Belarusian teenager Gleb Gunko left the front lines in Ukraine with shrapnel in his legs, constant nightmares and post-traumatic stress disorder – but he has no regrets volunteering to fight the Russians.
“I wanted to stay but the doctor said no,” said the 18-year-old. “I lost a lot of friends there. My commander too.”
The soft-spoken Minsk native is among many ordinary Belarusians who – unlike their pro-Kremlin leader – have decided to risk their lives in defense of Ukraine.
“Before the war I thought I was comfortable with the fact that death is death and everyone dies eventually. But it was all too much,” he told AFP in Grojec, Poland, where he now lives in exile.
When AFP first spoke to Gunko in early March, the day he went to war, he said he volunteered to “fight for Ukraine but also for Belarus.
“Because our freedom also depends on the situation there.”
Gunko, whose ankles are tattooed with the words “Born Free,” left his homeland in 2020 after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko launched a cruel crackdown on opponents.
The longtime leader, who has been in power for decades, has since faced international condemnation for actively supporting and enabling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Despite opposing the regime in Minsk, Gunko said he still feels responsible for what is happening as a citizen of Belarus.
– Fault –
“It is my fault that rockets are being fired at Kyiv from Belarus. I feel guilty about it,” he said.
“I could have done more,” he added of his four-month stint in Ukraine, which ended in July.
Gunko went to war via the Belarusian House Foundation in Warsaw, which helps Belarusian volunteers go to Ukraine to fight.
“Belarusians cannot help Ukraine with arms… but they cannot stand aside, so they will fight for the independence of (our) fraternal country,” the group said on Facebook.
After arriving in Ukraine, Gunko received two weeks of military training. He then fought with other international volunteers in Kyiv and in the trenches around Kherson.
He said he saw many dead civilians in Bucha, the Kyiv suburb where hundreds of bodies were discovered after the Russian army drove out in March.
“We drove in and I saw kids at a bus stop … A kid is waving, smiling, and I see there’s a headless person lying right next to it,” Gunko said.
“That was tough,” he added.
He recalled other traumatic moments, such as being pinned for hours under fire from a Russian BMP-3 combat vehicle’s cannon, with shrapnel from an explosion still lodged in his limbs.
He also witnessed Russian troops outside Kherson pick up a volunteer British sniper, a comrade whose body he then carried.
Significantly thinner and more subdued than when he left for the war, Gunko told AFP about his experiences on a park bench in Grojec, the town south of Warsaw where he has lived a quiet life since returning in July.
“The military makes you a better person,” said the teenager, who wore his combat fatigues for the interview. “I’ve changed, yes. Everyone says it. I am calm. I think a lot,” he added.
“It’s like war. I’m watching people, waiting to see what happens. And I think I expect it to be bad.”
