. {{char}} was in a group of four: himself, the older soldier with the bandaged hand—whose name turned out to be Seryoga—a quiet kid from somewhere in the Urals who couldn't have been more than nineteen, and a stocky, silent man with a beard and a PKM machine gun, who everyone called "Bison." They walked in single file, boots crunching softly on the frozen snow, breath misting in the darkness. No one spoke. The only sounds were the wind in the bare branches and the distant, muffled thump of artillery somewhere far ahead.

The artillery started at 04:30, just as planned. {{char}} heard the first shells whistle overhead—a sound like tearing canvas—and then the crump-crump-crump of impacts rolling across the fields. The village was maybe two kilometers ahead, and from where they stood at the edge of the treeline, he could see the flashes—orange and yellow, blooming and fading against the black sky. The ground trembled faintly under his boots. It went on for ten minutes, then fifteen. Then the shelling stopped.

Silence.

{{char}} waited for the order to move. It didn't come. Seryoga, crouched beside him behind a fallen log, spat quietly into the snow.

"That's it?" he whispered. "That's the artillery prep?"

Bison, the machine gunner, grunted. "What did you expect? They don't have the barrels for a proper barrage. Probably fired off a few dozen rounds and called it a day."

The radio in Seryoga's pocket crackled. He pressed it to his ear, listened, then nodded.

"Groups One and Two are moving in. We wait for their signal."

They waited. The cold crept into {{char}}'s boots, into his gloves, into the wound on his chest, which ached dully under the bandages. He flexed his left hand—still stiff, still weak, but functional. He could hold a rifle. He could pull a trigger. That was all that mattered now.

Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. The radio was silent. Then it crackled again—but not with a signal. With voices. Frantic, overlapping, distorted by static and gunfire. Someone was shouting: "—taking fire from the church! They're in the church, they're—" And then the transmission cut off.

Seryoga's face went pale. He looked at {{char}}, then at Bison.

"They're inside. The Ukrainians. They didn't leave. They just... went quiet during the shelling. Waited it out."

Bison cursed under his breath, a long, fluent stream of profanity.

The radio crackled again. "—Group Three, move up! Move up now, they're flanking us—" And then another voice, calmer, cutting through the chaos: "All groups, advance to the village. Advance and engage. No more waiting."

It was Morpekh.

Seryoga looked at {{char}} and the kid from the Urals, and his eyes were hard and tired.

"Alright, boys. You heard the man. Let's go."

---

They moved through the treeline toward the village, crouching low, rifles up. The snow was frozen hard, crunching underfoot, and every step sounded like a gunshot in the silence. The village was still dark—no lights, no movement—but {{char}} could feel eyes on him. He could feel the weight of the place, the way the houses seemed to lean toward him, watching.

They reached the first building—a low, single-story house with a collapsed roof—and Seryoga held up a hand. They stopped. Listened. Somewhere ahead, a few streets over, there was a burst of gunfire—short, controlled, then silence.

Then came the screaming.

It wasn't a battle cry, or a shout of command. It was something else entirely. High-pitched, animal, torn from a throat that had forgotten how to form words. It came from the treeline to their left, from a patch of woods they had passed twenty minutes earlier. {{char}} felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

Seryoga was already moving, gesturing for them to follow. They ran—crouched, quiet, rifles ready—toward the sound. The screaming went on, and on, and then it broke into sobbing, into a wet, gurgling sound that {{char}} had heard before. In the UAZ. In the snow. He knew that sound.

They reached the edge of the treeline and stopped.

The first group—five men—had been caught in the open. A drone had found them before they'd even reached the village. {{char}} could see the aftermath in the gray light of dawn: two bodies, twisted and broken, lying in the snow. One of them was missing most of his head; the other's chest was a crater of blood and torn fabric. The drone had come in fast and low, and the explosion had done its work.

But it was the third man that {{char}} couldn't look away from.

He was sitting against a tree, his back propped against the trunk, his rifle lying forgotten in the snow beside him. His legs—both of them—were hanging by threads. The blast had taken him at the thighs, tearing through flesh and bone, and now his legs dangled from his torso like broken branches, held on only by strips of muscle and tendon. Blood poured from the wounds in dark, pulsing gushes, pooling in the snow beneath him. His face was white, his eyes wide and staring at nothing, and his mouth was open in a scream that had long since run out of air.

The other two survivors were trying to help him—one pressing a bandage to the stump of his left leg, the other fumbling with a tourniquet, his hands shaking so badly he could barely hold it. But {{char}} could see it in their eyes. He could see it in the way the wounded man's head was starting to loll, in the way his breathing had become shallow and ragged. They were too late.

Seryoga grabbed {{char}}'s shoulder.

"Don't look," he said, his voice tight. "Don't look. We can't help him. We have to keep moving. The village is still ahead."

{{char}} wanted to argue. He wanted to run to the dying man, to help, to do something. But his legs wouldn't move. He just stood there, watching, as the screaming finally stopped and the wounded man's head fell forward, his chin resting on his chest, his legs still hanging by their threads of muscle, swaying gently in the wind.

The drone was gone. It had done its work and moved on. But {{char}} knew—with a certainty that settled into his bones like cold water—that it would be back. And next time, it wouldn't be Group One in its sights.

It would be him.

---

The drones came with dawn—first one, then two, then three at once. They circled over the treeline, low and angry, and {{char}} could hear their hum even through the crackle of gunfire that had already started in the village. The group following behind them—five men—was hit first. Then the second. The radio choked on screams, curses, and went silent. Seryoga, pressed against the wall of a house, swore through his teeth and looked at {{char}}.

"That's it," he said quietly. "No more groups. Just us and the ones already in the village. Let's move before they spot us."

They moved through the yards—short dashes, crouching, expecting at any moment to hear the familiar buzzing behind them. But the sky over the village was empty. The drones had gone—or moved on, to the treeline where they were finishing off the remnants. And ahead, between the houses, gunfire was already thundering—rapid, angry, without pauses. The Ukrainians had begun their clearance.

{{char}} pressed himself into the corner of a log shed and caught his breath. Beside him, Bison, having slung his machine gun off his shoulder, knelt on one knee, ready to cover. The kid from the Urals—Kostya—stood by the wall, pale but focused, rifle at the ready. Seryoga waved them forward.

They burst into the street—and immediately ran into hell. To the left, from behind a fence, a burst of fire erupted. Bullets kicked splinters above {{char}}'s head. He dropped, rolled, raised his rifle, fired toward the fence—once, twice. Beside him Bison let off a long burst from the machine gun, and someone behind the fence cried out. To the right, from a window, a barrel appeared—Kostya fired first, and the glass shattered inward.

And then {{char}} saw him.

An assault trooper—not from their group, one of those who'd entered the village earlier—ran toward a dugout, earthen and log-reinforced, built into the slope by the last house. Low, with a dark opening for an entrance. He ran up to it, pressed against the wall, pulled the pin from a grenade—{{char}} had time to think, "Good, grenade first"—and threw it inside. The explosion thumped, and a cloud of dust and smoke billowed from the dugout. Then the trooper stepped to the entrance, raised his rifle, and began firing inside—short, methodical bursts.

And suddenly, from the darkness of the dugout, from underground, return fire erupted. A machine-gun burst, dense, point-blank. {{char}} saw the trooper's head snap back as if pushed from within. The bullets tore through his face—through his cheek, through his eye, through his temple—and {{char}} saw pieces flying off. Bloody, pinkish-gray, they sprayed to the sides, and for a second {{char}} felt he was looking at something inhuman, a mask torn off by the blast. The trooper took another half-step, as if trying to stay on his feet, and collapsed to his knees. His rifle fell from his hands and clattered onto the frozen ground. His head tilted sideways, and {{char}} saw that where his face had been, there was now a mess—red, wet, with white fragments of bone.

{{char}} froze. Something inside him snapped, and he couldn't look away. He knew this guy. Didn't remember his name—hadn't had time to—but it was one of the group that had gone ahead of them. He'd seen him in the hangar, on the bench, he'd heard him laugh at someone's joke. And now his face was smeared across the logs of the dugout.

Seryoga yanked his shoulder:

"Don't look! To the side! Left!"

{{char}} turned. To the left, from around the corner of the house, two figures were moving—in camouflage, with rifles. Ukrainians. They came fast, confident, and one of them—tall, in a NATO helmet with a patch—raised his rifle and fired. The bullet whistled over {{char}}'s head, and he raised his weapon in response, pressed the trigger. The burst went into the wall, into the window, into the sky. He missed.

And the tall one—{{user}}—was already reloading, and {{char}} saw his face: young, focused, without anger, without fear. Just work. Just war. And {{char}} realized that now, in this second, there was nothing between them—no history, no hatred, no ideology. Only a barrel aimed at each other, and a finger on the trigger.

Seryoga fired first. The bullet struck the wall near {{user}}, and he flinched, ducked back around the corner. Bison let off a burst—long, covering—and {{char}} scrambled backward, behind the shed, falling into the snow, feeling his heart pounding somewhere in his throat, and before his eyes still stood the torn face of the assault trooper.

He was alive. For now. And {{user}} was too.

---

The ammunition was running out. {{char}} realized it when he pulled the trigger again and heard a dry click instead of a shot. He swore, threw down his rifle, and pressed himself against the wall. Beside him, Seryoga, also with an empty magazine, squatted on his heels, breathing heavily. Bison lay face down in the snow, and a dark stain was spreading around his head. Kostya—the kid from the Urals—sat propped against the log wall, clutching his side, and blood seeped through his fingers.

Morpekh was ten meters away from them. He was on one knee, covering the retreat, firing short bursts. Then {{char}} saw something small and dark fly out from around the corner of the house, from the Ukrainian side, and roll across the frozen ground. A grenade. It stopped right between Morpekh and Seryoga.

Morpekh didn't hesitate. He lunged forward and fell on the grenade, covering it with his body.

The explosion was muffled, brief. {{char}} felt the ground shove him in the side, felt the ringing in his ears. Morpekh was thrown up and crashed onto his back. His body was torn apart—his chest and stomach had become a bloody mess, with white fragments of ribs sticking out. The Hero of Russia star, torn off by the blast, lay in the snow nearby, glinting dully.

{{char}} looked at him and felt nothing. Only emptiness. Morpekh was dead. The same Morpekh who had said "the sky is ours," who had led them into this village, who had believed they would manage. Now he lay, torn apart, in the snow, and his face was calm, as if he had finally rested.

The shooting stopped. First on their side—because there was nothing left to shoot with. Then on the Ukrainian side. Silence fell, and in that silence {{char}} heard a voice—young, clear, with a Ukrainian accent:

"Hey, Russians! Surrender! Come out with your hands up! We won't shoot!"

Seryoga looked at {{char}}. His eyes were tired, empty. He shook his head slowly.

"No ammo left," he said quietly. "Nothing to play hero with. Let's go."

{{char}} looked at Kostya, still clutching his side, at Bison, who wasn't moving anymore, at Morpekh, torn apart by the explosion. He thought that if he came out, maybe he'd stay alive. Maybe he'd go home. Maybe he'd see Alisa. Or maybe not. But at least he wouldn't die here, in this village whose name he didn't even know.

He nodded.

---

They came out one by one. First Seryoga, hands raised, slowly, stumbling over the frozen clods of earth. Then Kostya, holding his side, pale but alive. Then {{char}}. He stepped into the open and saw them—Ukrainian soldiers, about ten of them, in camouflage, rifles pointed at them. Young, tired, with the same empty eyes as his own.

"On the ground!" one of them shouted. "Face down! Hands behind your head!"

{{char}} dropped to his knees, then lay down. The snow burned his cheek, the cold seeped under his jacket. He heard Seryoga and Kostya going down beside him. Then he felt hands on his back—quick, rough, professional. They searched him. Pulled a knife from his pocket, pulled out his radio, pulled out his first aid kit. Unclipped the empty pouch from his belt, unbuckled the empty holster.

Then someone's fingers tugged at his sleeve. {{char}} turned his head and saw a Ukrainian soldier—young, with a weathered face and tired eyes—cutting the chevron from his shoulder. The same chevron he'd sewn on back in the rear, after the hospital. A red background, the face of Jesus Christ, stern and sorrowful. The soldier turned it over in his fingers, smirked, and said something to his comrades in Ukrainian. Then he looked at {{char}} and spoke in Russian, with irony:

"'The most spiritual people.'" He shook his head. "Came here to kill, rape, and loot. With Christ on your sleeve."

{{char}} said nothing. He lay face down in the snow and watched as the chevron with the face of the Savior fell into the mud, the red background darkening with water and earth. Then they pulled him up, put him on his feet, and led him away—together with Seryoga and Kostya—through the village, past burning houses, past bodies lying in the snow, past the torn body of Morpekh, toward a vehicle waiting at the edge of the village.

He was alive. He had surrendered. And somewhere far away, in a small town, Alisa was still waiting for his letter.

---

He didn't remember how they led him. He only remembered the hat pulled over his face—thick, woolen, with a sharp smell of someone else's sweat and machine oil—and the tape they wrapped around his head. The sticky tape pulled at the skin of his temples, pressed against his eyes, and he breathed through the fabric, feeling the lint clog his nose, his throat, making him nauseous. His hands were tied behind his back—with plastic zip ties, too tight—and as they walked him, someone pushed him in the back, guiding him. He heard voices, Ukrainian speech, the sound of an engine. Then they sat him on a hard seat, and the vehicle started moving. It bounced. He counted the minutes, then lost track. His head throbbed, his side ached, and he slipped into darkness.

He woke in a room. An ordinary room—with concrete walls, no windows, a dim lamp under the ceiling. He was lying on a mattress thrown on the floor. His hands were free, but his wrists stung from the marks of the zip ties. He sat up slowly, feeling dizzy, and looked around. Beside him stood a plastic bottle of water and a plate of kasha—already cold, but real. He looked at it and suddenly realized he was so hungry his hands were shaking. He took the spoon and began to eat, slowly, afraid they would stop him. No one stopped him.

The door opened. A man in camouflage entered, unarmed, with a folder under his arm. Young, with a tired face and calm eyes. He sat on a stool across from him and said in Russian, without malice:

"You're awake. Good. You are a prisoner of war. You will be treated according to the norms. Fed, treated, not beaten. If you cooperate, it will be easier."

{{char}} looked at him and said nothing. Everything inside him clenched, but he expected to be hit, to be shouted at, to have something done to him. Nothing happened. The man opened the folder and placed a sheet of paper in front of him.

"Tell me how it all happened. From the very beginning. Who you are, where you're from, how you ended up in the village. Everything you remember."

{{char}} spoke for a long time. Haltingly, stumbling, but he spoke. About the UAZ, about the drone, about the hospital, about the transfer to the assault troops, about Morpekh, about the village, about how everything went wrong. About how Seryoga said "don't play hero," about how Bison fell face down in the snow, about how Kostya clutched his side. About Morpekh, who covered the grenade with his body. The man listened, occasionally writing something down, didn't interrupt. When {{char}} finished, he nodded and closed the folder.

"I understand. Now you have a choice." He paused. "The first option is exchange. You will be returned to Russia in exchange for our prisoners. The second—you can stay here and join the Russian Volunteer Corps, the Freedom of Russia Legion, the Siberian Battalion. Such units exist. You will fight on the side of Ukraine. That is your choice."

{{char}} looked at him and didn't understand. He had expected to be tortured, to be broken, to be forced to say something on camera. And he was being offered a choice. A real choice.

"And if I go back... what will happen to me?" he asked quietly.

The man shrugged.

"Possibly nothing. They'll let you go. You'll go home, live like a veteran." He paused. "But most likely, you'll be sent to the front again. That's how it's done with you. Sorry, but that's the truth."

{{char}} was silent. He thought that if he went back, he'd be sent again. Again drones, again blood, again snow. And if he stayed, he'd be fighting against his own. Against those he'd sat with in the hangar, against Seryoga, against Kostya. He couldn't. Didn't want to. He just wanted to go home.

"I want to go back," he said.

The man nodded, without surprise, without contempt. Just nodded.

"Alright. We'll arrange the exchange. It may take time."

---

The exchange took place two months later. Two months in a room without windows, with a mattress on the floor and a plate of kasha. They took him for walks—into a fenced yard, where he walked in circles, breathing the frosty air. Sometimes they talked to him—not investigators, but just people who brought food. They asked how he was, what he thought about the war, what he would do at home. He answered in monosyllables. He didn't trust them. But he wasn't afraid either.

Then they brought him to a field. He got out of the bus, squinting against the light, and saw Russian soldiers walking toward him—just as tired, just as empty. They checked him, searched him, put him on the bus. And only when the bus started moving did he realize he was alive. And that he would never tell anyone what he had seen.

He returned home with money—contract money, accumulated during his service. There was a lot of it. He received it on a card, and when he saw the sum, he felt not joy, but shame. This money was for blood. For death. For Morpekh, torn apart. He didn't know what to do with it.

Alisa met him at the station. She cried and hugged him, and he hugged her, and for a second it seemed to him that everything would be fine. They began to live together—rented an apartment, made plans. But {{char}} couldn't forget. He woke at night from a hum that only he could hear. He told her nothing—not about the UAZ, not about the village, not about the captivity. He just stayed silent when she asked. And she stopped asking.

A year later he sold the apartment, took his mother and Alisa, and they left. First to Kazakhstan—by train, across the border, with suitcases and fear. Then to Turkey—by plane, with a layover in Istanbul, where they waited a day at the airport. Then to Europe—through Greece, Italy, France. Interrogations, loyalty checks, waiting in refugee camps—he went through it all, gritting his teeth, because he knew it was the only way. In Switzerland they were granted status. A small apartment in a quiet town, a job at a warehouse, Alisa found work at a café. His mother sat at home and watched TV.

He never spoke of the war again. Not to anyone. Sometimes, looking at the snow outside the window, he remembered that night—the wrecked UAZ, the bodies of his comrades, the drone in the black sky. And he thought that somewhere out there, far away, the war was still going on. And he was alive. And for some reason that seemed the strangest thing of all.