By the time the Russians invaded, 43-year-old Mufti Said Ismahilov - one of the Muslim spiritual leaders of Ukraine - had already resolved that he would step aside from his religious duties to fight for his country.
At the end of last year, as warnings of an imminent attack grew louder, Ismahilov began training with a local territorial defense battalion. By then he had served as a mufti for thirteen years.
Born and raised in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, Ismahilov had already fled Russia once before, in 2014, when Moscow-backed separatists captured his city.
He eventually moved to a quiet suburb outside Kyiv called Bucha - only to find himself, eight years later, at the heart of Moscow’s assault on Kyiv, and the site of atrocities that shocked the world. It felt as if the threat of Russian occupation would never end.
"This time I made the decision that I would not run away, I would not flee but I would fight" he said in an interview with The Associated Press in Kostiantynivka, a town close to the front lines in eastern Ukraine where a battle for control of the region is intensifying. Ismahilov began working as a military driver for paramedics evacuating the wounded from front lines or besieged towns.
Tasked with driving in highly dangerous conditions, but also emotionally supporting the critically injured, Ismahilov says he sees his new job as "a continuation of my spiritual duty before God."
"If you are not scared and you can do this, then it is very important. The Prophet was himself a warrior," Ismahilov says. "So I follow his example and I also will not run, or hide. I will not turn my back on others." Ismahilov was one of dozens of Ukrainian Muslims who gathered at the mosque in Kostiantynivka Saturday to mark Eid al-Adha - an important religious holiday in Islam.
The mosque is now the last remaining operational mosque in Ukrainian-controlled territory in Donbas. Ismahilov told the AP that there are around 30 mosques in the region in total but that most are now in the hands of the Russians.
Last week, Russia captured the city of Lysychansk, the last major stronghold of Ukrainian resistance in the eastern province of Luhansk. The governor of the Luhansk region said on Saturday that Russian forces are now pressing toward the border with the neighbouring Donetsk region.
Muslims make up almost 1 per cent of the population in Ukraine, which is predominantly Orthodox Christian. There is a large Muslim population in Crimea - home to the Crimean Tatars and illegally annexed by Russian in 2014.
Numbers there jump to 12 per cent. There is also a sizeable Muslim community in eastern Ukraine, the result of waves of economic migration as the region industrialised and many Muslims immigrated to the Donbas region to work in the mines and factories.
The conflict in 2014 forced many Muslims from Crimea and Donbas to relocate to other parts of the country where they joined long-established Tatar communities or built new Islamic centers alongside Turks, Arabs and Ukrainian converts.