Peter Caddick-Adams
This year marks the fourth anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s ‘Special Military Operation’ into Ukraine. It was expected to take ten days. The professional Russian soldiers in the vanguard of the invasion were told they’d be welcomed with open arms. Consequently, leading battalions carried few rations, spare parts, or fuel. Officers were instead ordered to pack their best uniforms, swords and medals for the victory parade they were assured would happen shortly in Kyiv.
Within a year, Ukrainian forces had conducted two counteroffensive operations, rolling back Russian positions, in the south at Kherson and the northeast around Kharkiv. These cost the Kremlin men like 21-year-old Nikita Loburets, a professional squad leader in the special forces brigade of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence. He had always wanted to be a soldier, studied martial arts and learned how to parachute-jump before leaving school in Bryansk. One of his country’s irreplaceable elite soldiers, he perished in the fighting around Kharkiv, being awarded a posthumous award for bravery. Ukraine’s casualty lists, illuminated by flickering candles, have been erected inside every church, along with portraits of the deceased, proudly captured in their best uniforms. They contain many men of a similar age and background to their Russian counterparts. They might have been brothers in arms, in a different time and place.
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