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Why I won't go home to fight on the Ukrainian frontline
Ukrainian-Australian Alex Vasilenko has lost at least 10 friends and family who went to fight on the Ukrainian frontline.
Published 10 July 2022 8:37am
By Jennifer Scherer
Source: SBS
Image: Alex Vasilenko moved to Australia from Ukraine in 2012.
24 February will always be firmly burnt into Alex Vasilenko’s memory.
He was travelling with friends in a remote part of Australia’s Northern Territory when they hit a rare patch of mobile reception.
“I got a bunch of messages on all the [applications] like Telegram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and people have been saying, ‘Alex, they're bombing us … the war has started,’” he tells SBS Dateline.
“We stopped the car in the middle of the road and that's one of the first times in my life that I actually got tears in my eyes because I realised that this is the end of the life as I knew before.”
But as the missiles fell, the pain of losing his homeland wasn't enough to make him want to return home and fight the advancing Russian forces, alongside many of his friends and family.
Having moved to Australia from Ukraine in 2012, Mr Vasilenko lives in Sydney and works in data and analytics while also running a startup business. The 33-year-old says watching Russia invade his homeland made him feel a sense of helplessness.
“When I'm here, I'm getting homesick for Ukraine, especially the food, music, and how people behave,” he says.
“It is a part of me … even if I will spend the whole rest of my life here [in Australia]... on my last day, before I die, I will still be remembering Ukraine.”
After Russian President Vladimir Putin approved his ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, Russia launched a full-scale invasion by land, air and sea.
In response, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy established a foreign legion and called for anyone, including Ukrainians overseas, to return home and fight.
The call was enthusiastically responded to and by 6 March, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba announced more than 20,000 people from 52 different countries had enlisted.
While Dateline reported in April on an Australian man who travelled to Ukraine to fight, it is unclear how many other Australians have joined him.
It’s illegal for Australian citizens to fight for non-state armed groups in foreign conflicts, although it is legal to join a foreign nation’s formal military forces. DFAT's current travel advice for Ukraine and Russia is do not travel.
Additionally, a Department of Home Affairs spokesperson told SBS Dateline that consular support to Australians in the region is extremely limited.
Each day, Alex Vasilenko receives a flood of messages from friends and family in Ukraine.
“If you live in Australia, I don't think that you will support Ukraine, if you go there and fight, unless you're a professional soldier, and you have very specific professional skills,” he says.
“If you are just coming there and taking the gun and get killed the next day, it's not much of support. It's a loss of support.”
According to an adviser to Mr Zelenskyy, up to 200 Ukrainian soldiers are being killed each day. The number of Russian soldiers killed in the conflict is unclear. Russia rarely discloses its own troop fatalities.
Losing loved ones
Alex says at least 10 of his close friends and family have been killed while fighting on the Ukrainian frontline.
“I've got a few messages from the wives who know me and they're like, do you remember Genya? … he’s been killed.
"In this group of people, there are young families, they have young kids, they just started their proper life to settle down.
“And now they're losing their lives. They're losing everything.”
If you are just coming there and taking the gun and get killed the next day, it's not much of support. It's a loss of support.Alex Vasilenko
Being captured by Russian forces is another risk of joining Ukraine’s foreign legion, with two Britons and a Moroccan national who fought for Ukraine currently facing execution.
Aiden Aslin, Shaun Pinner and Brahim Saadoun were sentenced by a court in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, one of Russia’s proxies in eastern Ukraine.
UK officials have condemned what they say is a Russian ‘show trial’. The UK foreign secretary, Liz Truss has tried to intervene, stating they are “prisoners of war” and that the ruling is a “sham judgement with absolutely no legitimacy.”
British citizens Aiden Aslin (left) and Shaun Pinner (right) and Moroccan Saaudun Brahim (centre) attend a sentencing hearing at the Supreme Court of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic. Source: AAP / STRINGER/EPA
“My close friends who are working in the army or in the Ukrainian intelligence forces, they say, we have long queues, five, six people per seat who want to go and fight. They said you better do your job, especially if you stay overseas, spread information, support the Ukrainian movement … influence [other] governments to support Ukraine.”
Before foreign governments started providing assistance to Ukraine, Alex said the frontline was suffering from a lack of basic supplies.
“The other kind of help that we can provide is financial help,” Alex says.
“The soldiers, they don’t have enough money on the army account to supply them with medicine like painkillers."
It was this knowledge that compelled him to act quickly.
”So I thought, ‘why don't I sacrifice my salary?’ Give it to those people who are fighting for my country.”
A Ukrainian serviceman walks amid the rubble of a building heavily damaged by multiple Russian bombardments near a frontline in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Monday, 25 April, 2022. Source: AAP, AP / Felipe Dana
Following Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s visit to Kyiv in early July, Australia pledged a further $99.5 million in military support, which included the delivery of an additional 14 armoured personnel carriers and 20 more Bushmaster protected mobility vehicles. Australia has so far provided about $388 million in military assistance to Ukraine.
Escape from Ukraine
In early February, when Alex was sitting in his vehicle in the red dirt near Uluru, there was only one person on his mind.
“I realised that my mum is in danger and that I had to make some quick decisions,” he recalls.
Tetiana Vasylenko lived in the city of Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine, about 40 kilometres from the Russian border.
On the 24 February, at 5am, she heard the bombs exploding.
“I was very much afraid for my life, because at any time a missile might have arrived,” Tetiana tells SBS Dateline.
“It's very hard to realise that all your life in Ukraine is literally over.”
Tetiana Vasylenko lived in the city of Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine.
She made it to a bomb shelter in the Ukrainian city of Kropyvnytskyi before boarding an evacuation train to Krakow in Poland.
The United Nations estimates more than 3.5 million people have fled to Poland since the invasion began.
“The train has been stopped multiple times and they asked them not to use their mobile phones because the Russian aircrafts were flying around them and had started to bomb the railways,” Alex recounted.
“The worst thing she has seen was parents boarding their kids on the train as there was no space for parents.
“They were giving their kids to random people and crying and saying ‘could you please at least save our kids.’”
Tetiana travelled from Kharkiv to a bomb shelter in Kropyvnytskyi, before catching an evacuation train to Krakow.
“It is so terrifying, all these explosions,” she says.
“When I’ve been in Krakow … a door would bang and I’d think that it was gunfire.
“Since I came here [to Australia] I am feeling alright,I have peace of mind. Perhaps it's because my son is at my side.”
Tetiana Vasylenko and her son, Alex Vasilenko in Australia.
Some of his relatives are sheltering in the Kharkiv Metro which has been turned into a bomb shelter. The trains have stopped.
“This war is not just about Ukrainian sovereignty,” he says.
“This is the war between the free world, the future against the past.”
