Ukraine-Russia war: Belfast-based filmmaker finds ‘spirit of nation weary but determined’

The welcoming party on the Ukrainian border was made up of dozens of heavily armed soldiers, in full battle camouflage, cradling assault rifles as they searched the train for Russian spies and collaborators.

The rail link from Poland to the Ukrainian city of Lviv is a lifeline for beleaguered Ukrainians keeping supply routes open, and the border guards who patrol it are not taking any chances.

Any passenger who arouses suspicions is escorted out of their seat and removed for further interrogation. Fortunately, I’m not one of them, and before long cameraman Michael Quinn and I reach our destination of Lviv, western Ukraine’s largest city. I’ve gone there to try to find out more about Achill Island man Finbar Cafferkey (45), who enlisted to fight for Ukraine and was killed last April in heavy shelling during one of the bloodiest phases of the two-year war — the battle for Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. I want to find out what happened to him and why someone would exchange the idyllic tranquillity of the west coast of Ireland for the horror of a war thousands of miles from home.

Lviv station was the scene of jam-packed trains carrying hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing Ukraine in the early days of the conflict. Today it’s much quieter, but there is an air of expectancy in the city that reminds me of Belfast in the 1980s. On the surface, it may look normal, with people going about their daily business, but the threat of violence is never far away. An air raid siren can sound at any second, leaving people running for cover. And with good reason.

I saw for myself the impact of a Russian missile strike on a residential building last July while the people slept in their beds. Ten civilians were killed and 45 injured. Photographs of the dead are posted in the courtyard — ten faces — each one a symbol for every thousand of the estimated ten thousand civilians who have been killed since this war began.

Across town, the ‘Field of Mars’ military cemetery, which only opened at the beginning of the war, is filling up. The story of two years of bitter fighting can be seen in row after row of freshly dug graves and hastily erected headstones, each flying a Ukrainian flag. The biting snow doesn’t deter a steady stream of Ukrainians paying tribute to their dead. It’s not far from where I meet the diminutive Anastasiya Brezina, a 26-year-old who looks about half her age. She was one of the last people to see Finbar alive.

She joined a volunteer unit of Ukrainian fighters along with Finbar and two others and is the only one still alive to tell the tale. The other three — Finbar Cafferkey, Russian anarchist Dmitry Petrov (33) and American Cooper ‘Harris’ Andrews (26) — were killed in the same mortar strike on the frontline. Anastasiya was supposed to be with them but cheated death.

“We did not know exactly where we would be sent, or if we would be sent anywhere at all,” she said.

“Some people were partially experienced and some people were not. On the last day I was offered to go with them.

“I woke up in the middle of the day and, honestly, I felt sick, and I didn’t know much about it. They said: ‘We’re going on a mission with the guys, and to be a participant is voluntary, and, if you want, you can come with us.’

“Unfortunately I don’t know the exact details of the operation, but it was the battle for the ‘Road of Life’, which was the main road to supply troops to Bakhmut. The problem was that there were Russian positions in the trenches very close to this road. It was essential to drive them out from there. At the time when our guys went into battle to do this, there had already been heavy fighting.”

Anastasiya didn’t go with them — a decision that saved her life. She said she planned to re-enlist in the Ukrainian army but her parents had, so far, persuaded her not to. My vote was with them.

She showed me a picture of her and Finbar together at a training camp near Kyiv, both holding Kalashnikovs. Her uniform was too big for her, and it looked like her assault rifle was as well. I felt she summed up the spirit of a nation after two years of war: weary but determined in the face of enormous adversity and long odds.

​Caillte san Úcráin, from TG4’s award-winning current affairs strand Iniúchadh TG4, airs on February 28 at 9,30pm; TG4.ie