Letter from Ukraine: How will my mom survive if I’m drafted?

Taras Revunets is a Kyiv-based political commentator and activist. His work has been previously featured in the Kyiv Post.

I’m a Ukrainian caregiver by day — but by law, I’m about to be promoted to criminal, or draft-dodger.

When Russia first invaded Ukraine on Feb. 20, 2014, I was among Twitter’s top Ukrainian keyboard warriors. Our Euromaidan protests in Kyiv’s Independence Square had just come to an end. Fresh from the fire and smoke and bullet-peppered trees, I campaigned relentlessly for Western military aid as Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and moved on to the eastern region of Donbas.

I tweeted my way into U.S. Embassy events, including two Independence Day receptions hosted by then-U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt.

But by the time Russia’s full-scale invasion began, I had fallen out of love with the platform. I had other priorities — caring for my elderly disabled parents who chose not to evacuate.

There’s a video of me escorting them into the bomb shelter in the early days of the Russian onslaught, one I later shared in a short interview with France 24. My dad, then 80, could only manage baby steps and soon became bedridden. He passed away a harrowing 18 months later, on Aug. 30, 2023.

The meds, the diapers, the bedsores, the sleepless nights and his dying breaths — they all left me with a crater in my soul. And he left me with one last parent: my mom, aged 75.

In her younger days, my mom had spent nearly four decades working as an English-speaking tourist guide at one of Kyiv’s most revered sights — the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, a millennium-old cave monastery. In 1982, when Kyiv celebrated its 1,500th anniversary, she graced the cover of the Polish magazine Przyjaźń (Friendship) — so young, radiant and energetic. Throughout her career, she guided thousands of people from all continents and all walks of life. Her list of VIPs included  International Olympic Committee Chairman Juan Antonio Samaranch and other dignitaries like the head of the Pakistani General Staff. She saw in-person First Lady Raisa Gorbachev, former U.S. President Bill Clinton and Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite. Did she love her job? She was married to it.

Russia first invaded Ukraine on Feb. 20, 2014. | Anatolii Stepanov/Getty Images

Now she’s a mess — anxious and depressed, insomniac and psychotic, underweight and constipated, socially isolated and cognitively impaired. Like my dad in his final years, she fully depends on me.

My mom has no one else left to care for her. I’m her one and only child. And now she’smy one and only child. She communicates only with me. She won’t go outside without me. She won’t eat or drink without me coaxing her. She won’t take her meds without me begging her. She stopped using the phone in 2018. She can’t get an ambulance. She’s more disabled than my dad was until his final months.

But unlike him, my mom never had “disability papers.” And it’s undocumented — or under-documented — special needs folks like her whose lives are at risk because of Ukraine’s new turbocharged mobilization law.

No papers? Then no caregivers! No draft dodgers! Loophole closed. But if I am drafted, what’s a depressed and disconnected septuagenarian like my mom supposed to do? Euthanize herself?

The new law does grant draft immunity — for police officers, prosecutors, judges, lawmakers and senior government officials; to certain journalists, artists and high-skilled workers. And conceivably, caregivers have the right to a waiver. But for many of us, that’s much easier said than done.

To secure a waiver, one is thrust into a byzantine world of bureaucratic complexity and obstinacy, and is sucked into wrangling over the extent of a loved one’s disability. If you’re a cognitively impaired senior like my mom, you need a special medical form. And, well, good luck with that!

At every stage there seems to be a presumption of draft dodging. “Now that’s suspicious,” our district shrink announced when I arrived in her office at Kyiv’s Psychiatric Hospital No. 1 to start the prolonged process of getting the life-saving medical form N 080-2/o to legalize me as my mom’s sole caregiver. The hospital reports to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, the former boxing legend. And I have been in and out of medical offices, dragging my poor startled mom behind me, trying to secure this ever elusive document.

Eventually, the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights opened an inquiry into our case on right to life grounds — but that too ran aground. The problem is that the hospital and its mayor-controlled higher-ups get away with disregarding the Ministry of Health order that regulates form N 080-2/o.  Instead, they’re cherry-picking the most severe conditions like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, while overlooking disabilities like social dysfunction. 

Who cares? Times are tough. This seems to be the attitude of shoulder-shrugging bureaucrats.

Having read POLITICO’s in-depth interview with Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s powerful chief of staff, I must say this: Mr. Yermak, I hope your mom is doing well. I wish her all the best. My mom needs help. And elderly people in life-or-death situations deserve better than being left hostage to a self-serving monster of bureaucracy.

So, wish me luck as I transition from care giver to criminal, or draft dodger.