I Still Felt Sorry for Him

By all accounts, Ruslan Anitin should be dead.

Anitin is a Russian draftee who found himself on the edge of Bakhmut, one of the deadliest battlefields in Ukraine. Nearly everyone else in his unit was dead.

Anitin carefully threaded narrow trenches, stepping over the crumpled bodies of dead comrades, as Ukrainian assault drones swarmed above, dropping deadly explosives. For hours, he desperately navigated trenches to escape the bombardment.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the 30-year-old Anitin is a “slight man with a receding hairline,” who “studied to be a veterinarian and never expected to end up in the middle of a war.” Anitin believed the professional army would do all the fighting, and there would be no need for a draft.

He was wrong.

Exhausted, thirsty, and facing certain death, Anitin weighed his options. Wagner fighters that led Anitin and his fellow draftees to the front line trenches made one thing clear, per the Wall Street Journal story:

If you refuse to execute a mission, you get shot. And if you try to retreat, you also get shot.

Anitin decided that he would surrender to the drone. He dropped his rifle and gestured with his hands to stop the attack. He drew his finger across his neck and shook his head, to plead with the Ukrainian drone pilots not to kill him if he surrendered.

Per the Wall Street Journal article, Anitin’s “face was beamed onto a screen at a command post of Ukraine’s 92nd Mechanized Brigade a few miles away, near the eastern city of Bakhmut. Colonel Pavlo Fedosenko conferred with other officers, then sent an order over the radio to the drone pilots.” The order said:

Try to take him alive.

The Ukrainian drone pilots studied Anitin’s body language and communicated by flying up and down for yes, and side to side for no. They also flashed a light on the drones—once for yes and twice for no. Eventually, the drone pilots wrote a message in Russian, attached it to one of the drones, and delivered it to Anitin.

The note simply said, “Surrender follow the drone.”

Grace versus evil

Anitin’s entire ordeal was captured in riveting drone video footage. As I watched the video, I wondered to myself: Would an AI war drone spare the life of a cowering soldier who wants to surrender?

As the world grapples with the implications of artificial intelligence, and the fear that AI could someday threaten mankind, I considered the only reason why Anitin was not killed by the drones:

Human compassion.

The Ukrainian assault drone that initially set out to kill Anitin was piloted by a 26-year-old man with the call sign “Boxer.” The Wall Street Journal notes, “After seeing the high-definition images of Anitin pleading for his life, Boxer aborted his mission and dropped the grenade short of his position.”

Boxer explained why:

Despite that he is an enemy, even though he killed our boys, I still felt sorry for him.

Thank God there are still humans piloting drones of war. Because humans still have the capacity for compassion and empathy. Who knows what, if any semblance of humanity, will exist in autonomous AI battle drones?

The rest of the video shows Anitin following the drone to safety as Russian artillery, in an effort to kill him, explodes nearby. Thus, we confront the paradox of the human condition. Enemy compassion versus the retribution of comrades.

Grace versus evil.

A light of divinity deep within us

The best and worst in us have been around for a long time.

Consider the trench fighting in World War One. It was 1914 and the muddy, barren landscape of the Western Front was littered with bodies. The trenches were freezing, and the stench of death hung in the air.

Both the British and German soldiers had killed one another with ferocity.

But then something unexpected and amazing happened, as the following excerpt from a Los Angeles Times article describes:

All along a 20-mile stretch of the Western Front, unarmed German troops began climbing over the parapets and walking toward the British side simply to shake hands and exchange greetings, the first tentative steps toward what is likely the largest spontaneous Christmas truce in modern history, one in which the warring armies shared cigars, good cheer, chocolate and, in more than one place, a game of soccer.

The Christmas truce of 1914 shows that humanity and grace can be found in unlikely places. Even on the battlefield.

Mankind, despite our capacity for ugliness and war, still has a flame of divinity deep within us. It’s a flame that we must keep stoking, in the hope that our better angels will prevail.

The Los Angeles Times article notes:

More than a century later the truce and its spontaneous example of humanity and decency in the darkest of times continue to inspire, which is why the incident remains a subject of both study and curiosity. Failed, cowardly leadership had brought the world to war, but a simple child’s game brought the two sides to peace — for a few hours at least.

Ruslan Anitin managed to avoid the Russian shelling designed to thwart his surrender and end his life.

Anitin followed the Ukrainian drone through a no man’s land of open battlefield, and eventually dropped to his knees and surrendered to the Ukrainian soldiers, who took him into custody.

Humanity is like an ocean

Anitin has a wife and infant daughter back home in Russia, where he hopes to be returned, even if it means jail time. In the Wall Street Journal article, he states:

Let them lock me up. I’d like to return home to my family and never experience the sorts of things that I have seen here.

One cannot watch the drone video footage of Anitin’s plight and not feel for this man. Even his sworn enemy, a young Ukrainian drone pilot, couldn’t bring himself to kill Anitin.

All because he felt sorry for him.

Thanks to the humanity and flame of divinity still residing in that young Ukrainian drone pilot, Anitin’s life was spared, and he may yet get to see his family again.

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. —Mahatma Gandhi

Do not despair at the ugliness, war, and endless wounds of this world. They have always been with us. But so have moments of grace, love, compassion, and empathy.

As long as we keep our flame of divinity, we’ll always find humanity and grace in unlikely places.

Even on the hellscapes of war-torn battlefields.

Before you go

I’m John P. Weiss. I write elegant stories and essays about life. If you enjoyed this piece, check out my free weekend newsletter, The Saturday Letters.