part 4/? two captured ukrainians were led past us. i saw ukrainians for the first time during the entire war. they werent making any unnecessary movements and remained silent. they had already been stripped of their armour and weapons. their uniforms looked so much like ours you couldn't tell a friend from foe from a distance. they were being searched and prepared to be escorted further to the rear. there was fear in their eyes. there were arguments on the radio about what to do with them next: take them for interrogation or zero them out on the spot. in the end, they were taken away somewhere. as dusk fell, we moved on. we had a guide from the eva team; he led us to the next strongpoint. the trees here were already completely bare. no needles. branches broken off by constant shelling. tree trunks fallen across the path. this trek was a little easier for me because i had taken off the warm pants. shallow trenches, a dugout, and one covered machine gun nest, half a meter deep, awaited us. you could only get in there by crawling. some people went into the dugout. fonar, another soldier nicknamed zmiy (snake), and i climbed into the machine gun nest. cold. we were to spend the entire night here. we hadnt taken our sleeping bags with us. so we slept right on the ground, on the bottom of the pit. the wind blew through the pit from both sides. my teeth chattered, i shivered, my feet were frozen without the warm pants. cold. but at least we managed to get some sleep. we spent half the day in that frozen pit. our sleep was restless. i constantly woke up from the explosions and from the cold. but even such restless sleep was enough. the sand was everywhere. all our clothes were covered in sand. all our gloves were covered in sand, our hands were covered in sand. the sand was in our eyes. how did i not get conjunctivitis? how did i not get pneumonia? truly, there are far fewer sources of infection on the front lines than back in russia.
Finland