A Ukrainian Supreme Court Judge Takes Up Arms
Ivan Mischenko has started smoking again. “One pack, two packs a day. I don’t know, I don’t count,” he says, and sighs, and looks at the trees that surround him, at nothing in particular. He stopped five years ago. “It was a resolution I made with my son. I told him I will quit, and I did. He was very proud of me.” For the first time since meeting him the week before, a deep sadness flashes across his face.
We had just finished pulling a camouflage net over his 4/4 car. The vehicle disappeared into the green and brown of the woods around us - a crude metaphor for the transformation of his life in three and half short weeks. The thump of artillery rounds landing rushed through the trees. Mischenko wore camouflage fatigues, body armor and a helmet. He rested his hands on the metal ammunition clips sticking out of the military belt around his chest. An AK47 hung over his left shoulder. He had brought me and my producer Volodymyr on a rare trip to the very front, in the woods north of Kyiv, crammed into the car alongside his two teammates, young soldiers flying small drones over Russian positions to film their hideouts.
Five years ago, as Ivan was facing nicotine withdrawal at his son’s behest, he was also starting his job as one of Ukraine’s youngest Supreme Court Judges. Today, on this early spring afternoon, he is part of a massive movement of civilians from across his country’s society dedicated to the war effort. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, sending tanks, heavy weaponry and at least 150,000 troops across the border to topple its government, that government immediately called on people to volunteer with the Territorial Defense Forces, the country’s reservists. Over 100,000 signed up to fight, man check points, and help in any way that could bring civilians’ skills to a ferocious resistance of the Russian army.
“When the war started, it was Thursday, I think,” Mischenko told me on our first meeting in Kyiv, over coffee. He had walked into the tiny café - a rare open coffee shop in the bombarded city’s cobble-stoned center – in the same full fatigues he wore we visited the front. Squeezing past the espresso machine and till, wider now due to the military kit hanging from his chest, he walked across the room, sat down placing his gun on his lap, and ordered a flat white. Mischenko’s story starts before the war. Another pivotal moment before it broke out on February 24th [and it was a Thursday] was Febraury 22nd, 2014. That was the day the revolution in Ukraine finally succeeded, and the country’s leader Victor Yanucovich, the pro-Russian President, under whom over $100 billion in the country’s assets were looted by him and his cronies, fled after three months of protests on the streets of Kyiv not far from where Ivan Mischenko now sat. In the new Ukraine, opportunities for fresh, young talent opened up, especially in formerly closed-off institutions plagued with nepotism and corruption, like the judiciary. He was a graduate of Kyiv university, a lawyer, and a young man already learning to adapt well to change.
“I had my own litigation company, and I think we brought something new, our new vision, new perspective, to the system,” he explained. “If you didn’t have some, I don’t know, relatives or political ties, it was closed. But now things changed so anyone can possibly join.” He became a supreme court judge in the commercial chamber. He was 40 years old, with three small children from 10 months to 12 years old, when the Russian army invaded; and he was at the office. Rushing home to gather his family in a hurry, he piled them into his car and drove 500 miles to the Polish border, before driving back to Kyiv to volunteer. The government had made it compulsory for all men aged 18 to 60 to register with the military so they could be called up if needed. He had no intentions of waiting for the phone to ring.
“First, I think like most men did, I went to a conscription office where you can sign up to the military,” he said, sipping his coffee. “But of course at first they said I don’t have military experience … I [would] have to be somewhere at the headquarters like drinking coffee and bringing papers from one table to another. So then I called Roman and he gathered a group of people.”
Roman sat next to him in the café. The 24-year-old social activist was also in fatigues, slouched over his gun, drinking coffee. Smaller than Mischenko’s frame, he had pale skin and a shy demeanor. “He is the commander of our unit. His name is Roman Ratoshny,” smiled the judge, nudging his young friend and encouraging him to speak.
Ratoshny was 16 years old when the revolution exploded onto the streets of his home city Kyiv. He took part, learned social activism from those around him, and was inspired. Crucially, he discovered he was good at it. After the revolution, he formed his own organization ‘Protect Protasov Yar’ that tok developers to court who were trying to destroy a major public park in Kyiv called Protasov and develop it into high rise buildings. The developer was a close ally of President Zelensky. That case landed in Mischenko’s court last year, sparking his interest in the young activist. They still didn’t meet in person however until late 2021 when Ratoshny was accused by the government of vandalism during a protest over the park’s re-development.
“I [was] not jailed, but in house arrest, because of my activism,” said Ratoshny in the coffee shop. “Maybe you remember this action near presidential office?”
“They painted the door that leads to the Presidential office,” Mischenko interjected, to explain.
“Not me but…” quipped Ratoshny, before laughing.
“And the police decided that it was a very serious crime,” said Mischenko, with an ironic smile. “And that’s how we met.”
After being told by military commanders he would have to take a desk job, the judge decided if he really wanted to be involved in an armed resistance movement, the young Ratoshny would be the best person to call. He was right. His younger counterpart was already buying small, commercially available drones to fly over Russian positions. The revolution of 2014, and massive changes it brought, prepared Ukraine’s civilian youth. Those like Ratoshny learned not only how to organize collectively as civil activists. They learned it could work. The judge was ready to join the young defendant’s team.
“So we just come to the military guys, to intelligence guys, and we just say, ‘we are a group, we have some trainings, we have equipment, we have cars, drones, we have everything so what tasks can you give to us?’” said Mischenko.
He was so matter of fact when discussing the last few remarkable weeks of his life, I quizzed him on how well he has adapted to military life. The way he holds his gun, places it against a wall, rests in a chair while wearing a bullet proof vest, seem as natural to him as a veteran soldier. He paused to consider an answer, looking down at the table. “Adaptation is the thing that made us on the top of the food chain, right?” he says, finally. “So, this is our main asset as human beings. If you can adapt, then you can survive. If you can survive then you can defeat your enemy.”
The existential nature of this war is what inspires men like Mischenko. It’s also the reason many volunteers, when asked why they are fighting, seem bewildered by the question. “If we lose this war, then there will be no Ukraine. And that’s why it is so simple – life or death,” he said. “Do we have a country or do we have no country at all. Because of course Russia will destroy everything, it’s what they do, they just destroy… It’s so easy, so easy and simple. You are either a Jedi or you are for the Empire.”
He sleeps every night in ‘a base’ in the city with other volunteers, preferring not to be at his old home. The camaraderie helps with morale, he conceded, but most of all, knowing his family are safe in Europe, helps him focus. “The main thing for me is to know that they are in a safe place,” he said. “That’s why it is much easier to do all this stuff knowing that they are somewhere there.” He preferred not to say where in Europe his wife and three children were staying, and seemed uncomfortable talking about them, more because he missed them than fear for their safety. So we changed the subject.
The next week he contacted us to invite us on a mission at the front. Soon we are driving through Kyiv’s abandoned streets, exempt from a 36-hour curfew imposed by the mayor in anticipation of increased Russian attacks. The boom of outgoing and incoming artillery fire interrupts the otherwise silent city, a sound that seems to bend and bounce off the huge concrete Soviet era apartment buildings, making it impossible to tell where it’s coming from. In the back seat, I am sandwiched between Volodymyr to my left and another member of the team: a tall, bald, smiling 28 year old soldier. He gave his name as ‘The Sergeant’ and was the only one who had been in the military before. We race through the checkpoints dotted across the city, Mischenko in the driver’s seat, window down and joking and laughing with the armed men waiting at various barricades on the road. We had stopped at an agreed meeting point in the city’s suburbs as we headed north, to wait for members of the military to meet and tell the judge the password. Wary of Russian spies and cyber surveillance, they had adopted a simple, old-fashioned system of meeting in person to tell each other the word of the day. After the judge joked with men through the window once more, I tell the group about how we were stopped in our car marked press, shortly after arriving in the city, pulled out at gun point and held with our hands on the bonnet for a terrifying few minutes of yelling. “You didn’t have the password!” joked the judge. Everyone laughed.
As we travel to the vicious front line north of Kyiv, beyond their guns and ammunition, these men have only equipment anyone ordinary citizen may own. They use google maps on an iPhone to find the route to where we are going, and in the trunk stow several small commercially available drones for filming. We stop one last time by the side of the road as the group contact the commanders on the front to let them know we are coming. Fear of Russian attacks by saboteurs already planted inside Ukraine is potent enough for soldiers to open fire on vehicles approaching from behind their own lines. Mischenko, with a stoic, quiet demeanor and a few grey hairs in his beard, cuts a fatherly figure driving the young activist Ratoshny and the 28 year old Sergeant to the front lines in his upscale car. A suit jacket hanger is still attached to the back of the driver’s seat where he sits in his fatigues, both hands on the steering wheel.
Waiting by the banks of the still, near peaceful Dneipir River, the volunteer soldiers smoke and stare across the wide expanse of water, brilliant blue on a sunny day. In the distance smoke rises from a fire caused by the fighting. Over the gentle lap of the water on its muddy banks, the bangs of shells landing remind us we are closer to the fighting. The Sargent pulls a tin of sardines from somewhere in the car and places it on the ground for a small black cat to eat. In Ukrainian towns and villages where locals have fled or been killed, abandoned animals walk the streets, carefully approaching soldiers, in hopes of food and affection. We get the call to move forward to the front. For the last few miles, as the forest thickens on both sides of the road, they play a song on the car radio and everyone falls silent. It’s a classic Ukrainian ballad by Yuri Gulyaev, called “My Kyiv”. As we drive, a barritone sings the haunting ode to the city now threatened by the might of the Russian army. “It’s like the hymn of Kyiv,” said the judge over his shoulder. “It was recorded in 1962, but is very old,” added The Sargent. Ratoshny gently humms along with a verse from the front passenger seat.
The road turns to no man’s land up ahead, beyond where across a bridge over a small river, Russians are dug in to the next village. We swing left off the tarmac road and up a narrow muddy pathway through the trees. Within such close reach of Russian artillery fire, the men know the car could be targeted at any time if we are being watched. Everyone is quiet. Near the top of a hill inside the forest, we park the car, cover it in camouflage netting and pull a drone from the back. Ratoshny walks off into the woods, disappearing for a few minutes and returning with another young soldier. The two of them lead us to the top of the hill, telling us to walk in single file formation, and wait 10 feet away in a ditch. Not far to the east we can hear the explosion of incoming shells. The Russians could detect the drones when they began flying, explained Ratoshny, kneeling in the soft leafy grass and prepping the machine. They sometimes give away their position and the area can come under attack quickly. The ditch I am kneeling in, sheltering behind a fallen tree branch, is most likely a World War two trench from one of the two major battles for Kyiv, where Nazi Germany troops encircled and took the city from the Russian soldiers. The war in Ukraine straddles the past and present in a remarkably literal way. Suddenly, the whirr of the small drone kicks up leaves and twigs before rising just high enough over the trees above us to disappear in the direction of the Russian-occupied village up ahead.
The young men were hoping to locate a specific building the Russians were believed to be occupying in large numbers. Filming it with the drone, they could then take that footage to commanders in Kyiv to help with accurate targeting. It is rudimentary reconnaissance warfare for 2022, but helpful for field commanders dug in to positions like this, being attacked daily by heavy weaponry and artillery.
Mischenko offers to walk us to the positions of the soldiers on the front to introduce us while the drone was in flight. Marching off to the most forward positions of the 72nd Brigade, we discover the entire unit seemed near invisible it is so well-camouflaged. Men hop out of a trench dug into the soft earth of the forest, their faces covered in mud, cheeks sunken, to greet the judge. This war may have only been three and a half weeks long so far, but it has been a long few weeks for these men. Cooking stoves, containers of water, a motorcycle, are all hidden under branches and leaves. The 72nd Brigade are leading a counter offensive in areas like this north of the capital city, hoping to push the Russians far enough away to keep Kyiv out of the reach of their artillery fire. In the midst of what seems like a scene from world war two, a new-looking, black anti-tank rocket system lays under a tree, the only piece of equipment betraying this as a 21st century war. The anti-tank systems, manufactured mainly in the US and UK and provided by governments as military aid, have helped these exhausted soldiers keep the Russians from taking the capital. Simple to operate and handheld, they enable a single soldier on foot to destroy tanks, helicopters, and armored vehicles. We don’t get to stay long before the soldiers tell us we must leave. The Ukrainian government has banned reporters from embeds with their military and the field commander is nervous that we are there.
Ratoshny and The Sargent are back at the car when we arrive, watching the footage on the small screen of the drone. Ratoshny is disappointed they couldn’t see the Russians from above. Driving back from the front line they discuss it amongst themselves in Ukrainian. Russian advances have stalled and in recent days they had noticed from their footage a significant decrease in their numbers. “The most possible version of what happened here is they retreated but they left some forces here just to distract our forces,” said Ratoshny in the car. Since visiting the front with the men the Russian military has acknowledged that it is no longer trying to capture Kyiv city and has decided to re-group its forces in the Eastern Donbas region. These men’s assessment that the Russians were pulling back was correct.
I meet with Mischenko one last time before leaving Kyiv, this time in his family home. He had been back only once since the war began, to pick up some things.
“I don’t like to be here. It’s too quiet.” he says, standing in the doorway between the living room and entrance hallway, filled with children’s shoes of various sizes, coats hung on the wall, and a baby stroller by the door.
The apartment is in an ornate 19th century building in Kyiv’s historic city center, its interiors modern with exposed brick and black cast iron fittings. The tiled floor of the living room is covered in places by child-friendly foam matts. Children’s toys lay across the sofa and floor. Baby clothes are folded in a pile on a nearby chair, signs of a rushed exit. Inside the modern kitchen, red and steel cooking station and cabinets lead to a dining table, a baby’s high chair at the end. “Don’t photograph that please,” Mischenko tells Jerome Sessini, a Magnum photographer who has come to take the judge’s portrait for The New Yorker. “I don’t want it photographed empty.” For the second time since we met, now standing in his old apartment still dressed as a soldier but amidst the normal mess of a family home, his otherwise enigmatic presence reveals a deep sadness.
“I keep expecting my son to come running around the corner here,” he says, pointing to the living room entrance. “He used to always greet me when I came home.”
Mischenko is determined to return to his career as a supreme court justice when the war is over. “I hope so, I miss my work,” he told me back in the café when we first met. “Sometimes, especially in the first week, I even had thoughts about the cases I was working on. I was thinking ‘on this case I have to use this legal precedent’ or something like that. Now I don’t. But of course I miss it. I want a peaceful life like everyone. I want me family to return. I want normal, peaceful life. But firstly we have a job to do.”