Just four days after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the life Mykhailo* had built in Russia was shattered. On February 28, 2022, the Ukrainian who has been working on Russian territory for seven years goes to a working meeting in Moscow. In the middle of a meeting with members of Transneft, a large Russian oil company, the engineer specializing in the design of industrial pumps expresses his disagreement with the requested production quotas.
“One of them replied: ‘What do you know? You’re a fucking Nazi!’ I had been working with these people for five years,” the young man recalls. He now lives in Budapest, Hungary, in a duplex that he shares with his Ukrainian partner Daryna*. But at that time, the thirty-year-old had been living in Russia for seven long years. It was in this enemy country, whose language he now refused to speak, that he had made his life. There was a job, but also properties and even a wife, herself Russian.
An irreconcilable divide with his in-laws
Quickly, the Ukrainian understands that his two lives have just experienced an irreconcilable divide. On the one hand, his mother calls him under the bombs, in Sumy, a city in the north-east of Ukraine near the Russian border. On the other hand, “my mother-in-law told me: ‘don’t worry, everything is fine, it will be over in a week. And your parents can come here'”, he recalls, searching for words in English.
At regular intervals, the tall dark-haired man gets up quickly to go smoke a cigarette in the doorway, then returns to continue his story, punctuated by nervous laughter.
« They didn’t understand my distress. The Russians don’t understand anything. They believe that they are the best in the world and that everything they do is perfect. They believe the propaganda of the state media. »
A former member of the Ukrainian army
Nothing seemed to predispose Mykhailo to a life in Russia. The 35-year-old young man joined the “anti-terrorist operation” in 2014. This is how kyiv then designated the military operations carried out against pro-Russian separatists in Donbass, after the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014. Member of a special commando, Mykhaïlo was even injured during of an infiltration mission.
“It wasn’t like Rambo,” he says with a nervous laugh. Let’s say we were leading a special operation, we were spotted and they bombed us. Then… The only thing I remember is waking up in a white room.” Modest, Mykhaïlo does not specify the extent of his injuries. However, they are serious enough for him to have been discharged from the army. It was at this time that he retrained as an engineer, specializing in industrial pumps for the nuclear and oil sectors. A prestigious qualification which opens the doors to Russia for him.
Interrogation and tracking
But in 2022, after the large-scale invasion of his native country, Mykhaïlo decides, urgently, to leave Russian territory. He asks his wife to accompany him. “It wasn’t possible in Europe, but we could go elsewhere, to Kazakhstan, to Georgia… There were many possibilities. She just didn’t want to follow me.” The couple ended up breaking up a few weeks later, long distance.
The engineer leaves his entire life and his heritage behind him and flies to Kazakhstan, with only a suitcase for company. A necessary step, flights between Russia and the European Union already being suspended. At the border, Mykhailo explains that he was interrogated by the FSB (Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation).
“There were seven of them, it lasted five hours. They took photographs of my body, my tattoos, my clothes, everything. They unlocked my phone and checked all my accounts, all my social networks, every little text message. They called my wife to question her too,” confides Mykhaïlo, leaning back in his chair, his face closed.
“It took him months to recover from this experience. They looked for every possible reason to prevent him from leaving and throw him in prison,” Daryna, his Ukrainian partner, intervenes in a whisper. The thirty-year-old only gets his phone back on board the plane. “When I turned it on, I saw that all my messaging apps and social media were connected through an Apple device. They were tracking me.” The Ukrainian destroyed his phone and SIM card.
Love rather than war
A few hours later, he took a plane back to Poland, this time in the middle of a plane two-thirds full of fleeing Ukrainians. The flight attendant walks back and forth in the cabin to reassure the passengers while the plane is delayed at takeoff: “You are already in Polish territory. Don’t worry.” Looking for a job, Mykhaïlo finally lands in Budapest, Hungary, where he meets Daryna, his partner. “She saved my life twice,” he smiles.
The first time, when he was preparing to leave for Germany. Even today, he does not know what his life would have become there. The second, whose outcome could have been much more dramatic, occurred in 2024. One of his friends from the army had visited him and Mykhaïlo had begun the process of re-engaging in the conflict. Love will ultimately make him take another path.
Des « compétences pour survivre »
But that doesn’t mean he’s turning his back on his native country. Mykhaïlo went to Ukraine three times to transport equipment, as close as possible to the front. The third time, the thirty-year-old rolled over a landmine and spent a week and a half in the hospital. Fortunately, he has no after-effects. However, he can no longer go to Ukraine without risking being drafted into the army: since the overhaul of the laws on conscription, the status of “partially fit” has been abolished, forcing former reformers to go back before military doctors.
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When asked about the weight of these traumas, Mykhaïlo brushes them aside with a nonchalant laugh. For him, these are “good experiences”. “Skills to survive”, almost an insurance policy, if the war were to spread to the rest of Europe. “No one knows what will happen tomorrow,” he recalls. An uncertainty that continues to fill the ashtray installed in front of his front door.
* First names have been changed to maintain the anonymity of those interviewed
