BBC News
BBCBig plumes of smoke are visible on a screen that’s providing a live feed from Ukrainian drones hovering over the outskirts of the eastern city of Pokrovsk, one of the most intense front lines in Ukraine.
A few seconds earlier, Ukrainian artillery strikes Russian positions, places where we’d seen Russian soldiers moving about as they try to advance towards a key road going into Pokrovsk.
At least one Russian soldier is injured, possibly dead after the strike.
It’s chilling to watch the live footage. It drives home the bloody consequences of the war that Russia started, in which hundreds of thousands have so far been killed, a “never-ending bloodbath” as US President Donald Trump calls it.
We are in a rural house converted into a command centre for the 155th mechanised brigade of the Ukrainian army. It’s a few miles from front-line artillery positions.
The scale of the devastation that we see on the screens, homes and buildings completely flattened, is far greater than what we saw six months ago.
It is evidence of the fierce battle that has been fought over the past several months to defend Pokrovsk, a crucial transport hub in the Donetsk region.
This week, there’s cautious optimism, even among sceptical soldiers who have witnessed hopes of a ceasefire being dashed over and over again, as diplomatic efforts from the US, Europe, Turkey and others have pushed Russia and Ukraine to direct talks for the first time in three years.
“I think something should happen since Russia was the first one to push for these talks. I mean since 2022, they have refused to go into any contact,” says an officer who wants to be referred to with his call sign “Kozak”.
“I want to believe this would be the beginning of the end of the war.
“But now I see, we have been successful in destroying their rear positions and their supply lines. Russia does not have the same strength and power it had at the beginning. So I think that something will happen.”
Yurii, 37, used to work in a technology company before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “They (Russia and Ukraine) have to start talking. Us soldiers, we wish this war would end. But it’s important to remember that we cannot stop it because we did not start it,” he says.
He looks up at the screen and spots Russian soldiers moving again. He and his colleagues calculate the co-ordinates of their positions and pass them on to their artillery unit.
We drive from the command centre to the artillery position, on mud tracks running through a wide expanse of open fields. Clumps of mud fly in the air, our car slips and slides, as we move as fast as possible. The speed is a mitigation against strikes from drones, which have sharply increased fatalities for both Russia and Ukraine since they were deployed in large numbers in 2023.
And war technology keeps evolving. Now there’s a new threat – drones equipped with a real fibre optic cable which unrolls as they fly. “We cannot detect them or neutralise them, so there are probably a lot more drones in the area right now than we know,” says Yurii.
As we drive into the artillery position hidden under trees and bushes, soldiers are already loading the gun. It’s a French made self-propelled artillery gun called the “Caesar”. Scores have been deployed in Ukraine since the start of the war, and France has been trying to ramp up production.
“I’m very impressed by its accuracy, and we can use a large range of ammunition. The most important thing is that bringing it into combat is very fast. It is much more effective than the old Soviet equipment I’ve used,” says Kozak.
Ukrainian soldiers fire four rounds, each one emitting a deafening sound. From around us, we also hear the sound of incoming shells. The battle rages on.
“As you can hear, there is a wave of assaults from the enemy and we need a lot of ammunition to suppress that. We hope our international partners can give us as much ammunition as possible, because if we have to start choosing priority and non-priority targets then the enemy will be successful,” says Kozak.
We ask the soldiers how they feel about suggestions that Ukraine will have to make concessions, that it might have to give up land to secure peace.
“It’s painful to hear that. Even I want to go home to my family. My daughter is eight and I miss her so much. But we need to be strong. I don’t believe that if we give up some territory, they will stop. In a couple of years, they will return and start over,” says Yurii.
“A person who has not come here, who hasn’t felt the consequences of Russian aggression, those armchair commentators say you can give up land and everything will be over. They will never understand how many brothers and friends we have lost. We shouldn’t give up a single metre of our land,” says Kozak.
The cost Ukraine has paid to defend its land is visible everywhere, most acutely in the photos of smiling, young soldiers posted by the side of highways, on memorial walls in central city squares, and on rows and rows of freshly dug graves in the country.
Yana Stepanenko lovingly buys her son’s favourite treats – a cup of steaming hot chocolate and a chocolate roll.
Then she drives out to a cemetery in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, and places them neatly by 22-year-old Vladislav’s grave. She and her daughter, 13-year-old Nicole, wipe the grave with wet tissues. Before long, they break down inconsolably into each other’s arms.
Vladislav was a drone operator with the Ukrainian military. He was killed in combat in a Russian strike on 21 February this year.
For Yana, news of direct talks resuming bring no hope.
“It seems to me that this war is eternal. Of course, I hope they will find a solution. Because people are dying here and there (in Russia). But Putin is greedy. His hunger for our land is insatiable,” says Yana.
Parts of the Zaporizhzhia region are currently occupied by Russia, the front line less than 40 miles from the city. But Russia has on more than one occasion demanded control of the full regions of Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk, Donetsk and Kherson as part of any peace deal.
“No way. I want to live in Ukraine, not Russia. We have seen what they do under occupation, what they did in places like Bucha – their cruelty and torture,” says Yana. “Can you imagine, they’ve not even spared this graveyard,” she adds, pointing to a big crater nearby where a bomb exploded some months ago.
Tears rolling down her eyes, she adds.
“I hope my child did not die for nothing. That there will still be a victory and all of Ukraine will become free.”
Additional reporting by Imogen Anderson, Volodymyr Lozhko, Anastasiia Levchenko, Sanjay Ganguly
