"Why Am I Here and Not Them?": In Ukraine, the Silent Divide Between Those Who Fight and Those Who Shirk Their Duty - Le Figaro
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Within families and in the workplace, reactions of envy or anger between combat volunteers and those who remained behind may foreshadow future tensions in society. A challenge for post-war Ukraine.
Four years of conflict in Ukraine. Four years during which, in Ivano-Frankivsk, in the west of the country, a silent tension developed at the in-laws of Denys. What drones? The 31-year-old had volunteered at the very beginning of the Russian invasion in 2022. But his wife Yulia’s uncle is avoiding conscription. For the past four years, he has gone out as little as possible, terrified of running into a patrol from the recruitment center. So, as a family, they avoid talking about the front lines. Too explosive, says Denys. "I don’t want to judge him. Everyone has their reasons. But he clings to conspiracy theories to ease his conscience," laments the young soldier.
The longer the war dragged on, the more tension grew within the family. It was as if the uncle was taking out his resentment against a system he considered corrupt on Denys. One day during a family gathering, he confronted his niece: "Does your husband truly want the war to end, or is he ultimately not benefiting from it?" Hurt by this unjust suspicion, the couple took it hard. At Christmas, eagerly awaiting his leave, the drone operator dreaded the confrontation. His fear was unfounded: when he learned that Denys was there, his uncle simply didn’t show up."He refuses to see me," said the soldier.
As sensitive as it is taboo in society, the subject of "ukhyliant", literally "those who evade," the military openly acknowledges this. On soldiers’ Telegram channels, the mockery has intensified since January, when the new Minister of Defense, Mykhailo Fedorov, officially estimated their number at two million. For some, this mockery is turning into bitterness. This February, "Git," a drone pilot in the Donetsk region, confided his pain at imagining his fellow citizens on the ski slopes of the Carpathian Mountains in western Ukraine. His own dream before the war was to snowboard down them."And I’m still here, for how much longer?," says the former AI engineer, reached by phone while on his way to a zone filled with drones. That’s his daily life. “I don’t want to judge. But this question often comes to me: why am I here and not them? Here, we can’t even manage normal rotations because of understaffing.”
As peace negotiations stall and the end of the war remains a distant prospect, the symptoms of simmering resentment are multiplying. There is the funeral in Lviv of a soldier killed in action in 2025, where the nephew, on leave due to injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder, refuses to shake hands with his two cousins who are avoiding conscription. "I remember those fights on construction sites belonging to a building company between workers returning from the front and the others," recalls a family member.
One business executive describes the dynamic: "Veterans’ resentment can turn into provocative words, and others respond by escalating the situation. Our HR department doesn’t know how to react. She tells us that no one is prepared for this.”
Moscow, which is pulling out all the stops to weaken Kyiv, has identified this vulnerability and made it a central theme of its propaganda. In 2024, a Swedish think tank, the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies, demonstrated how Russian bots amplify isolated real-life events to evoke genuine events. "Manhunts" in the streets of Ukraine, the sending of soldiers to the front without training, the command errors. In this narrative, the"mobilized" are presented as victims, and the "avoiders" are encouraged to flee abroad, explains the report. Ukrainian expert Rena Marutian, director of the Institute for Resilience and National Security, regularly warns against this latent threat. “Among the most destructive narratives (of Russian propaganda) are those that aim to inflame internal divisions, radicalize opposition, and destabilize societies from within,”she warned at a December forum on Russian disinformation in Brussels.
The fact remains that the frustration is real. At the Superhumans rehabilitation center for veterans in Lviv, psychologist Yuliya Aviyam has identified it in many of her patients. “The question of fairness torments many veterans. Why did I lose my health, my friends, my limbs, while others continued their lives? Why do people who have never sacrificed anything speak with such certainty about war, politics, and what should be done?,” says the psychologist. “These questions are not always voiced. But they haunt many and deserve our full attention.”
This feeling of injustice also affects civilians, worn down by the anguish of no return. "I am much more violent than my husband on this subject," says Luda*, an energetic woman in her thirties whose husband volunteered in early 2022. In his former position as an engineer, he could have benefited from an employer exemption. It was his choice and Luda is proud of him. But in a daily life punctuated by the cold and power cuts, the absence is all the more painful, confides the Ukrainian woman encountered in a hipster cafe in Kyiv. “I’m jealous all the time, angry all the time. When I hear my friends complaining because, ‘Oh, he’s been coming home late from work lately,’ it makes me furious. I only see my husband every three or four months, and it’s really hard.”
This potential fracture poses a challenge for the future. The reconstruction of the country, which neighboring Russia is obsessed with weakening in order to dominate it, will depend in particular on the ability of society to remain united.“What is still a weakness foreshadows a real fracture to come, especially in a post-war context that is always delicate,” notes Anna Colin Lebedev, a specialist in post-Soviet societies at Paris-Nanterre University. “In the Ukraine of tomorrow, everyone’s place in society will be judged by one key question: what did you do during the war? The answer will paint a very complex picture of divisions. There will be those who went abroad, those who stayed. Civilians who were active, and others. Those who were not mobilized, whether they had a valid reason or not. In all of this, the most marginal place is likely to be reserved for those who went into hiding.”
This future worries Denys. In the midst of this pain, isn’t a witch hunt something to fear? “I don’t want to think about it; I leave that to the sociologists,” says the young soldier. “But everything will depend on how it ends. If public opinion sees peace as a victory, things will be much easier for all of us.” That is, for the more than a million combatants who will have served since February 2022, and everyone else.
*Some first names have been changed to preserve anonymity.
