What It Is Like to Live After the War Front
How Russian military personnel who have returned from war live and what they think about
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“It is my predisposition”
Dmitry Zhuravlev is 23 years old and grew up in the village of Yantikovo in Chuvashia. Three years ago, Dmitry attended medical school, which his mother chose for him, thought of leaving it and dreamed of building a career in the military. “I grew up without a father, and I lacked a mentor in life. I was more attracted to the male profession, I wanted to go into the army. First of all, there is at least some stability. Secondly, it is an honor from the society, because military men give their whole life to the motherland.”

Dmitry became a soldier, but did not have time to build a career. Now he has a service in the army and two months on the front line, a trauma, a coma, almost a year of recovery and the disability. Now Dmitry’s dream, as he says himself, is to “get the truth” — to get the right payments and a veteran’s license.
Alexei Voronin is 25, from Gorokhovets, Vladimir Oblast. After school Alexei entered college to study electrician, but quickly dropped out and also joined the army, and then signed a contract and continued to serve. He wanted to become a military man since childhood: “It is my predisposition. I liked military service, I thought it was my thing. I like military uniforms, weapons. I wanted to be not just any military man, but in special units, such as special forces.” Alexei’s mother did not expect her son to like military service: “He had no friends at school, he had no contact with anyone in his class. A mama’s boy, homely, always on computers. But the army got him hooked, and we were shocked.”

In Alexei’s room there is a gamer’s chair, a huge monitor, a system unit with stickers of anime heroes, pages from manga on the walls, boxes of chocolates on the shelf, strikeball rifles above the bed. The only reminders that Alexei Voronin is a military man are his khaki-colored T-shirt and shorts, and a stump instead of a foot — an injury he received in the war in Ukraine. He bought the apartment he lives in now with the money he received for his injury.
Alexei’s decision to become a professional military man was influenced not only by his childhood dream. "We were all very poor before I became a contract serviceman, we lived in a great lack. And the army means stability. You always get your paycheck on the same day. You can retire at the age of 40, not like in a civilian job — you will work until you fall off your feet. Since signing the second contract, you get about 30 thousand rubles every month for the mortgage and within 10-15 years you can take a free apartment. That suited me fine. I don't know of any other job in Gorokhovets with a salary of more than 30 thousand rubles, where anyone can get a job," Alexei explains, but immediately clarifies: “I won’t say that I signed the contract just for the money. I did it because I love my country.”
“Nobody dragged anybody”
Alexei found out about the outbreak of war on duty: “I was standing guard at the time, it was five in the morning, and they said that the war had begun. There was great excitement.” Voronin recalls that he and other servicemen were given a choice: to come in the morning ready to leave for Ukraine or with reports for resignation. No one resigned. “Everything is fair, I think so,” Alexei says confidently. — “Nobody dragged anybody. Being a military man means that you can take part in combat operations. But if I had been given the right to choose, I wouldn’t have gone. I had something to lose.” Another reason to stay in the service in Voronin’s case was loans: “I had a loan of about 250,000 rubles. Unfortunately, I had no financial cushion at that time to decide to leave the contract service. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to afford it financially and would get into debt. It is hard for a one who earns so much money to lose it abruptly.”

When asked if he would have gone to war if he had no loans, Alexei says he would have gone anyway: “I was sure that mobilization could start, and I would have gone anyway, but not with my comrades, but with people I didn’t know at all. Would you go on vacation with your friends or with strangers? Of course, it would be better with friends.”
Dmitry Zhuravlev met the beginning of the war as a student at the Yaroslavl Military School, where he entered after dropping out of medical school. He did not like his studies very much, Dmitry wanted to join a combat unit, and in September 2022 he was able to sign a contract. A few days later, Zhuravlev was assigned to the Mosrentgen Guards Brigade in Moscow, and after another five days of training, he unexpectedly found himself on the front lines. “We knew we would go over the ribbon [to the front lines]. But we were told that we would be in the rear patrolling, helping peaceful civilians, that’s all. And it turned out the other way around. No one told us that we would go to the front line.”
“It’s like turning into some kind of animal”
Dmitry’s platoon came under fire on the first day. “We passed the ribbon and drove for a very long time, arriving at the site close to nightfall” — Dmitry recalls the first day at the front. — “I found out later that we were near Kupyansk, and then we did not expect danger from the enemy. We opened our dry rations, started eating and the mortar fire broke out. I did not understand what was going on at all, where the fire was coming from. I just heard whistling and bursts from the mortar fire. All I could think was, ‘I wish it would all end quickly.’”
Dmitry spent almost two months on the front line without a break. Trench conditions, the constant threat of life and death of loved ones were given to him hard. “The longer you are in a war zone, the more you are broken psychologically. The smell of death is always with you. Death is, you know, like dampness, like heavy air, and it makes you feel heavy yourself. Everyone there understood that at any moment someone could die, any meeting could be the last. There was a case, we were communicating in the basement with a miner, and an hour later his partner came to us, concussed, and said that he was gone. We went to look for the remains, and except for a helmet and a piece of armor found nothing. At the end of October I started to break down morally. I was lying in the trench at night, looking at the clear starry sky, just crying and praying. I begged God: sooner he would get me out, sooner it would just be over,” Dmitry recalls.

Dmitry is a believer. Over the question “Is murder a sin?” he said he thought a lot. Priests often came to the hospital and explained that there is murder, and there is a situation when the enemy attacks and you have to defend yourself and protect the interests of your homeland.
— I consider killing a person a terrible sin. But sometimes circumstances happen when it is necessary to do it.
— Do you believe it or do you convince yourself?
— Most likely, I convince myself rather than believe it. Because it is written in the Bible: if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. So if, say, they want to kill you, it is probably better to die than to kill someone.
But in war there is no time to think about it, Zhuravlev admits: “It’s like turning into some kind of animal, which is ready to endure everything, which is ready to do anything just to survive, which feels nothing: no regrets, no love. Human values, principles, become secondary. In fact, it is scary when a person feels nothing.”
Psychotherapist Anastasia Rubtsova says that dissociation is one of the defense mechanisms of the human psyche, which helps to survive stressful situations. “We in general as a biological species have several ways of reacting to an acute extreme situation. We can react with adrenaline release, we can react with freezing. Very often the psyche uses the mechanism of dissociation, which means that we stop feeling what is happening around us as what is happening to us,” explains the psychotherapist.
From the first day on the front line, supply problems began. Food was brought irregularly, so Zhuravlev and his coworkers saved food and shared one ration for several days. “To eat a pack of galettes - already not bad,” — recalls Dmitry. In two months he lost more than 20 kg. When food was not delivered for more than a week, Dmitry’s platoon returned to the rear to investigate.
In the rear, on the advice of a comrade, he began to keep a diary to “leave something behind.” All the entries in it are made on the same day. This is one of the last: "I am tired, I am devastated. There seem to be many more thoughts and ideas, many more unspoken words, but my head is a big mess. I’m tired, I’m exhausted. Know that being on the front lines is very scary. Know that every fighter on the front line is fighting a double struggle: a struggle with the enemy and a struggle with himself. Every mortar, tank attack, a man feels death. Feels the smell of blood. Cold and fear overwhelms him. And it is in such moments that man overcomes himself. Breaks himself, breaks his psyche, his instinct of self-preservation. It’s hard. It’s hard when you are alone, without information, without communication with your command. It’s hard to see death, it’s hard to see domestic dogs crying, civilians crying, children dying.”
Alexei does not remember or does not want to remember anything about his feelings while serving on the front line.
— When you were over the ribbon, how did you feel?
— I don’t remember.
— What were you thinking about?
— I didn’t think anything. I don’t know, I don’t remember.
— What did you and your comrades talk about?
— We didn’t talk much about the war. I don’t remember.
He started serving in the infantry in reconnaissance. He recalls that the thing they were most afraid of was not people, but drones, which were often followed by attacks. “The constant feeling that it could fly right up to you, that you could drive off in a coffin at any moment. The anxiety never went away, but somehow everyone got used to it. Everyone hid their fear so as not to stress other people, so that everyone kept normal. Most of all I wanted to sleep and eat good food. Buy yourself a mountain of chocolate, eat a lot of chocolates. In war, you always want sweets.”

After Alexei’s platoon was shelled during one of the reconnaissance missions, his entire squad, as refusers, returned to the border to the artillery unit. “We were artillerymen when we were still serving in Mulino [a military unit in the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast], and there we also became artillerymen. We didn’t go for reconnaissance anymore. We were given targets, coordinates, and we fired at them. I never once saw the enemy directly with the naked eye.”
Both Alexei and Dmitry say that they were defending the interests of the state in the war, protecting the civilians of Donetsk and Luhansk. They speak in very similar phrases. At the same time, both believe that there should be no war. “They are ours, roughly speaking. We speak the same language and fight each other. It’s not normal. This is what I can only say. There should not be such a thing,” Alexei argues. “The war is started by politicians, not civilians. Any hostilities are evil, because war brings only destruction, death, chaos. There are a lot of coffins both on one side and the other. It would be good if there was no hatred towards people. No hatred towards Ukrainians, no hatred towards Russians on the part of Ukrainians,” says Dmitry.
300s
According to Dmitry, there are two ways to return from the front line — become 200 or 300 [killed or wounded]. Both he and Alexei were lucky. In November Dmitriy developed a fever, which could not be brought down even with antibiotics, and he was taken to Belgorod. Doctors went through diagnoses from acute respiratory viral infection to mouse fever, but eventually discharged Zhuravlev from the hospital and sent him to Moscow. In the Moscow hospital Dmitry fell into a coma, he was diagnosed with Lyme disease due to a tick bite. After the coma, Zhuravlev had to almost re-learn how to walk and talk.

Dmitry immediately realized: the war was over for him. And although he wanted it for so long, he was not happy. “In the first moment, I had disappointment in myself. My physical condition was extremely grave. Just a body that couldn’t move anything, there were vision problems, pelvic organ dysfunction [urination and defecation disorders]. This fear of infirmity motivated me to get on my feet faster. I didn’t want to lie in bed and be a burden to other people. For the first month, I cried all the time in the evenings that I had come to such a life that I couldn’t get out of bed, I couldn’t walk.”
Dmitry met the new year-2023 in the hospital. He recalls that when the fireworks started to go off, his first thought was: had the enemy reached Moscow? He immediately started looking for a safe place and even opened the news to check what was happening.
In the hospital, Dmitry worked with a rehabilitation therapist, speech therapist and psychologist, who diagnosed a depressive disorder and prescribed antidepressants. Zhuravlev still takes them: “I can’t sleep well, I’m afraid to experience that feeling again when you go to bed and wake up in the intensive care unit. I’m afraid of falling asleep alone, of going into a coma when no one is around. When I was left alone in a room at night, I had panic attacks, when my heart beats rapidly and there is a fear of death.”
Alexei was also “lucky,” he was blown up on a mine in August 2022 during the retreat. The fellow soldiers who were with him at the time had already died. “I was the last one to jump out of the car and immediately blew up. Jumped up, fell flat on the ground and could not turn around in any way. As if my whole body was numb, I couldn’t move. I thought my leg had been torn off. I lifted my head and looked, my shoe was in place, but the front part was gone and there was blood. I thought: well, it’s not so bad, I guess.” Alexei compares the pain from the torn off part of the foot to an open fracture and admits that “if you judge not by pain but by fear, there were some moments that were even more serious.”

The scariest moment was the vehicle, which they had managed to unload a few minutes before, was blown up on a mine. “If we hadn’t unloaded it completely and sent it back with a couple shells, those shells would have detonated. There would have been no chance of survival in the 100 square meters in the area of the explosion.”
After the operation, Alexei was rehabilitated in a hospital in St. Petersburg. “I didn’t feel anything — neither bad nor good. I just realized that that was it, I had had enough. It's time to rest. Immediately realized that the leg will not be the same as it was, only the heel remained, and that's it,” he recalls. Alexei does not share his emotions after the loss of the foot, saying that he felt nothing. But he recounts his parents’ reaction: “My mom was emotional, but I don’t like to listen to her. If she starts talking, you can’t stop her. My father is more reasonable. He supported me morally, he said: ‘You won’t live the way you lived. Hang in there. If you need anything, call me.’” After rehabilitation, Alexei went on medical leave. It took him a year to recover. Then he was offered a job at the military commissariat in his native town of Gorokhovets, and Voronin accepted.
“Everything is the same, except for the leg”
Alexei believes that everything happened correctly, and he would not have changed anything. “At home, I would also strain no less, working for pennies. So I don’t regret what happened. What’s the point of regretting something you can’t get back? But now I have everything I thought about and dreamed of.” Alexei received about 4 million rubles for the wounding, now he receives a disability pension, veteran’s pension, benefits for an apartment — together about 19 thousand rubles a month. “I bought the apartment. I made repairs. I got settled, as they say, I raise my quality of life. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough for a car, so I decided to get a bicycle. The best, most powerful bicycle you can buy on the market,” says Alexei.
He is sure: after the war his condition has not changed. “Everything is the same, except for the leg. But the main thing is not to dwell on it, and not to accidentally step on it. I stepped once in the hospital and immediately felt such a sharp pain, as if I stepped on a bare bone. It didn’t go away for three days. Without the prosthesis I just jump on one leg, with the prosthesis I limp, but I walk. I also can’t seem to gain weight. I used to weigh 60+ kg, but now it’s 50 and I’ve been like that for a year, I haven’t gained any weight.” Now he works at the military registration office, does document management and is studying at college in the field of “Computer Systems and Complexes” in order, as he says, to go further up the career ladder.

Among Voronin’s hobbies is shooting. Alexei became interested in strikeball even before he started serving under contract. “Earlier there were no funds to buy equipment, a set of weapons. I bought the most budgetary automatic rifle and in a regular uniform participated in small events. And when the [servicemen] contract was signed, I found people who are really into it. I even took loans for the realization of strikeball games at that time.” Comparing strikeball with real military actions, Alexei first of all speaks not about the reality of death, but about the fact that in the war, unlike in the game, you can’t see the enemy. “In strikeball to shoot a person, you have to get closer to him than 30 meters or at least closer than 50 meters, otherwise the bullet will not reach. But in real combat, you can shoot a man a kilometer away. Even without a scope. Just by chance.”
Now Alexei continues target shooting at home. His mom tells about it. “A calm boy, no aggression. He likes to shoot. He takes his gun, we go to the vegetable garden, with my daughter we spread him a soft thick mattress, he lies down and shoots at a target. He loves it. I say, ‘Didn’t you shoot enough?’ — ‘No, mom, I love it.’”
Voronin talks about the war only if he is asked. He says he doesn’t want to impose his thoughts on a person. He has not consulted a psychologist because he does not believe in psychotherapy and does not want anyone poking around in his head. He describes his plans for the future as follows: “I just go with the flow, work and live quietly like everyone else.”
“Bro, unfortunately, you weren’t there”
Dmitry says that it is difficult to keep the experience of combat operations inside himself, but he is not ready to share it with everyone — they will not understand. “In fact, it’s hard to keep it all to yourself all the time. It’s just easier for me if someone else knows about it besides me,” says Dmitry. He does not share his experiences with his parents, but does share with his friends. Speaking about his fears, he recalls that during his recovery he was afraid of being infirm, and now he is afraid of being alone and unloved.
“I realize that at some point I won’t be able to contain my emotions, all my negativity that I have inside. I mean, it kind of manifests itself in me a lot, this aggression. Some random dude starts picking on me, and I can explode at the snap of a finger: not only verbally, but also physically, cause bodily harm,” says Dmitry. His sister Elena also says that he has changed: “It’s as if a person has been replaced. He has some problems with his nerves, constantly twitching, constantly shaking. It’s been a year already, and he won't be the same as before.”

“In people who return from the war zone, the level of aggression is very often elevated,” — says psychotherapist Anastasia Rubtsova. — “Society is almost always built on a ban on violence. War unbans this prohibition, and people who return from war have this prohibition of violence is unbanned in their heads.”
Dmitry admits that what he misses most in peaceful life is the feeling of “brotherhood” and “real” life. “In the first days when I regained consciousness, I cried too much because I lacked the feeling of brotherhood, lacked real emotions, real feelings. It’s been a year, two years. And even now I miss it. It’s hard to readjust to peacetime. There are completely different emotions and feelings. People in civilian life, they are like that, more fake, or something. There is some nobility in the war zone, because somebody’s life depends on your promise to come to a certain place and time. In the modern world, people are more inclined to material goods, and when you are there, you don’t even think about it. It is important for you to have a comrade with you, to make him feel comfortable. I experienced firsthand the care from my senior comrades, I felt supported,” says Dmitry.
He says that if offered another chance to try his luck, he would return to the front to experience the feeling of reality, brotherhood and support. But he adds that he would never go to the front line: “There is too high a chance of dying there, it is not worth risking your life.”
“The feelings we experience under the influence of adrenaline feel much sharper, more vivid and real,” — explains the psychotherapist. — “It’s clear that the moment we have a sense that it’s real, we begin to transfer that to relationships with the people who happen to be around us at that moment as well. When there is an adrenaline rush, we really have a feeling that now we are experiencing real emotions, real feelings. And very often we see this phenomenon when people come back from war and they really want to return there.”
After his return, Dmitry tried to enroll in a military school, but failed: “I thought that my status as a combat veteran would help me get into a university. I was hinted that I was, roughly speaking, from an ordinary family, that my parents were ordinary people, engaged in an ordinary profession, and it is extremely difficult to get into this university. And also my health doesn’t allow me.”

Now Dmitry helps his sister in a tobacco store and plans to enter a creative specialty. He writes poetry and thinks to connect his life with it. But now the main goal is to “get to the truth.” “When I came to Mosrentgen to write a request for the status of combat veteran, I was told: ‘Bro, unfortunately, you weren’t there. We don’t see in the database that you were there.’ I want to get recognition from the state that I was there, that I participated in combat operations.” For more than a year Dmitry, with the help of a lawyer, has been trying to be recognized as a participant of combat operations and receive the money he is entitled to for his military trauma.
“You know, I have a fear of not being needed by the country. Well, man, you’ve done your duty, now you can, roughly speaking, retire. They say on TV that there are no problems, that servicemen get everything they need after returning to civilian life. In fact, the reality is quite different. A person is left alone, and he has to spend a lot of energy and money, I don’t know, on trips to Moscow, on a lawyer. The point is not even really about money, the point is the truth. I have a resentment at the way I was screwed over,” says Dmitry.
At the last court hearing, according to Dmitry, the defendants from the military medical commission, which refuses to recognize his injury as a combat injury, hinted that if he continues to fight for payments, they may change his eligibility category and send him to the front.