If you are not an experienced sapper (miner), you can go on a mission, but you may not return, jokes Andriy, commander of the Ukrainian sapper platoon.
Marian Kušnir and Serhiy Nuzhnenko write in a text for Radio Free Europe that they meet Andrije, whose call sign is Porthos, after one of the Three Musketeers, in a recreation center in the Donetsk region.
It's already getting dark outside. We will meet late because during the day the fighters had combat missions in the vicinity of the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
There is no shortage of work for sappers here. Almost every meter of the front line is mined.
Andrij joined the army in March 2022, right after Russia launched a full-scale invasion.
Until then, he had no military experience.
"I lived in Portugal from 2009 to 2013," he recalls. "I returned to Ukraine after my daughter was born. My wife and I decided that we wanted her to be educated here in Ukraine, to think the way we think."
He worked as a bricklayer in Portugal. He was surprised that in the Western European country many workers had no education, and some were illiterate.
"If someone received a salary and had to sign it, some would just mark it with a cross," he says.
Not long after he returned to Ukraine, Russia forcibly annexed Crimea and launched the first phase of the war in eastern Ukraine. Then came the invasion of 2022.
"I didn't get to the front right away," recalls Andrij.
He first underwent basic military training and then specialized as a sapper, with various military engineering tasks, the most important of which was working with mines.
"I came to the battlefield in July 2022. That was the beginning of my military career," he points out.
Andriy and his platoon went through some of the toughest battles in eastern Ukraine, defending Bahmut and Soledar as best they could before both cities fell into Russian hands. Today he works in the south of Bahmut.
"What you see in war movies are just fairy tales. In reality, it's completely different," he says. "Conflict is something that changes every minute, every second. It's impossible to be ready for everything."
During his first experience in combat, he recalls: "There was no fear, but maybe if I had known what was coming, maybe there would have been."
"I felt fear after the first combat missions," says Andrij. "Sometimes the mission was scheduled to pick up at 11 at night, so the car would arrive in the middle of the night. As they say, waiting for death is worse than death itself."
It was, he says, when he was returning from a combat mission, when fear began to enter him.
"You get back to the evacuation point where it's calmer and you start thinking about where you were and what you were doing," he says. "Yeah, that's when the fear comes in."
Andrij recalls the operation of mining the area near Bahmut, which was one of the most dangerous missions of his team.
"The position was attacked by Russian troops and we were assigned to go in and mine the area. We completed the mission (laying mines) and returned to the positions. The next day the battalion commander came and said that this job should be done by a special operations team This means that we were not trained for such tasks," he points out.
After this operation, he says, he and his team "considered themselves good soldiers."
The hardest part of the fight, he states, "is seeing your wounded brother next to you, and not being able to help him."
"You become attached, you become like a family. And then, when you start losing that person and you can't help, it's very scary. You don't know what to say to his family after that. That's the biggest fear – feeling helpless and unable to save a close friend. "
In the evening of the next day, we go with Andrije and his team to the training area behind the battlefield, where several small groups shoot at targets and simulate attack missions.
He pulls out grenade launcher charges, various types of mines, and a bomb-laden FPV drone that failed to reach its target. He arranges everything to show how the "toys" are neutralized.
"If you see no beeps or flashing lights, then you can approach the drone at your own risk and inspect it," he explains.
According to official rules, it is best not to approach any armed drone. Ideally, it would be destroyed remotely.
However, with enough experience, it can sometimes be worth trying to save the drone.
"The first thing to do is to turn off the main battery. The second is to inspect the explosive charge and find its detonator. Then carefully disconnect the detonator from the ammunition," explains Andrij.
"If you see an extra battery, try to deactivate it. Only then do we remove the ammunition, which is then destroyed. If it is possible to demine the drone, the remains go to our pilot friends who will use them for spare parts," he explains.
Next, a TNT charge is placed on top of the ammunition, as well as remote-controlled detonators.
We take cover, and then we hear: "Fire in the hole".
Stones fall and a cloud of dust rises. The explosion was at least 30 meters away, but you feel the force of the shock wave in your chest. The smell of explosives is in the air.
An equally difficult situation is how to neutralize an anti-tank mine. Russian forces often hide the so-called an anti-lift explosive that activates a larger mine when the sapper tries to remove it.
If there is any danger of such a device lurking under an anti-tank mine, a special technique is used to move the mine remotely, which Andrij demonstrates.
We return to the shelter again.
A rope leads from our position in the trench to the mine. With a sharp pull on the rope, the soldier jerks the mine from its place and the explosion echoes through the training ground.
By using this method, the Ukrainian sapper remains unharmed, but there are many tricks that Russian troops resort to in order to inflict maximum damage on the sappers.
Some of his stories illustrate the dangers of the battlefield itself.
"One of our soldiers rigged the bell on the door to be a detonator. I don't know what he was thinking, but he decided to hang that bell on a tree," recalls Andrij.
"Then the Ukrainians had to withdraw from this position. Russian troops entered the area and one of the enemy soldiers, God knows what he was thinking, pressed the button. The explosive device was connected to the bell and half of his group was killed in an explosion."
One of the closest encounters with death was when Andrij encountered a Russian POM-3 mine.
The fearsome device, which is dropped from the air, is equipped with a seismic sensor sensitive enough to explode if someone steps within its radius.
"We demined the area in one zone. Everything was going smoothly. Then our driver spotted the parachute of one of those mines. Then he took a few more steps and shouted that he thought he saw a POM-3 mine. We all froze because it was about to explode ", Andrij says.
"The mine battery seems to have run out. It was supposed to self-destruct, but it didn't. We decided to machine gun it from a safe distance. It didn't explode, it just went to pieces."
"Later, we were given a mission to go to the same field to pick up a fallen drone," says Andrij.
"We were looking for a safe place to enter that field, but empty containers of POM-3 mines were lying everywhere. It was pretty clear that these mines were scattered all over the area. The commander was informed, and he withdrew the mission. He decided that life a sapper is not worth a drone."
"There is an opinion that sappers are disposable soldiers," points out Andrij, half-jokingly.
As for psychological support, Andrij says: "Your military family, the brothers you live with, are your most important network. Without them, things would quickly become unbearable. There are seven of us in our team. We all live together under the same roof. There are elderly guys and younger ones, but we all support each other. Then there's my wife - that support is very important. Then there's my daughter, who says: 'Dad, you can always call me, talk.' with by me'".
Bonus video:
