Back to the U.S.S.R.: Dan Bilak, 62, formed a volunteer force to protect Kyiv and was recently awarded a medal by Ukraine\u0027s defence minister, writes Paule…
KYIV — The choice of a Crimean restaurant for my lunch date with Dan Bilak is symbolic as well as culinary. The menu is inspired by the cuisine of the Crimean Tatars, a Turkic people that have the sad distinction of having been persecuted by both Stalin and Vladimir Putin, for the crime of being native to a piece of land coveted by Russia. “Crimea, this peninsula that Russia tore from Ukraine and which we will take back,” he tells me.
Back then, Ukraine had a threadbare and outdated army hobbled by a Soviet-style military culture. Russia’s stealthy military intervention in the eastern Donbas region, under the guise of a revolt by Russian-speaking separatists, was a wake-up call to modernize. “We accepted all the training we could get from NATO countries, including Canada,” says Bilak. “If we hadn’t had these eight years of collaboration with Western armies, I don’t know if we would have been able to confront the Russians.
The following month Putin invaded. At 62, Dan was past the age of conscription in Ukraine and, as a Canadian citizen, he could have left. But he stayed. While his old McGill classmates prepare for retirement at their Muskoka cottages, he’s becoming proficient in the use of assault rifles, heavy machine guns, mortars and RPGs. “I practice setting ambushes, setting traps. I do basic tactical manoeuvring. I learn how to retreat and do tactical medicine with tourniquets,” he says.
Bilak still struggles with the reality of war. Many of his friends never came back from the front lines. Last autumn, his village lost seven men, including three in a single day in Bakhmut just before Christmas. Recently, he learned that one of his best friends, an actor, was seriously wounded in the killing fields of Soledar. “When that happens, I just can’t function,” he says. “You try to fight the hate you feel with love, so I am lucky I can channel that feeling through my family.
On the media front, he amplifies the Ukrainian government’s messages everywhere he can — on CNN, FOX Radio, CBC, CTV. He describes the current conflict as David vs. Goliath, and believes it will get worse before it gets better. “It looks like the Russians will mobilize 500,000 more men,” he says grimly. “They just throw in bodies at our lines until something collapses. Their equipment is crap, their weapons are crap, but these human waves are killing us.
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