Voice of Ukraine

From: Maia Mikhaluk in Kyiv (692nd day):

In the past, before the war cold weather and snow symbolized the arrival of winter fun, like skiing, sledding, building snowmen, and walking in the snowy wonderland of the forest. Now the beautiful white cover on the ground is not filling any hearts with joy and seeing low temperatures on thermometers and in weather forecasts makes us think of our defenders having to battle this freezing cold and civilians with half-ruined homes having to survive the winter.

Ukrainian photographers Kostyantyn and Vlada Liberovy published a series of new shots on the Web, taken in Kreminnaya 50 meters from the enemy.

They talked about the winter at the front and showed Ukrainian defenders who defend Ukraine from the ruzzian invaders in extremely difficult conditions.

“Winter at the front. The temperature at night is around -20-25C, during the day -13-16. The intensity of artillery fire is comparable to the First World War: aviation, heavy artillery, drones. In addition, enemy snipers are actively working. The roar of the artillery does not subside for a second. At the extreme positions, the distance to the enemy is 50 meters. Yes, it is actually direct visibility and audibility. Young and exhausted guys meet us there. The faces and hands are black from the soot of trench candles, dust and sand.

We run into the shelter just in time: the enemy saw us while we were walking, and for 20 minutes pummeled our hiding place with artillery. Fighting is always difficult. But in the winter in the forest… Even trivial things require titanic efforts – for example to dig even a shallow trench. The ground is frozen for 20 centimeters, the shovel will not work, you must first break the frozen layer with a pickaxe, and only then dig. And all this under constant shelling,” the authors of the photos said.

PS. The first photo in this post is from my FB memories from before war – our forest. The rest of the photos are from the war front lines – taken by Kostyantyn and Vlada Liberovy. You can see more of their photos on their Instagram page – libkos/Instagram. By the way, before war, they were wedding photographers, and if you scroll far enough on their Instagram page, you will see what these gifted photographers were capturing in peaceful days.