Author: David Kirichenko

The fog rolls in across eastern Ukraine, and with it comes danger. For Ukrainian defenders, the murky weather that blankets the front lines has become as much an adversary as Russian forces themselves, grounding the drones that have become Ukraine’s primary defensive tool and allowing small enemy units to infiltrate deep behind Ukrainian positions. “In this fog the Russians don’t move the way textbooks say they should,” Anatolii Tkachenko, commander of a mortar battery unit from Ukraine’s 92nd Separate Assault Brigade that until recently was fighting in Pokrovsk, told me. “They cross open fields and suddenly appear eight to...

The fields around us smolder from recent Russian strikes, dark smoke drifting into the sky as Shahed drones roar overhead. The trees are charred and skeletal after years of fighting. The Serebryansky Forest, near the Lyman sector of the front, is part of the fiercely contested Donbas region, which Russia’s Vladimir Putin told the US in August he plans to seize within “two to three months, maximum four.” That gives him until the end of the year, and Moscow is pouring resources and men into the fight. Before heading on the perilous route to the frontline headquarters of 63...