“I’ll let you in on a secret, there will be an assault at dawn tomorrow." Sviatoslav, a 57-year-old sergeant responsible for the mental support of the mortar unit, lowered his voice as he said the words. “Get some sleep, as you can be sure there will be some work
Editor’s note: Full names and the deployment locations of the soldiers interviewed for this story are not disclosed since they weren't authorized to speak to the press. KHERSON OBLAST – Mortars are the first things that greet the Ukrainian soldiers who are lucky enough to make it across the Dnipro
KYIV – Alina, her 9-year-old son, and 80-year-old grandmother were sitting outside. Their apartment was burned down, window frames were blown out, and the three were cut by shattered glass. “We were lucky (to survive). A fire quickly broke out, smoke around. The child was half naked. I managed to grab
DONETSK OBLAST – “Our working hours are as follows: first you do a 12-hour shift, then another one, until you’ve done seven of these 24-hour-shifts, and that’s your week” said Oleksandr Kolesnikov, a 47-year-old surgeon, sitting hunched over on a bench-turned-overflow hospital bed at a Ukrainian stabilization point in
KHERSON – Sitting in a pitch-dark kitchen with just the flashlight on, 70-year-old Viacheslav Bezprozvanyi warned of an incoming shelling as soon as he heard a swish over him. Split seconds later, a thick thud of shelling hit the ground a few hundred meters away. The house shook, knocking off a
Editor’s note: The location of the prisoner of the war camp the Kyiv Independent visited is undisclosed for security reasons. The Kyiv Independent got vocal recorded agreement from the prisoners of the war to be interviewed and identified in the story. When Yevhen Kalashnikov found an opening to surrender
Editor’s note: Some soldiers interviewed for this story declined to give their last names due to security issues amid the ongoing war in Ukraine. DONETSK OBLAST – More than a month after his first assault operation near Bakhmut, 23-year-old soldier Oleksandr Mikulak still blames himself for not saving a comrade.
NESKUCHNE, DONETSK OBLAST – Vitalii Ivanov stepped gingerly across the messy floor through the kitchen to what was once the living room of his family home. Scattered across the floor and countertops were the iconic markers of a space that was once occupied by Russian soldiers. Cardboard military ready meals complete
Editor’s note: The location of the prisoner of the war detention center is undisclosed for security reasons. The Kyiv Independent got vocal recorded agreement from the prisoners of the war to be interviewed and identified in the story. Undisclosed location in Western Ukraine – Private Alexey Strelkov massages his knee
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
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