"Advancing is tough" – the cost of counterattacking on southern front

Snakes, serpents, a scorched plain – this is what distinguishes the Ukrainian south from Donbas and Slobozhanshchyna in the east – lands where the Ukrainian-Russian front also stretches.

On this scorched plain, where the possibility of life seems rather illusory, Ukrainian soldiers have been living underground for several months. Life, it turns out, can go on here. Someone managed to propose to his girlfriend, someone got a dog – right here, in the dugouts.

hromadske saw first-hand what it costs the Ukrainian army to advance deep into Kherson Oblast. And what the Ukrainian counteroffensive means here. Life here defeats death, although death is nearby – just in the next trench, in the next position, on the next task.

We made this report in August, before the Armed Forces of Ukraine began large-scale offensive operations on multiple axes in the south of Ukraine.

Photo credit: Yevheniya Stepanenko / hromadske