This is the moment when a popular TV presenter ended his news program and told viewers that he was joining the Ukrainian army.
“It’s time for me to leave my usual workplace, this cozy studio that I love, for a military uniform,” says Orest Drymalovsky, 29.
His decision to heed his mobilization call and trade his microphone for a machine gun comes as Ukraine desperately tries to replenish its frontline and bring back men who left abroad at the start of the war.
At the end of his news program Window and Facts he told ICTV viewers: ‘That’s all for now. And for me it’s a personal ending today. This was my last deployment before being mobilized into the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
“I ask you to believe in the armed forces, help the armed forces and join the armed forces of Ukraine,” he said. ‘There is no other way to victory.’
He later said it is the duty of Ukrainian men of military age to join Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion.
“We have no right to enjoy a peaceful life, while the best give theirs for it,” Drymalovsky said.
“Believe in the armed forces of Ukraine, help the armed forces. Rise up against the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
In an interview explaining his decision, he said he had not considered fleeing abroad – as hundreds of thousands have done.
“I want to work in Ukraine, I want to raise a family here and build my own business, I want my future children to live here,” he said.
‘To make all this possible, the state must be preserved. To save the state, you have to join the army when the state needs it. The logic is as simple as possible.’
He admitted he was scared and said he had prepared for the call by taking a first aid course and fire training.
‘Is this enough? Of course, not. I want to see mobilization as a challenge. I will try to continually improve my skills to be as effective as possible where I will be.”
