Mr. Tinazzi, what was the most memorable experience on the front for you? When a Russian Tochka missile hit the Kramatorsk train station on April 8th, where there were between one and two thousand civilians at the time – many of them women, children and old people. People tried to leave the city because of the Russian attacks, but the railway line was already damaged by that time. That’s why so many people stayed in the station hall.
I was there just ten minutes later, before the rescue workers. Everywhere between the rubble people were screaming for help, chaos reigned. I and two other colleagues then tried to help the seriously injured with our first aid kit. The images of the massacre – that’s how the attack has to be described – still catch up with me to this day. According to official figures, more than 50 people died in the station that day.
This action by the Russian army is familiar from previous conflicts. I saw the same thing in Syria back then. On the one hand, many of the Russian rocket attacks are imprecise, which is due to the outdated weapon systems, but also because nobody cares whether civilians die. On the other hand, attacks on the civilian population are used as collective punishment.
Human rights hardly play a role in the entire Russian military apparatus, and the commanders are not interested in how their units treat civilians. As a result, there are barbaric crimes like in Bucha.
After half a year of war, reporting has changed. Topics are above all new weapon systems, counter-offensives and front shifts – a bit like in a conquest game. Less and less is read about what is happening at the front itself. Are people in the West losing sight of it? After six months, there is a certain war weariness – in the West, but also in Ukraine. And that’s only understandable. After the first two months of the war, I went home to Italy for four weeks to recover. When I returned to the front in Dnipro, the mood and morale among the volunteers and the soldiers was already different.
Every day the people there lose comrades, friends, compatriots. One dies, another is taken prisoner, and another comes back from the front badly injured. Of course, that makes you tired and exhausted.
As for the volunteers, many ran out of money simply because they quit their jobs. At the same time, prices are also rising in Ukraine because of the war, which makes everyday life even more difficult for many. The tears that the war leaves in the lives of those affected, both mentally and materially, the human dramas that cannot be read from the history of the front or military analyses.
And even when talking to civilians in the combat zones, it often takes a while before you realize that something is wrong.
What do you mean? After a while, people got used to the exceptional situation at first glance: the war became normal. In Dnipro, for example, after a few weeks hardly anyone fled into the bunker during a missile alert. You just went about your everyday life – a feeling of false security had set in. Many have simply suppressed the fact that the next Russian bomb could hit them.
In Zaporizhia I interviewed refugees from Mariupol. Many were traumatized and didn’t want to talk about what the Russians had done to them; that they had lost their home or loved ones. Instead, there was mostly silence. Others acted like it wasn’t all that bad. Hardly anyone has really opened up.
What did the soldiers you spoke to tell you? Soldiers are people. A bulrush – yes. But when they’re fighting for their lives and their country – and that’s exactly what Ukrainian soldiers are doing – then a decent meal or a new pair of boots or new gloves suddenly become enormously important. Of course, some complain when something is missing. But what I heard most often – and that’s probably because I’m Italian – were questions like: “What do Europeans think of us?”
The soldiers want to know whether the Germans or Italians realize how they are risking their lives for Europe at the front. Because many people I spoke to see themselves as a protective shield for Europe against Putin and the Russian troops and draw a large part of their motivation from this. That’s why they closely follow the discourse on the continent about the war in their country. It is extremely important to them how the West sees them. You see and feel like a European.
What role does fear play in the lives of soldiers at the front? A big one, of course. But it is not so much the fear of death itself, but the fear of not being able to return to parents, comrades or children. As if it would be a betrayal if they didn’t come home from the front. And of course many miss their former life, the life in which they didn’t have to think about the war.
You are returning to the front today – what drives you after six months of war?As Europeans we have a special duty to report what is happening at the front. After all, the war is taking place right on our doorstep. And the war just won’t let me go. I now have a lot of contacts and friends in the Ukraine, and as soon as I’m at home in Italy for a little longer, I notice how I’m drawn there again. It’s just my job.
