The frozen war: On the frontline of Ukraine's bloody stalemate

Updated

Next month marks two years since the Donetsk People's Republic declared its independence from Ukraine. Freelance contributor Bryce Wilson visited Ukrainian troops on their frontline as they fight to halt the Moscow-backed Donetsk rebels from gaining any more territory.



The sun is setting over Mariinka, a small Ukraine Government-controlled city 30 kilometres from the breakaway republic's capital, Donetsk.

An army radio crackles to life and voices discuss a vehicle seen in the tree line 100 metres away.

"Now they are going to attack us," one of the Ukraine troops warns me.

Some soldiers pace anxiously, others chain-smoke.

Time is punctuated by the sound of water drops falling into a bucket.

Cigarette smoke hangs in the air like the winter fog outside.

But the anticipated firefight never comes.

The advances and retreats of this war in Ukraine's east are about to enter their third year, but there is a brief respite from combat today, and the relieved government soldiers crowd into a small room and watch 21 Jump Street.

In Russian and Ukraine, the television show is called Macho and the Nerd.

"There is fighting day after day, now the silence makes me feel anxious," one soldier confides during an ad break.

Since the beginning of this year alone, the Ukrainian solders tell me there have been over 3,000 ceasefire violations.

And just this year in the war, bloody encounters have resulted in 26 Ukrainian soldiers being killed, while 140 have been wounded.

Mariinka is one of the most dangerous battle zones in this war, where local territory has been regularly changing hands.

Now some Ukrainian and Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) positions are within 50 metres of each other.

"They often shout insults at us," a soldier says, laughing.

"I wish I was deaf," he adds.

"We're not fighting for President Poroshenko (Ukraine's leader)," another soldier with the nom de guerre Thunder said, nursing an AK74 on his lap.

"We're here for our families. For Ukraine," the 23-year-old declared.

As ceasefires and agreements come and fail, Ukrainian soldiers and their DPR enemies continue to die in what has been dubbed "the frozen war" by some.

"Politicians far from the frontline have no idea what it's like here," Thunder said, after enduring the bitter winter.

"Snipers with 12.7 calibre rifles [designed for destroying vehicles and walls] fire at us every day.

"We're shot at with RPGs [rocket propelled grenades], they shell us with mortars and their infantry fighting vehicles fire cannon at us."

The proximity and indiscriminate nature of the mortars and RPGs often puts the 6,000 civilians in Mariinka in the line of fire.

Just last month, five houses occupied by civilians were burned down after intensive mortar shelling from separatist positions.

Two days earlier, four civilians were killed when their vehicle drove over an anti-tank mine near a Government checkpoint.

While the rebel DPR — backed by Russian arms, money and President Vladimir Putin — presides over almost 2 million people, the rogue republic remains unrecognised and condemned by the international community.

The War in Donbass, as the overall regional conflict is known, has taken almost 10,000 lives and many thousands more have been displaced.

As the stalemate drifts on, the Ukrainian fighters of Mariinka tell me there can be no retreat or surrender.

Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, territorial-disputes, ukraine, russian-federation

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