The impact of a tank round cracked the bunker’s plaster roof and sent uniformed men scrambling. Flak jackets and helmets were flung on and automatic weapons cocked. Amid a crescendo of machine gun fire, a tall soldier slung an anti-tank missile launcher over one shoulder and took a slow drag on his cigarette.
The Russians were close.
Fighting in eastern Ukraine has mostly occurred at a distance, with Ukrainian and Russian forces lobbing artillery at one another, sometimes from dozens of miles away. But at some points along the zigzagging eastern front, the combat becomes a vicious and intimate dance, granting enemies fleeting glimpses of one another as they jockey for command of hills and makeshift redoubts in towns and villages blasted apart by shells.
On Wednesday, one such dance played out as a Russian unit entered the village where soldiers from a Ukrainian contingent had dug in. Read more
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