Trees generously cut by artillery shelling indicate "zero" positions. The landing closest to the Russians can be determined by the height of the trunks: the lower they are, the closer they are. The forward observation position is 250 meters away. The enemy is in a nearby windbreak. The wind sometimes carries abusive conversations and quarrels of the enemy from there to the Ukrainian defenders.
It's winter in the trenches. Snow fell that night, turning the eastern soils into a mixture of clay and water. The infantrymen finish their shift, and soon they will be replaced by another group, which will also look into the horizon for several hours, so that the enemy does not attack from there.
The soldiers of the Separate Presidential Brigade named after Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytskyi call these last weeks of winter calmer. Now the Russians are trying to push through flanking positions adjacent to them. But even here you can hear how a tank is working regularly and drones crash into protective nets.
After the Ukrainian military liberated several villages on the border of the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions in the summer of 2023, infantrymen entered the defense and stabilized this section of the front. Last year's events are reminded here by the bodies of Russians decomposing under the trees, and their scattered dry rations and first aid kits - Esmarch's tourniquet and menstrual tampons are lying around among the medical supplies.
However, recently, the Novopavlovsk (formerly Mariinsky) direction is increasingly mentioned in the reports of the General Staff as the hottest: the Russians are trying to capture Vugledar and reach Kurakhove. In this direction, they do not lack either people or drones. The latter regularly monitor the Ukrainian sky.
"The Russians do not strengthen their positions - they are quickly defeated, but they come like cockroaches. You smash them - they come running again, sit again. Sometimes, you hear they're shooting each other. But they climb here again. There are a lot of them. In terms of fighting, they rely on luck - they can send their men without armor," says Serhii, an infantryman.
He is here for his second year. He says that there are few left of those who came here first. There is a shortage of military personnel, and shifts at positions last longer.
"If in a company 50-60% of the personnel can go to positions, then it is a powerful company," says another soldier, Yaroslav.
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