Ukrainian soldier patrolling Chernobyl says deaths in Russia's war are 'catastrophic' and worse than anything he's seen in years of fighting
John Haltiwanger
Tue, 30 August 2022, 6:30 pm·3-min read
A funeral for a Ukrainian soldier
The mother of Ukrainian serviceman Roman Barvinok mourns near his coffin during a funeral service at the cemetery in Kyiv.Oleksii Chumachenko/Getty Images
A Ukrainian soldier serving near Chernobyl but who has also served in the Donbas wrote a reflection on death for the NYT.

Artem Chekh said that the scale of death in Russia's war is worse than anything he saw in the Donbas years earlier.

Chekh served in a conflict against Kremlin-backed rebels in the Donbas that began in 2014.

A Ukrainian soldier serving in the Chernobyl exclusion zone wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times that Russia's unprovoked war against his country has led to "catastrophic" losses.
Artem Chekh previously served in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region from 2015 to 2016, fighting in a conflict against Kremlin-backed rebels that began in 2014 — the same year that Russia illegally annexed Crimea. Chekh said Russia's war in Ukraine, which started in late February, is worse than anything he saw on the front lines in terms of the sheer number of deaths.
"I used to think I had seen enough deaths in my life. I served on the front line in the Donbas for almost a year in 2015-16, and I witnessed numerous tragedies. But in those days the scale of losses was completely different, at least where I was," Chekh wrote, adding, "This is another kind of war, and the losses are, without exaggeration, catastrophic."

"We no longer know the names of all the dead: There are dozens of them every day. Ukrainians constantly mourn those lost; there are rows of closed coffins in the central squares of relatively calm cities across the country. Closed coffins are the terrible reality of this cruel, bloody and seemingly endless war," he added

When Ukraine was bombings russians in donbas, there was no lamentations now russians has started their own madness, they are crying. This war will be Very bloody Very bloody.