The war in the Levant may be in a ceasefire, but for Jewish soldiers fighting in Ukraine, the war never stopped. While the eye of social and traditional media has moved on to other stories, from the October 7 War to the US raid in Venezuela, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has endured every harsh winter since 2022, and Jewish Ukrainians have numbered among the ranks of warriors holding the line.
Recon Drone team commander Moshe Bizsemov had been serving in the Ukrainian military since 2018, during much of the 2014 Donbass War, which served as the true beginning of the current conflict. The Mykolaiv resident was supposed to end his service in April 2022, almost two months after Russian forces invaded the rest of Ukraine.
Bizsemov wasn't with his soldiers because he was in the process of release, and many were captured in Mariupol. Seven still haven't been released. He decided to extend his contract with the military. When asked about his motivation for serving, Bizsemov answered as if it were obvious and trite.
"To fight for my country," Bizsemov said simply.
The decision to continue to fight was brought before Bizsemov many times during the war, but he never wavered. The 31-year-old father of two was wounded at the beginning of the war, and could have been honorably discharged, but chose to continue in drone reconnaissance.
He has held many different positions in the past, including in intelligence, but whenever he has arrived at a new assignment, he has never hidden his Judaism, which he takes pride in. His current team is small, with only ten soldiers. There is nothing to hide, and he never saw a reason it would be needed.
Armored vehicle driver Andre Chernetsky has not just never hidden his Judaism, but made it a point of his service. Serving since March 22, Chernetsky has fought in some of the bloodiest battles of the war, fighting twice in Bakhmut, including one seven-month tour.
Chernetsky breaks protocol to save a fellow soldier
In one story, Chernetsky shared that he had been driving back from the Bakhmut front, and only one kilometer away, encountered a fellow Ukrainian soldier trapped in a collapsed building. Against protocol, Chernetsky stopped the BMP and leapt out to aid the soldier.
The trapped man's leg was ruined, connected to his body only by a few sinews, but still anchored him under rubble. Chernetsky tied off the wound, cut off the limb, and his team placed the soldier on the armored vehicle.
He had risked not only his own life, but also his team's. Still, he insisted that if the soldier hadn't been saved then, they would have been left behind and all but forgotten. Everyone had seen his quality and how precious a life was to him. Seeing himself as a representative of the Jewish people, he believed he had to hold himself to a higher standard.
Soldiers are stuck together in close quarters for every hour of the day, and it was only natural that Chernetsky's comrades would know that he was Jewish. Keeping Jewish practices, such as keeping kosher, was difficult on the front. Yet when he returned from a course in Poland, his friends saved him a menorah that they found in an aid package from last year. The common knowledge of his faith and lineage meant that he needed to be stronger, needed to fight harder, so that he would be an exemplar of the Jewish people.
Chernetsky had grown up in a secular household. His family had suffered persecution as Jews under the Soviet Union, and changed their names to sound more Russian. There were always those who wanted to persecute and expel the Jews, said the BMP driver.
Jews were a traditional scapegoat around the world, and Chernetsky explained that one could always blame the Jews because it was always possible to find at least one Jewish person who had done something bad. There were some in Ukraine who criticized President Volodymyr Zelensky for the war's prosecution, and some of those people extended that animosity to other Jews.
"You can always find a scapegoat," said Chernetsky.
No one can say Jews don't fight, Chernetsky says
Chernetsky said that he had been wounded three times during the course of the war -- Among the dozen medals he wore proudly on his chest was a decoration for being injured in combat. He continued fighting so that no one would say that Jews didn't fight.
Yet some Jews, as with other Ukrainians, didn't fight. Some Ukrainians, Jews included, hid in their homes lest they be stopped in the street by military police and forcibly conscripted.
One Jewish leader said that he regretted that this was the situation for some Jewish citizens. Yet Jewish officials said that many more, like Chernetsky, served their country proudly. They said that it was difficult to know how many Jews were serving in the Ukrainian military, as there were those involved in the community and those who were unknown to them.
Jewish officials gave varying numbers, saying about twice the number of Jewish soldiers who had been killed in action now served in the military. Since 2022, Jewish citizens who had paid the ultimate price for their country were estimated to number between 100 and 200. Dozens were killed last year alone.
Chef Zvi-Hirsch (Grisha) Zvergazda, a father of two children, was killed in June fighting on the Kherson front. He dreamed of opening a Kosher restaurant in Odessa and earning a Michelin star.
Around the same time, 32-year-old Chabad school teacher Andrey Korovsky died of a heart attack at the front after the drone operator had returned following a combat injury.
In May, 44-year-old Ukrainian actor Maksym Nelipa was killed in action. He left his job as a television presenter at the beginning of the invasion to fight for his country. According to the Federation of Jewish Communities in Ukraine (FJCU), his son was fighting for the Golani brigade in Gaza when he received the ill tidings.
Even during the war, FJCU had worked to help try to ensure soldiers, such as Hungarian Jewish volunteer Benjamin Aser, were given dignified Jewish burial rites.
"We assist in holding Jewish funerals together with Chabad emissaries in the country, assist families financially, and hold prayers and Kaddish recitations for the souls of the heroes," FJCU chairman Rabbi Mayer Stambler said in a statement in May.
In December, Stambler told The Jerusalem Post that the war was difficult on the Jewish community of Ukraine, but he believed that Ukraine was fighting the same "axis of evil" that Israel was fighting against. Associated with FJCU, military chaplain Rabbi Lt. Yakov Sinyakov has been helping soldiers cope with facing those evils.
At the beginning of the war, Sinyakov had volunteered to go speak with Jewish soldiers. Having a master's in psychology and being an accomplished martial artist with his own gym, Sinyakov was well equipped to understand and connect with those engaged in fighting.
He had initially come to support and inspire soldiers from his community, but Sinyakov found that non-Jewish soldiers were also interested in hearing what the rabbi had to say. Sinyakov said that he had been reluctant to serve as a chaplain, but he was convinced by a friend, who was a high-ranking military officer. He said he had been serving in an official capacity as the first and only unit military chaplain in the Ukrainian military for four months.
Sinyakov's work brought him to the trenches in the front, dodging drones and missiles, and he had seen the terror in the eyes of new recruits. He always brought with him sweets to give the soldiers a taste of home. Soldiers would gather around him to hear what he had to say. To those who wanted, he would give books of psalms. Almost every time he visited soldiers, Sinyakov would discover at least one person who would tell him that he was Jewish or believed that they had Jewish roots.
Some soldiers had great difficulty with the idea of killing. Sinyakov said that a God-given soul resided within all men, but Ukrainians faced the same "evil reality" that met Israelis on October 7, 2023. Some men had chosen of their own free will to commit to evil, and in the "evil reality," it was a necessity to kill to defend their families and country.
When asked about how he felt about the fighting, Chernetsky said sardonically that in Ukraine, "if guests come, we go to greet them."
Chernetsky wanted other Jews to watch Ukrainians to see how they fought, and urged global Jewry to support the FJCU, which he said had helped a lot of soldiers. Donations had been sent of equipment that allowed modifications to drones to bring food and materials to soldiers on the front. He also thanked Israel for accepting Ukrainian refugees when the war began.
Bizsemov said that the contributions of the Jewish people to the war would continue; A people that endured such hardships, staying the same in essence over the years.
"The Jews that received the Torah at Mount Sinai are the same as today," said Bizsemov. "We continue to spread the light of the Torah."