Bjarti fights for Ukraine

"I can’t speak right now. A missile siren just went off. I’ll call you back.”

While many of his Faroese friends are starting to think about a night out on the town in the Faroes, 25-year-old Bjarti Grunnveit Olsen is facing another day on the Ukrainian battlefields.

”When the siren goes off, you need to pick up your belongings and run like hell to the nearest trench,” he explains.

“We haven’t been hit directly yet. One missile hit about 500 metres away from us. This was obviously quite scary at first, but you get used to it after a while.”

Bjarti Grunnveit Olsen

Bjarti is no stranger to military life, having served with the Danish Royal Life Guards, and this experience is proving useful now.

“My training in Denmark focused mostly on urban and forest warfare, which is exactly what we’re doing here,” he says.

So, what makes a young Faroese man volunteer to fight for a country that he barely even knows about?

”I was planning to return to the Danish army, but then a Ukrainian friend told me his village had been bombed. That’s when I decided to join the legion of foreign fighters in Ukraine,” he explains.

“It was perhaps a bit of a rash decision, but now I’m glad I came here. The Ukrainian people are amazing, and now I really understand why people want to come here to help protect the country.”

Bjarti Grunnveit Olsen

Caption: 

Bjarti wearing his Danish Royal Life Guards uniform

Bjarti is currently some way from the frontlines, helping to train new foreign fighters for frontline fighting.

An estimated 20,000 foreign fighters have joined the Ukraine forces since the start of the war.

Not for the faint-hearted

Life on the Ukrainian battlefields is not for the faint-hearted, he says, with even experienced soldiers buckling under the pressure.

“I know of many veterans from other wars who came to fight in Ukraine and decided to leave because this was too much for them,” he explains.

“About half of all new foreign fighters in our area decide to leave when they hear the first bomb.”

Bjarti Grunnveit Olsen

Caption: 

Bjarti pictured on the right with his friends from the foreign legion in Ukraine

Bjarti has been in Ukraine for about six weeks. No date has been set for his return to the Faroes as he has committed to military service in Ukraine for the next three years.

"My contract is flexible, and I can leave if I want to. But Ukraine needs all the support it can get, and the country needs fighters from abroad because the atrocities that Russia is committing in this country cannot be expressed in words.”

Read the Faroese version of this article here.

Translated by prosa.fo.

More Faroese News in English.