UK Edition
Special report: Loose cannons at the frontline of Ukraine's forgotten war
The sun had set and a bitter steppe wind was reversing the work of a recent thaw when the sentries heard it: a distant mechanical growl, coming from the south.
Somewhere across the dead trees and brown fields of no man’s land, enemy vehicles were on the move, and Sgt Vladimir Kudrya was taking no chances.
“God knows what they’re doing, but we’re probably going to be shelled,” he said, as he put his company on alert to receive a barrage. The other men in the dugout barely batted an eyelid.
For the Ukrainian army’s 46th battalion, this was a routine evening in the chain of trenches that defines the frontline of a forgotten war.
War broke out in Eastern Ukraine after pro-Russian militia groups seized control of police stations and government buildings across the region in April 2014.
Two large-scale interventions by the Russian army, in August 2014 and January and February 2015, dealt devastating defeats to Ukrainian forces and resulted in peace agreements that - on paper - ended the fighting and laid out a road map for rebel regions’ reintegration into Ukraine.
In reality, the peace process has been stalled for nearly two years, and the “ceasefire” simply means the war of manoeuvre has become one of attrition, with near constant exchanges of small arms, mortar, and artillery fire up and down the 285-mile front line.
By Dec 1 last year, the war had claimed at least 9,758 lives, according to the United Nations. A series of skirmishes since mean the figure is already out of date.
This time, the 46th were lucky - the all-night barrage, when it came, landed several miles further down the line. By morning, with the thuds of the distant artillery duel fading, the men emerged from their bunkers for another day of the routine of chores that define trench warfare: kitchen fatigues, lookout duty, and filling machine gun belts.
Boredom
For Sgt Kudrya, an NCO who has found himself commanding a company because of a lack of officers, this low-level war means a constant struggle with the elements, paper work (he is under constant pressure from above to account for each litre of petrol and round of ammunition), and the erosion of discipline born of boredom.
In this, the unit relies above all on camaraderie - the 46th prides itself on being a fighting battalion, and many of these men have literally saved one another's lives in combat - and a wry, often filthy, sense of humour.
Nothing would raise morale more than an advance - but a brutal calculus of force means that cannot happen.
The Russian army has twice intervened in the war here to deal government forces devastating defeats.
In the first, in August and September 2014, the 46th’s predecessor unit, the volunteer Donbass battalion, was nearly wiped out after being surrounded at the town of Ilovaisk.
In the second, in January and February 2015, Russian and separatist troops defeated a major Ukrainian force at the city of Debaltseve, as Vladimir Putin sought leverage over Petro Poroshenko at the Minsk peace talks.
A new Ukrainian offensive would risk a third intervention from Russia’s southern military district, with predictable results.
Conversely, the separatists in the self proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics seem either unwilling or unable to mount their own effective offensives without the men and firepower the Russian regular army brings to the battlefield.
The current arrangement may suit governments in Moscow and Kiev, who face international pressure to end the conflict.
But it is deeply unpopular among the fighters in the trenches - as the frequent eruptions of fighting up and down the line testify.
Banned firepower
Both sides, however, have concentrated far more force than they officially admit, increasing the chances of a flare in fighting spiralling out of control.
The D-30 122 mm Howitzer has a range of 9.6 miles (or 13 with rocket propelled ammunition). It is reliable, Soviet-designed piece of kit much valued by its users, and is a mainstay of both sides.
It is also banned within 31 miles of the frontline under the Minsk peace agreement, and the camouflage netting covering half dozen guns that stood in a frozen field last week was not just meant to conceal them from the enemy.
“We’re in a game of cat and mouse. We hide from the OSCE observers, and they try to find us,” admitted Lt. Mikhail Strebizh, the officer responsible for the battalion’s artillery section, who granted the Telegraph rare access to a secret position last week.
Lt Strebizh, a lean 56 year old from Donetsk, now the de-facto separatist capital, says he takes full responsibility for deploying his guns here and is unapologetic about breaking the Minsk agreement, saying he needs his D-30s to protect the infantry holding the frontline trenches.
“I have to cover our people in case they are attacked. What do you want me to do when the other side has tanks and god knows what else in the area?” he asked. The Ukrainians routinely come under fire from separatist guns of similar calibre, he points out.
Against that consideration, Minsk means "nothing" he said.
The soldiers still rely to a remarkable degree on volunteer donations for much of their equipment, including food, replacement uniforms, and even specialist kit like drones and night goggles, said Vitaly Averin, a sergeant from Kiev.
It is a source of deep irritation, and in many cases frank disillusionment, with the current Ukrainian government.
“You’d think that volunteers are there to offer a little support and the government does the main work. But its actually the other way round: we rely on the volunteers, and the government helps out a little bit,” said Sgt Averin. “The government should be ashamed.”
Mud and blood
It is a cliche from Siegfried Sassoon, rather than Andy McNab.
The key unit of life here is the dugout - what the soldiers call a ‘blindage’ - an underground burrow where half a dozen men share the narrow space between the bunks with weapons, ammunition, biscuits, tea bags, and a jumble of other essentials (there is also usually a cat, not to mention the mice).
The depth gives protection from shells and the weather, but the life-giving nucleus at the heart of the mud-walled cell is the burzhuika, a home-made iron stove that serves as heater, hot plate for tea, and an incinerator for inflammable rubbish.
It runs on peat, wood, and plastic bottles, and in the frozen Donbas winter, tending to it is a matter of basic survival.
It is an example of the improvisation that continues to define the Ukrainian war effort even after nearly three years of war.
Drinking
But the biggest headache, says Sgt Kudrya, is alcohol.
“It’s the biggest problem in the Ukrainian army. We’re just that kind of people,” he said as he trudged the company’s trenches on an evening last week. “The Russians have the same problem," he said, meaning Slavs in general.
There is, indeed, a well developed Russian military slang to describe it. “Siniy,” or dark blue, means drunk. During the Chechen wars, a “blue” tank was one with a drunken crew.
The slang has evolved with the times, and today a troublesome alcoholic is an “avatar” - after the giant blue characters from the James Cameron film of the same name.
On New Years eve, after an incident in which one ended up threatening to blow himself up with a grenade, Sgt Kudrya arrested several avatars.
They did not face court martial, however, and were soon back on sentry duty.
Sgt Averin, the grenade-wielder’s platoon commander, says what outsiders might view as surprising leniency is simply reality.
“We’ve all seen incidents like that before. He wouldn’t really have set it off,” he said.
But while army culture can tolerate avatars, he says, narkomani, or drug users, are not.
By way of illustration, Sgt Averin tells the story of another soldier who was caught stealing syringes of powerful painkillers from his comrades’ first aid kits.
This, he said, would have put soldiers lives at risk, and was unacceptable. The offender got a vicious beating with a metal poker before being packed off to headquarters. Unlike the suicidal drunk, he will not be accepted back into the platoon.
Drinking, of course, is a symptom of boredom and frustration.
Vyacheslav Vlasenko, the 46th's commander and a survivor of the bloodbath at Ilovaisk, says he has no plans to break the ceasefire, but says his unit “has the men and capability to take [the separatist town of] Gorlivka if the order is given.”
Asked about the threat of Russian intervention, he was dismissive: “The Russian commanders are cowards. I studied at the same military academy in Moscow, I know their psychology.”
Others openly express their desire to move forward, despite the dangers of shattering the deadlock. Lt Strebizh, the artillery officer, says he would rather face a third Russian intervention - even full scale invasion - than the current pointless attrition. A full scale partisan war would at least cause the Russians such losses over a ten year occupation that they would be forced to leave Ukraine altogether, he reasons.
He acknowledges it is drastic reasoning, but “otherwise my grand children will be fighting this war,” he said. “If we advance five kilometres a year, we can be in Donetsk in five years. I can accept that. But not 25 years,” he added.
Incremental advance, however, is a strategy the Ukrainian side has shown some inclination to pursue.
In December, Ukrainian troops in nearby Svetlodarsk moved forward to seize separatist positions, sparking a days-long spate of fighting that claimed at least seven Ukrainian lives.
Shortly afterwards, the men of the 46th occupied Novoluhanskoye, a village of about 4,000 people lying in the neutral “grey zone” between the two armies.
The justification for the operation was to close a smuggling route to the DNR and prevent the local battery pig farm from selling meat to both sides (in a porcine version of the Trojan Horse, the Ukrainians achieved surprise by hiding in lorries belonging to the farm, capturing both it and the town without firing a shot).
It has gained the Ukrainians a small salient into separatist territory, a derelict grain silo that offers commanding views of the area, and access to the staff showers at the pig farm - something particularly appreciated by troops who spend most of their time in trenches and dug outs.
The separatists have not yet responded to the land grab. If and when they do, there will probably be a fight. But it is difficult to see how that will bring either side closer to victory.