<p>The intensity and longevity of the Russia-Ukraine war, as well as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine came largely unexpected. How did efficient mobilization on both sides become initially possible and lasting, despite all odds? Engaging with and responding to the existing literature on war-time mobilization, I propose a discursive analytical model which helps, on the one hand, to overcome the reductionism of nomothetic explanations of this phenomenon and, on the other hand, to systematize idiographic analyses of mobilization, revealing a bigger picture. Empirically, I reconstruct the discursive conditions of possibility for mobilization in both Russia and Ukraine by analysing the rhetoric produced by Ukrainian and Russian combatants. Toward that end, I assembled and analysed a large database of public testimonies and identity statements coming from both sides, thematically categorizing them according to an abductively imposed interpretive matrix. The resulting picture turned out to be complex, yet still legible. What mostly mattered for Ukrainian combatants were flattened hierarchies, new horizontal bonds, temporary reconciliation with previously salient internal Others, and decoupling of post-Soviet aesthetics from their new ethical-political choice. The Russian mobilizational drive was mostly sustained by micro-solidarity, historical myths, deprivation of agency in relation to Ukraine, as well as state information monopoly.</p>