Exclusive Front-Line Report: Modern Trench Warfare in Eastern Ukraine

The Ukrainian soldier warns me to speak no louder than a whisper. The enemy lines are less than 50 meters away, he tells me, and my voice if too loud can easily carry across no man s land and invite gunfire from the other side.

We see each other, and we shoot at each other every day, says the soldier, whose name is Mykhailo. Everyone is afraid & we are afraid, and the Russians are afraid of us.

We re standing at one end of a ruined factory on the outskirts of the city of Avdiivka in Ukraine s eastern war zone. Ukrainian soldiers seized the building in a bloody 2017 battle that involved close-quarters combat. On this day in October, the war-ravaged structure clearly evidences its violent history. The factory floor is a wasteland of blasted concrete and twisted metal. The inanimate detritus of urban combat covers the ground shattered glass, crumbled concrete, bullet casings, shrapnel shards. There s graffiti on the walls, including the words, spray-painted in English: God bless us.

via coffeeordie.com

H/t LGS.