“I like war”
I have never in my life met a mercenary.
That changed on a balmy late afternoon in June 2025 when we found ourselves on a square on Kreschatyk street. The square is in the middle of Kyiv, and lest you think it’s a quiet, self-contained square, let me disabuse you of that notion immediately. Kreschatyk is a four lane road with cars going both ways, flanked by pedestrians who gander in front of the kebab kiosks, bars, and high end department stores.
We were on the South side of Kreschatyk. At our small round cheap tables, we were dwarfed by The House With a Star, an imposing example of Stalinist Empire Architecture. It features its eponymous star on its highest tower, although the star may soon be gone. In 2024, the Kyiv city council decided to “remove elements of decoration that reflect soviet and russian historical and propaganda narratives”.
The reason we were at this square was being delivered out of red brick arched alcoves that made up the staircase leading up the House: Odessa oysters and bubbles.
As the light turned golden, tray after tray of testaments to Odessa’s grit and bravery come out of the shadowy stone walls, where music was starting to promise late night of revelry, inasmuch as you can get a late night with curfew.
Even the occasional air alarm didn’t stop the strides of people fanning about Kreschatyk, their unhurried pace a deliberate insult to Russia’s military capabilities.
Seated at the table next to us was a group of Spanish-speaking men. They had traded the bubbles for a bottle of tequila, and had brought a speaker that was playing bachata. Every once in a while a song was just too good and you could spy some shy dance moves on the way to picking up more food.
It’s not unusual to hear foreign voices in the Kyiv. All the big NGOs are there, embassies are well staffed, there’s even the occasional lost tourist. We struck up a conversation.
The group was made up of four men, Luis[1] was young, but he felt like the leader of the company. Extremely polite, he had an air of a gentleman soldier: he stood when he shook my hand and his slow speech was deliberate grace to my still-learning Spanish.
Two of Luis’s friends made no such allowances, speaking at a thousand kilometres an hour. Sebastian was the youngest, shy, and had suffered an injury to his right hand that had left him with two fingers that looked most like a lobster claw.
When we explained what we were doing in Ukraine, building houses from straw, one of the men interjected breathlessly, eyes as big as saucers: “Construction? I love construction, my brother is in constrution, he makes good money, you can make good money in construction, me I don’t like construction, construction isn’t as good as WAR, I like WAR, that’s what I’m good at, don’t want to do anything but WAR”.
Every iteration of “WAR” was uttered with a automatic rifle’s worth of energy.
Mercenaries get paid well in Ukraine. According to Ukraine’s Foreign Legion, a mercenary can expect to make $500 a month behind the frontline, $1200 a month for service in a dangerous zone, and up to $4600 a month for combat deployment. It’s unsure how many mercenaries are curently active in Ukraine.
I never thought to wonder what made men pack up and seek out war. The money is good, but maybe it’s just for the sheer love of it, as it seemed to be for one of the men we met.
As the long summer day definitively turned into night and the Kyiv youth claimed their right over the streets, we bade our goodbyes, and shook each man’s hand. Sebastian hesitated in giving his right hand, self-consciously hiding it in his sleeve. I held out my hand, until he gave me his, and shook it.
[1] Names have been changed to maintain anonymity