A Train, Some Cognac and the Ukraine War with Sergiy

 Article and photos by Tony Mangia

I arrived at the Odesa train station, a half eaten shawarma in hand, prepared for the 18-hour train trip to Zaporizhzhia hoping there would not be any delays. My contact, Kateryna, said she heard lots of explosions there last night and news reports said much of southeast Ukraine's power grid was out.

In Odesa, I had already seen the devastation left by Russian missiles accompanied by the random blare of bomb sirens and blackouts. My host, Vadym, showed me the rubble of a leveled Black Sea hotel and city apartment building both laid to waste by drone attacks—everything around them pockmarked by flying metal shrapnel. 

With a glowing warm November dusk setting on the train station platform, I couldn't tell there was a war going on if not for the number of military uniforms in the mix. It was hard not to notice the higher ratio of older looking troops compared to youthful military faces you see in the United States. Or maybe it was just short-term weathering from the brutal war conditions.

There was a Ukrainian solder leaning on the wall smoking next to me. I said hello and asked how he was doing, trying to make some small talk. He nodded back, but any chance to engage in a conversation was dashed after he immediately looked away, pulling his knit cap further down his weary face. I didn't know if he was headed to battle, but his mud-caked boots led me to believe he was coming back from the war. The soldier looked at me again with kind of a grin and wandered away to another wall. I’d hoped my American accent would open up some sort of Where are you from line of dialogue, but his quick escape left me feeling like an intrusive bug—after all, this was wartime in Ukraine.

While taking photos of the grand terminal, I saw an older couple whom I presumed to be a mother and father help a fresh-faced soldier with a large tote bag. They gave each other long hugs before he tossed the bag onto the coupe class car on the train. I would be traveling in the slightly more expensive two bed “first class” sleeping compartment—hopefully with a vacant second bunk.  

After a few hours of quiet solitude in my berth, except for the mantra of rhythmic clatter of steel wheels on the rails and an occasional horn blast, the train pulled into a station about ten-o-clock. Through a din of muffled conversations and luggage rolling down the aisle my door opened. A man in a crisp, clean camouflage Ukraine military uniform entered.    

Sergiy greeted me with a cordial, ”dobrost,” as he removed  and hung up his military jacket and gently placed a green camo backpack on the floor. I shuffled my large backpack on the floor out of his way and moved the greasy shawarma off to the side of the center table. I nodded a respectful “hello” back. We shook hands before I poked my chest and kind of timidly told him, “American.” A big smile came across his face.

“Cognac?,” was the response as he pulled a slim bottle out of the backpack. It was a generous—and quite unexpected—invitation and a language I understood.

“Sure,” I responded with surprise as we both glanced around the berth looking form a glass or cup. Sergiy motioned with his hand to drink from the bottle and then handed it to me. As the brandy warmed my mouth, I passed the bottle back to him. Sergiy then handed me a wrapped piece of chocolate.

Being unsure if this was a Ukrainian ritual, and not in the mood for chocolate, I didn’t want to offend my new roomie. I peeled of the wrapper and popped the candy into my mouth.

“Is this a tradition?” I asked Sergiy as he took a swig of the cognac before eating a peace of chocolate himself. He held up his hands and shrugged, not knowing what I said, before abruptly handing me back the bottle. I took a sizable gulp and he handed me another piece of candy which looked more like a giant sugar cube. I dropped the sweet block into my mouth.

In between silent pauses and thank yous, this practice of passing the cognac topped off with candy went on for a couple of more rounds before I tried to access my translate app to open up a genial line of dialogue. Damn, no Wi-Fi on the train. In Ukraine, until now, I usually had Vadym to help me translate.

Sergiy saw me fumbling with my phone and pointed to his phone and then mine, back and forth. He was offering to piggyback my phone to his Wi-Fi. It was something my low-tech knowledge had never heard of. And it worked.  Communication was easier, but I was confused —and maybe a little nervous— that I had to use Russian because there was no Ukrainian on the app even though Vadym told me most everyone in Ukraine speaks Russian. Still, speaking Russian seemed oddly profane to me under the country's current circumstances, but that's one of the contradictions of this war.

Through a cognac buzz—and self-consciousness about the odor of my shawarma permeating or cabin— I tried to convey an apology to Sergiy for the smelly chicken wrap that I planned to have for breakfast. He seemed to get it and laughed.

It took some linguistic jostling, but Sergiy divulged that he was an Ukraine Army officer returning to the front lines. He had just come from a hospital and was headed back to join his unit after being wounded by shrapnel fighting with a tank division near Donetsk. Sergiy removed his sweater to reveal fresh freckles of wounds up and down his arms.  He then gestured to his right leg before standing up and dropping trou. I immediately noticed two jagged cuts where a large metal fragment pierced his thigh clean through about eight inches from his groin and even closer to his femoral artery. The wound was still fresh with stitch marks that still looked susceptible to infection, especially if he was headed to the grimy front. Despite his injuries, Sergiy seemed unfazed about going back to the trenches outside of Dnipro—a key city mercilessly bombed many times since the war began.  His blue eyes showed no sign of battle fatigue and were almost enthusiastic.

With a baffled look, Sergiy asked me where I was going and what I was doing here in Ukraine during the war. I didn't feel like making this conversation about myself, but did briefly explain that I was there to do a story about volunteers fighting the war behind the scenes. I asked Sergiy if I could take his photo. He politely said no and I respected that. Media officials had instructed me not to photograph any military personnel without permission.

Despite some progress with the translate app, there was still a lot of pauses and hand gestures to convey questions and answers between us. I did find out Sergiy had wife and two children. He quit his job as an IT in Kyiv and joined the army immediately after the first Russian attacks on February 24, 2022.  Sergiy's facial expression underscored his vow to keep fighting until Ukraine is free of any Russian occupation.

It isn't always easy to admire somebody you just met or never heard of. But that wasn't the case with Sergiy. It took only a couple of hours for his quiet hospitality and stoic demeanor and assuredness to earn my reverence. He was a man who was fighting for freedom with his life and, despite already carrying the physical scars of the war, would be going back to it. Because of a random shared train cabin, Sergiy offered me a glimpse into his life although I could still only imagine what survival on the on the front lines was really like.

Up to now in Ukraine, I had only heard the sirens and seen scorched buildings, but hearing Sergio’s sacrifices and first hand experience in battle made the brutality of this war more of a reality. His wounds made it tangible. It humbled me knowing that he was one of millions fighting for independence and the basic freedoms for his children and all of Ukraine.

There were a couple more rounds of cognac and mouthfuls of chocolate while Sergiy insisted I watch some videos of his armored unit firing at Russian targets he had recorded on his phone. High quality clips except for the pixilated identification numbers painted on the turret of the Soviet-era T-72 tank. Another contradiction. I presumed they were blurred out for security reasons. He proudly held up the screen in front of my face like they were highlights from his kid's soccer match. Sergiy grinned and nodded his head while I looked at the concussion-inducing volleys coming from the tank hidden in a tree-lined field while his fellow soldiers cheered and threw fists into the air. This was the same spot where he was wounded. It was fascinating first-person war footage.

Sergiy stepped out between the train cars for another one of his numerous smoke breaks and I started to feel the effects of the cognac and long day. When he returned I apologetically told him I was ready to sleep. Sergiy agreed, but not before one more shot. I obliged. As I fluffed the pillow and tried to stretch out under a sheet in my bed, I could see a glow from his phone and heard him quietly talk to his wife. 

There was some weak lukewarm coffees and Sergiy's smoke break the next morning before I bid him a brief goodbye and a wholehearted good luck as the train screeched into the Zaporizhzhia station. Kateryna greeted me at the door and just like that, Sergiy was gone, but not forgotten. 

I still often wonder what this war has in store for him.