Slavik’s voice was laced with panic. “No one is coming for us. We are surrounded by the enemy,” he had told me over a crackling telephone line. There were, he said, many losses, many soldiers lying on the floor around him – “some dead, some injured. Commanders need to send in reinforcements, or start negotiating a way out.” I would get the message out, wouldn’t I?
Over the course of that Saturday 17 January, I spoke to him on two further occasions. It was clear the 22-year-old Slavik had grown more and more terrified as he became trapped in Donetsk airport. “We’ve been looking around for people’s arms so we might stitch them on again,” he had said. By our third call of the evening, Slavik reported that a comrade missing his arm had bled to death. “If they don’t come for us by day break, we are done for. Done for.” That was the last contact I had with him, the last contact anyone had with him.
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