Who is fighting in the Ukrainian Army? Meet Oleksii, with the call sign "Molot" or "Hammer", a fourth-generation career military officer with 28 years in uniform, UN peacekeeping deployments to African countries on his record, and a stint as head sergeant of Ukraine's Land Forces Command Directorate, according to the 210th Separate Assault Regiment.
Molot retired in 2021. He could have stayed out of the full-scale war that broke out nine months later. Instead, he demanded mobilization.
"If we don't fight now, there's a big chance our children will have to," he said.
In Congo: 95 against 4,500
"In Congo, there were 95 of us. We stood in the way of around 4,500 rebels. We managed to avoid direct contact," Oleksii recalled of one deployment with the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The arithmetic is striking even decades on — a small Ukrainian contingent fronting a force roughly 47 times its size, holding the position by presence alone.
Ukraine was a regular contributor to UN peacekeeping over the past three decades. Thousands of Ukrainian troops served on missions across Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East before the country needed them all at home.
Modern technology changes everything except endurance
The 28-year career left him fluent in a kind of warfare that has been almost completely rewritten since 2022. Modern technology has changed the rules of combat, he said, but a cold mind and endurance remain the bedrock of every operation.
Drones and electronic warfare are layered on top of the older basics, but the older basics don't go away.
We won't live in a cage"
"We'll win through Ukrainian stubbornness and love of freedom," Oleksii said, adding that Ukrainians are free people and "won't live in a cage."
Earlier, Ukraine's Presidential Office reported that it was developing its first strategy to expand relations and presence on the African continent. Meanwhile, Russia continues to rely on African soldiers fighting in the war amid no decision on full-scale mobilization by the state.
