“We Live in a Swamp”

Winter hasn’t set in yet, but wetness and cold are already affecting Ukrainian soldiers in Donbass in eastern Ukraine. “We literally live in a swamp,” says a 30-year-old man who called himself Kit during the war. “When I went to the hospital yesterday, I looked like a big pile of mud.”

More and more soldiers are falling ill, many suffering from so-called trench foot, a dreaded infection of the feet.

“The soldiers’ boots are always wet, they sleep very sporadically,” says a 24-year-old, nicknamed Taller, who fights with a special forces unit in Donbass. If feet are in damp shoes for too long and are stressed at the same time, they become inflamed. If left untreated, the trench foot suffered en masse by soldiers in World War I can even be deadly. “The infantry are the heart of any army and they suffer a lot,” says Taller.

Volunteers support soldiers

Since the withdrawal of the Russian army from the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson earlier this month, the Donbass in the east of the country has been the main battleground. The adverse weather conditions did not prevent the Russian troops from attacking. “The Russians are like zombies. You shoot them and more and more come,” says Kit.

To prepare the Ukrainian soldiers for the winter, volunteers have set up large camps near the front with donated supplies. “Warm clothes, long underwear, flu medicines, medicinal teas and pain-relieving ointments are in great demand,” says Slava Kovalenko, who works at one of these depots in the city of Sloviansk. “Everyone who comes here asks for it.” Week after week, he distributes thousands of kilograms of clothing, medicines, candles and canned goods, says Kowalenko.

Preparation for counter-offensive

The front can be seen on the outskirts of Bakhmut: rows of Ukrainian artillery pieces and tanks line the brown landscape. The noise of battle is deafening. A soldier watches the action from a hilltop, smoking. “We are preparing for a counter-offensive,” says the man with the battle name Rambo. “We have reinforced our troops in this area,” says another soldier, nicknamed IT Guy. “Our morale is very high,” he says.

Amid mounting casualties in the fighting, the Kremlin has redoubled its attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure, destroying power plants with drones and cruise missiles. The power goes out more and more. The hospitals near the front lines depend on generators to feed soldiers and civilians.

“The way they fight and attack civilian infrastructure can only infuriate,” said Oleksiy Yakovlenko of the hospital administration in Kramatorsk. Still, giving up is not an option for him. “If they expect us to get down on our knees and crawl to them, it won’t happen.”

fear of winter

In the apartment buildings in Lyman, 40 kilometers away, there has been no electricity or gas since the spring. The city is in ruins. The few remaining residents are too poor or too old to leave. They depend on the support of aid organizations, only those who have wood can burn them.

“I don’t know how we will survive the winter,” says 62-year-old Tatyana Kutepova. “Maybe we’ll freeze to death and they’ll take us to our graveyard.” (AFP)