Dmytro Filimonov, 41, is a Ukrainian journalist based in Kyiv. He was one of the first reporters to travel to the separatist-controlled territories of Donbas in 2014–2015 at the very onset of the conflict that would trigger Russia’s full-scale invasion eight years later. Now, having observed the war up close for the last three years, talking to both soldiers and civilians, Russians and Ukrainians, he has found that many of his compatriots just want the conflict to end, but avoid saying so out of fear of being labeled a traitor. Here, he tells his story to our Tanya Lukyanova.
KYIV, Ukraine — On February 24, 2022, I woke up to a phone call from a friend. “It’s started,” he said.
“What started?” I asked. “The war,” he replied. Only then did I hear the sound of the sirens in Kyiv signaling that yes, Russia had begun an invasion, announcing itself with bombs and shellings.
Every hour of that first day brought fresh news of air strikes—in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Kramatorsk, Odessa. By evening, president Volodymyr Zelensky reported that 137 Ukrainians had died. He also imposed martial law that day.
My younger brother, Anton, enlisted on that first day of the war. I’ve always thought that if war ever came, I would be a conscientious objector. But when the bombs began falling on my hometown, I found myself consumed with an animalistic rage and nearly enlisted, too. Instead, however, I instinctively began helping people escape from Ukraine—organizing transportation for women, children, and the elderly. Leaving wasn’t an option for me. Kyiv is my home. I wasn’t afraid to die. I just wanted to help as much as I can. Within a week, I had four drivers who traveled all over Kyiv, evacuating civilians. Soon, we were helping organize escape routes in other cities, too.
That sense of unity in Ukraine, in those early days of the invasion, was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I was amazed by my compatriots—by their courage, their humor, the strength of their spirit. During the first week of the war, I saw women handing flowers to soldiers as they marched off to war. When a man who had used his truck to block approaching Russian tanks was given a medal, he shrugged and said, “I don't know why I did it. I was just drinking.”
At the same time, Ukrainian men from all over the world were rushing home. People had a clear idea what they were fighting for. Hundreds of thousands were standing up as one to defend their land against the Russians who had invaded our country.
And in just over a month, Ukraine managed to achieve the impossible—we drove the mighty Russian army out of the Kyiv region. It was hailed as “the defeat of the ages.” Russian soldiers fled in disarray, abandoning equipment and supplies as our forces pushed them out. In dozens of villages all over Ukraine, citizens emerged from their shelters and hugged soldiers in the streets. Despite the devastation, there was a profound sense of triumph. It felt like a moment of victory. To me, it was victory.
But instead of seizing that moment to negotiate from a position of strength, a political decision was made to push forward. As a former actor, our president, Zelensky, is highly attuned to public perception—and perhaps that’s his biggest weakness. His image is of paramount importance to him. His heroic actions in the early days of the invasion rightly earned him a place in history, but by April 2022, his focus appeared to shift. Optics took priority over human lives. And now, nearly three years later, that sense of unity feels like a distant memory.
Since the onset of the invasion, I’ve been all over Ukraine. As a volunteer, aid worker, and mere observer, I traveled thousands of miles—from the Black Sea coast in Odessa to the Carpathian foothills in Lviv, and from the northern border in Chernihiv to the eastern front lines in Kramatorsk. I saw civilians—some of them mere boys—who, despite their uniforms and guns, didn’t know what they were doing. I went to villages that the Ukrainians had just taken back from the Russians, where I saw people who were too afraid to leave their apartments.
At the height of Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the fall of 2022, I spent several weeks with my brother in Bakhmut—the city in the Donbas region where the longest and bloodiest battle of the war was about to start. Anton is two years younger than me, but when I saw him, he looked so much older. He didn’t want to talk about the battles he’d been in.
This war didn’t just divide Russians and Ukrainians, it divided Ukrainians from each other. Because it’s not the enemy my countrymen fear most. It’s our own neighbors. The enemies within. In times of war, the hunt for traitors predictably reaches a fever pitch. This paranoia feeds an unrelenting pressure to prove your loyalty, to publicly denounce the enemy at every opportunity. If you don’t, you risk being labeled a traitor yourself.
I know because it happened to me.
In 2014, while working as a journalist for Kyiv’s 17 Channel, I traveled to what had then just recently become the Russia-backed, separatist-controlled territories of the Donbas region. Shortly after my trip, my name appeared on a notorious website called Myrotvorets, a Kyiv-based list of people deemed “enemies of Ukraine.” It accuses journalists, activists, and even foreign leaders of being traitors or Kremlin agents. Proof of their guilt? Their public opinions. Or, as in my case, simply visiting what was deemed to be “the other side.” Myrotvorets has no legal authority, but its power is real. Once your name appears, sometimes along with your personal information, you’re fair game for harassment—or worse. In my case, that meant the revocation of my state-issued press credentials, effectively barring me from numerous work opportunities on the front lines and elsewhere in the country. Whenever I left the country, I would be stopped and questioned for hours when I approached the border to get back in.
War, I’ve come to believe, is cancel culture in its most extreme form. It demands a kind of purity, and total alignment with your side. There’s no room for nuance. There’s no time to think, really—you live in a perpetual state of fear and hatred. In Ukraine today, the party line is that we will cede no territory, and we will fight the Russians to the bitter end.
If you challenge that narrative, you’re accused of “pro-Russian propaganda.” The accusation alone is enough to shut down the discussion, no matter how thoughtful or well-argued your viewpoint may be. Over the past decade, the arguments on both sides of the conflict have grown simpler, more black and white. Complexity is inconvenient in times of crisis. Honest conversation has become impossible.
But, even if they aren’t saying it outright, most people do feel compromised and conflicted about the war. Nearly three years in, the sense of unity inside Ukraine has given way to exhaustion, despair, and the overwhelming desire to end the bloodshed as soon as possible. One Ukrainian soldier recently said on TikTok that if the military is presented with a choice today, most would give up their weapons and return home.
This brutal, nearly three-year-long year war has already left approximately one million Ukrainians and Russians killed or wounded—a devastating human cost that will haunt both nations for years to come. And yet, there seems to be no end in sight. Russia is now bolstering its ranks with troops from North Korea. Ukraine doesn’t have the same capacity to purchase manpower, so instead, the government is now simply pulling people from the streets and sending them to the front lines. There’s no end date to their service. They will fight until the war ends—or they die.
If you flee, you’re labeled a “coward” or a “traitor.” And I’ll be honest: I know plenty of people who have tried to flee. At this point, so-called handlers are advertising their services online, offering to help men illegally cross the border for the equivalent of $5,000 to $15,000 in U.S. dollars.
The corruption is staggering. Anything can be bought. Everyone knows about it. No one talks about it. The justification is always the same: “Now is not the time. We’re at war.” This silence has eroded the solidarity that defined Ukraine in the early days of the invasion. The sense of unity has given way to a crippling mistrust. I have friends in Kyiv who are essentially hiding in their apartments for fear of being conscripted.
Many people still live in anticipation of victory. “We’ll win, and then life begins.” But what does victory even mean? Is it when the enemy says, I’ve lost? Is it when we reclaim all our territories? And then what happens? Abstract “victory” can’t be the goal in and of itself—it has to lead to something bigger, it has to be for something. And right now, there’s no formulated idea of what the future, post-war Ukraine looks like. That’s not even part of the conversation.
What has recently become part of the conversation, however, is the prospect of peace. In a subtle shift of rhetoric, Zelensky is now hinting he could cede Russian-occupied territory for a ceasefire. Why is this happening now? Had a peace deal been reached in those first few months, countless lives could have been spared, along with the country’s history, culture, and economy, all of which have been devastated by three long years of fighting.
My brother is currently in a hospital in Kyiv, suffering from a devastating case of post-traumatic stress disorder. When our cousin got a letter from the army telling him that he had to enlist, Anton offered this advice: “Find any way to avoid this.”
—As told to Tanya Lukyanova
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