VALENTYN DUBAS WAS sure Russian soldiers were going to kill him. The soldiers were drunk. They detained him and a friend. Had him on his knees in the street with a gun to his head, interrogating him. Dubas insisted he was buying boards to fix windows in his neighborhood in Hostomel, a city northwest of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. They called Dubas and his friend homosexuals. They challenged their local knowledge. Dubas could feel their impatience with threats of shooting him in the knee or cutting off his head. All with an AK-47 pointed at his face. Dubas took one last shot at convincing the soldiers to let them go.
“I took a chance and said once again that we are peaceful, we do not need problems, and we do not pose any threat,” he says. “I also said that I am an ordinary teacher at school, and a basketball coach.”
The mood shifted. The soldier removed the AK-47. He picked up Dubas and escorted him away from the others. Dubas thought he was doomed. But the soldier started asking questions.
“Are you really a basketball coach?”
“I say yes,” Dubas recalls. “He started asking me questions about the rules of basketball and the most amazing thing, he asked me to explain how the word
