On Donetsk’s Front Line, Small Gains and Losses Impose a Heavy Toll
DONETSK PROVINCE, Ukraine — Red flames crackled in the golden wheat field, the target of Russian artillery just minutes earlier. Nearby, the commander of a Ukrainian frontline unit was finishing his lunch of pasta from a tin bowl. As more incoming shells exploded in the fields, his men took cover in their bunkers.

Life on the front lines in the eastern Donetsk region has seen little letup in recent weeks. Ukrainian soldiers serving there say they live under almost constant Russian artillery and aerial bombardment. The fields and hedgerows around them are charred and smoldering. Their days and nights are interspersed with the sharp bangs of outgoing Ukrainian artillery and the deeper, rumbling bursts of incoming fire.

“It’s tense,” said the commander, Samson, 55, who, like most members of the Ukrainian military, asked to be identified by only his code name in accord with military protocol. “There is daily mortar fire, airplanes, helicopters, ‘Grads.’ They have a lot of ammunition.” Grad, meaning hail, is the Russian acronym for a commonly used multiple rocket launcher system.