Source: PostPravda.info 19.01.2026.
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/frontline-stories/the-existential-experience-of-war/
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/frontline-stories/the-existential-experience-of-war/
Existential experience is everything that shapes one’s attitude toward life, and for many people today war occupies a central place in that experience – especially for those who live in frontline areas. The existential experience of war includes not only what a person observes – bombardments, the collapse of vital infrastructure, destruction, and the loss of life – but also what they experience inwardly. However, inner experience acquires existential value only when hatred is overcome through intention, fear and inaction through action, and a sense of uncertainty and illusory expectations through a vision of the future.
The Existential Experience of War Is Not Mere Knowledge, but Understanding That Changes a Person
In 2022, I decided to remain in Sloviansk. The city was under constant shelling, but the prospect of occupation seemed far more frightening. At that time, I was checking frontline news three times a day: the situation was deteriorating dramatically, and it was unclear whether our city would survive. I could have moved to the rear or gone abroad, but this is my home. There was another reason to stay: only direct proximity to the war could give me genuine understanding, enabling me to write about it. Knowledge and understanding of lived experience are not the same. Knowledge is the possession of information. Genuine understanding – in other words, understanding in the existential sense – is the interpretation of knowledge through one’s own lived experience.
Hatred in the Existential Experience of War
Hatred. You are living your ordinary life – work, everyday concerns, relationships – and suddenly someone, for no reason at all, tries to kill you. An entire state is working toward that goal. You turn to acquaintances and relatives in Russia, but instead of words of support you hear accusations of Nazism and approval of the invasion. After February 24, 2022, many residents of Ukraine lost their homes, their jobs, and their loved ones, and for the fourth year now have been forced to struggle for survival. It is therefore unsurprising that an all-consuming hatred toward everything associated with Russia has arisen among them.
In the first months of the war, this hatred helped Ukrainian society to mobilize, but over time it became increasingly destructive. Hatred cannot be kept inside – it simply burns you from within. A need arises to release it, at least on social media. But posts filled with curses directed at the enemy are not read by the enemy. They are read by friends, to whom this hatred is transmitted.
Thus, passing from person to person, hatred grows like a snowball, while its intended target remains unreachable. Neither Putin nor his inner circle read our posts. As a result, the accumulated aggression begins to shift toward closer targets: first toward corrupt and incompetent bureaucrats, then toward Ukrainian politicians, public and religious figures who remain silent about problems, then toward those who respect them, and ultimately toward everyone who, in one way or another, has failed to meet your expectations. Arguments begin within Ukrainian communities and among pro-Ukrainian activists, and in this squabble the main enemy – Russia – recedes into the background.
Intention. Once you allow hatred inside, it takes complete control of you. That is why I internally distanced myself from this feeling and turned my work on a wartime philosophical diary into a practice of transforming emotions into understanding. Instead of hatred, what took root within me was the intention to fight until the complete victory over the aggressor state and the punishment of all those guilty of war crimes. Hatred is a passion that flares up spontaneously and suppresses human will. Intention is the directedness of one’s own will–it orders feelings and mobilizes strength.
The fourth year of the full-scale war is now underway. The situation at the front continues to deteriorate. Russia is increasing its military potential. Europe increasingly feels the real threat of invasion, especially Poland and the Baltic states. However, the scale of these threats does not affect my intention, because it depends neither on my psychological state nor on external circumstances. Only the form of struggle changes. For me, it is work with words.
Inner Experiences in the Existential Experience of War
Fear. In a frontline city there is no time to hide from shelling – and I have nowhere to hide. So when shelling begins, you simply hope that the next shell, drone, or bomb will not hit you. At first it is terrifying, then you get used to it, and the shelling no longer distracts you from working on texts, even when you hear the roar of an incoming strike that makes the windowpanes rattle. Right now, as I write these words, a powerful explosion has gone off very close by – the house shook, and sirens wailed in the street. The electricity went out for a moment but was immediately restored, and I can continue working.
Fear is experienced differently in the rear than near the front. Sometimes it seems to me that it is even scarier deep in the rear. When death is nearby, fear becomes very concrete: shelling begins – it is frightening; it stops – relaxation comes, as if nothing had happened. A person cannot live in constant tension; the psyche dampens emotions on its own. But the farther you are from the front, the more frightening the future and the uncertainty of the situation become. Fear grows diffuse and turns into a constant background of perception.
Uncertainty. I live on the outskirts of Sloviansk, where phone coverage is poor. Sometimes, after shelling, electricity disappears for a long time, and you don’t know when it will be restored – or whether it will be restored at all. Then you remain in the dark, with a drained laptop, unable to find out what is happening around you. The enemy may already be close – and you would not even know it. Only the cold of winter nights breaks this sensory isolation from the world. The pump that circulates hot water through the radiators cannot operate without electricity. If the temperature drops below zero, the pipes will burst (fortunately, this has not happened yet). It's in moments like this that the sheer horror of a future unknown sinks in – work at the computer had kept those thoughts at bay, until the lights went out.
Analysts’ forecasts rarely come true because it is impossible to calculate all the factors of war. We can only track trends – and right now those trends are very bad. But if the future is not predetermined, it can change despite even the bleakest expectations. There is always room for hope.
Inaction. No matter how exhausting work may be, inaction is far more frightening. In the summer of 2022, Sloviansk emptied out, and many of those who remained lost their usual occupations. You sit at home all day without electricity, with no way to distract yourself, simply watching your city being shelled. At the “Good News” Protestant church, an acquaintance told me: “I try to come here as often as I can because just sitting at home is unbearable.” Fortunately, I did not have this problem, because I was constantly working on texts. I knew I was doing important work and felt that I was taking an active position in life. That is why I reacted calmly to shelling and other difficulties, which become unbearable if you remain in passive contemplation. The most valuable thing in wartime is meaningful work that prevents you from sinking into inaction.
The Perception of the Future in the Existential Experience of War
Illusory expectations. When the front is close, you live one day at a time, without hoping for the future, and then you stop understanding people in the rear who live with illusory expectations. At first, everyone in Ukraine hoped for new weapons that would turn the tide on the front. Later, people counted on Russia running out of soldiers. A year and a half ago, when the Russians began advancing toward Pokrovsk, in Ukraine preferred not to notice it – everyone talked about local successes near Kharkiv and assured each other that the enemy would soon exhaust its offensive capacity.
When I said that there were no signs of exhaustion at all – on the contrary, that Russia’s military power was growing – my interlocutors reacted with extreme irritation, sometimes even aggression. After all, I was calling into question the illusions that morally sustained people. Yet the destruction of false hopes led to a painful disappointment. In this sense, it is easier for me near the front: no illusions – no disappointments.
Now, as the Russian army advances, the future looks bleak, and death is sometimes so close that it feels as if there is no future at all. Paradoxically, to bring it back, one must give up expecting it.
Distortion of perception and a passive mindset. The image of the future always diverges from reality. Moreover, the very expectation of the future distorts the perception of the present. Before the war, no one imagined that the future could be so terrifying, and for the sake of temporary economic gain Europeans, including Ukrainians, indulged a dictator instead of preparing for war. But even the war did not lead to universal awakening; it merely changed the nature of illusory expectations.
Expectation of a catastrophic future suppresses the will, while optimism in expectation leads to relaxation – and both prevent readiness for the future. In 2022, we waited: new weapons were about to arrive that would change the situation on the battlefield, and once we reached the 1991 borders, peace would come. Illusory expectations made it impossible to see that the war would not have ended regardless of the outcome of the counteroffensive, and that survival therefore requires preparation for a long war of attrition.
For many, their attitude toward the future is like a weather forecast – you accept it as inevitable. But if you absolutely cannot come to terms with it, you look for another, more optimistic forecaster… or military analyst. This forms a passive mindset. Its cost in wartime is excessive, and the future always turns out to be different from what we expected. An active mindset means that the future is not awaited but designed on the basis of one’s own decisions.
Vision of the future. Expectation always distorts the perception of the present. A vision of the future that is formed not from expectation but from an awareness of one’s own capabilities and intentions, on the contrary, allows for an adequate perception of the present. The future is not a fact given like a weather forecast, but a possibility that is constantly shaped by our decisions; it exists in our inner intention as the vector of our aspirations. This makes it possible to accept reality as it is, without reshaping it to fit illusory expectations. Instead, we change our internal priorities.
Reality is frightening: too much has been done wrong, too much theft and betrayal has occurred to expect victory over Russia passively. And there is no need to wait passively if there is an opportunity, within this frightening reality, to build an alternative project of the future – a project of victory over Russia. A vision of the future is not an expectation, but a system of priorities and a general vector of aspirations based on an understanding of reality without illusions.
