8/8 — What Van Gogh wants when it ends
Asked what he wants to do after demobilisation, Van Gogh gives the answer of someone who has lost the certainty that civilian life will return.
“It’s like in a movie. I’ve replayed this question in my head so many times — and the further it goes, the more my desires change. After a year on Donbas, I didn’t want to see anyone, didn’t want to be anywhere — only to hug my children, to be home with the family. Now I don’t even know what I want anymore. I just want the war to end.”
His specific wish:
“That russians pack up their things and go to their forests to feed their mosquitoes and die there from those same mosquitoes. Let them live there. Just don’t let their feet be here. That’s the only wish.”
When asked about Ukraine’s future, his answer points entirely to the next generation:
“I believe only in the generation of our children. Children are much smarter than us, they’re completely different. They’re not like us — smarter, more interesting, more developed. They’ve seen more and want to see more. The hope is with them. Essentially, the war is for them — so that they can develop, so that they can build the Ukraine of the future.”
His callsign came from his daughter Mariyka, who chose it after he asked her to paint Van Gogh as a child. She is the same daughter for whom he is fighting now — and the same generation he expects to build the Ukraine that will exist after this war ends.
This is what Ukrainian fathers are doing in 2026. Fighting in 20-kilometre grey zones. Distributing intelligence from prisoner interrogations. Losing fellow villagers. Discovering cousins in besieged cities. Hoping that the daughter who gave them their callsign will live in a country worth all of it.
— Source: Eugene Buket, ArmyInform, May 20, 2026
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