Ballet was his life -- before the war. Now Sergeant Oleksandr Dushakov is a soldier -- a scout in a Ukrainian National Guard unit currently deployed near the war zone in eastern Ukraine.
“I was a ballet dancer. Well, I remain one formally. I’ve been doing it since childhood, and it’s the family business,” Dushakov told RFE/RL in an interview in a forest clearing not far from Kupyansk, a Kharkiv region city that is under pressure from Russian forces as Moscow’s full-scale invasion nears the four-year mark.
“My grandparents danced. My mother would also have danced, but she had poor eyesight, and at that time there were no contact lenses, so she became an accompanist…And she is a ballet dancer. My wife is a ballerina. And my daughter is already a ballerina,” said Dushakov.
The 41-year-old is one of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians from a wide range of professions and walks of life who have volunteered to join the military since Russian forces poured across the border and the existing dividing line in the eastern Donbas region before dawn on February 24, 2022.
He was in Paris that morning for a performance, having just arrived the day before – and was up all night worrying about his family back in Kyiv: “I remember their first text messages. It was very scary, because watching the war from a distance is much worse.”
'I Couldn’t Just Sit There'
Dushakov’s wife and daughter later left for Vilnius, and he returned to Kyiv in March, as Ukrainian forces were beginning to drive Russian troops back away from the outskirts of the capital –- upending Putin’s expectations of a quick victory and setting the stage for a protracted war.
Dushakov first went to an enlistment office, where “they wrote down my details and said they would call me back. But they never called me back,” he said. “I couldn’t just sit there –- I started volunteering, clearing up debris after attacks. Soon the theater reopened, and I returned to my profession” -- as a dancer for the Kyiv Municipal Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre for Children and Youth.
But he also joined one of the civilian Territorial Defense Units established after the start of the invasion – and by the spring of 2023 he made the switch to the military, joining a National Guard unit based near an area “where I had been picking mushrooms all my life.”
“I had several training courses, and in the fall our brigade went into combat” in a forest along the border between the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in the Donbas, he told RFE/RL. “I spent nine months there.”
'The Power Of Adrenaline'
The first weeks and months were hard for Dushakov, who had never carried a gun before the full-scale invasion -- a tough “period of adaptation at the front for a fighter who had never fought.” But he drew courage from the forest, he said, something he has “adored” since childhood.
“At moments of psychological decline, when it seemed that everything was over, it was the forest that supported me,” he said. “I perceived it as a being, as something living. It told me when to go, when not to go, where to go, where not to go. And the proof of that is the fact that I am still alive.”
Asked whether his training as ballet dancer has helped him in the war, Dushakov’s answer was unequivocal: “Of course.”
“Coordination, the ability to turn on the right amount of strength when needed. And another very important point -– as an artist, I know the power of adrenaline,” he said. “Because when you go on stage in a part where you are very nervous -– the adrenaline switches on.”
He also chalks up his survival to good military training -– which can be hard to come by in Ukraine’s overstretched armed forces, in part because many soldiers with the experience and qualifications to train have been killed or are fighting at the front -- and good fortune.
“I was lucky that I survived the first week, two weeks, three weeks,” he said.
Some of his comrades have not been so lucky.
Dushakov did not give details about deaths or injuries in his unit, and Kyiv does not publicize its casualty figures. But the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated in June that between 60,000 and 100,000 Ukrainian military personnel had been killed since February 2022.
'Strong, Beautiful People Die'
Dushakov suggested that, to some degree, he has become inured to the deaths of those around him, and that he is not comfortable with this development.
“There are people who take it very hard, and there are people who make you angry because they don’t care at all,” he told RFE/RL. “Personally, at some point I felt like that switch was flipped, which made me feel embarrassed.”
“Of course, it is a tragedy that strong, beautiful people die,” he said. “But part of me has already resigned myself to the fact that this is war, and in war people kill. And no one is immune to that.”
Dushakov would like to return to his ballet career when the war is over, but he’s not holding his breath, he said, “because I do not see the finish line.”
“When I joined the army, we all lived in the hope that the war would end soon. But the more time passes, the more I understand that this is an equation with many unknowns. And I am already of an age at which in my profession you can retire,” he said.
“I have been in ballet since childhood. It’s in my blood,” he added. “But some more time will pass, and the army will already be in my blood.”
