Maxsym Lutsyk appears to be older and more serious than when I last met him in the days following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and he tells fewer jokes. The 19-year-old had recently dropped out of university and volunteered to fight.
He traveled out of the Donbas front line last week, traveling back routes at night to avoid artillery bombardment, to pick up supplies for his battalion, and to tell me about his experiences battling the Russians.
We met in Bakhmut, a little village located well within Russian artillery range. Some of its structures are in ruins, and the city has been nearly depopulated.
Maxsym and his companions had struggled for three weeks to preserve possession of a location they'd named Serber after a tiny dog they'd adopted. It was in a derelict industrial factory in Rubizhne, a town that lost to the Russians in the end.
