– Wait at the checkpoint, and we will come and pick you up from there. It is a hot summer’s day in Mykolaiv County in the south of Ukraine. We talk to Iryna Jegorova on the phone. Outside the small town of Arbuzinka, the local Home Guard has set up a checkpoint. The well-grown soldiers are friendly but firm. They will not let news into the city without further ado. This is a war zone. Not far away is one of Ukraine’s four nuclear power plants. The soldiers want to know who we are going to meet and say it is best that we are picked up. But they nod approvingly when we tell them that we are going to meet Viktor Yegorov’s family. – We have heard of him, he is one of our heroes, they say. On the way to Arbuzinka in Mykolajiv county. Photo: Eskil Wie Furunes Viktor and his family stand as an example of the Ukrainian resistance struggle, after half a year of war. And after a little over half an hour, a scooter with two women comes towards us. Iryna and her mother Valentina say they have been waiting for us. With what they call their “iron horse”, they guide news’s car between the potholes in the road into Arbuzinka, up to their small house on the outskirts of the town. – He calls from time to time and tells a little about how things are going, says Valentina. She talks about her husband, Viktor, who news was with for a day in February at an outpost at the front in Donbas. Iryna, Valentina, Elizaveta and Viktoria, with Iryna’s son Aron, in the garden in front of their house in Arbuzinka, Ukraine. Photo: Eskil Wie Furunes Soldier for eight years Viktor Yegorov was then responsible for an advanced position in the Ukrainian defense, east of the small village of Krymskoe in Luhansk county. We talked mostly about the war, of course, which he believed had in practice been going on since 2014. But he also told a little about his family at home in Mykolajiv county. Viktor had five children, we learned, one of them was a soldier and was lying down near Mariupol. Viktor himself had volunteered in 2014. At the time, it could look as if Russia and Russian-backed separatists were about to take over large parts of Ukraine, following the uprising on the Maidan in the capital, Kyiv. This is what it looked like when news visited Viktor Yegorov at the front in eastern Ukraine, just a few weeks before Russia’s invasion. Photo: Lokhman Ghorbani / news Since then he had been a soldier, on contract, because he believed he could not graduate until the Russian forces had been chased back across the border. When news was with Viktor Yegorov and his fellow soldiers, there was a kind of strange “wait and see” atmosphere along the front. But it was not quiet. Several times we could hear shooting, and no more than three weeks later, the war broke out in full. In the following months, the front section Viktor was on would be the scene of some of the fiercest fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces. Viktor Jegorov and the three or four soldiers who manned the outpost we were at at all times were quickly withdrawn. Viktor Yegorov at the front in Donbas, where he has served since 2014. Photo: Private “We hold out” The position was simply impossible to defend, where it lay like a kind of spearhead with Russian positions on both sides. Instead, a tenacious defensive battle began in which Viktor Yegorov and his squad were gradually forced back slowly. Ever since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, news has tried to keep in touch with Viktor, to hear how things are going with him and the department he is a part of. Popasna, Sievjerodonetsk, Lysytjansk. All these cities have now been surrendered by the Ukrainian army. At the same time, they say they have inflicted heavy losses on the Russian attackers. “We will endure”, was one of the short messages we received from Viktor after the invasion. Then there was silence for a long time. That is why we have now sought out his family in Mykolajiv. What is it like to live with a husband and father who is in the middle of a war of life and death? Difficult to keep in touch – We also persevere, says Iryna Jegorova, Viktor’s daughter. She and her mother Valentina have dished up the best food they have for news’s reporter and photographer, in their small kitchen in the house in Arbuzinka. Chicken, fresh vegetables from our own garden and, of course, borscht, the soup that Ukraine considers to be theirs and that’s all. Valentina Jegorova with her three daughters and grandson Aron, in the kitchen at home in Arbuzinka. Photo: Eskil Wie Furunes – I spoke to Viktor at the latest yesterday, I think it was around 8 o’clock when he called, says Valentina Jegorova. Mobile coverage is poor along the front, and everyone is cautious about using it because it can give the enemy information about their location. Valentina does not hide the fact that it has been a great burden that the man has in practice been in mortal danger for eight years. It doesn’t make it any better that two of her sons are also now in the military. She says that Denis is in the marine infantry, while Jevhen is in the national guard, in a department that is currently not in the front line. Denis is said to have been injured. Now the family has not heard from him for a long time. Iryna Jegorova with her son Aron. He has hardly seen his grandfather because of the war. Photo: Eskil Wie Furunes Hard time with lots of tears On the fine summer day we visit the Jegorov family, the war can seem far away. Iryna lives at home with her son Aron and her two siblings Jelizaveta and Viktoria. At the beginning of March, the Russian forces dangerously approached Arbuzinka, but were stopped a few tens of kilometers further south, at the town of Voznesensk. – I know that it is important that we defend our country, says Valentina Jegorova. But she does not hide that it has been a difficult time with many tears. Viktor Yegorov with a fellow soldier in the city of Chernihiv in July this year. Photo: Private Viktor Yegorov is alive and continuing the fight against the Russian forces. This summer he posted a picture of himself from what was probably a perm stay, in the city of Chernihiv in the north of Ukraine. Now August is coming to an end, summer is in full swing. It has been six months, half a year, since Russia attacked. In an SMS to news, Viktor writes: “Good day! Yes, everything is fine. Now we have been pulled behind the front, we have had heavy losses. But we will be completed and then we will start again.” Viktor Jegerov writes in a text message that they have suffered heavy losses, but are ready to go to war again.
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– We have had big losses, but we will start again – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
