Maksym Skubenko

Maksym Skubenko doesn’t remember what happened before February 24 very well.

“Maybe I’ll come back someday, I’ll get an injection of peaceful life, and then I’ll remember,” he says. “Right now everything’s in a haze, the details are blurred.

Still, Maksym recalls how right up until February 24 he calmed everyone down, while he made evacuation plans for his team and family; how he decided who to hand over the bank keys to, and created backup accounts; how he wrote out algorithms for those who would take over his responsibilities. But he didn’t have a plan for himself. Still, he had to do something.

When the team began their evacuation on February 24, Maksym handed over his access codes and decided to go to the military enlistment office. He packed some things that he turned out not to need, sat down at his favorite table in his rented apartment, drank two shots of his favorite whiskey on the rocks, and left.

“It wasn’t a heroic decision,” he says. “I’m not someone who has anything to do with the army, I had never served in it, and I have a lot of illnesses. But it’s like that joke: if you serve, everyone’s sick, and if you fight, you are healthy because you want to be.”

Maksym did not know which enlistment office to go to. He lived in the Shevchenkivskyi district, but he didn’t want to go to the one there: he would have had to climb up the hill to reach it. But he could go down to the one in Holosiivskyi, so he chose that.

They told him to come to the muster in half an hour. The recruits were given documents and machine guns: no one seemed to understand anything. On the same day, someone betrayed their location – they were struck by a missile. Chaos ensued, in which Maksym noticed some calm men with weapons and ammunition in a car, and went over to them. Later, two of them became the company commander and chief sergeant; but at that time, they were all just volunteers for the Territorial Defense (TD).

“There were a lot of Aidar members in the Territorial Defense, so we became Aidars too. We started going on missions, and became a platoon within the company. We liberated Horenka, Moshchun, Bucha. We didn’t get any combat payments or documents about our service.

“But it was scary and exciting,” says Maksym.

He learned quickly, on the go. He did not see the first Grad attack, but only felt it: their car was shelled on the way to Horenka. One of his fellow soldiers, who had been in the ATO since 2014, taught Maksym to listen for mortar fire and determine whether it was aimed at them. Their unit exchanged ammunition with other brigades. After the mine arrived, the soldiers who remained unscathed helped their concussed friends. They learned to take care of each other. All of this happened in a matter of days, but they gained experience very quickly.

“All sorts of shit came out, people started quarreling, and I had to smooth it all out,” says Maksym. “It wasn’t too different from my managerial work, but at the same time it was very different because there’s no such intense emotions anywhere else. There’s a lot of adrenaline and drive. Understanding comes later. At the time, I didn’t think about whether I might become numb to it all, so that [that understanding] wouldn’t appear – it was a lot like my first transatlantic flight. I just knew that I had to do certain things, and I did them as best I could.”

There was no heroic march across the region. The guys dug trenches with whatever they had, even a mug or a helmet, and they went out with assault rifles against Grads and 150-mm shells. When the order came, they abruptly dropped everything and went to another place to blow up a pontoon and shoot tanks. And then they had to move on again after a whole column of the enemy turned up.

Maksym says that they were lucky: the Russians were not prepared for urban combat. And when they had already withdrawn from the outskirts of the city and the region had been de-occupied, the TDs were offered the chance to join a newly formed assault regiment and go to the forefront. Almost all of them agreed.

“I never wanted to make a career in the army,” says Maksym. “I was going to become a sniper, but I accidentally became a master sergeant. No one else in our command wanted to become one.”

Maksym had a friend, a veteran of the US Army, whom he asked to train the newly mobilized men who had joined the former TDs. The latter were scared and inept, so he had to help them. In the end, they managed to create a full-fledged unit during the training. But at the same time they took responsibility for it, even though everyone shied away from the bureaucracy which would have been involved. Now Maksym mostly works at the headquarters.

His call sign is ‘Rain’. This is the abbreviation of an old nickname of his, ‘Alone in the Rain’, from his days in the Harry Potter fan club. For identification purposes, he draws the emblem of the Deathly Hallows on the unit’s vehicles – according to legend, their owner is immortal. He already has a beautiful story about how one such car exploded and the soldiers in it survived.

Maksym has been in the Donetsk region since the summer. He says that his 5th Separate Assault Regiment earned the right to become a full-fledged mechanized brigade with its own blood. Even before they arrived in the region as a unit, they had already traveled there on separate missions. And then they settled there. They traveled by bus on confusing roads, at night, and in unmarked trains.

“On the train, I sat by the open door, dangling my legs, and just admired the Donbas landscapes,” Maksym recalls. “These fields and terricones give the impression of power and independence, and there’s plenty of room to walk around. Here, the idea of Cossacks marching onwards for tens of kilometers to the Kremlin, and burning it down emerges very naturally.

There is also a strong feeling that life in the Donbas is rolling around in the footsteps of the military who are liberating the occupied territories. As soon as a piece of land is liberated, people immediately return there.

Maksym doesn’t consider himself a professional soldier. He sees what the powerful units are capable of, and he realizes that he will never be like them. But the army needs different kinds of people.

“I don’t like bureaucracy, I complain to the company commander, I swear, but I grit my teeth and do it, because I have the knowledge and skills to build these systems,” says Maksym. “And if it simplifies the work of the units at least a little bit, if it can save lives or help with planning an operation, I’ll do it.”

His economics degree, his work as an auditor, his investigations into frauds, his top management position, and his ability to fight theorists and argue when it makes sense – that’s all come in handy.

“I’m not afraid to stand up against someone, or take responsibility for my mistakes,” Maksym adds. “And that also has to be done. Without it, there won’t be any movement. You have to do it, if it improves the situation for you and the country.”