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What I Learnt when I Entered Ukraine in March 2022

My experience defending Ukraine

Ain Stærlingsson🎄
8 min readAug 13, 2024
Pushkin square, Uzhhorod, head chopped off plinth

Actually it took me a while to write here. Living and writing are different, and life was getting priority, which means no diary for my own perusal, and since I had decided to put all in book form, it did not seem like I had much left over anyway. But then I thought there were plenty of things, little things, that did not fit into the grand scheme of my planned book on Ukraine, of which a bit more later.

The first thing that got to me was that salute: was a cold night and I gazed down from the bus window, A solitary border guard stood with an AK-47, watching buses, cars, trucks, big trucks with sealed doors go by. And he removed his finger from the trigger to salute me.

I was wearing an old green army jacket and was about the only male on the bus. I guess I looked like a foreigner. But at that moment I knew I was there to defend Ukraine, that I would.

Uzhhorod by Olena Andruschenko

Arriving in Uzhhorod, I stood by the river on a very fresh bright morning, a scrolled address in my pocket. I walked up to Pushkin square, and saw that the plinth was bare: Pushkin’s head had been sliced off. There…

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Ain Stærlingsson🎄
Ain Stærlingsson🎄

Written by Ain Stærlingsson🎄

---A forestbather in UA🌳currently writing "Love and Loss in Ukraine" based on the war🌳member of <forestbathers unit> support them @forestbather via Revolut🌳

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