The cook from the hell of war

MENTAL HEALTH BOOST: RUNNING SOCIAL MEDIA PAGE KEEPS LINK WITH CIVILIAN LIFE

- Florent Vergnes

Standing amid ruins in east Ukraine, Ruslan Mokrytskyi held combat knife and concentrated on cutting onions without crying.

As trivial as it seems on the front line, it is still not easy. The moustachioed 32-year-old in military fatigues instructed his comrade to get the right shot of him with his phone.

The angle matters. Mokrytskyi is one of Ukraine's soldier-influencers keeping spirits in times of war and has 131 600 followers on TikTok.

"Take a close-up of my fingers," he told his friend, a cameraman for the day. "Lower the frame." The shot showed his shrapnel-scarred hands as he peeled the onions carefully.

Mokrytskyi's social media profile describes his life as a part-time celebrity chef and soldier in a nutshell: "A cook from the hell of war."

The day AFP met him, he revisited an Italian classic, pasta all'arrabbiata.

Just 24 hours earlier, he was a drone pilot in what he called the "hell of Toretsk" - defending the eastern city that Russia has been trying to capture for months.

At the front since the start of the war in 2022, Mokrytskyi needed a form of escape while being under constant fire.