Hroza, Kharkiv Oblast - Serhii Pletinka rushed to the scene just after a Russian Iskander-M missile struck a packed cafe in the village of Hroza in Kharkiv Oblast. A soldier on vacation who lives just across the street from the cafe was the first to witness the fire, screams, and
Editor’s note: The soldiers featured in this article are identified by first name and callsign only for security reasons. ZAPORIZHZHIA OBLAST – Even months before it started, just the idea of Ukraine’s large-scale counteroffensive in 2023 carried on its shoulders a historic weight. Having held back waves of brutal
DONETSK OBLAST – Ukrainian soldier Oleksandr Navarenko says his unit was under heavy Russian tank fire last summer in Zaporizhzhia Oblast when the idea for a life-saving robot came to him. “Why use people when you can use machines?” the 59-year-old combat engineer told the Kyiv Independent, wondering why humans still
Editor’s note: The soldiers featured in this article are identified by first name and callsign only for security reasons. DONETSK OBLAST – One sunny day in eastern Ukraine, two grown men in pixel camouflage sit together in the shade of lush summer bushes on the edge of a field, playing
Editor’s Note: Soldiers in this story are stationed on the front and are identified only by their first name due to the nature of the information they are sharing. KHARKIV OBLAST – Fighting throughout Ukraine is grueling, even for hardened veterans. For inexperienced troops recently plucked from civilian life, it's
Editor's note: The Kyiv Independent is not disclosing the soldiers interviewed in the story by their full names due to security concerns amid the ongoing war in Ukraine. The article also contains photos that some readers may find disturbing. DONETSK OBLAST – Twenty-nine-year-old assault company commander Bohdan knows what’s at
Editor’s note: Though the commanders quoted in this story are public figures, the other soldiers are identified by first names and callsigns only due to security reasons. DONETSK OBLAST — In a wide field in Donetsk Oblast, the silence of what would otherwise be a sleepy August afternoon is broken
Editor’s note: Due to security concerns, the Kyiv Independent isn’t publishing the real name or the photo of the police officer at the center of this story. He is identified in the story as Oleksandr. KUPIANSK, Kharkiv Oblast – Kupiansk police officer Oleksandr doesn’t like remembering the time
Editor’s note: Military medics interviewed for this story are only identified by first name due to security reasons. DONETSK OBLAST – With its sirens blaring through the narrow and bumpy road, an ambulance speeds off to the closest front-line makeshift hospital in northeastern Ukraine. “How many more minutes?” wounded 39-year-old
Editor’s note: Some soldiers, local police officers and residents of Kupiansk district, Kharkiv Oblast, are not identified by name due to security concerns. All of the reporting and interviewing for this story was completed before the order was announced on Aug. 10 to evacuate 12,000 district residents from
Kherson Oblast – Ukrainian soldiers board a speedboat one by one. It sinks deeper into the water, weighed down by the men, their weapons, and equipment. The soldiers at the stern push off from the riverbank with oars until, finally, they turn on the boat's engine, roaring into the darkness toward
Editor’s note: The Kyiv Independent is not disclosing the full names or deployed positions of the Ukrainian soldiers interviewed in the story due to security concerns amid the ongoing war. Donetsk Oblast – The narrow, partly destroyed road through the Serebrianskyi Forest in the northern part of Donetsk Oblast is
DONETSK OBLAST – Sixteen months have passed since Halyna Nikiforova's husband went missing on Ukraine's eastern front line. But the 40-year-old Sloviansk native still texts him daily stories about their children. "They were everything to him," Nikiforova said of their 13 and 15-year-old sons. "They've grown up so much this year
Editor’s note: The Kyiv Independent spent a day with soldiers from the 80th Separate Assault Brigade in June, and the story is comprised of interviews with them about their experience near Bakhmut. The soldiers are identified by their names or callsigns, and their deployment locations are not revealed for
DONETSK OBLAST — Moscow has fought bitterly to avoid giving up control over the lands it conquered over the centuries — and made many enemies in the process. Now, as Russia is leading yet another war of conquest, in Ukraine, many of those enemies have joined Ukrainians on the battlefield to fight
Editor’s note: The Kyiv Independent interviewed a few dozen soldiers deployed near Bakhmut and visited their positions in late May and early June. The soldiers are identified by their first names or call signs for security reasons amid the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine. NEAR IVANIVSKE VILLAGE, Donetsk Oblast
Editor’s Note: The Kyiv Independent introduces soldiers interviewed for the story by their first names or callsigns due to security reasons. DONETSK OBLAST – Islam’s mind was empty of thoughts and feelings as he crawled carefully towards the Russian trenches near Siversk, with grenades prepared. “You crawl forward and
KHERSON – Since Russia’s full-scale war began, first came eight months of terror under occupation, then came seven months of intense shelling across the river, then came the river itself to Kherson. Over 24 hours after Russian forces destroyed the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant and its massive dam over the
Editor’s Note: Soldiers in the story are introduced by their first names for security reasons amid the ongoing war in Ukraine. DONETSK OBLAST – Soldiers from Ukraine’s 24th Mechanized Brigade listened closely to the instructors as they practiced assault tactics before using them on the battlefield for the first
Editor’s note: As per the regulations of the unit, soldiers interviewed for this article, many of whom have relatives remaining in Russian-occupied territory, are identified by first name and/or callsign only. SOUTHEASTERN UKRAINE – After months of seeing Russia’s war against Ukraine through the drab gray-brown landscapes of
DONETSK OBLAST – Yuliia Mykytenko, the commander of a Ukrainian air reconnaissance platoon deployed near Bakhmut, has gotten used to seeing surprised faces when doing her job. Though the 27-year-old is a seasoned service member, Mykytenko said she frequently encounters sexist comments on the battlefield, such as “You are a girl,
Editor's Note: The Kyiv Independent, together with a number of journalists, was taken to a location in northern Ukraine to interview the members of the units that took part in the military operation inside Russia. Not revealing the exact location was the only precondition for the interview. Northern Ukraine – At
Donetsk Oblast – At an unusually nice house on a street with rows of modest cottages, Ukraine’s front-line sappers spend their days indoors waiting for their daunting nightly missions– venturing out into “gray zones” laying mines sometimes as close as 100 meters from the nearest Russian trench. “The scariest moment
Editor’s Note: This story is based on interviews with Ukrainian soldiers, conducted in Donetsk Oblast, near the eastern front line, in late March. Some of the soldiers declined to give their last names for security reasons, and are identified by first names and callsigns instead. DONETSK OBLAST – Under the
Editor’s Note: Some of the soldiers interviewed in this piece declined to give their last names for security reasons or because they had relatives in occupied territory, and are identified by first names and callsigns instead. KHARKIV OBLAST – At an undisclosed part of the front line in Ukraine’s
DONETSK OBLAST – Climbing to a firing position through trenches dug into black Ukrainian soil, the relative quiet in the air is only reassuring to an extent. At the most forward point, a Soviet-era recoilless rifle stands watch, dug into a shallow depression in the ground. Bohdan, a company commander of
ORIKHIV, HULIAIPOLE, Zaporizhzhia Oblast – A massive rumble shakes the basement under the partly destroyed administrative building, followed by another blast much closer. “Not good,” says 51-year-old Svitlana Mandrich, Orikhiv’s deputy mayor, looking warily at the sandbags protecting the cellar’s vent. Mandrich is in charge of keeping the small
Zaporizhzhia Oblast – In a split-second, two Ukrainian jets appear over the road, releasing chaff that sets off a couple of Russian anti-aircraft missiles. It allows one of the planes to hit a Russian position that billows with black smoke rising over the trees, leaving no doubt on how close the
Editor’s note: In this story, the Kyiv Independent is not disclosing the Ukrainian soldiers’ full names or their deployed positions due to security concerns amid the ongoing war in Ukraine. Donetsk Oblast – At an abandoned building about 20 minutes drive from Bakhmut, wounded Ukrainian soldiers pour in from the
AVDIIVKA, Donetsk Oblast – Avdiivka is an eerie city to drive into in March 2023. One year into Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, but nine years into the Donbas war, the compact city just 10 kilometers from the center of occupied Donetsk is barely holding on. There is little choice
Editor's Note: The Ukrainian soldiers featured in this article don't share their family names for security reasons. ZAPORIZHZHIA OBLAST – A couple of running gray silhouettes appear on the phone screen of drone unit commander Ashot, call sign "Doc." "They saw the drone, see?" he pointed at them. A few seconds
DONETSK OBLAST — The Donbas battlefront meanders for over 1,000 kilometers through a land that has not known peace since 2014. In some points like Bakhmut, it flares into a meat grinder of incalculable human loss. At others, it appears to be coiled and waiting, limited to probing attacks by
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