Don't Ask Me If I Killed

On the 8th of April 2022 the story of a russian missile killing 51 civilians in Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region was seen all over the world. I was there moments after the attack and that is the day that changed the course of the rest of my life.

I have been filming since the beginning of the war. In just over two months of my country being invaded I have already seen things I would have never imagined before: thousands of desperate people fleeing for their lives, rockets falling close to the home I grew up in and houses turned into rubble. Friends in the filmmaking community abroad aski me to leave but I just can not abandon my country so, at first, I volunteer to evacuate civilians from places like Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Bucha and document their ordeal. But upon reaching the Kramatorsk train station shortly after the russian rocket obliterated the lives of 51 human beings waiting to be evacuated, and seeing the bloody remains of women, children and elderly scattered like rags on the platform, I decide that I am not doing enough. I am angry and I want to fight back and so I enlist in the National Guard of Ukraine.

I learn how to use a weapon, how to treat the wounded and how to survive on the battlefield. I am the only woman in my unit of 240 but I gain respect and make some friends. My commander allows me to film but it is made clear that my job as a soldier comes first and after a month of training we are sent to the frontline in the Donbas.
We spend two months in a besieged mining town in Eastern Ukraine constantly pounded by artillery and with few shells of our own to respond with. We are sending more and more wounded and dead to the rear, while trying to get the few remaining civilians to leave. Clinging on for dear life, we are moving from one position to another. Yet we form a bond. My young friends Artem and Andrey keep me safe and sane with their innocence and good natured humor. We form a friendship that can’t compare with any of the bonds I have previously made in life, and I keep on filming.

Focusing on the few moments of rest we get and the lives of people I encounter, I film the day to day life of an army made out of people who came from quiet lives and regular jobs. I am both a witness to and protagonist in the transformation of average civilians into combat veterans and what they lose on the way.

Life in a war zone gives me an overwhelming clarity of who people really are. There is no experience other than combat that reveals the nature of people. It reveals whom one can rely on or not.

Amongst all the pain, destruction and moral ambiguity, there are genuine moments of joy, love and human decency.

After a year at war, I am a veteran of many battles, I have been wounded and made friends who I will love for the rest of my days but who will never see their loved ones again.

My 20-year-old friend, Artem, whom I carried on my back as a pretend-casualty during training, gets a head-wound from a piece of shrapnel and falls into a coma. He saved many lives but there is not much I can say at his funeral to his grandmother nor to the girl he married last summer on a 3-day leave. Our friend Andrey disappears somewhere in Bakhmut. He only saw his baby daughter twicewhen he was on leave and I cannot bring myself to break the heart of his wife who still hopes he is a prisoner. It is far more likely that he died.

I use my camera and write a diary to chronicle this journey. Now, as a recently promoted second lieutenant, I have 36 young men under my command. I am torn between the pain I feel I am causing the people I love back home who worry about my safety every day, and the responsibility to take care of who I lead in battle.

I am also a woman in a world of men. I had to prove myself from the very beginning. I had to shoot better than most, had to make sure I made no mistakes, I could not show weakness or frustration and most definitely could not cry when seeing so much pain. I saw plenty of strong healthy men crying in the past year but I know if I do it in front of other soldiers I would be seen as frail. For now, I am showing no weakness to my men because they rely on my experience to stay alive. Yet, I have not let go of my hope in humanity and my wish for a better world and deep down inside, I’m still a girl who wants to dance, swim in the ocean and be a mom.

This film is a story of those who abhor inflicting violence upon other humans but who have no choice but to do so in order to preserve the lives of those they love. A story that can be told about any war, about how humanity bends under the constant threat of death, to those who need to see it but will hopefully never have to experience it.

East Doc Forum (HBO Max Award, Current Time TV Award, 2023), CineDoc Tbilisi (Best Pitch, Current Time TV Award, 2022)