The war in the Levant may have reached a ceasefire, but for Jewish soldiers fighting in Ukraine, it never stopped.
While the eye of social and traditional media has moved on to other stories – from the Israel-Hamas War to the US raid in Venezuela – the Russian invasion of Ukraine has endured every harsh winter since 2022, and Jewish Ukrainians have numbered among the ranks of warriors holding the line.
Recon Drone team commander Moshe Bizsemov had been serving in the Ukrainian military since 2018, during much of the 2014 Donbas War, which served as the true beginning of the current conflict.
The Mykolaiv resident was supposed to end his service in April 2022, almost two months after Russian forces invaded the rest of Ukraine. While Bizsemov was in the process of being released, many of his soldiers were captured in Mariupol.
Seven still haven’t been released. Bizsemov decided to extend his contract with the military. When asked his motivation for serving, he answered as if it were obvious and trite to state.
“To fight for my country,” he said simply.
The decision to continue fighting came up many times during the war, but Bizsemov never wavered. The 31-year-old father of two was wounded at the beginning of the war and could have been honorably discharged, but he chose to continue serving through drone reconnaissance.
During his service, Bizsemov has held many different positions, including intelligence. Whenever he received a new assignment, he never hid his Judaism, which he takes pride in. His current team is small, consisting of only 10 soldiers.
“There is nothing to hide,” he said.
Not only does armored vehicle driver Andre Chernetsky not hide his Judaism, but he has made it a point of his service.
Since March 22, Chernetsky has served in some of the bloodiest battles of the war, fighting twice in Bakhmut, including one seven-month tour.
Chernetsky breaks protocol to save a fellow soldier
In one incident, Chernetsky shared that he had been driving back from the Bakhmut front, and when he was only one kilometer away from arriving, he encountered a fellow Ukrainian soldier trapped in a collapsed building.
Against protocol, Chernetsky stopped the BMP and leapt out to aid the soldier. The trapped man’s leg was severely injured, connected to his body only by a few sinews, but still anchored him under rubble.
Chernetsky tied off the wound, cut off the man’s limb, and with help from his team, placed him in the armored vehicle.
He had risked not only his own life but also his team’s, yet he insisted that if the soldier hadn’t been saved then, he would have been left behind and all but forgotten.
Everyone who knows Chernetsky could see how precious a life was to him. Seeing himself as a representative of the Jewish people, he believed that he had to hold himself to a higher standard.
Soldiers spend every hour of the day stuck together in close quarters, and it was only natural that Chernetsky’s comrades would know that he was Jewish. Keeping Jewish practices, such as kosher, was difficult on the frontlines.
Yet when he returned from a course in Poland, his friends saved him a menorah that they found in an aid package last year. Since everyone knew about his faith and lineage, he needed to be stronger and to fight harder in order to be an exemplar of the Jewish people.
“There are always those who want to persecute and expel the Jews,” said the BMP driver. Jews are a traditional scapegoat around the world, he explained. One could blame the Jews because it was always possible to find at least one Jewish person who had done something bad.
Some Ukrainians have criticized President Volodymyr Zelensky over the prosecution of the war, and in some cases that animosity has been extended to other Jews.
No one can say Jews don't fight, Chernetsky says
Chernetsky has been wounded three times during the course of the war. Among the dozen medals he wore proudly on his chest was a decoration he received after being injured in combat. He had continued fighting so that no one would say that Jews didn’t serve.
At the same time, some Jews – like other Ukrainians – did not fight. Some Ukrainians, including Jews, hid in their homes to avoid being stopped in the street by military police and forcibly conscripted.
One Jewish leader said he regretted that this was the situation for some Jewish citizens. Yet Jewish officials said that many more, like Chernetsky, served their country proudly.
They said it was difficult to know how many Jews are serving in the Ukrainian military, as some are involved in the community and others are unknown to them.
Jewish officials cited varying figures, saying that about twice as many Jewish soldiers currently serve in the military as have been killed in action. Since 2022, the number of Jewish citizens who have paid the ultimate price for their country has been estimated at between 100 and 200. Dozens were killed last year alone.
Chef Zvi-Hirsch (Grisha) Zvergazda, a father of two, was killed in June while fighting on the Kherson front. He dreamed of opening a kosher restaurant in Odessa and earning a Michelin star.
Around the same time, 32-year-old Andrey Korovsky, a Chabad school teacher, died of a heart attack at the front after returning to service as a drone operator following a combat injury.
In May, 44-year-old Ukrainian actor Maksym Nelipa was killed in action. He left his job as a television presenter at the beginning of the invasion to fight for his country.
According to the Federation of Jewish Communities in Ukraine (FJCU), his son was fighting for the Golani Brigade in Gaza when he received the ill tidings.
Even during the war, FJCU tried to ensure that soldiers, such as Hungarian Jewish volunteer Benjamin Aser, were given dignified Jewish burial rites. “We assist in holding Jewish funerals together with Chabad emissaries in the country, assist families financially, and hold prayers and Kaddish recitations for the souls of the heroes,” FJCU chairman Rabbi Mayer Stambler said in May.
In December, Stambler told The Jerusalem Post that the war was difficult on Ukraine’s Jewish community, but he believed the country was fighting the same “axis of evil” as Israel.
Associated with FJCU, military chaplain Rabbi Lt. Yakov Sinyakov has been helping soldiers cope with facing those evils.
At the beginning of the war, Sinyakov volunteered to speak with Jewish soldiers. With a master’s in psychology and an accomplished martial artist with his own gym, Sinyakov was well-equipped for understanding and connecting to those engaged in fighting.
Initially, he wanted to support and inspire soldiers from his community, but Sinyakov found that non-Jewish soldiers were also interested in hearing what the rabbi had to say. Sinyakov said he had been reluctant to serve as a chaplain, but he was convinced by a friend, who was a high-ranking military officer.
He said he had been serving in an official capacity as the first and only unit military chaplain in the Ukrainian military for four months.
Sinyakov’s work has brought him to the trenches in the frontlines, dodging drones and missiles, and he has seen the terror in the eyes of new recruits. He always brings the soldiers sweets to give them a taste of home.
Soldiers often gather around him to hear what he has to say. For those who are interested, he gives them books of psalms. Almost every time he visits soldiers, Sinyakov discovers at least one person who tells him that he is Jewish or believes he has Jewish roots.
Some soldiers have great difficulty with the idea of killing. Sinyakov said that a god-given soul resides within all men, but that Ukrainians face the same “evil reality” that met Israelis on October 7, 2023.
Some men have chosen, of their own free will, to commit to evil; in this “evil reality,” it is necessary to kill in order to defend one’s family and country.
When asked how he felt about the fighting, Chernetsky said sardonically that in Ukraine, “if guests come, we go to greet them.”
Chernetsky wants other Jews to watch how Ukrainians fight and urges global Jewry to support the FJCU, which he says has helped a lot of soldiers.
Donations help buy equipment that allows drones to be modified in order to deliver food and supplies to soldiers on the frontlines. Chernetsky also thanked Israel for accepting Ukrainian refugees at the start of the war.
Bizsemov added that the contributions of the Jewish people to the war would continue – a people that have endured such hardships, staying the same in essence over the years.
“The Jews that received the Torah at Mount Sinai are the same as today,” he said. “We continue to spread the light of the Torah.”