Every day we, the volunteers of the All-Ukrainian Center People’s Project, are informing you of everyday life in the frontline. The fourth year of the war. Shelling day and night, quantity and quality of weapons, artillery mines’ calibers; numbers of KIA and WIA among Ukrainian soldiers or even civilian casualties of the war – the sensitivity towards even the biggest tragedies has dropped off, and today we perceive all these figures mostly as scarce and dry statistics.
Thanks to the efforts of some decent people, the correspondents of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Mr Marian Kushnir and Mr Andriy Dubchak working in the forefront beside the Ukrainian military, the nameless war re-acquires human features and definite personalities. It is these guys who form that thin but adamantine line separating the wobbly external world in the rear and the real hell at the front. We propose you a selection of materials from those positions where no one can be sure whether the next day will not turn into their last one.
Here is Pisky, located in Donetsk peripheries. The runway of Donetsk airport is in direct proximity to the village.
Here is Promka, the misfortunate industrial zone in Avdiivka outskirts. These are the ruins where our defenders are holding the line. Distance to the enemy occasionally makes a hundred meters, and in some sections – just a grenade’s throw from here.
In addition, the correspondents visited positions near Mariinka, in Donetsk peripheries.
And these are Luhansk region’s dreadful day-to-day life. The enemies refuse to open Zolote checkpoint, even despite the only neighboring one, Stanytsia Luhanska checkpoint, is closed due to maintenance. To get to work or elsewhere, locals have to either drive extra 200 km to the other checkpoint, or to cross the wastelands stuffed with mines by the terrorists. The Ukrainian military are evacuating the body of a local killed in a stretcher landmine explosion.
The war is still far from the end. And it will continue as long as Russia goes on with sponsoring local terroristic groups, supporting them with weapons, supplying them military equipment and cannon fodder. As you can see, our situation is a way different: we do not have any mercenaries, so Ukraine’s best sons and daughters have been sacrificing their life for their homeland, for the fourth consecutive year in a row. And to win this war we need to amass all our skills, intelligence, brains and the innovative gear, as opposed to fighting with just multitude, like a horde.
Within a separate Rapid Response volunteering project, we are accumulating money for equipping our military fighting I the forefront, with the most urgent and necessary stuff. They need a variety of things. Sometimes it is a thermos imager or night vision scope to hunt the enemy saboteur groups down and to prevent them from slaughtering our fighters. Sometimes it is certain unique gear or devices for special communication. Occasionally, a plain axe or a saw can turn out helpful in saving their lives by simple warming them in wintertime in their dugouts or equipping their positions and blindages. Right now we are planning to buy snowsuits for our Special Forces military, as the winter is on, and these suits will come in definitely handy for them. Dear friends, please join the project. Every hryvnia of your donations adds to making closer the moment when we will be able to breathe out in realization that we managed to win this war, and to positively state: “We did it at last!”.
