The international delegation, headed by Ana Lucía Bueno, ICRC Public Health Coordinator, and Sujit Panda, Head of the Physical Rehabilitation…
He chose the callsign “Raiven” himself, which means “raven”. Before the full-scale war, he had nothing to do with the army — he worked as a grain-truck driver.
His story was published on the page of the 44th Separate Artillery Brigade named after Hetman Danylo Apostol.
He was on a route on February 24, 2022. The news about the first hundreds of killed children changed everything.
“I couldn’t stand it, called my father, told him I was going. My boss didn’t want to let me go, said it was a one-way ticket. Asked me to ‘drive around a bit more’, but I couldn’t. I waited for the truck to break down, because only then we went home for repairs. When it happened — I left immediately”, — he recalls.
On May 8, he went to the military enlistment office, and the next day he began training in Starychi. “Raiven” was 31 at the time, his father — 51. Both joined the service.
His father, a former teacher with military training, now serves at the enlistment office, and after three weeks of preparation as a gunner, his son was assigned to the 44th Separate Artillery Brigade.
“Raiven” wanted to fight. First came the forests of the Zhytomyr region, but it was quiet there. Then — Zaporizhzhia direction. That was when the Russians were conducting an active offensive. His experience with large vehicles became decisive. He was transferred from the crew to a driver.
“I started driving Krabs, transported foreign M-777s, worked with Msta. We had to haul guns and crews with KrAZ trucks across the Kyiv region and the southern steppes”, — the soldier says.
Now he is behind the wheel of a Bogdana—the first Ukrainian 155 mm self-propelled howitzer built to NATO standards.
According to him, it drives like a foreign car. The engine and chassis are familiar, and the steering wheel is round everywhere, so he didn’t have to get used to it for long.
During the first year of the war, nothing scared him. There was excitement and a desire to be useful. Fear came later—after his “baptism by fire”. Then a drone hit the KrAZ truck from which they were unloading things.
“There were five of us. I ran to a car, started collecting the wounded. Everyone had shrapnel injuries. I ‘got burned pretty well’— suffered burns and an eye injury. I evacuated the guys to the medical point. That’s when I realized the war wasn’t joking”, — he recalls.
The second time, the strike hit directly into the Bogdana’s cabin. An FPV drone struck the cab while the vehicle was on the move. The crew had just completed their fire mission and was leaving the firing position.
“Raiven” saw the guys running aside, and then an explosion happened. The gun commander ordered an immediate retreat from the firing position.
“I was a bit ‘scratched,’ spent nine days in the hospital — and back to my guys. Then I got a chance to go to a rehabilitation sanatorium in the Lviv region. A lot happened, not everything can be told. But we stay positive, because otherwise you can’t. Our crew is the best — young guys. Sometimes it’s funny when we run under fire, fall, trip, and then remember those ‘somersaults’ with laughter”, — says “Raiven”.
The war of 2022 and the current one are different in strategy. Earlier, artillery could drive out, fire, and calmly leave the position. Now the sky is filled with drones. They strike everything: equipment, cars, people. Artillerymen were issued hunting shotguns to shoot down UAVs with buckshot.
A crew’s workday is monotonous and tense. If there is no offensive — they wake up, drink coffee, patrol the territory.
Every morning — gun inspection, engine warm-up, checking the mounting systems. They wait for the command. When “To battle” sounds, they must quickly unmask the vehicle, start it, and move to the firing position. It takes 10 minutes to the first shell.
“The howitzer is hidden so well you can’t see it from the sky. What saves us is that the enemy rarely hits accurately. They have plenty of resources, they don’t conserve — shoot randomly. There were times when KABs flew past us, more than a hundred such cases. Sometimes counterfire comes — misses, lands nearby — and we keep firing. Sometimes we hit on the third round, sometimes on the fifth”, — says the driver.
Now the front is in the season of rain and mud. Everything melts, vehicles get stuck. At this time, the risk of becoming a target for FPV drones increases dramatically. The soldiers have their own “dark humor”: if you get stuck in the mud under drones — it means “you have a day off tomorrow”.
But despite fatigue and danger, “Raiven” knows his job.
“The main thing is we see the result. How much enemy equipment we’ve destroyed — if you gather all the strike videos, you’d get a three-hour movie. Before we targeted tanks and APCs, now we more often fire at infantry. They’re improving, entering quietly in groups of 3–5, especially in fog. But when we see on video how it burns — that’s great”, — says the soldier.
Despite the daily danger, Raiven’s heart is always far from the front. At the start of the full-scale invasion, he sent his two sons to Poland. Every shot and every drive to the firing position — he considers a contribution to their future.
He keeps going because he knows: everything he does today, he does for them, so that one day they can return to a safe home.
