Mykola Melnyk brings “My Maidan” book and Ukrainian veterans who survived Putin’s war to Milwaukee

At the Milwaukee Central Library, three highly decorated Ukrainian war veterans met with the local Ukrainian diasporia. They held a special Q&A session to discuss their experiences during Russia’s brutal invasions of their nation since 2014.

The September 20 event in the library’s Rotary Club Community Room centered on My Maidan. War. Love. Fight (МІЙ МАЙДАН. ВІЙНА. КОХАННЯ. БОРОТЬБА), a book by Ukrainian veteran Mykola Melnyk (МИКОЛА МЕЛЬНИК), who served as a company commander in Ukraine’s 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade.

He was seriously wounded during the Zaporizhzhia counteroffensive in June 2023. That was the same month that Milwaukee Indpednent staff reported from inside Ukraine, for the second time. Melnyk was joined by fellow veterans Denys Haida and Oleh Bonchynskyi for a public conversation with the Milwaukee community.

The gathering came days after Ukrainian advocates, including President of Wisconsin Ukrainian and community leader Halyna Zdyrko Salapata, traveled to Washington DC for the ninth Ukraine Action Summit, where legislative sanctions against Russia was a central demand.

That timing gave the Milwaukee event a more urgent atmosphere. The veterans were not speaking from theory, policy papers, or distant memory. They carried the physical scars and moral evidence of Russia’s war into a civic room in Wisconsin, asking Americans to understand that Ukraine’s battlefield was not separate from their own future security, politics, or humanitarian obligations.

A PERSONAL CHRONICLE OF WAR

Melnyk’s book was not presented as a memoir removed from Putin’s bloody war, but as a work shaped by it. “My Maidan. War. Love. Fight” was a book written “in trenches and hospitals” as an attempt to understand what happened to Ukraine after the Maidan, tracing the path of an ordinary citizen who went from the pro-democracy uprising in 2013-14 to command in wartime a decade later to protect his homeland against a full-scale invasion.

“This book is about the war, so history cannot forget,” Melnyk said. “It’s a story about war, but also about fate. The fate of a nation, and of a soldier who began the fight since the Revolution of Dignity to now.”

Born in Odesa, Melnyk studied law and history at the National University “Odesa Law Academy.” Melnyk later served in the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps “Right Sector,” a volunteer formation that fought in eastern Ukraine after Russia’s war in the Donbas began in 2014.

He helped defend Kyiv after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, and later commanded the 4th Mechanized Company of the 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade. In June 2023, during the counteroffensive in southern Ukraine, he was seriously wounded, losing his right leg and most of his left foot.

WITNESSES FROM UKRAINE’S LONG FIGHT FOR FREEDOM

Melnyk was joined in Milwaukee by two other highly decorated Ukrainian veterans, Denys Haida and Oleh Bonchynskyi, whose military service added a deeper view of Ukraine’s war and Russia’s battlefield brutality.

Haida also began his path to defend Ukraine during the Revolution of Dignity. In Donetsk he fought with the “Cyborgs,” Ukrainian defenders who held Donetsk Airport under extreme conditions for months. Russian-backed forces reportedly used the term for because they could not believe ordinary human soldiers could keep resisting unless they were part machine. Ukrainian media and the public later embraced the name as a symbol of endurance.

He primarily fought on the Donetsk front, but also in Sloviansk, Pisky, Avdiivka, Kyiv, Sumy, and Zaporizhzhia.

Oleh Bonchynskyi served in the Armed Forces of Ukraine from 2014 to 2025. His combat history included Saur-Mohyla, Marinka, Pisky, and Avdiivka, where he was seriously wounded.

Avdiivka, a front-line city in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, became one of the war’s most punishing battlefields. It was a strategic defensive stronghold before Russian forces captured it in 2024.

Together, the three men represented more than battlefield credentials. Each carried a different part of Ukraine’s long war to preserve its democratic independence. The Maidan generation that became soldiers, the first years of Russia’s invasion in the east, and the full-scale invasion that forced Ukraine’s civilian society into a national fight for survival.

Their presence in Milwaukee also reflected a broader advocacy effort. The veterans have represented Ukraine in the United States through university appearances, public speaking, and engagement with Ukrainian American communities. Their witness to the war has been part of an ongoing appeal for U.S. understanding, cooperation, and public support.

That advocacy has also extended back to the families of fallen Ukrainian soldiers, linking the cost of the war to those still living with absent loved ones. Through Brave Children of Ukraine, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded by Melnyk, the organization seeks to protect the childhoods of Ukrainian youth and orphans whose parents gave their lives defending Ukraine. Projects are focused on education, wellness, recovery, and even gift giving so events like a birthday do not pass in silence.

THE LIVES BEHIND THE UNIFORMS

For Salapata, one of the reasons the Milwaukee event mattered to her was that it gave the public a way to see Ukrainian soldiers beyond medals, uniforms, and battlefield summaries.

“To me, and I think due to my experience with talking to soldiers, sometimes we think of a soldier as someone who is just like a statue and not a live object,” Salapata said. “Soldiers just humans just like we are.”

Melnyk’s story, for example, did not begin as a military biography. Before the war remade his life, he had been a civic activist, policy analyst, and legal scholar. His path through the Revolution of Dignity, military service, catastrophic injury, and return to defense work became part of his book’s testimoney. Ukraine’s soldiers were not born as symbols.

“They volunteered because they felt there was no other choice. They were citizens who became soldiers to protect their country when it was attacked,” Salapata said. “Before that, Melnyk shared a love story and talked about his life. That’s why I asked what helps him cope.”

Salapata said Melnyk’s book could help readers see Ukrainian soldiers not only as figures of sacrifice, but as ordinary people whose lives were overtaken by war.

A WARNING SHAPED BY SURVIVAL

Melnyk’s message included a personal plea and strategic warning to Americans. He thanked the United States for its support, and said Ukraine’s survival still depended on whether that support arrived with enough force, consistency, and seriousness to meet the scale of Russia’s war.

“Without the United States, we lost this war,” Melnyk said. “But unfortunately, without continued support, we have lost battles, and brigades of men, and this is terrible.”

For Melnyk, the September 18 sanctions were not an abstract diplomatic tool. They were part of the battlefield. Russia’s economy, manufacturers and supply chains were connected directly to the weapons killing Ukrainians.

“American politicians understood that Ukraine needs support,” Melnyk said. “Because without American support, we, all Ukrainian soldiers, and all Ukrainian people, have only one fate. The fate of the defenders of Fort Alamo. That’s the end.”

He said sanctions against Russia were essential to bring peace.

“Russia must be destroyed economically, or Putin will never stop,” Melnyk said. “We must destroy the manufacturers who build weapons like the Iranian Shahed drones. Without the U.S. sanctions to stop the war machine, we can’t win.”

His observations carried the bluntness of a soldier who had survived the cost of delays. Melnyk was not asking Americans to see Ukraine as a distant charity, but as an ally whose fight was entangled with the security of the democratic world.

LESSONS FROM A CHANGING BATTLEFIELD

Alik Kasman, a Chicago-area advocate for Ukraine, said Americans were underestimating how quickly drone warfare had altered military strategies.

Ukraine’s war, he said, was also not isolated by geography, because Russia was learning on Ukrainian battlefields and sharing that knowledge with other U.S. adversaries.

“It is very hard to care when something is not happening directly at your backyard,” Kasman said. “But this is a shortsighted view because technology has changed. Ukraine and Russia are the two countries that know the most about this modern drone warfare.”

A public example of that came in Sweden during Aurora 26, a NATO-linked exercise held in spring 2026 with more than 18,000 troops from 13 countries. NATO said Ukrainian drone operators were brought in to test allied forces and share battlefield lessons.

Ukrainian drone pilots, acting as the opposing force, overwhelmed Swedish troops so severely that the exercise was reportedly halted three times to let Western forces regroup.

Russia is sharing its technology and experience with Iran, China, and North Korea. Kasman pointed to Shahed drones as one example.

“At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Iran shared its technology with Russia and supplied Shahed drones,” Kasman said. “Russia adapted and improved on it through the time they were fighting Ukraine. Now that improved technology was sent back to Iran’s arsenal, and is used against U.S. forces.”

Kasman said the war in Ukraine had exposed how quickly cheap drone technology was reshaping military doctrine, leaving many Western forces unprepared for the speed and scale of battlefield adaptation.

After Donald Trump launched the U.S. war against Iran on February 27, 2026, Iranian drones and missiles became part of the threat facing U.S. troops in the region. Six U.S. troops were killed on March 1, when an Iranian drone struck a U.S. military facility in Kuwait, while later fatal attacks in Jordan were reported as missile strikes.

WISCONSIN ADVOCATES IN WASHINGTON DC

Salapata had returned from Washington DC only days before the Milwaukee event, after attending the ninth Ukraine Action Summit organized by the American Coalition for Ukraine. She said the advacacy message to lawmakers had been tightly focused.

“We had a one ask this time and one ask only,” Salapata said. “It was sanctions on Russia.”

The summit took place September 12 to 16, where advocates from across the country met around continued U.S. support for Ukraine’s defense, recovery, and democratic future. For Salapata, the trip was not separate from the veterans’ visit to Milwaukee. It was part of the same effort asking Americans to understand that Russia’s war machine could not be stopped by sympathy alone.

Trump signed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 into law September 18, two days before the Milwaukee event. The bill targeted Russian officials, banks, and the shadow fleet of oil tankers used to transport Russian energy. The law authorized tariffs of up to 100% on the largest importers of Russian oil or natural gas. The measure passed the U.S. Senate 86-11 and the House of Representatives 262-159.

Ukraine has fought off Russia’s full-scale invasion for 4 1/2 years, in what was expected by Putin to be a few day offensive. For Ukrainian disapora around the United States and in Wisconsin, the war has brought cycles of optimism and fatalism as they have pushed to keep public attention and political support from fading.

Salapata said all 50 states were represented at the summit, which meant lawmakers heard directly from constituents.

“There are many things we cannot do, we are not empowered to do. But we for sure can share our opinion with our representatives,” Salapata said. “And that’s why it’s so important for everybody to understand that your voice matters. Your representatives work for you, and they should hear your voice.”

A MESSAGE FOR AMERICANS

The Milwaukee event ended where the veterans’ message had begun, with the burden of memory placed on people far from the front line, and with the insistence that distance was no longer protection.

Melnyk described Ukraine’s struggle as part of the same confrontation that the United States faced. While Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea learning from one another, democratic nations were still deciding how much urgency the moment required.

“We do not have a separate war in Iran or in Ukraine,” Melnyk said. “We have one war. It is the democratic world against the tyrants who live in Moscow, Tehran, Peking, and Pyongyang.”

The warning came from a soldier who had lost part of his body in Ukraine’s defense, returned to service, and carried into Milwaukee a message that was both personal and strategic.

If Americans wanted Ukrainian soldiers to stand beside them in a future fight, Melnyk said, Ukraine first had to survive the war Russia was waging now.

For the audience at Milwaukee Central Library, the book presentation and community discussion offered more than the story of three soldiers. It shared the testimony of veterans who had already lived through a war that Americans were still debating from a distance.

In coming to Wisconsin, they asked Americans to listen to their lessons before parents of U.S. service members had to experience more grief from Iran, or yet another forever war.