When Sergyi joined the 79^th Ukrainian Brigade in March, his wife wanted to know where her husband would be fighting. The answer was Marinka, in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. On social media, videos show an annihilated city, an earthquake landscape, a chaos of ruins as far as the eye can see. It's impossible to imagine that there were streets, houses, flower boxes and schools. "I mistook it for images from an apocalyptic film," said his wife. But over the phone Sergyi said that that was where he had just arrived. He repeated the words of a training instructor: In an urban environment, a soldier has less than a minute to move from one position to another. Beyond that, their survival is threatened. He added that in Marinka, the countdown was even shorter. Chilled, his wife remembers thinking: "What condition will he come back to me in, if he ever does?"

In the Donbas, in a building behind the fighting, soldiers were waiting to take over. "Marinka is the place where the 79^th brigade experienced its bloodiest clashes," said colonel Yaroslav Chepurnyi, its spokesman. Simply entering the town was itself already a "heroic act," as they all knew. In this mining basin, the only road to the front accessible to Ukrainian troops was overhung by slag heaps, the black hills formed by coal residues. All were held by the Russian army, in a dominant position.

This makes it impossible for the 79^th brigade to bring in tanks or even a vehicle. To ensure rotation, soldiers have to sneak in at night, in small groups, and walk 4 kilometers with 45 kilograms of equipment on their backs. During the previous rotation, only three out of five soldiers managed to reach their positions. Injured, the others were unable to reach the end of the road.

Nothing to hide behind

Now, with the Ukrainian counter-offensive taking root on the southern front, fighting has been intensifying in the east and is particularly fierce in places like Marinka, where the Russians are attempting a breakthrough. But the outcome of the war is not at stake here, and Colonel Chepurnyi would even go so far as to say that the locality itself is not of the utmost importance. "But we can't afford to back down. In this part of the Donbas, if just one point moves, the whole defense line is destabilized, opening the door for the enemy." In this ghost town, cut in two by the front line, they have to hold on, whatever the cost.

Not a day goes by without a Russian assault. "When you see them coming forward, emerging from the rubble, they're a mass, four times more numerous than us, and much better armed. Their artillery and tanks, in particular, are impressive," said a sergeant. Here, there are no trenches, no houses, nothing to hide behind, and everywhere is that kind of smoke that gets in your eyes and the smell of death. Dogs roamed about, sometimes clutching human remains in their mouths.

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