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U2 follow up. On the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, they released a four-and-a-half-minute documentary set to their new song “Yours Eternally,” which can be seen on the band’s YouTube channel. The EP “Days Of Ash” was only released on Ash Wednesday and was initially louder
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Ukrainian cinematographer/filmmaker Ilya Mikhaylus shot the short film in December 2025. He and his team accompanied the Khartiya Corps, which is fighting against Russian troops in the Kharkiv region and consists of 40,000 soldiers. They can be seen here doing everything that makes up their “everyday life”: running between destroyed houses, wincing at explosions, sitting in tanks, eating out of bowls. In improvised offices, people sometimes pet a cat and play a bit around the campfire. Candles for the dead, there is no room for much more contemplation in the daily struggle.
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With the anthemic music playing in the background, it’s all hard to take – and that’s probably exactly the goal. The pointlessness of wars! And yet: “If you have the chance to hope/ It’s a duty” is the core line of the piece.
The long version of the documentary comes at the end of 2026
A long version of this documentary is scheduled for release at the end of the year. Mikhaylus said: “In this short film and in the upcoming full-length documentary, we seek to show the beating human hearts of these incredible men and women, the struggles and sacrifices they make every day for the most sacred thing on this planet – freedom.”
The song “Yours Eternally” is also about freedom that must be defended. And it’s more of a promise than a threat when Bono announces: “Don’t bet/ On getting rid of me/ Yours eternally!” It was written by U2, the lyrics come from Bono, The Edge, Ed Sheeran and Simon Carmody. Bono admitted that Ed Sheeran was initially worried because he wasn’t supposed to make such explicitly political statements. Bono reassured him – a bit of a bluff, as he later confessed. The Ukrainian singer Taras Topolia can also be heard in the song – and Bob Geldof and his wife Jeanne Marine, among others, sing in the choir.
