“Mom, are you sleeping? Baibak is ‘200’ (dead – OstroV). Cowboy just messaged me (all call signs have been changed – OstroV). I can’t sleep. Of those who went in with us – almost all are ‘200’ or ‘300’ (wounded – OstroV). Two or three are intact. Tserkva among them”.
On Baibak’s smile
In the army, my son finally found a boys’-men’s crew for the first time, a tight-knit group. Four schools in nine years and only one in-person semester at college before the occupation of the Luhansk oblast – none of that really helped in building real bonds.
“The instructors told us before deployment not to get too attached to each other, ‘cause many of us will be ‘200’, maybe all”, - he said after training.
But they’re still getting attached. Seems like, with time, they’ll stop – the ones who survive.
Baibak became one of his closest friends, despite the age gap – he was just over 30. Lived and worked in Italy for a long time and came back to Ukraine to fight. His mom stayed in Italy. She still doesn’t know why her son returned. Thinks that he just wanted to come home… Whether Baibak gave her contact info to the unit, how she’ll find out her child was killed, or if she ever will – who the hell knows now…
“They should’ve been recruiting guys like Baibak for UAV units, not just grabbing any randoms… His intellect is really sharp. But physical training – not so much”, - my son said.
Truth is, Baibak wasn’t aiming for UAVs – he deliberately went into infantry.
“You can’t break spaghetti. If Baibak saw what you’re doing, he’d be telling you how they do it in Italy. He’s got a wicked sense of humor”.
Baibak is in the only photo they have together: at first, you notice the joyful, genuine smile, and then a guy who looks much younger than his “over 30”. I dreamed of meeting him. I was even convinced I would – out of some incurable, optimistic naivety.
For over ten years, news about the “200” and “300” were about my friends, people from my generation. And now it’s reached my son’s generation. My God, how many more generations will this go on, and will those generations even be born in such a reality? Will they even be conceived?
The day I found out about Baibak’s death, the official news was optimistic: frozen russian assets, sanctions, a drone strike on some russian plant that made stuff for the defense ministry and Roscosmos... My God, is any of that worth Baibak’s death???
Are sanctions against some russian oligarch, a strike on a factory in some Lipetsk – even remotely comparable to the smile of a kind guy with a sharp mind and sense of humor? A guy who knew how to cook spaghetti right, and came back from working abroad in Italy to fight for Ukraine on the front line? Can any of that even be compared???
My God, how do we learn to live with all this?
His smile from that photo is always in front of my eyes – the one I’ll never see in real life. And I still can’t make myself look at that one photo. But that’ll pass, I know. Just like the need to form bonds with people will pass for my son and his comrades. If they survive…
Anna Hamova, for OstroV