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Mark Kupchenenko lives alone in a large abandoned house in the war-torn Ukrainian town of Bakhmut, apart from his unit of service. “In order not to get too close,” he said.
Every day, the 26-year-old military chaplain goes to front-line army positions to try to rescue troops.
Officially, his job was to keep “very high morale” among soldiers serving at one of the most dangerous spots on the eastern Ukraine front.
The reality he describes is very different.
Soldiers fighting in Bakhmut suffer “incredible moral fatigue” and psychological changes, Kupchenenko said.
He said that in this endless war of attrition, some fighters thought they were reduced to pieces of “meat to die.
“These are non-rotational fighters – that is, they are constantly actively fighting on the front line without rest.
“They miss their loved ones and haven’t seen them for a long time.”
Some people have “panic attacks, when a person’s hands shake, when he becomes agitated, when he can’t force himself to perform a task,” he said.
Given the conditions on the front lines, rest was almost impossible.
Some people “feel abandoned,” he said. “They feel like no one needs them.
– ‘Human Shield’ –
Before joining, the young priest was a prison chaplain who also worked with coronavirus patients and sick children.
Those previous jobs helped prepare him for the test of his current job in the dire conditions at Bachmut, which has seen months of heavy fighting since the Russian invasion began last February.
“I communicate, I pray, I talk about the Word of God, I answer the difficult questions soldiers have in this situation. And there’s a lot,” he said.
For more than six months, Russian troops and paramilitaries from Russia’s Wagner Group – whose founders have dubbed the battle for the city the “Bachmut Meat Grinder” – have been fighting to capture it , but so far in vain.
Much of the city was devastated, with heavy casualties on both sides, and most of the pre-war population of about 70,000 had left.
“My job as a pastor is to remind them why they’re here.”
They were likely to be there because they were ordered to the front by their superiors, he said. But that doesn’t change the importance of their roles.
“They’re here primarily because they’re a human shield between the enemy and our family, our people.”
Without them, Kupchenenko said, “orcs would come into our homes, they would rape, they would cut, they would kill, they would destroy”.
Ukrainians often refer to the Russian army as orcs, a reference to the savage, goblin-like monsters in JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.
Of the soldiers he served, he said: “They gave their souls for us, for their people, for their families. I can’t guarantee they’ll come back.
“But I tell them that if we trust God enough, then he will accept us into his kingdom.”
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