military chaplain Petro helps soldiers “who no longer have the strength inside to hold on”

Many soldiers rely on their battalion’s military chaplain, between uncertainty about the future of the conflict or hope of reuniting with their family. Meeting with one of them, religious, patriotic… and sportsman.

In the east of the country, soldiers responsible for monitoring the Russian border live in uncertainty, and under constant threat from enemy drones. So many rely on the military chaplain of their battalion to find some reassurance. He occupies the outbuilding, at the bottom of the garden, in a house squatted by soldiers, a few kilometers from the Russian border.

Petro is 39 years old and has the white collar of a military chaplain, clearly visible under his uniform. He’s been in the army for almost a year. Before that, he was a simple priest in Ternopil. A quiet life, where he was married, with two children. “This is precisely one of my motivations, as a responsible father : do something to free our country from the enemy.”

On the wall in the small room, a painting of Jesus praying gazes at a large flag of Ukraine. This is where Petro organizes prayers every day. He is a shoulder for an entire battalion. “Sometimes, I also go to join the guys in their positions. I take a helmet, a bulletproof vest. I go there, either to bring them supplies, or to pray and chat with them.”

These soldiers, engaged from the start of the war, were not prepared for it to last for more than two years. “Some people have trouble holding on, it’s very hard for them,” deplores Petro. “Big, strong guys, but they don’t have any strength inside.” Their common language then also becomes black humor. “It happens a lot, someone walks into the room and says, ‘Ah ? Still alive ?'”he says, laughing.

A trail-loving chaplain

But what attracts the soldiers the most to Petro the chaplain is his weight bench. The most athletic compete for it, between two rotations on military positions, near the border. “One of my missions is precisely to promote a healthy life, so that the guys are not only in good moral health, but physically, too.”

And he himself uses it almost every day, “because I have a dream”, he said. Indeed, Petro, the religious man, is also a big fan of trail running. “I dream of going to France, in Chamonix, to participate in the Mont-Blanc ultra-trail. It is one of the most popular races in the world. I will go after the war. So I train so as not to lose shape“, Petro explains.