Ukrainian author-turned-soldier takes aim at Westerners' ‘abstract pacifism’
From the first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Western leftists have invoked “peace” as a slogan — as if peace were not already at the heart of every Ukrainian’s daily prayer. They warn the world not to “provoke” the Kremlin, as if Ukraine’s restraint could halt Russian missiles. For Ukraine’s own leftists, though, the prospect of total annihilation has laid bare how hollow abstract pacifism sounds when survival itself is on the line.
When Russian forces tried to take Kyiv in 2022, Ukrainian writer Artem Chapeye — a well-known leftist and outspoken male feminist — made sure his family reached safety before he enlisted to defend his country. In his latest book "Ordinary People Don’t Carry Machine Guns," translated into English by Zenia Tompkins and published by Seven Stories Press, Chapeye reflects on his path to military service, the ways in which the war has upended parts of Ukrainian society, and what it means to hold onto your humanity when forced to pick up a weapon.
“It’s easy to hide behind the abstract idea that ‘the more weapons there are, the more war there’ll be’ when you yourself are safe,” Chapeye writes.
“But what if one of your brothers is sitting with his wife in a corridor in February 2022 on the outskirts of Kyiv, with gunfire all around and Russian armored vehicles already driving by the building, and he is panicking when he realizes that he doesn’t even have an axe in his apartment, nothing to defend himself with other than kitchen knives and a meat tenderizer? Things look a little different then.”
Chapeye’s inner conflict with his longstanding pacifism unfolds when he and his family stop by a village heading westward and he meets an elderly local. This man, along with other locals of his generation with military experience, is readying to enlist. By contrast, the man’s son has returned to the village, hoping to lay low and avoid military conscription officers. When Chapeye asks the son if he can give his family a ride to continue their journey westward, he replies that he doesn’t want to be stopped at a military checkpoint.
“It’s easy to hide behind the abstract idea that ‘the more weapons there are, the more war there’ll be’ when you yourself are safe.”
Ukrainian writer and soldier Artem Chapeye attends the 13th International Book Arsenal Festival in Kyiv, Ukraine, on May 30, 2025. (Nastya Telikova / Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
Chapeye’s writing resists easy blame when it comes to such social issues, always choosing instead to look deeply, contextualize, and find empathy, if possible. On the son’s choice, he says: “I just wouldn’t want that to be me.”
“I struggle more with the men who have bought documents claiming a fake disability or obtained a fake guardianship of a disabled person and now sip beer from bottles with ‘Heroes don’t die’ on the labels,” he adds.
Chapeye approaches such reflections with an understanding of his personal limitations. More than once he conveys in the book how he is in awe of the Ukrainian men who chose to come back from abroad and enlist, confessing that he likely would have lacked the courage to make that sacrifice himself. He admits that initially, he even suspected these stories were state propaganda until encountering those men firsthand proved otherwise.
Recognizing one’s own limitations — and those of others — during wartime can also give rise to many different manifestations of guilt, according to Chapeye. Ukrainian mothers can experience remorse over their perceived insufficient contribution to national defense. Volunteers confront the dissonance of supporting the war effort without fighting on the front line. Soldiers serving in the rear struggle to compare their setbacks with those who are in trenches, while others endure survivor’s guilt, mourning fallen brothers-in-arms.
“This multilevel nature of guilt is, for me, one of the most bizarre and unexpected psychological phenomena of war. Russia attacked Ukraine, but Ukrainians are the ones to feel ashamed. Everyone in Ukraine talks about this,” he writes.
War rewrites the order of things. What we do in its long shadow shapes the peace that might follow — if we survive to see it. Once condemned as weakness, certain gestures reveal unexpected strength: in Ukraine’s rather patriarchal society, Chapeye notes, it is no longer “wrong” for men to cry. If anything, it is a sign of strength and refusal to grow numb to the daily horrors of war.
For Chapeye, it is the thoughts of his children that bring him to tears most easily. When the war began, his family sought refuge in Germany while Chapeye stayed behind to serve in the military. Technology keeps them connected, but screens cannot bridge the ache of their physical absence — an ache that only grows sharper when they visit him in dreams.
“You rush to pick them up in your arms, to hold them close so you can feel them, but your children melt away, and you wake up in tears. Your children are gone, and you are in a f**king military uniform, with a f**king assault rifle under you, sleeping in some f**king train car,” Chapeye writes.
Chapeye is not the only servicemember who is in despair over being separated from his family. One of Chapeye’s brothers-in-arms — a “tough-looking guy with an assault rifle,” as he describes him — reminds him of this in a delicate, unexpected way: he hugs Chapeye, and asks him to remember that he is not alone in his feelings.
At the same time, all this suffering makes it especially difficult for those serving in the military to emotionally connect with those who are not. Chapeye describes in the book feeling “a sharp pang of dislike” when he sees an acquaintance on Facebook post about searching for an apartment for his family in Kyiv, while Chapeye himself can’t see his own kids, who are abroad. (Chapeye's own family has since returned to Ukraine.)
“Tens of thousands of people who were less fortunate have already died to make his pleasant life possible,” he writes.
"Ordinary People Don’t Carry Machine Guns" stands as a timely, clear-eyed account of the sacrifices Ukrainians have had to make to defend their homeland. While many of Ukraine's Western supporters reach for grand myths of tireless, unbreakable warriors, Chapeye counters with a necessary reminder: Ukrainians will continue to fight for as long as they can, but that fight is slowly breaking them.
Perhaps no one is better placed to say so than a pacifist in military uniform. Such a person doesn’t romanticize war — they loathe it. Yet, they choose to serve. They serve because they understand that peace, if it means anything, sometimes must be defended and not simply wished into existence.
Unlike the “abstract pacifists” Chapeye criticizes in the book, the pacifist in military uniform knows that peace is not the absence of war — it is about protecting justice, human dignity, and national sovereignty. When those are threatened by another country invading, taking up arms is not a rejection of pacifist ideology: it is the refusal to let senseless violence prevail.
Note from the author:
Hi, this is Kate Tsurkan, thanks for reading this article. There is an ever-increasing amount of books about or related to Ukraine, Russia, and Russia's ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine available to English-language readers, and I hope my recommendations prove useful when it comes to your next trip to the bookstore. If you like reading about this sort of thing, please consider supporting The Kyiv Independent.
