Originally from Tajikistan, Bizhan Sharapov was a PhD student in biology in Kyiv before the war. When Crimea was seized by Russia, he began training to prepare for combat and eventually found his way by bus to the front-line where he joined the Aydar Volunteer Battalion, liberating and defending towns in the Luhansk region. Until February 2022 he had continued his work in the biology field as a researcher. He was writing a book about his experience during the war. In February he joined the Kyiv Territorial Defense battalion and has been missing since April.

From the start we realized that it's the Russians. We realized if we do not start fighting, we will lose the country. We started to prepare, to train, to learn how to shoot. We searched for an organization that could give us weapons and bring us to the front. Someone informed us that there is the "Aydar" battalion, which was already east and participating in combat. We just rented a bus and went there.

We thought this battalion was a regular unit, but when we joined we realized that it was absolutely self-proclaimed. It was not a military unit; it was a gang of patriots. I only saw these things in the movies, but this was real. Everyone had a civil profession. I was a biologist. Valera was a businessman. Babai was a culturologist. Mikhas was a historian.

Imagine we are there, forty people, and the officer asks: "Who is not eighteen-years-old yet? Who's been to prison?" Then, "Who has no experience in the military at all?" The entire group of forty people raises their hands.

Before the volunteer movement started, our army retreated all the time. The volunteers, thousands of people who joined different volunteer battalions started fighting, and after us, the regular army started to attack. This was the role of the volunteer movement in this war. We were very bad in some military skills, very unorganized, undisciplined, but we started the fighting.