War Widow's Lament: 'He Died for Money'

Iraq Duty Had Lure for Poor Ukrainians

VINKIVTSI, Ukraine -- Irina Zlochevskaya is 19 years old, and a widow. They brought her husband's corpse home to her on May Day. Along with the body in American-issue camouflage came a new DVD player he had bought, a roll of film -- undeveloped -- and a death certificate from the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.

The cause of death was left blank.

But his young wife believes she knows why Yaroslav Zlochevsky died in the Iraq war launched by the faraway American superpower. Officially, she has been told he was killed in an ambush near the Iraqi city of Kut, his legs and one arm torn off his body. On the news, she heard a Communist Party official say he died "in the interests of an alien empire."

In reality, she said, "he died for money."

The abandoned child of an alcoholic raised in an orphanage, Zlochevsky had tried, and failed, to continue his education after high school. He had tried, and failed, to find work in the big city, away from the poverty of the grim hamlet in western Ukraine where the young couple lived, six people crammed into her family's sour-smelling apartment.

At 23, he finally found a job.

For $670 a month, he signed up to serve in Iraq, part of Ukraine's 1,650-member military contribution to the U.S.-led occupation. He arrived in Iraq in late February after telling his family he would be a peacekeeper, handing out humanitarian aid. "He had no idea it's a real war there," said his wife. "No idea at all."

Zlochevsky was killed on April 28. Kostyantyn Mykhalev, another son of western Ukraine, born just three days after Zlochevsky, died with him. Mykhalev had also sought education and work but found no possibilities that did not involve wielding a gun. They became the fifth and sixth Ukrainians killed while serving in Iraq, adding to a roster that now includes 109 non-American troops.

The news of the deaths of the two young men came as a jolt to a place that had largely forgotten the Iraq war. And it served as a reminder that the conflict's toll has been felt not only in the United States but in Poland and Bulgaria, Italy and Estonia. Ukraine has one of the largest contingents in Iraq after the U.S. and British forces, but its soldiers are poorer, less adequately equipped and more uncertain about their country's mission there than the Americans whose occupation they serve.

The last time Ukraine sent its young men to die in war, the conflict was in Afghanistan in the 1980s and the superpower waging it was the Soviet Union, of which Ukraine was a part. This time, Ukraine's soldiers went as volunteers after President Leonid Kuchma enlisted his independent but economically struggling country in the U.S.-led "coalition of the willing" for Iraq.

To a Ukrainian public that overwhelmingly opposed the war, Kuchma explained the mission as peacekeeping, while his critics accused him of signing up to rehabilitate an image tarred by accusations of illegal arms sales to Saddam Hussein before his ouster as Iraq's president. But as the sector of southern Iraq where the Ukrainians were stationed erupted into rebellion this spring, the new realities turned the job from peace to war.

In March, the Ukrainians were forced to retreat from Kut after a takeover by Shiite militiamen loyal to the rebel cleric Moqtada Sadr. One soldier was killed. In late April, the ambush that claimed the lives of Zlochevsky and Mykhalev aroused a new political debate about the troops' presence in Iraq, as Ukrainians saw the charred remains of one of their armored personnel carriers on television and heard military experts say the Ukrainian convoy had not been properly protected.

Kuchma rebuffed Communist demands for the troops' immediate withdrawal as "brazen cynicism," and the pro-presidential majority in parliament has blocked efforts for a vote. But Kuchma's defense minister has acknowledged "frequent attacks and a worsened situation" for Ukrainian troops and pledged to provide them better equipment, communications and security.

The families of the dead soldiers are to receive $105,000 each in compensation -- an unprecedented sum for the Ukrainian military, which has struggled to reduce its force after the Soviet collapse but still has about 310,000 men in uniform. Many are poorly paid conscripts who have inadequate food and housing and outdated weapons and equipment.