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ISTRA, Russia: In his kitchen in a Russian town near Moscow, Yury stirs his tea and tries to settle into a normal routine after months on the front line in Ukraine.
But the memories of a conflict that he says is “more terrible” than anything shown on Russian television still haunt the 39-year-old school employee.
“My wife says I came back bitter,” says Yury, 39, whose military call sign is “Lokomotiv” — a reference to his favorite Moscow football club.
He also brought back reflexes like scanning the sky for drones or not wearing a seat belt in order to evacuate quickly from the car in case of enemy fire.
This last habit has earned him several fines in Istra, 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of Moscow, where he lives with his wife and their four-year-old son.
When Russia announced partial mobilization in September 2022, Yury, who already had combat experience from the Russian Caucasus, was sure he would be one of the first to be called up.
“But it was my friends without any experience who were mobilized instead. Why them and not me? I felt then that I should go,” he said.
“My friends told me I was an idiot. ‘Why do you want to go? You have a family, a child, a good job’.”
In October 2023, he signed up with a private paramilitary company as a radio operator in an artillery brigade.
The brigade was based in Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine that was captured by Russian forces in May 2023 after one of the bloodiest battles of the offensive launched by Moscow in February 2022.
Yury took part in an assault on the town of Chasiv Yar, where Ukraine’s troops are still clinging to the outskirts, and on Bogdanivka, which fell to Russia in April 2024.
Since returning, Yury is bored with “daily routine.”
On the front line “there was always something new — you are afraid for the first two weeks and after that it is an adventure,” he said.
His wife Albina, 40, said she had made “a huge fuss” when she found out he was planning to go to Ukraine.
“It was tough. I was afraid of losing him,” she said, sitting on a sofa in their modest apartment.
She said his nine-month deployment felt “like five years.”
“I rushed to my phone every time I received a notification. I was afraid of reading or hearing some bad news. Every morning started with this fear. It was terrible,” she said, crying.
“In reality it was more frightening more terrible than anything they show on television,” Yury said.
“If they showed everything that happens there on television, people might change their mind” about the conflict, he said.
In Istra cemetery there are around 30 graves with Russian flags and pictures of men in military uniform who died in Ukraine.
The area is known as an “Alley of Glory,” like similar corners of cemeteries across Russia, where thousands have died on the front.
The overall toll is a state secret.
Yury points to the grave of a school friend and says in total five of his friends have died on the front.
“The majority die or are injured by shrapnel, from artillery fire or from explosive drones,” he said.
“I think every Russian understands that this war is against the West,” he said, repeating the official rhetoric which portrays the conflict as a wider confrontation initiated by Western countries.
Yury said he was skeptical about the outcome of possible truce talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump.
“It would be good if they could agree, if the war ended, but it will not finish immediately,” he said.
“A ceasefire will only make the situation worse. We have to get to the end of this!” he said. “If it’s not over by the New Year, I’ll go back.”