The Documentary Podcast · BBC World Service

Ukraine: The war behind the war

·27 min·2 clips

Major Serhii reveals how a wife reacted with pale-faced disbelief upon learning her husband was killed by a drone strike.

BBC journalist Richard Pendry embeds with Major Serhii Lazyuk, a former bank lawyer now working in Lviv's Territorial Recruitment Centre, whose primary duty is to personally deliver sealed envelopes notifying families that their loved ones have been confirmed dead or missing in the war. Pendry observed Serhii delivering news to a woman named Halina that her husband had been killed by a drone strike in the Zaporizhia region, and to a nursery worker named Hanna whose son is missing in action. Serhii describes delivering three or four notifications on some days, attending hundreds of funerals, and maintaining contact with bereaved families for weeks. He says his emotional response has become frozen, estimating he feels about ten percent of his normal range, and describes a shaking episode while helping his sons with their homework. Ukraine's new defence minister opened his tenure by declaring that two million men of fighting age are evading the draft and 200,000 servicemen are absent without leave. Street patrols by Serhii's colleagues drive unmarked vehicles and stop men aged 25 to 60 to check military documents, and critics have posted videos of alleged forced drafting. These patrols are colloquially called busification. According to Ukraine's Security, Defence and Intelligence Committee, four out of every five drafted men run away during basic training. Pendry meets Nikola, a man in his 50s who has barely left his house for eighteen months to avoid the draft, having cut a small window into the top of his garden fence to watch for recruitment officers. His wife Yulia took their son, then 17, to Italy before his 18th birthday to keep him from being barred from leaving the country, and the family remains separated, with the son making pizzas in an Italian restaurant. Serhii says he does not confront friends who avoid service and recognises the moral complexity of living alongside both categories of people after the war. He imagines becoming a mediator or opening a small cafe and says time has become far more precious to him since working with death every week.

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