When Marta Syntchina was first sent as a nursing sister to eastern Ukraine, in the midst of the Russian invasion, she and her father, deployed in the same brigade, decided not to tell her mother.
"Mom didn't know I was here for a long time," the young woman told AFP, sitting next to her father, Ivan Syntchine, on a bench in Druzhkivka, a town where she treats wounded Ukrainian fighters.
"We didn't say anything at first so she wouldn't cry," she says.
But once she found out, the mom was reassured that daughter and father were together.
Marta, 25, enlisted seven months before the invasion of Ukraine. The east of the country had already been plagued by conflict since 2014 against pro-Russian separatists led by Russia, but at the time saw only a few injured per month.
Today, she says she treats countless numbers of them.
By committing herself, Marta did like her father after having followed her mother's example by studying medicine, with training as a midwife.
"Before, my job was to bring life to life, now it's about saving it," she explains, thrusting her hands into her jacket.
While Ivan and his wife are proud of their daughter, he doesn't think his wife would accept their 18-year-old son enlisting as well.
"There are already too many of us in the army," said the 48-year-old, who has served for more than seven years and whose brother also volunteered to fight after the invasion.
Marta notes that she and her dad are not the only family in this case, listing a father and son at the front, a mother and her two sons working as drivers and another nurse whose father and brother belong to a battalion. of infantry.
And some die together.
Oleg Khomiouk, 52, and his son Mykyta, 25, joined the army together soon after the invasion. They were both killed in a trench near the besieged town of Bakhmout.
Oleg covered his son with his body during an attack, but a shell exploded nearby, killing them both, according to Yuri Samson, Oleg's brother, at their funeral in Kiev.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense posted a photo of the two men side by side, armed and in fatigues, on Twitter, with the inscription: "They died together".
Volodymyr Tchaikovsky, 54, tries not to think about death. He serves in the same brigade as his 25-year-old son, also named Volodymyr.
"Of course I'm worried about my son," he said, sitting beside her in an abandoned house not far from the front, near the town of Lyman.
"But he has experience... And it all depends above all on you and your training, then it's a matter of military luck."
With years of service, Volodymyr Tchaikovsky was called up on his son's birthday in 2015 to fight Moscow-backed separatists. Last year he returned as commander of a tank battalion.
This year, he and his son reunited for his birthday, stepping away from the battlefield for a moment to share a coffee.
"It's not really about celebrating the birthday, the main thing is to see each other, not to be soldiers for a while, to talk about civil things," says Volodymyr.
His son feels that being in the same squad "adds some peace of mind" because they know where the other is and what the situation is.
"I don't know how much longer (the war) will last," adds his father. "But we have to put an end to it once and for all, so as not to leave any problems for my youngest son."
23/03/2023 11:30:03 - Drujkivka (Ukraine) (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
