How one Ukrainian soldier and his spouse survived 1,000 days of struggle with Russia

KYIV and LYMAN, Ukraine — A thousand days into Russia’s full-scale struggle on his nation, Mykola Ivantsov fights on the japanese entrance line with a damaged again that hasn’t healed.

Each morning, he sends a textual content to his spouse, Yaroslava Ivantsova.

“Hello, Sunshine,” he writes.

Till she sees that textual content, she can not loosen up.

“I try not to think about the bad,” she says. “I tell myself that our guys will win back our territories. I try not to think about him being captured again.”

The final thousand days have examined their 32-year marriage. The struggle has examined Ukraine, too, because the nation has gone by means of a curler coaster of grief, hope, frustration and exhaustion. An estimated 12,000 folks in Ukraine have been killed and hundreds of thousands turned to refugees since Russia invaded the nation in 2022, in accordance with the United Nations.

Many Ukrainians are fearful their most important ally, america, will abandon them after President-elect Donald Trump takes workplace in January. There’s additionally worry that European allies could also be unable to make up for cuts to U.S. support. Ukrainians who used to speak about victory are actually speaking about concessions. It is time to convey the troopers dwelling, they are saying.

Troopers like Ivantsov, although, have a special view.

“I do not separate my family from my country,” he says. “It’s one and the same. And the war is not yet over.”

A love story

Mykola and Yaroslava met in japanese Siberia because the Soviet Union was collapsing. A Ukrainian from the japanese area of Luhansk, Mykola was ending his obligatory navy service. Yaroslava, from Russia’s far east, was a university freshman. Each say it was love at first sight. Even now, they at all times maintain fingers.

“We’ve been asked if we’re lovers or newlyweds,” says Mykola, 52. “And we say, no, we’ve been married for decades. No one can believe it.”

They raised 4 kids and ran small companies collectively within the Luhansk area. After which, in 2014, Russia helped pro-Kremlin separatists take over a lot of japanese Ukraine.

“We had a really nice big house there,” he says. “We sold it very quickly for nothing. Rented a van, packed up whatever could fit, took the kids and the cat and left.”

Mykola tried to enlist within the navy however was instructed, at 42, that he was too previous. As a substitute, he was directed to a volunteer battalion accepting males his age.

He adopted the navy name signal Yar — the primary three letters of his spouse’s identify.

The volunteer unit he joined was Azov, which was based by ultranationalist politician Andriy Biletskyi and initially bankrolled by Ukrainian Jewish oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi. The Kremlin, in addition to some researchers of the far proper, have known as the brigade neo-Nazis. Mykola says the brigade has expelled anybody with such views.

“I condemn Nazis,” he says. “They are the same as [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.”

Mykola and Yaroslava lived within the southeastern port metropolis of Mariupol when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

Captured after the Mariupol siege

Mykola and two sons-in-law who joined Azov stayed to defend Mariupol, whereas Yaroslava took their daughters and grandchildren to the central area of Dnipro, which was shortly filling up with displaced Ukrainians from the east. She minimize off all contact together with her household in Russia.

“After I heard them say they would destroy us, I was shocked,” says Yaroslava, who’s 51. “If that’s what they think of us, then why bother communicating?”

Russian troops destroyed Mariupol, killing hundreds of civilians. Mykola and tons of of different Ukrainian troopers holed up for weeks within the underground tunnels of Azovstal, a large metal plant owned by Rinat Ahmetov, Ukraine’s richest man. Russians bombed the plant continually. Mykola known as Yaroslava every time he had a sign.

“I kept telling her, ‘we need a miracle,’ ” Mykola says. “We realized that there would be no liberation here.”

Yaroslava and different navy spouses pressed the Crimson Cross and the United Nations to assist free the troopers. She took anti-anxiety capsules and prayed that her husband may by some means slip out of Azovstal and outdoors Mariupol. An novice coin collector who had navigated Ukraine’s forests utilizing previous maps and a metallic detector, Mykola had compasses in his backpack.

“I had no doubts he could find his way home,” she says. “But I also knew he would never abandon his boys.”

To Mykola, his fellow Azov troopers turned a second household. A lot of them died within the metal plant, and lots of others have been gravely wounded.

Because the Russians closed in, Yaroslava listened to his final voice memo, which he recorded on a good friend’s telephone after his personal telephone was destroyed.

“Everything is burned,” he instructed her. “I barely made it out alive.”

Ukraine gave the troopers orders to give up. Yaroslava bought a name from the Crimson Cross informing her that her husband was alive and in captivity in a Russian-occupied a part of japanese Ukraine.

Torture in captivity

Mykola was taken to a prisoner-of-war camp in Olenivka, an occupied village in Ukraine’s japanese Donetsk area.

He crammed right into a small cell with 25 different POWs. It was damp and moldy, infecting open wounds of injured troopers there. The jail guards introduced them meals in a bucket.

“We divided it among ourselves,” he says. “Porridge that was like dog food, and something that wasn’t quite soup, just colored water with a few cabbage leaves.”

He misplaced greater than 50 kilos whereas in jail in Olenivka. He was crushed too, which injured his again and arms. However somebody in his cell managed to pay money for a cell phone. He instantly known as Yaroslava.

“I would always tell her, ‘don’t worry, honey,’ ” Mykola says. “‘We are eating a lot and lying on the beach like seals.’ “

Yaroslava says she knew he was joking. “And then he called and said, ‘I’m being transferred to another place, so we might lose our connection,’ ” she remembers.

The following day, on July 28, 2022, a missile hit the jail the place Mykola had been held. Many POWs have been killed or wounded.

Yaroslava and her daughter, whose husband had additionally been taken prisoner, tried cold-calling hospitals in occupied territory. Nothing. The Russians circulated an inventory with the names of these lifeless and wounded. Her husband’s identify was not there.

Mykola was not in Olevnika. He had been transferred to a different POW jail within the Donetsk area. He says the jail guard confirmed the prisoners images from the explosion web site.

“Photos of our guys with their arms and legs blown off,” he says. “And they told us this was done by Ukrainians, by our own people, using artillery. All lies, to make us lose faith.”

Months of silence and worry

The telephone Mykola used was destroyed. For months, Yaroslava didn’t know if he was alive. Mykola says he may sense her unhappiness and wished he may ship her proof of life.

“I remember telling the guys in my cell, ‘I am absolutely sure that my wife is doing everything to get me out of here,’ ” he says. “And that’s exactly what happened.”

After months of Yaroslava campaigning on his behalf with the federal government and worldwide organizations, Mykola was launched in a prisoner alternate in Could 2023. He known as her proper after the navy convoy he was in crossed the border into Ukraine.

“I heard her voice, and I said, ‘Honey, it’s me!’ ” he says. “I was trying to hold back my tears, but when she cried, I did too.”

Yaroslava introduced all the youngsters and grandkids to fulfill him on the navy hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, the place he was because of arrive.

“It was after curfew, but we didn’t even care,” she says. “And when the bus he was in pulled up, I saw him right away. The bus was going very slowly, so I ran up to it and put my hand on his window. He placed his hand on the other side. And I jogged with the bus like this until it stopped.”

Yaroslava spent months nursing her husband again to well being, usually with grandchildren in tow. As an injured former POW, Mykola was eligible to proceed his service in Kyiv.

“But he said he had to go back to his guys on the front line,” she says. “We had these very long arguments. And I used to yell at him. I said that I went through so much to get him home. And now I may have to go through the same thing again. To worry, to stay awake at night.”

He says he tried to console her. He instructed her Ukraine was very in need of troops in what has change into a struggle of attrition.

“It’s hard for me to sit here while my fellow soldiers are out there,” he says. “This is my country, my land. And if I don’t defend it, who will?”

Mykola has returned to his brigade, again on the entrance line, and once more outmanned and dealing with troublesome odds.

Solely this time, he says, he will not be taken prisoner.

Yaroslava says she is aware of what meaning — however chooses to imagine it means he’ll escape.

She picks up her telephone and writes him a message.

“Hello, Sunshine,” she says, “I’m here.”