“Soldiers of Tank 27”: “Soldiers of Tank 27”: the most difficult year for three civilians who took up arms to defend Ukraine | International

Volodímir Orenchak was the director of a beverage import company in kyiv, including Estrella Damm beer. Alexander Karman was an emergency services advisor in his village, Talne, in Cherkasy province, central Ukraine. Taras Havrilenko was a representative of a bakery company in Smila, also in Cherkasy. In 2023, they were tankers of the 1st Ukrainian Armored Brigade, when EL PAÍS filmed a documentary about them. They are just three of more than half a million civilians who took up arms to defend their country against the Russian invasion. The second year of the war was the most difficult of their lives. They lost comrades during the summer’s failed counter-offensive and the fighting took a toll on their mental health; also to their families.

Orenchak, Karman and Havrilenko are the protagonists of the documentary Tank Soldiers 27, which this newspaper publishes this Sunday and which accompanies this article. Tank 27 was a Soviet T-72 armored vehicle, a central vehicle in the film. “There are more breakdowns than missions,” Karman explained in April 2023 while they were preparing it in a hangar. It is a unit manufactured more than four decades ago, in continuous use since the 2014 war between the Ukrainian army and pro-Russian separatists in Donbass. Today Tank 27 no longer exists: it was destroyed by a Russian drone in August 2023, during an assault on the Zaporizhia front. The crew, three young people under 30, died. This was the car that Karman and Orenchak had been using since 2022. That day, they loaned it to another team. It saved their lives. Within minutes, four tanks were lost. Two armored columns of his brigade were stopped by a minefield and enemy fire fell on them.

In a meeting without cameras in September, during one of EL PAÍS’s many trips to Zaporizhzhia to prepare for the documentary, Karman emotionally recalled how he had to abandon his tank and run, dodging the corpses of his infantry. This 54-year-old man, cultured and slow, with the voice of a movie actor, then spent two weeks in hospital. His heart problems then worsened. It was neither his first nor his second experience in a Russian attack: in early 2023, he was part of the forces defending Bakhmut, a battle to the last meter that Russia won in May.

Havrilenko had no combat experience in April 2023, when we lived with him and his comrades in arms in the village of Huliaipole on the Zaporizhia Front. Since then and until last December, he has continued to participate in missions. From a fearful and timid civilian, he became a seasoned soldier. But during a failed assault in August, as Havrilenko himself explains in the documentary, he spent 24 hours in his bunk, unable to move or speak.

“I am a person who, in principle, is not prepared for this, because we were not prepared for such a thing,” Orenchak admitted. On the day the invasion began, February 24, 2022, his dream was to return to Barcelona in April with his son, who had given him tickets to attend a Barça match. This trip failed because Kremlin troops had arrived at the gates of kyiv. Orenchak did not hesitate: his city and his country were in danger, and he enlisted voluntarily.

Today, few Ukrainians voluntarily present themselves to recruitment offices. The war changed scenario, with Russia again in an offensive position, superior in all resources, including the number of troops. The vast majority of Ukrainians avoid being called up for military service. The new mobilization law will increase pressure on men aged 25 and over to join the army. The Armed Forces estimate they need 500,000 new soldiers. The victims, between wounded and dead, number in the tens of thousands, and those who are still active are exhausted. Of the three tankers, only one is still fighting, Orenchak. Due to his weakened health, Karman was transferred to a rearguard unit; Havrilenko was released from the army in December: his wife is ill and he has to take care of his four-year-old daughter.

When we met the three tankers, it was a moment of pause for the 1st Battalion of the 1st Armored Brigade. Reinforcements, like Havrilenko, were arriving for the summer counter-offensive. Operations with armor were limited to reserving ammunition for the impending major offensive, which finally began in June. Ammunition is also rationed today, but because arsenals are at a minimum. Above all, young recruits trained in Europe in the use of the Leopard, the German-made tanks which were to be the backbone of the offensive, joined in. Without air superiority for Ukraine, the Russian fortifications proved impregnable for the Leopard.

The Russians withdrew between the spring of 2022 and 2023 in this sector of Zaporozhye. Huliaipole had moved from the zero line to seven kilometers from the fighting. Russian artillery and its drone visits were periodic in the city, but it was a time when the hope prevailed that all the resources accumulated for the counter-offensive would be used to break the front towards the Sea of ​​Azov and isolate the Russian army in the south.

The EL PAÍS team visited the three tankers again in October. The Ukrainian offensive barely managed to advance 10 kilometers, and its main triumph was the capture of the town of Robotin, Zaporizhzhia. The 1st Armored Brigade took part in the fighting at Robotine, as well as at nearby Orijiv. The base of the 1st battalion was located in May in a forest near Orijiv. And there they remain, showing that the battle lines have barely moved so far because Russia, which is once again dominating the war in all areas, is pushing for the reconquest of Robotine.

The protagonists of the documentary want to be optimistic, partly out of military obligation and partly out of conviction. But Karman wondered in April interviews what his return to society would bring: “I don’t know if I will have a place there like the one I occupied before the war.” He spoke of the thousands of fighters from the Donbass war, who returned to civilian life completely transformed. And as he indicates, this invasion is much more violent.

At dusk one October day, sitting in a clearing in the forest where he lived with his companions, Karman explained in detail that he had reread the Apology of Socrates, written by Plato. His main conclusion, he says, is that you must follow the example of Socrates and be strong to defend your principles, even if the majority rejects you, even if it costs you your life. Thanks to hundreds of thousands of civilians like Karman, Orenchak and Havrilenko, the Ukrainian state resisted the invasion and continues to exist.

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