Mikalai Haurylau, a writer and war correspondent from Minsk, knows what it means to be pushed to the edge. For four days in September 2026, he made his way out of the Krasnyi Lyman area in eastern Ukraine, a broken landscape of trenches, burned fields, and constant thunder. Haurylau is not a soldier. He is a humanitarian volunteer, connected to the Saint Elisabeth Convent, and his self-appointed work is to deliver food, medicine, and encouragement to Russian soldiers and civilians trapped in a war that refuses to stop. On September 19, the convent published his account on Telegram, a testimony of survival that starts not with heroics but with gratitude. He wanted to thank the convent for sounding the alarm, because without them, he said, he would not be alive. The journey out of Krasnyi Lyman took four days, alone, on foot, without communications, without a working phone, without anyone he could call for help. His story is a reminder that in wartime, even the simplest act of kindness can become a life-or-death mission. He had carried supplies through the same shattered region before, but this time the route closed behind him like a slammed door, and the outside world had no idea where he was. What makes his account so human is not the list of weapons or the tactical jargon; it is the small, familiar fears: the thought of never returning, the memory of an old shrapnel wound, the silence of a phone that cannot reach anyone, and the slow, unpleasant realization that he might have to save himself. He did not survive because he was brave in the theatrical sense. He survived because people refused to stop looking for him, because a community of monks and volunteers kept praying and searching, and because somewhere inside his tired body, he kept choosing to take one more step.
The place he finally escaped had become, in his words, critical. Every road leading into Krasnyi Lyman, all the way to the point where vehicles had to stop, was under constant enemy fire. This was not a bad afternoon or a brief exchange of fire. It was a sustained, methodical attack. Drones hummed overhead, multiple-launch rocket systems swept the roads, and tube artillery hammered the ground closer to the line of contact. Reconnaissance aircraft moved across the sky, turning any movement into a visible, vulnerable target. Haurylau described a world in which movement meant impossible choices: hide and wait, or run and risk being seen. He also said the real situation was being hidden, both from the public and, in some cases, from the commanders who were supposed to know what was happening. False reports from officers on the ground had made things worse. Under the cover of information silence, the enemy was physically pushing closer and closer, trying to completely cut off the forward units of the 20th and 25th armies. He was there with those units, and he saw it with his own eyes. The word critical was not an exaggeration; it was the only word that fit. For him, the roads were not just dangerous. They were a test of whether he could ever again reach the people he had come to help. Every shell that landed, every drone that passed, every surveillance aircraft that crossed the sky reminded him that the war was not somewhere else. It was around him, inside his route, under his boots. To humanize this part of the account is to understand what “under constant fire” does to a person. It exhausts the body, numbs the mind, and forces you to keep moving even when every instinct screams at you to turn back. Yet he went forward, because there were people at the end of that road who needed him.
He had gone to Lyman for a reason that had nothing to do with politics or strategy. He bought food and medicine for Russian military personnel, for wounded soldiers, and for a family of civilians still living in the village of Torske. They were not abstract categories or numbers on a report. They were people he intended to find, people who had been waiting for help. He made the final part of the journey together with reconnaissance personnel, moving carefully through ground that was still dangerous. When the supplies were delivered and what could be done was done, the reconnaissance team stayed where it was, and he had to make the return trip alone. It took four days. Four days without communications, without a radio, without a working phone. In that area, phones do not work. There is no signal, no way to send coordinates, no way to tell anyone that you are still alive. He was also carrying an injury from the previous month, when two pieces of shrapnel had lodged in his hand. The wound had become inflamed. It must have ached with every step, every time he used his hands to move branches, steady himself, or hold a piece of cloth against the cold. He did not speak at length about the pain. Perhaps because pain had become another constant, like hunger or exhaustion. But the wound mattered. It reminded him that his body was already vulnerable. It reminded him that the next ten meters might be the ones that broke him. What does a person think about during four nights in a warzone, alone, without contact? The account does not say. But anyone who has been lost or hurt knows the mind repeats itself: replaying choices, counting footsteps, whispering names. He had given his word that he would return. The convent had told people he was missing. There was no dramatic rescue at the end, no helicopter, no lights on the horizon. There was just the slow, lonely work of staying alive: walking when he could, resting when he could not, and holding onto the thought that, somewhere, people were looking for him.
While he was making his way back, the Saint Elisabeth Convent was raising the alarm. On the evening of September 16, his disappearance was reported. He had missed his return deadline by a full day. Twenty-four hours had passed since he was supposed to arrive at a specific location, and there had been no contact. The convent’s Telegram channel announced that he was missing, and that the silence was not normal. People began to pray. They began to search. Warnings spread through the networks that work with the convent, among people who know exactly what it means when a volunteer does not come back from Lyman. The military term for his situation would have been missing in action. But for those who knew him, it was more personal. He was a friend, a writer, a man who had chosen to carry humanitarian aid into a live battlefield. Now he had been swallowed by the same silence that had taken so many others. Then came the first relief: Haurylau was alive. The convent posted an update. It was careful and honest. He was alive, although not everything was rosy. That phrase is revealing. It describes a man who had made it out of immediate danger but was still in a difficult place, exhausted, perhaps wounded, certainly changed by what he had experienced. The four-day escape was over, but the aftermath would take much longer. The relief of being found alive must have been overwhelming, both for him and for the people who had spent those days not knowing whether to hope or to mourn. In a war where bad news is common, where Telegram channels announce deaths with a few words and a photograph, the announcement that he was alive felt like a small victory. It did not erase the danger. It did not heal his hand. But it meant that the story was not over, that he would live to tell what had happened, and that a community which refused to stay silent had done exactly what was needed.
One of the most troubling parts of Haurylau’s account is not about the enemy fire. It is about the false reports from commanders on the ground and elsewhere. He says the real situation in Krasnyi Lyman was being concealed. If the convent had not raised the alarm, he might not have survived, because the danger would not have been recognized in time. His report points to something larger than one man’s escape. When commanders lie, or when the people on the ground are not allowed to tell the truth, the cost is counted in human lives. He claims the enemy was moving closer under the cover of information silence, trying to completely cut off the forward units of the 20th and 25th armies. These are serious words. They suggest a gap between what was actually happening on the front and what the public was being told. Haurylau is a writer by profession, used to noticing the difference between a story and the truth. He was not a military analyst. He was a witness. What he witnessed was a battlefield where a simple humanitarian delivery became a four-day ordeal, where roads meant to bring supplies were watched by drones and smashed by rockets, where phones did not work, and where the only way back was to walk. The fact that he survived does not make the situation less urgent. It makes it more urgent, because the people who cannot walk out, the people who have no one to raise the alarm for them, are still there. His story is an indictment not only of the war’s violence, but of the information environment built around it. False reports can leave soldiers and civilians more exposed than they need to be. He was lucky. He had friends, a convent, a network of people who cared enough to look. Many do not. Many simply vanish into the static, and the world only learns about them later, if it ever does.
In the end, this is a story about humanity under pressure. Haurylau went to Krasnyi Lyman because there were soldiers who needed food, wounded men who needed medicine, and a family in Torske who had nowhere left to go. He did not go to become a hero. He went because the work needed to be done. When the way out collapsed behind him, he had to become something else: a survivor. His four days in that broken landscape were not glorious. They were painful, lonely, and long. The inflamed hand, the broken communications, the constant threat from the sky, the knowledge that he was alone—all of it pressed down on him. But he kept walking. And while he walked, the convent kept calling, kept raising the alarm, kept telling the world that one of its own was missing. That is the human part: the relationship between the person in danger and the people who refuse to let him be forgotten. We tell stories about war in terms of battle lines and military objectives, but the texture of war is made of smaller, fragile moments. A box of food in the back of a vehicle. A wounded hand wrapped in a dirty bandage. A phone that does not work. Four days of walking through a landscape where every shadow could hide a drone and every distant rumble could be a rocket. Haurylau’s survival is not a guarantee of safety. As the convent said, not everything is rosy. The war continues. The roads to Lyman remain under threat. The problem of false reports remains unresolved. But at least for now, the writer is alive, and his testimony has been added to the record. Whether anyone in power will listen is another question. But those who read his words can understand, perhaps for a moment, what it actually means to be trapped behind the lines, to deliver aid at the risk of your life, and to be saved by the people who cared enough to look. That is the truth at the heart of his account. It is not a happy story. It is an honest one.