July 11th 2025

Yuriy reflects on the psychological toll of war, the loss of close friends, and the inescapable horrors faced in Ukraine. Amidst widespread destruction and cruelty, he delves deep into the struggle of being both an observer and an active participant in the conflict.

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TRANSCRIPT: (Apple Podcasts & Podbean app users can enjoy accurate closed captions)  

It is 11th of July.

I'm starting to forget my fallen friends. A few days ago, someone reminded me of anniversary of one of their deaths. And it took me quite a while to remember who they were even talking about. I think this is how the minds defense mechanisms work. They push away the nightmarish memories of losing close people and with them their names and even their faces. These can probably be prevented, for example, by keeping a journal. Many people around me do just that: they record everything that is happening. Some have already published their journals as books, or turned them into film or theatre scripts, but I don't want that. I don't want to keep a journal or publish it or turn it into a screenplay about the war. I haven't even listened to a single episode of my own podcast. It's too painful for me digging into memories, dragging out the shadows of the death and the suffering of a wounded.

You know, being a reporter- and I've done that for over 20 years- is above all about knowing how to be invisible. You write about events in Syria, in Iraq, in Egypt- wherever- but you yourself are not present in the texts. You never use the words "I". Or at least you try not to, because you are not the main character here. You're just an observer who cannot and must not influence what's happening.

But here, you can't be invisible. A soldier in war is an active participant, not an observer. And when you write about this war, you write about yourself too. Or rather, first and foremost about yourself. And how can you write about yourself when you are alive and countless, thousands are not. In just the last three months alone, over 1500 civilians have been killed. Every night Ukrainian cities are destroyed by missiles and kamikaze drones. And you can't imagine how ordinary Russians celebrate this on social media. Every murder Ukrainian child is a holiday to them. Every destroyed home, a reason to cheer and laugh. It's a twisted world. Instead of raising their our children and building their our own cities, they kill our children and destroy our cities. The mind just can't handle it. Because the cruelty and hatred are so unnatural, so inhuman that it feels like it simply can't be real, but it is, and we are living in it for the fourth year now. And we are starting to forget those who died in the war with this inhuman mass that came for us.