BBC News
BbcThe large flows of smoke are visible on a screen that provides live food from Ukrainian drones that move above the outskirts of the eastern city of Pokrovsk, one of the most intensive front lines in Ukraine.
A few seconds earlier, Ukrainian artillery hits Russian positions, places where we saw Russian soldiers move around as they tried to move to a key path, entering Pokrovsk.
At least one Russian soldier was wounded, probably dead after the strike.
It is cooling to watch the footage live. This causes the bloody consequences of the war in which Russia began, which has already killed hundreds of thousands of “endless bloodshed”, as US President Donald Trump calls it.
We are in a farmhouse, turned into the Commander Center for the 155th Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Army. This is a few miles from the front positions of the artillery.
The scale of the devastation we see on the screens, homes and buildings, completely flattened, is much greater than what we saw six months ago.
This is proof of the fierce battle that has been fought in the last few months to protect the Pokrovsk, decisive transport center in the Donetsk region.
This week, there is cautious optimism, even among skeptical soldiers witnesses of the hope that the termination of fire was over and over again, as diplomatic efforts from the United States, Europe, Turkey and others have pushed Russia and Ukraine to conversations for the first time in three years.
“I think something has to happen because Russia was the first to insist on these conversations. I want to say since 2022, they refused to enter any contact,” says an employee who wants to be named with his Kozak call sign.
“I want to believe that this would be the beginning of the end of the war.
“But now I see, we have been able to destroy their rear positions and their delivery lines. Russia does not have the same strength and power that at the beginning. So I think something will happen.”
37-year-old Yuri worked at a technology company before the full-scale invasion of Russia in Ukraine. “They (Russia and Ukraine) have to start talking. American soldiers, we want this war to end. But it's important to remember that we can't stop it because we didn't start it,” he says.
He looked up at the screen and noticed that Russian soldiers were moving again. He and his colleagues calculate the coordinates of their positions and pass them on to their artillery unit.
We drive from the command center to the artillery position, on muddy tracks, passing through a wide space of open fields. The mud pulls in the air, our car slides and slides as we move as quickly as possible. Speed is a mitigation against drone strikes that sharply increase the victims for both Russia and Ukraine, as they were located in a large number in 2023.
And military technology continues to develop. Now there is a new threat – drones equipped with a truly optical cable that unfolds as they fly. “We can't find or neutralize them, so there are probably many more drones in the area at the moment than we know,” Yuri says.
As we board the artillery position, hidden under trees and shrubs, soldiers are already loading the gun. This is a French artillery pistol called Caesar. The results have been located in Ukraine since the beginning of the war and France has been trying to increase production.
“I am very impressed with its accuracy and can use a large range of ammunition. The most important thing is that bringing it into a battle is very fast. It is much more efficient than the old Soviet equipment I used,” Kozak says.
Ukrainian soldiers shoot four rounds, each of which emits deafening sound. From around us, we also hear the sound of the incoming shells. The battle rages on.
“As you can hear, there is a wave of attacks from the enemy and we need many ammunition to suppress this. We hope that our international partners can give us as many ammunition as possible, because if we have to start choosing a priority and the goals of non-priority, then the enemy will be successful.”
We ask the soldiers how they feel about the suggestions that Ukraine will have to make concessions that it may have to give up on Earth to secure peace.
“It's painful to hear it.
“A person who has not come here who has not felt the consequences of Russian aggression, these commentators of the chair say that you can give up the earth and everything will end. They will never understand how many brothers and friends we have lost. We should not give up any meter of our earth,” says Kozak.
The price that Ukraine has paid to protect its land is visible everywhere, the most in the photos of smiling, young soldiers, published on the side of the highways, on the memorial walls in the central city squares and of rows and rows of freshly dug graves in the country.
Yana Melnikova loves her son's favorite treats – a glass of hot chocolate and a chocolate roll.
Then she moved on a cemetery in the southern city of Pershuzhi and puts them neatly from the grave of 22-year-old Vladislav. She and her daughter, 13-year-old Nicole, wipe the grave with wet fabrics. Before long, they break down undeniablely into the hands of each other.
Vladislav was a drone operator with the Ukrainian military. He was killed in a fight at a Russian strike on February 21 this year.
For Yana, the news about direct conversations resumed do not bring hope.
“It seems to me that this war is eternal. Of course, I hope they will find a solution. Because people die here -there (in Russia). But Putin is greedy. His hunger for our land is insatiable,” says Yana.
Parts of the attachment area are currently occupied by Russia, such as the front line less than 40 miles from the city. But for more than once, Russia has demanded control over the full regions of attachment, Luhansk, Donetsk and Herson as part of any peace deal.
“There is no way. I want to live in Ukraine, not in Russia. We saw what they were doing under the occupation, what they did in places like Bucha – their cruelty and torture,” says Yana. “Can you imagine, they haven't even spared this cemetery,” she adds, pointing to a large crater nearby, where a bomb exploded a few months ago.
Tears that roll on her eyes, she adds: “I hope my child has died for nothing. This will still have a victory and the whole Ukraine will become free.”
Additional reporting from imogen anderson, volodymyr lozhko, anastasiia levchenko, sanjay gangly