Bohdan: Azov Brigade

War does not ask for permission. It arrives uninvited, dragging with it the weight of sacrifice, leaving behind hollowed-out homes, empty chairs at dinner tables, and names engraved on cold stone. Bohdan’s name is among them now, a son of Ukraine, a man who once held his child in his arms and spoke of the future—a future he would never see.

I did not set out to learn about Bohdan. I was simply wandering through the National Museum of Ukraine, absorbing the history, the weight of what had happened, and what is still happening. And then I saw it—a small exhibit, unassuming in its presence, tucked away among the many stories of war and resistance. It was a tribute to a soldier, to a father, to a man whose name might have been lost in the chaos of war had it not been for the people who loved him.

Bohdan was not a hero in the way stories like to tell it. He did not march onto a battlefield with glory in his eyes, eager for the fight. He was a man who had something to lose. A wife. A son. A family that made the world feel warm even as winter set in. When the call came, he did not go because he wished for war. He went because he had to. Because there are men who stand between darkness and the ones they love, and Bohdan was one of them.

His wife, Nadiia, knew the moment he put on his uniform that the odds were never in their favor. She had seen the news, the images of cities turned to dust, the long lists of the fallen. And yet, they did not speak of death. They spoke of life. Of the day he would return. Of the first day of school, when he would take their son by the hand and walk him through the gates, smiling as the boy waved goodbye. Bohdan promised that he would be there. But war is cruel. It does not keep promises.

When the telegram arrived, it was not a surprise. Grief rarely is in times like these. It does not crash through the door; it seeps in like cold air through the cracks, settling in the bones, making a home where warmth once lived.

At his memorial, there was a letter from his mother, embroidered cloth in her hands, fingers tracing patterns she had made with love and sorrow intertwined. She had raised him to be kind, to be strong, to be the sort of man who did not turn away when duty called. And so he didn’t.

Beside the tribute to his life, there was a poem. “Why Do Men Cry?” I read it once, and then again, unable to move away. It was not just a poem. It was a reckoning. A question, an answer, and a eulogy all at once.

Why Do Men Cry?

Why do men cry?

Why do men cry? What is the reason?

Perhaps the reason is pain.

Everything that comes all at once,

But only real men cry,

Those who have taken their children from themselves;

A child whom the Lord asks for,

Asks for their father,

Or just a beloved husband.

Pain remains in the heart,

Like a bloodstain on cloth.

After all, our fathers never complained about anything.

They chose their own difficult path.

It seems that only the one who crosses the threshold

Will smile sharply,

As if handing over lost greetings

To those in whom the future is intertwined,

With those who will not be betrayed in a difficult moment.

The question of what will happen next

Is hidden beneath a peaceful face, a friendly face.

Now, when the moment has come, they will understand

Why he cries.

He cries and remembers himself,

Brother of the one who is younger,

And my brothers in arms.

He cries for those who have already left the class.

And there is no need to prove your freedom.

I just want to cry in the bunker,

Knowing that my brothers-in-arms will never forget.

Because crying is not shameful,

It is dry and dry.

If it is from war, then so be it.

But cry only from joy, brothers.

Bohdan cried once, in a moment he thought no one would see. He cried for his son, for the first day of school he would miss, for the life he would not finish. And then, like so many others, he wiped his tears away, picked up his rifle, and marched forward.

As the author of this piece, I want to share with you what he wrote and what he carried when he fell at the Battle of Azovstal.

In his pocket, folded and worn from too many readings, was a note. A scrap of paper, smudged with dirt and sweat, written in rushed but careful handwriting:

“Nadiia, I love you. Tell our son I will always be with him.”

Tucked inside his uniform was a small photograph, dog-eared at the edges. A picture of his family. His wife, smiling in the sunlight. His son, barely old enough to understand what was happening, laughing, his little fingers curled around Bohdan’s own. It was the last thing he held before the end.

There will be a day when his son grows old enough to ask about him. To wonder about the man in the photographs, the one with kind eyes and a uniform that swallowed him whole. And someone—his mother, his grandmother, perhaps a stranger who still remembers—will tell him. They will say that Bohdan was a good man. That he loved fiercely, that he fought because he had to, that he left not for war, but for peace.

And maybe, if the world is kind, that boy will never have to follow in his father’s footsteps. Maybe he will live in a country where fathers do not cry in silence, where mothers do not stitch their grief into fabric, where names like Bohdan’s are remembered not as war dead, but simply as men who once lived.

But today is not that day. Today, there is only the poem, the letter, the folded flag. Today, there is only the quiet echo of a promise that was never kept.