When Sergyi joined 79e Ukrainian brigade in March, his wife wanted to understand where her husband was going to fight: Marïnka, in the Donbass, in the east of the country. On social networks, the videos showed a destroyed city, an earthquake landscape, a chaos of ruins as far as the eye could see. Impossible to imagine that there were streets, houses, flower boxes and schools. “I must have confused it with images from an apocalyptic film, said the wife to herself.
But Sergyi confirmed to him on the phone: that’s where he had just arrived. He repeated to him 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, its survival is threatened. In the handset, the husband had slipped that at Marinka, this countdown was even shorter. Frozen, his wife remembers thinking: “How will he come back to me, if he ever does come back?” »
In Donbass, in a building behind the fighting, soldiers are waiting to take over. Marïnka is the place where the 79e brigade experienced the bloodiest clashes, recognizes Colonel Yaroslav Tchepournyi, his spokesman. Entering the city is already a “heroic deed” they all know it. In this mining basin, the only road to the front accessible to Ukrainian troops is overhung by slagheaps, these black hills formed by coal residues. All are held by the Russian army, in a dominant position.
Impossible, therefore, for the 79e brigade to bring in tanks or even a vehicle. To ensure the rotations, the soldiers must sneak in at night, in small groups, and cover 4 km on foot with 45 kg of equipment on their backs. At the previous relief, only three out of five soldiers managed to reach their position. Wounded, the others could not reach the end of the road.
nothing to hide
Today, as the Ukrainian counter-offensive takes root on the southern front, the fighting is getting tougher in the east, particularly fierce in places like Marinka, where the Russians are trying to break through. The outcome of the war, however, is not at stake here, and Colonel Tchepournyi would even go so far as to say that the locality in itself is not of the greatest importance. ” But we cannot afford to back down. In this part of the Donbass, if a single point moves, the whole line of defense is destabilized. And the door opens for the enemy. » So, in this ghost town, cut in two by the front, you have to hold on, no matter what.
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