But they also give voice to the cold fury shared by many of his peers, now pouring out in song, in art and tattoos, online in hashtags proclaiming “death to the enemies” and memes targeting Putin, and in fundraising for the war effort.

In Enemy, one of four new tracks that Otoy penned between and during stints on the battlefield driving ammunition and weaponry to front-line troops, he snarls of Russian soldiers: “We’re not scared but we are nauseous, because you smell stale even when your heart still beats. Bullets await you, you sinners.”

He imagines a taunting conversation with the widow of a dead Russian soldier, singing: “Well, Natasha, where is your husband? He’s a layer in a swamp, face-down. Natasha, he won’t come home.”

Others are riffing off the war, too.

In the furious heavy metal track “We will kill you all,” the band Surface Tension screams: “We will dance on your bones. Your mum won’t come for you.” The expletive-laced track has accumulated more than 59,000 views since its April 5 release on YouTube.

Iryna Osypenko, 25, was among concertgoers at a fundraising music festival last weekend in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, where Otoy gave a fiery performance. She broke down in tears as she explained how the growing reservations she’d had about Russia before the invasion have scaled up into rage.

“I hate them and, I’m sorry, it will never change,” she said. “I will explain it to my children and I hope that my children will explain to their children.”

Otoy says that if he has kids, he’ll do likewise, telling them, “the Russians were killing my family, killing my brothers, my sisters, bombing our theatres, hospitals.”

“It’s not just that I don’t like Russia, I hate this country, and I hate Russian people as much as I can,” he said in an interview in his Kyiv apartment, where he records and stores his guns and combat gear.

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“If I had the ability to save the life of a dog or the ability to save the life of a Russian soldier, I would pick the dog.”

His older brother, Dmitry Lisen, is missing, believed dead in the bombed-out ruins of Mariupol’s Azovstal steelworks. He was a fighter with the Azov Regiment, among the units that clung doggedly to the surrounded plant for nearly three months, becoming an enduring symbol of Ukrainian resistance.

Otoy dedicated his song Find My Country to Azovstal’s defenders — rapping in English with the aim, he says, of reaching “people all around the world”.

“This is my lands, you boys should leave,” he sings, holding a rifle and dressed in combat gear in the track’s video on YouTube. “Miss those Fridays we used to have, kisses, twilights, refuse to sleep. Now we soldiers.”

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His duties of late have included helping at a military hospital with the triage of bodies from Azovstal, turned over by Russian forces in an exchange. His brother’s remains are still missing.

He’s also working on his collection of songs largely penned during repeated ammunition runs to troops in the east, where fighting has raged since Russian forces were pushed back in their initial assault on Kyiv.

Themes include life on the front and the camaraderie of soldiers, wartime life for civilians, enmity and fighting for Ukrainian freedom. He says the mini-album reeks of “the smell of war dust”.

“I was actually lying on the ground under the airstrikes and bomb shelling,” he said. “You can actually feel the smell of, you know, like bombs, dead bodies, and dust, blood and other stuff.”

“This is the best way to show your hate, I think.”

AP

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