Maksym's Story: Growing up on the frontline
Ukrainecast
BBC
4.7 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 4 June 2024
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
One young soldier’s coming of age tale from the battlefield.
One of our most asked after regular guests, the young soldier Maksym Lutsyk, returns to the podcast. He’s now 21 years old and we find out about his time on the frontline, how he listens in to secret recordings of Russian soldiers and whether he still dreams of having a beer on a beach in Tenerife…
Today’s episode is presented by Victoria Derbyshire and Vitaly Shevchenko. The producers were Arsenii Sokolov, Bella Saltiel, Natasha Mayo and Clare Williamson. The technical producer was Garreth Jones. The series producer is Tim Walklate. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham. Email Ukrainecast@bbc.co.uk with your questions and comments. You can also send us a message or voice note via WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram to +44 330 1239480
You can join the Ukrainecast discussion on Newscast’s Discord server here: tinyurl.com/ukrainecastdiscord
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:04.7 | Hello, it's 832 days since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. |
| 0:10.1 | Remember this. |
| 0:11.8 | There is no words to describe the fight because no, there is only a few words. |
| 0:20.0 | Blood, scare, death, bullets, noise, explosions, maybe the word believe is one of the best ones that I can describe my personal feelings in fights because the only thing that you can do in the fight sometimes is just to believe that you will stay alive and your |
| 0:46.8 | friends will stay alive. That was Maxim Lutsik. So powerful. I've forgotten, I've forgotten he said all those things. |
| 0:55.0 | Well that's what you do when you're in the trenches you've seen the power. |
| 1:00.2 | You've got to have the power and Maximilutzer has been one of the most keenly followed of all |
| 1:06.1 | our guests on Ukraine cast since we spoke to him first in May 2022. |
| 1:11.7 | He certainly captured your imagination from wherever you are listening |
| 1:15.6 | around the world. 19 year old student he stepped up at the time of Russia's |
| 1:20.3 | full-scale invasion. He volunteered to fight on behalf of his country. You might remember he told |
| 1:26.2 | us about the killing of his commander. |
| 1:28.8 | Who he described as a legend. Yeah, and this commander died while saving Maxim's life in an attack by Russia. |
| 1:36.5 | Maxim was injured and hospitalized and then he went straight back to the front line. |
| 1:41.1 | And over the course of this war he went from being pretty optimistic to getting slightly |
| 1:50.3 | more pessimistic. |
| 1:52.3 | But everyone will remember, I hope you will anyway, he |
| 1:56.1 | talks about wanting to travel to Tenerife. Do you remember when the wall was over and |
| 2:00.1 | he painted this picture of drinking a beer on a sunny beach. |
| 2:04.0 | And we haven't spoken to him since February last year. |
| 2:08.0 | Until today. |
... |
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