The volunteers are Ukraine’s 2014 revolutionaries, men and women of all ages who drove, hitchhiked, boarded busses and trains and used whatever mode of transportation they could find to fight against a Russian insurgency in eastern Ukraine while their own government stood paralyzed to defend its borders. They weren’t under an obligation to serve a higher entity. They went to fight for something they truly believed in, to protect their homes, their families and friends, their civil rights, their dreams to live in a country free of government corruption. As a U.S. combat veteran who went to war under an obligation to serve, they captivated me. For over three years I’ve followed them, documenting their stories. Of loss and sacrifice, of friendship, of their struggle to move on from a war that they risked so much for and lost so much for, but now continues to drag on in a game of political chess, without a resolution in sight.