"I am a Ukrainian soldier and I accepted my death." Writer Artem Czech in the NYT column - about the most difficult questions during the war

These fighters lost a third of the personnel, and one of them said he would have died better because he is now afraid to live. Video Day I thought I saw enough deaths in my life. I served on the front in Donbass for almost a year in 2015-2016 and witnessed many tragedies. But in those days, the scale of losses was completely different, at least where I was.

Each death was carefully recorded, investigations were conducted, the names of most dead soldiers were known, and their portraits were published on social networks. Currently, losses, without exaggeration, are catastrophic. We no longer know the names of all who died: dozens of them every day. Ukrainians are constantly wearing those who have not become; In the central squares of relatively calm cities throughout the country are rows of closed coffins.

Closed coffins are the terrible reality of this cruel, bloody and seemingly endless war. And I lost many. Friends, acquaintances, people they worked with or those who have never seen personally but maintained friendly relationships on social networks. Not all of them were professional, but many could not but take up weapons when Russia invaded Ukraine. I meet obitologists every day on Facebook.

I see familiar names and think that these people had to continue to write reports and books, work in scientific institutes, treat animals, teach students, raise children, bake bread and sell air conditioners. Instead, they go to the front, are injured, they develop severe post -traumatic stress disorder, they die. One of the biggest blows to me was the death of journalist Alexander Makhov. He already had a military experience, and knowing his fearlessness and bravery, I watched it closely.

He checked his Facebook page and was glad to see new posts: so alive. I focused on his life like a beacon in a stormy sea. But then Alexander was killed and everything collapsed. One after the other, I received news about the death of those I knew. And as a result, I forbade myself to believe that I and those I love or appreciate will survive. It is difficult, but accepting your own death is necessary for every soldier.

I began to think about it in 2014, when, without holding weapons, I felt that I would once be able to own it - so it happened. In 10 months spent on the front under Popasna in Luhansk region, I often thought of death. She felt her quiet steps and calm breathing next to me. But something suggested: no, not this time. Although who knows? My service is currently on the northern border, where I patrol some of the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

It is safer here than in the east or south, although the proximity of the autocratic Belarusian leader affects the psychological level. The task of our unit is to prevent the repetition of March events, when the northern part of the Kiev region was occupied, and the enemy fired at the artillery of the capital. I'm ready to get to any hot point. There is no fear.

There is no silent horror, as it was at the beginning when the wife and son were hiding in the hallway of our Kiev apartment, trying to somehow calm down or even fall asleep among the painful howling of air anxiety and explosions. Of course, I am sad: the most I just want to be with my wife. She is still in Kiev with her son. I want to live with them, not die somewhere on the front line. But I accepted my death as a fact that almost happened.

The transition of this Rubicon reassured, made it bolder, stronger, more balanced. This should be the case with those who consciously go through war. A completely different thing is the death of civilians, especially children. And no, I am not to the fact that civilian life is more valuable than the life of the military. However, it is much more difficult to be prepared for the death of an ordinary Ukrainian woman who was peaceful and suddenly killed by a Russian rocket.

You can also not be prepared for cruel torture, brotherly graves, mutilated children, bodies buried in the yards of apartment buildings, rocket strokes in residential quarters, theaters, museums, kindergartens and hospitals.

How to prepare yourself for the idea that having two children who hid in the basement slowly dying in their eyes? How to accept the death of a 6-year-old girl who died of dehydration under the ruins of her home? How to respond to the fact that some people in the country, as in the occupied Mariupol, are forced to eat pigeons and drink water from a puddle, risking cholera? Quoting Kurt Wonnegut - and even if the wars did not come to us like glaciers, the old good death would still remain.

But meetings with death could also be different. We want to believe that we and our loved ones, modern people of the 21st century, will no longer have to die from medieval barbaric torture, epidemics or keeping in concentration camps. This is part of what we fight for: for the right not only to a decent life, but also to a decent death. Let's, to the people of Ukraine, we wish ourselves a good death - for example, in our beds when our hour comes.