The instructor-paramedic Daria Zubenko at work. A shot from the documentary "Invisible battalion", 2017, Ukraine.The protagonist of Serhiy Zhadan’s poem “The Recruitment Office” doesn’t want to join the army. It’s easy to understand why. Before 2014, the Ukrainian army was a wretched sight, with missiles crashing into apartment buildings and ammunition dumps exploding. Emerging from the ruins of the Soviet empire, this poor, corrupt non-bloc state hadn’t anticipated that it would have to put up much of a defence against anyone.
The army was underfunded financially and in terms of attention, and while the military hardware rusted away, conscripts built dachas for their generals. In the words of Zhadan, Ukraine’s most popular contemporary poet: “Here’s the bottom line, Mum: count me out, I’m not going [to the army].”
Everything changed in 2014. After EuroMaidan and pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych’s escape from the country, the empire struck back. Unexpected Russian military aggression in Crimea and eastern Ukraine required an urgent defensive operation, and the response mounted by Ukrainian society was quicker than the one mustered by the Ukrainian state. Aside from the dozens of volunteer battalions that were immediately formed to aid the so-called “Anti-Terrorist Operation”, who fought on the frontlines at times literally in slippers, Ukrainian society took on the challenge of providing the army with everything it needed, from quadcopters, gunsights and thermographic cameras to nails and staples.
