In Pictures

Gallery|NATO

Life on Ukraine’s front line

With the new ceasefire suffering violations, it remains to be seen if front-line fighting can be halted.

A volunteer from the Ukrainian Sich Battalion fires blindly from the last trench before no-man's-land on the front line in Pisky, just outside of Donetsk.
By John Wendle
Published On 23 Feb 2015

Pisky village, Ukraine – Rifle rounds zip over the helmeted heads of the volunteers of the Sich Battalion in the last trench before Donetsk.

 

Just across strategic Peace Street, the main road running through the village and into Donetsk, mortar rounds whistle by, crashing into houses in a constant rain. The explosions thunder off the abandoned houses of Pisky and shattered glass and walls can be heard tumbling to the ground.

 

One young fighter crawls and slips up the mud bank of the position and peers over its lip and down the sight of his Kalashnikov before squeezing off a round.

 

Beyond this trench, more reminiscent of WWI than any modern war, is a landscape of broken trees, bullet riddled fences and houses left in rubble. Down the road the twisted metal of a shell pocked mining tower squeals and claps in the wind.


Young men dressed in motley uniforms, helmets and body armour of the volunteer battalions wander and run through the ravaged, snow shrouded landscape.


This is their new normal.


This is their war.


“If we left, there would be no one to take our place and the army would leave,” says Ivan, the commander of the Dnipro-1 platoon.


Bogdan Butkovsky, a 29-year-old volunteer with the Dnipro-1 Battalion scrambles across the road, head pulled into his shoulders, fearing the random death bringers of this war – snipers and artillery.


He leads the way to a position at a disused coal mine on the edge of Pisky used by Pravy Sektor, the right wing Ukrainian nationalist movement.


“What the West doesn’t understand is that if we don’t stop the rebels here in Ukraine’s east, the Russians will be in Warsaw, and Prague and Riga. It will be the Cold War all over again,” said Butkovsky.

 

Though Butkovsky’s statement is hyperbolic, it is a thought shared by pro-Ukrainian volunteers and soldiers up and down the front line.


With the collapse of the Ukrainian defense of Debaltseve and the new ceasefire ever shakier, it seems likely that the quiet on the front line may soon be shattered.

Men from the Sich Battalion, including a former counter narcotics officer (C), listen to incoming mortars. The fighting and bombardment have been continuous here, destroying the whole village.
Volunteers from the Ukrainian Dnipro-1 Battalion maneuver between tanks disabled by mines on the main road into Donetsk.
Volunteers from the Ukrainian Dnipro-1 Battalion run back after moving forward to get a better view of rebel positions. The town has been the scene of fierce fighting for months.
A volunteer from the Ukrainian Dnipro-1 Battalion in a forward position peers through a trench periscope at rebel positions down the main road through Pisky towards Donetsk.
An armored personnel carrier disabled on Mirny Prospekt - Peace Street - the main road into Donetsk, is visible through a trench periscope at a Ukrainian forward position.
A volunteer from the Ukrainian Sich Battalion in the last trench on the front line in Pisky.
Fresh graves in a cemetery near Pisky show the human cost of the war after months of fighting between pro-Russian rebel forces and the Ukrainian army and volunteer battalions.
Ivan and his son Danil continued living in their house in Pisky even after mortars blew out all their windows and riddled their car with shrapnel. All their neighbors have left, replaced with volunteer fighters from the battalions.
Ivan, a commander of one of the platoons in Pisky from the Dnipro-1 Battalion, works to reassemble an old machine gun he got from the army, after repairing and cleaning it.
A member of a pro-Ukrainian Pravy Sektor platoon holed up in the elevator control room of an old coal mine, warms up with a cup of tea in a candle lit bunker.
A member of a Pravy Sektor platoon loads heavy rounds into a belt to feed a machine gun.
A member of a Pravy Sektor platoon fires an AGS-30 grenade gun at rebel positions.
Members of a Pravy Sektor squad in Pisky move a heavy mortar to get ready to make some repairs. They say they have been firing constantly but they believe Russian anti-artillery crews have targeted their position.
A member of a volunteer battalion prepares a belt of ammunition for his machine gun outside of his bunker on the edge of Pisky. Beyond, a field of unharvested sunflowers rots in the winter light.