Ukraine: Trench warfare in 21st-century Europe
Report by Marc Roussel
Imagine 450 kilometers of front in the dead of the northern winter. Ukraine and Putin’s Russia glare at each other across a no-man’s-land. An endless, deadly confrontation. From Pisky to Luhansk and Donetsk, soldiers—and reporters—stand in muddy trenches. Residents hunker down in their homes to avoid being picked off by Russian snipers. The largely ignored war is at the gates of Europe. A closed Europe dreamed of by Ukrainians left to their fate.
“Mariupol. That’s where the Ukrainian general staff has organized our first meeting, in the headquarters of the Navy Guard, with the officers who, for the last five years, have been leading the fight against pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass region.”
Bernard-Henri Lévy, The Will To See
Bernard-Henri Lévy and Marta Shturma, the young lieutenant who will act as interpreter during the report.
Pisky, Donbass — with Ukrainian military.
“Pisky, still farther north but now within reach of Donetsk, has been completely destroyed—and mined. We had to enter it on foot in single file behind the patrol that came out to meet us.”
Bernard-Henri Lévy, The Will To See
“Two streets that looked like vacant lots, the dead grass competing with the new-fallen snow. No water. No power lines or sewers. Of the thousands of souls who had lived in the town before the onset of this madness, only three families remain, holed up in their basements. But the leader of the patrol hasn’t seen them for weeks. Just possibly, he exclaims with a laugh and pretending to count on his fingers, there is no one left alive in this doomsday landscape except him…”
Bernard-Henri Lévy, The Will To See
“Pisky is a ghost town. Men and beasts alike are specters. Nothing on our trip will scare me more than this gutted, lifeless landscape through which we move among pale, bloated shadows.”
Bernard-Henri Lévy, The Will To See
“In the Myroliubovka zone, we are even farther north but not as close to the front. We come upon a firing range in which stand three 152 mm howitzers.”
Bernard-Henri Lévy, The Will To See
In Pokrovsk, near the field hospital of the Ukrainian military.
Pokrovsk — The hospital.
“Lying eleven kilometers farther east, Shyrokyne used to be Mariupol’s seaside resort. This morning, all that remains of its two thousand residents are a couple of former hotel keepers who have come in under the protection of a national guard unit to lay flowers at the grave of a father who was hastily buried last year in the family plot.”
Bernard-Henri Lévy, The Will To See
“… the sight of these exhausted men, their eyes swollen with insomnia, who are relieved only every six months and who, by virtue of pacing the same little patch of dirt, no longer know where they are, reminds me of a terribly archaic Verdun, frozen in time.”
Bernard-Henri Lévy, The Will To See
“We spend the rest of the morning […] weaving our way through an endless network of trenches, all zigzags and corners, like the streets of a buried city. Some are deep enough to resemble tunnels or caves; they are shored up with boards and logs.”
Bernard-Henri Lévy, The Will To See
“In Zolote, which borders Luhansk, we encounter more trenches. Cruder that those of Novotroitske, they consist of little more than boards laid onto the dark ground. But they are more striking because of the huge dogs guarding the entrances, like so many Cerberuses at the gates of this hell of a war.”
Bernard-Henri Lévy, The Will To See