Joan Estévez, Spanish mercenary in Ukraine: “In the middle of combat I thought they were going to win our position. I said goodbye to my family”

With a strong face, but often on the verge of crying, holding it back, Joan Estévez seems like a man who fights more inside than he has fought outsideand it is not little. He has spent six months on the front in Ukraine, in the first half of 2023, as snipershooting at Russian invaders in advanced positions on the Donbas front.

He once saw death very close, he says. Waves of Russian soldiers spent four days trying to storm their position. In a moment of tension in the middle of battle, when he thought he was going to die, he did something strange: he took out his mobile phone and recorded a farewell message for his family. It is one of the high points, of human and military epic, of the documentary Mercenario (Movistar Plus+) that stars this young Catalan of 39 yearsraised in the mountains of Val d’Aran. His nom de guerre is Espinosa. He attends El Periódico this Tuesday in Madrid to talk about what war is like, what it is to be a mercenary and the traumas that all this has left him and he is trying to overcome.

Do you know how many Russian soldiers you have killed? Did you have an account? Yes. Between 12 and 16. Eight confirmed casualties that I am sure of: I shoot and see the enemy fall. The rest are hot combats that you see that Russians have fallen but you don’t know if you or a companion have given them.

What do you feel at that moment? The blow of the butt when shooting [sonríe]. The truth is that at that moment I don’t feel anything.

For the adrenaline? And when the moment passes, at night? At night I think about the colleagues I have lost, 18 in total. There the crash comes later, with the days. You don’t forget them, they stay inside you and then traumas and stress arrive. I have specially marked some of them because they have been casualties under my command. In Ukraine I have the rank of first sergeant. He carried between eight and 12 men. You wonder if they died because of a bad decision you made.

What are you talking about? Maybe we were going to defend a shooter position with five holes, and I would say that one should put himself in one position and another in another. What if I had put them differently?

How long have you been in Ukraine? The first time I was there for six months, from January to June, in 2023. I was part of the international legion of Ukraine, integrated into the [49.º Batallón de Infantería] Carpathian Sich. My classmates were mainly Hispanic Americans.

What is the most dangerous moment you have experienced there? It was an attack in which they first bombarded our position with artillery and destroyed our defensive line. Then they spent four days trying to gain our position with waves of infantry. There were thirty of them, there were eight of us. There was a moment when we were in full combat and I saw that they were gaining on us. I realized that what happened in the next three or four minutes would decide whether we were killed or survived. At that moment I decided to say goodbye to my family. I told them on the phone, while I was fighting, that I loved them: my family, my son.

It sounds like World War I, a trench war… It is a combination of that war with the most modern things that exist now. The drones act first as reconnaissance, constantly monitoring the area to control your positions, to know where you are moving. They are then used to launch grenades, or as kamikaze drones.

What are the Ukrainian trenches like in winter? I’m a guy from the Aran Valley, so the cold didn’t affect me that much, but the Colombians, for example, had a terrible time. Furthermore, I had good material to protect myself, but the conditions for the soldiers there are terrible.

What are they missing, with everything that is being sent? Of everything. Material, clothing, training in adverse weather. There is significant corruption there. Some of the material that arrives disappears. Then you see it in the markets in kyiv (the capital). The soldiers themselves buy it to take to the front.

What else have you seen that you didn’t like? The treatment of the Ukrainians towards the people who have gone there to die for them. They prefer foreigners to die than Ukrainians to die. And that’s not right. In my case, due to my level of training, I was never exposed to a suicide mission, but people without training were.

Does Ukraine use foreign soldiers as cannon fodder? Yeah.

A colleague of yours complained that he was paid little… It went from more to less. When the war started, I earned between 3,000 and 3,500 euros a month. From there they went down. Then they put in a clause: the fixed salary was 1,500 euros and the other half was paid for being in the danger zone. At first they paid you simply for being in the second line, which is already considered to be in the combat zone. Then another clause was added that said they would only pay you if you went to the front line. There have been soldiers who had to bribe the commander to be sent to the front and receive more money.

Pay to go to the front? There are some commanders who are honest and some who are not. The thing is that in Ukraine each unit is autonomous. The money is given to the units and each one manages it as they want. There are some commanders who are chiefs and their own soldiers have tried to kill them.

With your experience on the ground, do you think that the Ukrainian strategy is essentially defensive? The area where I was was one to endure. We were at a spearhead on the front in Donbas [en el este del país] and it was about resisting there so that they would not take the city of Kramatorsk or Sloviansk.

What was your previous military training? He was in the Spanish Army at the Military Mountain and Special Operations School for three years and then in the French Foreign Legion.

Are you going to continue? Right now I think not. I have suffered from post-traumatic stress, but it is not the reason I want to decide if I want to continue doing this. At this level, this profession cannot be compatible with family life. I am divorced but I have a son.

What will you tell him about the war? How will you describe it? Don’t know. It’s a job I have to do.

Negotiations are now underway to achieve a ceasefire. How does it make you feel? I don’t watch the news, I do a total block. I am not interested in the geopolitical issue. It’s getting out of hand. I consider myself a professional in this sector who went there to do my job. I always try to do it with some values, which is to help the country that I think needs help. Good and evil: Ukraine was invaded without any justification. From there, I went to work. Then there you realize that not everything is black and white.