Pavlo Korobchuk is a Ukrainian writer, journalist, musician, volunteer, and officer of the Omega Special Forces Center. He is the author of seven poetry collections, two novels, and a book of short stories. A member of PEN Ukraine.
At the end of last year, I signed a contract with the Omega Special Forces Center. Everything here is really well-organized, and the people are incredible: everything is aimed at achieving high-quality results, and everyone treats each other with respect and humanity.
Of course, there's a certain specificity here. Above all, it's about a different type of hierarchy — a military one. Inside, it's clear and transparent, but it took me some time to get into it and understand how it all works.
I have immense respect for the Omega fighters, for special forces, for those directly engaged in combat, who carry out complex, highly coordinated operations, who have endured the toughest battles.
I joined the military to be useful. Now, 95% of the people around me are servicemen, men. After a certain period of service, my self-perception, on some deep psychological level, transformed somewhat — I felt a stronger sense of confidence, structure, manhood. I understood the specifics: things here are clearer. If something goes wrong, it's quickly and constructively resolved. And when order is clear, when everyone treats each other with dignity, you feel calm knowing that everything is being done properly. That's why I'd encourage every man who hasn't yet joined the army to do so. Omega's recruitment process actually takes civilian skills into account — that's how I, for example, became a press officer.
Even though the war has been going on for a long time, society still retains a certain cautiousness toward people in uniform. It's not fear, but rather a sense that they're different — because their world is hard to grasp, because of the fear of war.
The hardest part of service is the losses. I've had to write obituaries — studying the circumstances of someone's death, diving into their handwritten autobiography, searching for words of grief it's painful. And also the meetings and conversations with families who have lost a son, father, husband, or close relative — those are extremely difficult. You need to approach their feelings with special care and tenderness.
When I first joined Omega, I completely immersed myself in military life, learning all its specifics and nuances, and for about six months I didn't attend any civilian events at all. Later, I realized I missed culture, I missed a certain civilian socialization. Now, it's the opposite — I'm drawn to cultural events and try to communicate more with civilians. It gives me a sense of inner balance.
We're really living with a syndrome of postponed life. And not only because of the full-scale invasion, but even since COVID. Sometimes it's very difficult. I think I was in depression for months, especially during the blackouts of November and December 2022. Back then, it was hard to comprehend how to go on living. All plans and dreams had already collapsed, postponed — and might never come true. The same goes for millions of Ukrainians — many of their plans may never be realized in the future.
But other things can be realized. And that's one of the answers to how we live now. If before it felt like dreams could wait, now life is more intense, and you want to fulfill as much as possible.
This experience we're gaining now — even if we didn't want it and still don't — is extremely valuable. No other country in the world has such experience. This value must be absorbed and shared further — in Europe, in the world.
The value of responsibility, of building amid shelling and sirens, of stabilizing in chaos and uncertainty. And it's also a chance to discover other "bubbles." For instance, I never imagined I'd become a serviceman, but now I am, and I've learned so much.
As for Ukraine's future — you can't make plans. The sooner Putin dies, the sooner I'll be able to think about plans.
In the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war, foreigners must understand: the blame lies not only with Putin and his "hawks" but with the entire machine, with all of them. If, after the war, I happen to talk with a Russian individually, I'd need to ask a set of key questions to see whether a dialogue is even possible, or whether they belong to that same 100%. Starting with: whose is Crimea? Although honestly, why even talk to them?
And what should Ukraine do, what do we need? First of all, we definitely need NATO membership. That's been my personal opinion for many years. If we don't join the alliance, Putin will continue to see all of Ukraine as his territory and within his sphere of influence. We also need EU membership — we made that choice back in 2014 and paid dearly for it.
Second — Russia's complete withdrawal from Ukrainian territory. For three years now, the aggressor state has been putting forward terms as if Ukraine must capitulate.
Everything that reaches the press isn't negotiation texts, not ceasefire or peace agreement drafts. They're capitulation texts. Every time Russia simply proposes that we surrender. And this so-called "territorial exchange" — it's not their territory for ours, but only Ukrainian territories they want us to give up. It's absurd.
In all creative flows, right now I want to catch the subtle matters — like tiny bells. Imagine a church bell tower. I want to capture the sound of the smallest bells up there. They're called zazvonni in Ukrainian.
Writing can take different shapes. When it comes to exploring emotions, I often imagine creativity as a three-dimensional sphere with different sides — top, bottom, left, right, front, back. Each side is a different spectrum of emotions. Writing about terrible tragedies is like using low notes. You can write something far-left or far-right. You can look to the future or dwell in the past — the front or the back of the sphere. And right now I'm drawn to writing about what's above. About something delicate, fragile. About what rings softly.
It's important to remember that getting stuck on just one side of this imaginary sphere can be harmful.
Earlier, I used to write in broad strokes — expressively, in bold fonts, with expansive texts. Now I want miniatures: to see little details, and to embed everything I want to say within them.
Before, for example, the word "blood" could have metaphorical, super-metaphorical, meta-metaphorical meanings. In wartime, it's crucial to also consider its literal, material meaning: "blood" in most cases conveys exactly that — a material, real sense. Not hyperrealism, not hypo-, but reality. Words that once carried extra layers of meaning now have great impact without them. The material meaning of a word has become paramount. This is the "meat realism" of today.
After the full-scale invasion, many writers began to rethink how to approach creativity in describing what was happening. For me — fortunately, or bitterly fortunately — that answer came back in 2014--2015, when I was observing the horrors of war in the east. For about a year and a half, I barely wrote anything. At first, I simply couldn't process what was happening. Then I kept asking myself: "Do I even have the right to write about this?" If I do, then how exactly can I approach it, from whose perspective? Do I have the right to write in the voice of a soldier sitting in a trench? Artists always imagine things on behalf of others, but here the line is very thin: can you write on behalf of someone shedding blood for you and your fellow citizens? I carried this question for a long time until I eventually found my own answers and limits. There are still some things I can't touch because I don't feel I have the moral right to. But many things can be conveyed in different ways and styles. Every author finds their own way.
So, when the full-scale war began, I already had a sense of the boundaries within which I could work, continue writing poetry and prose. About a week after the invasion started, I began writing a lot of poems. In March and April there were an extraordinary number of them — they just hung in the air. Strangely enough, it was easy to write about very heavy things.
There's always, roughly speaking, a mandate in writing — a sense of what you personally have the right to put into words. My cousin, Serhiy Korobchuk, is a soldier. He fought for eight years even before the full-scale invasion, three times in a war zone. He experienced clinical death after losing a massive amount of blood. Serhiy survived, but with consequences. Now he almost never speaks about the war.
I know many people who have combined their writing skills with their war experience — like Artem Chekh, for instance. Everything he writes, I accept unconditionally. This is, above all, a question of the level of trust in the written word.
Independence is a sense of self-worth, of self-sufficiency. People may have many professional achievements, but I believe that inner peace, balance, calm, and simply the fact of your existence — that alone is enough for dignity. That, too, is about independence. And it's precisely from millions of such individual independences that a healthy society must be built — a healthy, independent Ukraine.
