These Ukrainians were musicians before the war. Now they fight with song.

KYIV — Yurii Ivaskevych’s military call sign is Pavarotti, a nod to his former life as a barrel-chested opera singer in east Ukraine — a life he thought he left behind when he enlisted the morning Russia invaded.

But after Ivaskevych, 51, lost a leg when his unit came under shelling, he was recruited by another branch of Ukraine’s military: the Cultural Forces.