Among the thousands of mobilized Ukrainian men fighting in trenches in Donbass to try to contain the numerous, brutal but ultimately ineffective Russian attacks, Nazar is a war daddy. He tells how he tries to preserve his son.
When he is not at the front with his infantry regiment in Bakhmout, Nazar trains. In a vast field, a good distance from the Russian positions, he learns to pilot a drone. The day is calm. The danger is far away. This is a good time to remember Olga and Mirone, her eight-year-old son, who stayed in kyiv. “Hello? My little bunny? Hi, hi! Do you need anything?”, asks Nazar. “Of you”simply answers Olga.
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Nazar was mobilized at the start of the conflict. We ask him how we explain to his son that we are at war. “I try to convey to him the idea that everything is fine, that nothing bad is happening, even if he knows very well where I am, what I’m doing.replies Nazar. Of course, he always asks me if I saw Russians, if I killed someone. I try to answer him with humor, even if there is nothing funny. There are things a child shouldn’t hear. We live in a complicated period.”
“I never call them when I’m in a bad mood. We go through a lot of terrible times and they mustn’t see that.”
Nazar, soldier in the infantryat franceinfo
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More than 700 kilometers to the west, in the popular district of Troyechina, in the heart of the Ukrainian capital, Olga and Mirone, eight years old, live on the third floor of a large building. In the little boy’s room, a portrait of Harry Potter, a kimono, and neatly arranged in a drawer of his school desk, drawings of Nazar. “That’s my dad. That’s his camouflage jacket and his beard”, he explains proudly. On the right there is written “My dad, this hero”. When asked why, the child replies: “He is a hero because he defends his country, he risks his life, for us and for all of Ukraine”.
“My dad, he can’t die because he’s very strong and he has a big helmet.”
Mirone, son of Nazarat franceinfo
Mirone is brave, he almost never talks about death, says mom, Olga. He refuses on the other hand that she touches the bath towel left by Nazar, “as if he had never left”.
“My dad at war” – Report from Ukraine by Thibault Lefevre and Éric Audra
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