For a whereas final yr, from July to October, they had been reunited when Kotenko was stationed in Lviv. They went working collectively on the weekends and educated collectively. It was a glad time. On 31 December, their households acquired collectively to ring in the brand new yr, and a month or so later Kotenko got here to Lviv to go to Yarovenko earlier than deploying south on an operation. They stayed up late, ingesting a little and speaking. Along Ukraine’s borders, Russia’s forces had been massed, ready for orders to invade, however in Lviv life was regular and that evening the struggle felt like a distant factor.
