Russia’s war has left a permanent mark on nearly almost every Ukrainian family, but the burden is arguably heaviest on those with multiple loved ones deployed to the front.
For Serhii Lyakh, 47, who owns a farming business in Tomakivka, and his wife, Lilya, 43, who has a women’s clothing boutique, it was their two sons — their only children — who left to fight for the country’s freedom.
Maksym and Ivan’s initial attempts to join the armed forces were rebuffed by recruitment offices because of their youth and inexperience.
Eventually, they managed to join “Right Sector” — a military volunteer corps — in April 2022. After nine days of intense training, they deployed to Avdiivka, a perennial site of fierce fighting on the eastern front.
Their short preparation time did not faze them. A video from last year shows the brothers enthusiastically headbanging to heavy metal music and laughing, while driving to the front.
“They trained us well but we wanted to fight, so we went fast,” Ivan said.
Their commander saw value in the brothers’ teamwork. Although there are no specific rules on family members being split or teamed up for military duty, he made sure that Maksym and Ivan stayed together. To Ivan, this was important. “I trusted my brother like nobody else,” he said.
In April, after a year of fighting side by side, the brothers were split up for the first time. Maksym, who used the call sign “Frost,” was sent on a mandatory break while Ivan deployed near the embattled city of Bakhmut to protect a key logistical route nicknamed the “road of life.”
Maksym was furious that his little brother, call sign “Tokmak,” was sent to such a dangerous battle without him. But by the end of April, they were reunited in the besieged city.
Back home, their loved ones were worried.
Maksym’s girlfriend, Sofia Kozyriatska, 21, was studying to become a dentist, struggling with the daily difficulties of the war and her boyfriend’s absence. Their text messages included news from the front and words of encouragement. “Tell me everything, so I know what to prepare for,” she pleaded in one text exchange.
Whenever Maksym could afford it, he traveled to her dormitory in Poltava to spend at least one night together. They talked about their future. Maksym wanted to leave Ukraine after the war and live in a little house in the Scandinavian woods. He asked Sofia if she would go with him.
“We talked about having children,” Sofia said. “We planned on having three boys, to replenish the Ukrainian population.”
Lilya, the brothers’ mom, never wanted her sons to fight.
When Maksym finished high school, war was already raging in east Ukraine. Lilya, terrified that Maksym would be conscripted, sent him to Poland for university.
“I’m saving you from the war,” she told Maksym as he left reluctantly. But in 2019, he returned home to finish his degree in economic engineering at Zaporizhzhia University.
Maksym and Ivan were not oblivious to the danger in Bakhmut. “We had an agreement,” Ivan said. “If one of us dies, the other will stay behind with our parents and take care of them.”
On the morning of May 1, the brothers were hunkered down in a house in an industrial area of Bakhmut, which they had been ordered to hold and defend. The Russians held positions in neighboring houses. The sound of artillery fire was deafening.
Constant assaults and heavy gunfire fights meant that there was no sleep. Ivan crouched behind the remains of a destroyed wall, and intermittently fired his machine gun to try to stop the Russian forces from advancing.
When he popped out to fire another round, Ivan saw a flash and fell back. Something had hit him in the face. At first, he said, he didn’t feel anything at all, but then a white hot pain overtook him. His jaw was shattered, his teeth all but gone. There was blood everywhere.
“I thought I was done for, that I couldn’t be saved,” he said.
Maksym screamed and grabbed his younger brother by his bulletproof vest, dragging him farther into the house. As he tried to keep his own nerves under control, he kept talking to Ivan, forcing him to stay conscious, and giving first aid.
“Heavy 300!” — military slang for heavily wounded — Maksym yelled into his radio. He pushed painkillers into Ivan’s mouth, but his brother, almost choking on blood, could not swallow. Half an hour later, two soldiers took Ivan to a basement-turned-command center only 650 feet away.
As the brothers said goodbye, Maksym pushed a flag into Ivan’s hands. It was a Ukrainian flag sporting the signatures of all their closest fellow troops.
In the basement, Ivan noticed two other wounded soldiers and the body of the commander who originally kept the brothers together. Exhausted, Ivan sat down next to him and cried, as he held his shattered jaw together with his own hands.
“That was very painful to see. He had a small child,” Ivan said. “But it’s a war.”
For more than nine hours, he waited to be evacuated. Every once in a while he would hear Maksym’s voice over the radio. A curt “450” — meant the situation at his position was stable.
Around midnight, an evacuation unit got in and took Ivan to a hospital in Dnipro, where his mother and girlfriend, Diana, were already waiting. “I was so happy Ivan was wounded,” Lilya said. “At least he was alive.”
Five days later, 20 minutes before he was supposed to undergo anesthesia, Ivan got a message from his commander: “Frost is dead.” Maksym was killed in fighting, likely from shrapnel or a bullet that hit his neck.
For years, the Lyakh home had been a center of gravity for the brothers and their friends. Videos show them happy, eating and laughing.
At age 12, Ivan discovered a love for motorcycles. Hooked on the speed and danger, he started training and competing, and eventually won a silver medal in the Ukrainian national championship. Ivan was set on a career as a sportsman.
“Look how many he’s won,” Lilya said, pointing to medals on the walls. Now, the bloodstained Ukrainian flag Maksym pressed into Ivan’s hand the last time they saw each other also hangs on the living room wall.
“We knew there were only two ways we would get out of Bakhmut,” Ivan said. “Dead or wounded.”
The evening before the funeral, Maksym’s coffin was brought into the house for a wake. His German shepherd, Dora, lay by his side all night, whimpering. “I didn’t believe he was dead,” Lilya said, wiping away tears. “I still don’t.”
Ukrainians still debate whether defending Bakhmut, which Russia seized in May, was worth the cost.
On May 9, the streets of Tomakivka echoed with a traditional folk song: “I don’t know where I’ll die — Oh I will die on foreign lands — Who will prepare a grave for me?” A hearse led a convoy to the cemetery. Passers-by fell to their knees to pay respects. Women covered their faces, sobbing loudly.
“He was a happy child, a child of light,” a priest said at the funeral. Soldiers fired a last salute. As Maksym’s coffin was slowly lowered, his girlfriend, Sofia, fell to her knees, tears streaming as she stared into the grave.
With a long rehabilitation ahead, Ivan’s plans are unclear. His face is gaunt; he has lost more than 30 pounds. A piece of shrapnel is still lodged in his neck. Few men from his unit are still alive. “I feel for those boys, my brothers,” he said. “They’re gone.”
Diana hopes he will stay home now, as he once promised Maksym, for their parents. But Ivan is not sure. “I don’t know if I’ll get used to civilian life,” he said. “War has changed me a lot. War is not what I had imagined it to be. It’s death and destruction.”
