‘We Are Accidentally Alive’: A Muslim Cleric Reflects on His War Experience

An activist Muslim cleric in Ukraine with an arrest warrant over his head, Said Ismahilov had no doubt of the danger as Russian troops advanced on the capital, Kyiv, at the start of the war last year.

He was then living in the tranquil Kyiv suburb of Bucha, which lay right in the path of the advancing Russian tank columns.

“I had no illusions,” he said. “I knew we had to run away immediately.”

He recalled that time recently, during a lull in his work in a first-aid post near the front…