In Wartime: Stories from Ukraine

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This is what I saw: the bloated corpse of a man, hanging folded over the high power cables in the eastern village of Novokaterinivka. He had been part of the Ukrainian retreat from Ilovaysk at the end of August 2014. When a rebel or Russian missile hit his armored vehicle and the ammunition inside it exploded, the top of it peeled off like the lid of a sardine tin. His body was flung into the air and then caught on the wire. In the wreckage there were the charred remains of another young soldier and, by the blasted top of the vehicle, lying on the road, the blackened torso of a third man. His arm was held over his head. The body on the wire, which had completely escaped the flames, looked waxy and somehow unreal, swelling and gleaming slightly in the late summer sun. His trousers had come off, dangling from his feet, his shirt and jacket hung down over his head. It was a symbol of defeat—or of victory, depending on which side of the war you were on.

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