At least eight Russian air strikes have targeted western Ukraine so far, including the cruise missile attack on an aircraft repair plant at Lviv airport on Friday morning, the bombardment of a training camp that killed at least 35 military at Yavoriv, and the attack on a television tower at Rivne which claimed nine lives.
Compared to the rest of the country, the west has been relatively spared. But if the Russians come in on the ground, Col Valeriy Kurko ( 51) is waiting for them.
Kurko, the burly commander of the 103rd brigade of the Ukrainian army's Territorial Defence Force, says he will not let the Russians enter the Lviv region. If the unthinkable happened and Russia overwhelmed the TDF's defences, Kurko would be the de facto leader of resistance in western Ukraine.
“Shooting soldiers, firing on tanks ... all methods would be used to eliminate the occupier,” Kurko says, “including ambushes and sabotage.”
The January 1st, 2022, law on civil defence integrated the TDF into the Ukrainian army and gave it responsibility for resisting occupation. In the meantime, “many units from the west have been sent as reinforcements to the east, including under my command. They are subordinate to a different commander while they do his tasks, but they remain part of my brigade,” Kurko says.
In his youth Kurko served in the Soviet army and took an oath to the Soviet Union. “I had Russian friends. I could not have have imagined what has happened. And yet, when the Soviet Union collapsed, I sensed that true independence does not come freely. You have to fight for it, and now the time has come.”
Pile of rubble
Kurko’s greatest military feat, he says, was commanding the 80th airborne brigade for the final month of the ferocious battle for Donetsk airport. “I was the last man to leave alive, on January 26th, 2015.The airport was a pile of rubble. My men came home in coffins.”
At the mention of the martyred city of Mariupol, where the government says 2,500 people have died in weeks of bombardment, Kurko falls silent. Army officers do not often show emotion, but he appears to struggle to contain rage and grief.
“I know Mariupol very well,” Kurko says after a long pause. “What is happening there is a personal tragedy to me, a catastrophe on a global scale, a genocide.”
Does the colonel have family in Mariupol?
“I don’t have family there, but I contributed a lot to make Mariupol Ukrainian and a successful city in the past eight years of my service. So every Ukrainian who lives there is my family.”
Kurko bristles when I ask if Mariupol will be the second Ukrainian city to fall to the Russians, after Kherson.
“Who told you that Kherson has fallen to Russia?” he snaps.
Western media reported the fall of Kherson, a key port, on March 3rd.
“Do not believe everything you hear in the news,” Kurko continues. “Ukrainian news would definitely not use the word ‘fallen’. You may lose a battle, but it doesn’t mean you have lost the war, even though the flag of the occupier is in the centre of the city. It won’t break the Ukrainian spirit.”
Kurko takes out his smartphone to show me a Ukrainian video of Paris wracked by explosions. Smoke billows from the Eiffel Tower. The soundtrack is of screaming babies and air raid sirens.
"Just think if this were to happen in another European capital" says the text at the end of the video, with a quote from President Volodymr Zelenskiy. "We will fight till the end ... If we fall, you fall. That is my comment on the Mariupol news," Kurko says.
He and Ukrainian leaders may be in denial about Russia’s ability to destroy their country, but their stubborn optimism could be their greatest strength.
Syrian soldiers
President Bashar al-Assad is reportedly sending tens of thousands of Syrian soldiers to Ukraine to fight on behalf of Russian. Would he rather fight Russians or Syrians? I ask Kurko.
“It does not matter whom we dig graves for,” the colonel replies. “I am confident we will bury them all. After what the Russians did to Aleppo, why would Syrians want to participate in Russian crimes against humanity? The fact they are seeking troops outside the Russian Federation tells you how bad things are going for them.”
Can Russia and Ukraine ever be friends again? "It's impossible," Kurko replies. Then he relents somewhat. "Even the Jews forgave Germany after the Holocaust, and there will probably come a time when this war too will become part of history."
There will still be people who call themselves Russians, Kurko predicts. “But Russia as we know it will cease to exist, as the Third Reich did. Russia is destroying itself already.”
