A Ukrainian tattoo artist blasting heavy metal in a black Opel pulled up to Poland’s border with Ukraine on Sunday, informing the immigration officers on duty that he was headed back to his home country to fight.
“Good,” a Polish officer told Nikita Azarkhin, 32, who stepped out and loaded a camouflage-print duffle bag full of first-aid kits onto a bus headed into Ukraine.
“I would love not to fight, and be alive, but this is the time where if I want to be able to look myself in the mirror, I have to, have to go,” said Mr. Azarkhin, who has been living in Berlin and had never fired a gun outside a firing range. “Otherwise, I will live in my own personal hell in my head.”
Ukrainians from across Europe—part of a huge diaspora that has spread across the continent in the three decades since the former Soviet republic gained independence—are returning to their home country to pick up arms in their fight against Russia.
Those men, and some women, have, in general, no combat experience, little training, and few have weapons of their own. They are drawn from the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians—truck drivers and cabbies, students and IT workers—who have emigrated in search of jobs and prosperity in Europe’s wealthier countries.
“It’s our home, it’s our country, and I don’t have a different one,” said Dmytro, a cryptocurrency trader driving his Volkswagen home to fight.
“Good,” a Polish officer told Nikita Azarkhin, 32, who stepped out and loaded a camouflage-print duffle bag full of first-aid kits onto a bus headed into Ukraine.
“I would love not to fight, and be alive, but this is the time where if I want to be able to look myself in the mirror, I have to, have to go,” said Mr. Azarkhin, who has been living in Berlin and had never fired a gun outside a firing range. “Otherwise, I will live in my own personal hell in my head.”
Ukrainians from across Europe—part of a huge diaspora that has spread across the continent in the three decades since the former Soviet republic gained independence—are returning to their home country to pick up arms in their fight against Russia.
Those men, and some women, have, in general, no combat experience, little training, and few have weapons of their own. They are drawn from the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians—truck drivers and cabbies, students and IT workers—who have emigrated in search of jobs and prosperity in Europe’s wealthier countries.
“It’s our home, it’s our country, and I don’t have a different one,” said Dmytro, a cryptocurrency trader driving his Volkswagen home to fight.
