Nicolas Tonev (special envoy to Ukraine), edited by Ugo Pascolo
Over time and meetings, he became an acquaintance of the special envoy of Europe 1 in Ukraine, Nicolas Tonev. Mykyta, 22, lieutenant-chief of the Ukrainian army at the head of a tank formation on the Donbass front, has already testified on several occasions to what he experienced on the front. And for good reason, since he has been defending his country against the Russians for a year now, he has only had 10 days of leave. For 365 days, his life has been summed up only in Donbass and the horrors of war.
“I don’t sleep, I have nightmares”
So to engage once again at the microphone of our special correspondent, Mykyta prefers to move away a little from his troops. He drives for a few moments, loud music in the vehicle, as if to do himself good. After a year of conflict, “the war is not only around you”, he begins. “It gets into your head, it eats you up… Me lately, I haven’t been sleeping, I’m having nightmares. You know, finding yourself 24/7 under artillery fire, seeing all these wounded, all these deaths, all these horrors… You cannot accomplish your mission, because you never sleep.” A physical fatigue, but also a psychological one which affects Mykyta, but also “most of [ses] subordinates”.
The Russians “have unlimited resources”
A situation made complex, which becomes even more so when the young officer speaks of the Russians. If he knows neither their physical condition nor their morale, he can clearly see that the balance of power between the two armies is not in favor of kyiv. “They flock in quantity, in the thousands to a point on the front and they don’t care about the losses,” he testifies. “We don’t have enough men, they have unlimited resources. And it’s the same for ammunition, they don’t have limits whereas we exceeded them a long time ago.”
But once this observation is made, this does not prevent Mykyta from returning to his men. The war didn’t stop, and neither did he. He always defends his country and promises to stay alive, for a next meeting.
Discover the other testimonials of Mykyta: