My latest report from #Ukraine's uneasy frontline and the port city of Mariupol. Video by @VolodymyrYurch and @guardian film coming soon. With thanks to @USCC_center theguardian.com/world/2022/jan…
The Ukrainian troops I met are motivated, professional and ready to defend their homes. But it's also clear they are badly outgunned by (pro) #Russian forces. The war continues, with shots and grenade fire when we visited the spectacularly wrecked frontline village of Shyrokyne
"The village’s seaside complex resembles a phantasmagoric film set. An alley of pulverised flats leads on to a glass-strewn terrace. There is a rusted child’s bike, a washing machine and a savagely twisted bonnet from a GAZ-53 truck. Swimming is not advised: the beach is mined"
"The separatists are ensconced in the village of Vodyane, visible from the net-covered former sanatorium that serves as the soldiers’ frontline base. Washing was hanging on a line. “They fired a rocket at one of our cars, out on patrol,” commander Yiry Ulshin said. “It missed.”
The mood overall is one of fear and defiance. Olena Chebeliuk - a historian from Lviv - predicted casualties and a bitter partisan war, should #Russia invade: "We don’t like dictators here. #Putin is a bit of a dreamer. If he tries to make a dictatorship in Ukraine he will fail”
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