“Behind us are our families. We can not retreat, we have no choice “: in the trenches, under a storm of fire, the Ukrainian soldiers defend Kharkivthe second most populous city in the country, from attacks by the Russian army.
Welcome to “Zero point”the last position of the Ukrainians “Before the enemy”says Captain “Best”, who welcomes the journalists of the French Agency to the front line to share with them the dangerous and exhausting daily life of his soldiers.
With eyes red from fatigue, but with high morale, these men belong to 92nd Motorized Brigade, the main unit of the army that undertook to defend Kharkov.
The men are camping in a former suburb, among the gardens and ruins of houses destroyed by shells, a short distance from a four-lane highway and a forest marking its borders. city. This point is of “strategic importance” because the road leads directly to the city center. Trenches and chariots defend it.
The earth trembles at intervals, at the rate of shells falling here and there throughout the zone.
Five corpses of Russian soldiers, half-naked, are lying on the lawn of a gas station. A bird nibbles on the dead. They “fell in an attempt to penetrate behind our lines,” says one officer.
“They have been rotting there for almost two weeks,” he continues. Due to the constant bombardment, neither an ambulance nor anyone else can go to collect them. Ukrainian soldiers have other things to do.
“We are constantly under attack, day and night. “The last one was this morning, artillery fire,” said the young Captain Best, with a Kalashnikov in his hand.
“It was morning exercise,” jokes one soldier, Olexi, who was a pre-war lawyer and volunteered.
The captain points to a hole he makes in the facade of a house. Smoke rises from the rubble. Next to it, what was left of a wooden hut that served as a canteen for the soldiers.
“These bums tore down our restaurant! What are we going to eat now? laughs a non-commissioned officer with a Cossack haircut and the tuft falling on his shaved skull. The talkative soldier, leaning on the steering wheel of a truck with broken windows, is responsible for the “logistical support”. He searches the battlefield for anything the team could use, reaching as far as the neutral zone separating the wars.
“I’m picking up a little of everything, the Russians are coming there to get the bodies,” said modern-day Taras Bulba, who recounted how he killed four Russians with a grenade. In his truck, he has boxes of Russian ammunition, a generator, an old shovel, pieces of bulletproof vests – one of which is pierced by a bullet.
The “Ivan”, as the Ukrainians call the Russian soldiers, is less than 4 kilometers away. “They often make small raids on our lines. “Five were killed a few days ago, in their last attempt,” said the captain.
Suddenly there is the sound of a machine, reminiscent of a lawn mower, and all eyes are on the sky. The figure of a small plane can be seen among the gray clouds. It is a Russian Orlan, an unmanned aircraft, according to Olexi.
“These weird birds are ‘recording the Ukrainian positions and helping the Russian artillery’ to target them, so ‘we have to shoot them down,'” he said. The soldiers shoot but the plane continues its flight undisturbed.
“This means that rockets will fall,” warns the non-commissioned officer, pushing visitors up a narrow staircase hidden under sacks of sand. In the basement, in their shelter, two soldiers are making tea. On the wall, pasted children’s paintings, one of them shows a blue-yellow tank. “Dear soldiers, thank you for fighting for our beloved Ukraine,” the child’s hand wrote.
On the surface, soldiers jump into the trenches, hide and wait for the storm of Russian fire. “If he fires a chariot, he will fall in two seconds. If it is a rocket, in thirty… »The war here is also done by ear.
Fires can also herald an infantry attack, Olexi explains. “Once, the pounding lasted almost six hours. The Russians thought we had been killed and advanced into our positions. Their mistake… »the non-commissioned officer mocks.
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