NEAR MARINKA, Ukraine - Russian forces were so close that Boghdan, a Ukrainian soldier with the 79th Air Assault Brigade, could see them digging.
Digging is the thing to do in this forlorn strip of scorched earth in eastern Ukraine in order not to die.
Boghdan wants the Russians dead.
The trenches are built with curves to contain the explosion in case a mortar or grenade falls inside.
Photographs by Tyler Hicks
So he raised a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, leaned over the sandbags mounted on the edge of his trench, and fired.
The excavation stopped.
Moments later, the Russian soldiers released a burst of automatic fire.
Then all was silent.
"We have silenced them," Boghdan said with satisfaction as he headed for a deeper underground bunker.
"I just need to have a coffee."
Such is life in what the Ukrainian military calls the zero line position - the most forward end of the front lines - with the Russians only
300 meters away.
In the mud and muck, with chunks of frozen earth giving way to thick, sloppy clay, there are many ways to kill and be killed.
Russian helicopters regularly strafing Ukrainian trenches.
The Russians
bombard
Ukrainian positions with heavy artillery from miles away and send small bands of soldiers to try to infiltrate Ukrainian trenches in the dead of night.
Powerful drones fly over the trenches performing surveillance tasks and small
quadcopters
drop improvised explosives into the trenches.
Russian assaults can include armored vehicles and tanks, or they can come in waves of foot soldiers trying to storm a trench.
In the Ukraine, a lot of time is spent waiting for the next paroxysm of violence.
Photographs by Tyler Hicks
The Ukrainians counterattack with force.
And in this area of the front, near the destroyed city of Marinka in the Donetsk region, they have largely frustrated all Russian attempts to conquer new ground for a year.
The New York Times
had access to soldiers from the 79th Brigade, at the far end of the front line, to better understand how soldiers who are close enough to see the Russians
through
the torn windows feel about war.
Ukrainian lands that they are determined to defend.
The full names of the soldiers are being kept secret for security reasons.
Despite heavy fighting over the winter, Russia has captured only about 400 square kilometers of the entire eastern front since September, according to a report published in February by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
A soldier waits in a bunker along the front line.
Photographs by Tyler Hicks
Visiting the trenches, it becomes apparent why breaking through entrenched and fortified lines is deadly work.
But maintaining the land also comes at a tremendous cost.
Two days before the Times visit, the 79th Brigade had suffered heavy losses, the toll of
unrelenting fighting
evident in its grim, bloodshot eyes.
The troops said they were willing to die.
This is a war of survival, they said, not only for themselves, but for their nation.
The 79th is one of Ukraine's elite units, and its forces have fought the Russians on the steppes, through the forests, and in ruined cities.
Now, the soldiers are charged with holding a position some 15 miles from the city of Donetsk, a stronghold of Russia and its proxy forces since 2014.
Members of the 79th Air Assault Brigade in a trench.
Nets and brambles are placed to hide its outline from attackers.
Photographs by Tyler Hicks
The town of Marinka no longer really exists beyond a point on a map, abandoned by some 9,000 pre-war residents.
It has long since joined the list of places devastated by Russian forces, their buildings razed to the ground or reduced to charred, hollow shells.
But for the Ukrainians, Marinka's defense has persisted.
Having failed to
break through the Ukrainian lines
for almost a year, the Russians have recently revised their tactics, resorting to small raiding parties trying to drive gaps in the Ukrainian defenses that they can try to exploit, according to a Russian manual captured by the ukrainians.
The manual details how assault squads of 12 to 15 members can be divided into tactical groups of as few as three people supported by additional firepower to infiltrate a Ukrainian trench.
Ukrainian soldiers have started calling these groups
"meat"
due to the high casualty rate.
Soldiers going through a damaged building.
Photographs by Tyler Hicks
Ukrainian fighters who have witnessed the attacks up close say the Russians often send a
first wave of infantry
to storm a trench, knowing they are likely to be killed.
Russian observers take note of the Ukrainian firing positions and unleash a barrage of artillery and mortar fire against those positions.
A second wave of Russian infantry then rushes in, trying to infiltrate the trench.
A Ukrainian soldier in a position not far from the Russian forces.
Photographs by Tyler Hicks
Like in the First War
This is a brutal tactic that would have been recognized by millions of soldiers hunkered down in trenches more than a century ago, during
World War I.
As a French officer, Captain André Laffargue, pointed out at the time in a pamphlet entitled "Attack in Trench Warfare," breaching well-defended trenches comes at staggering cost.
"Infantry units
disappear
into the fiery furnace like handfuls of straw," he wrote.
Walking through the mud and water in the Marinka trenches.
Photographs by Tyler Hicks
To reach line zero outside Marinka, Ukrainian soldiers must traverse a network of trenches in the rear, through gaps left for tanks, and through shattered villages.
The trenches are built with
curves
to contain an explosion should a mortar or grenade fall inside.
In some places nets and brambles are placed to hide the contours.
Ukrainian soldiers, intimately familiar with the geography, have observers on constant watch for threats.
Taking cover from Russian bombing.
Photographs by Tyler Hicks
In quiet moments - and even in the most embattled corners of Ukraine much time is spent waiting for the next paroxysm of violence - soldiers eat out of cans and care for what they call "Ukrainian war cats" who patrol the trenches
looking
for rats.
Although the front line stretches more than 600 miles, both armies have dug thousands of miles of trenches, arranged in steps so that, should a net fall, soldiers can retreat to safer positions.
In addition to small-scale assaults, Russia has been trying for weeks to break through the Ukrainian lines with more comprehensive attacks that include armored columns.
Shortly after the Times visit, reconnaissance units from the 79th Brigade detected movement of Russian tanks and armored vehicles in the vicinity.
Boghdan, a Ukrainian soldier, firing a rocket-propelled grenade at Russian forces from a trench in an area of Marinka, eastern Ukraine.
Photographs by Tyler Hicks
The Russians attempted to skirt the trenches on the flanks to "launch a
massive assault
", according to a brigade statement.
But they were surprised, and paratroopers using Javelin anti-tank missiles damaged several Russian tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, demolition captured on video released by the brigade.
Back in the trenches, the soldiers know that the Russians will keep coming.
And they say they are prepared for the day when they themselves go on the attack.
c.2023 The New York Times Company
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