UkrainePiles containing blood-stained stretchers are positioned outside the war hospital in Bakhmut, an eastern Ukrainian city. The doorway is filled with medics, soldiers who brought in wounded comrades, and soldiers taking a break. They smoke and listen to the incessant drumbeat of heavy autumn rain, punctuated only by sharp blasts of shellfire. The street is littered with vans and cars that have been smashed to pieces. Broken glass and smashed bricks are accumulating next to the buildings that have been damaged. Two dogs, once beloved family pets, have been forced to retreat into the corners of the porch by their insatiable desire for human company. One of the dogs lies trembling, uninterested in any food offered by soldiers. Bakhmut’s civilians are now more secure. The living creatures that are still under fire share a sense of solidarity. One of the exhausted-looking staff explained that the sound of explosions had traumatized the dog. It was evident that Ukrainians are exhausted, battered and locked into the debilitating war routines. However, they are determined to fight the Russians for independence.

Their sense of nationhood has been heightened by the February invasion decision by Russian President Vladimir Putin to subdue a people that he claims is the same as Russians. Volodymyr Pihulevsky was one of the soldiers at the Bakhmut war hospital. He agreed to speak. He was a civilian emergency physician until he was mobilised in March. We spoke in an improvised theatre with two tables. Although it was well-equipped and clean, the monitors and resuscitation equipment were not very sophisticated. The hospital was quiet as rain fell from the low cloud that hung above Bakhmut, which is weather that reduces the volume and frequency of shelling. Volodymyr was able to speak because the theatre was not being used. “Fortunately, this morning there are not as many wounded people. There were many wounded in the past, including shrapnel injuries, traumatic leg amputations due to mine explosions or shelling, and also bullet wounds. “We have worked 24 hours a days, sometimes two days in succession, without ever having the chance to sit down. We just stop for food or the toilet. Volodymyr is also on the frontline, providing immediate medical assistance to the injured. This was very difficult. Sometimes you have to choose between your life and the lives or wounded men. I have never seen anyone be afraid to die. No one waits, even during the shelling. Everyone rushes to help the wounded and give them first aid. We then put them in a vehicle and drive them to the hospital. “It’s not as scary as it is psychologically… Only people with mental illness don’t have fear.” According to the surgeon, wounds they had to treat in the war hospital were not something they would have seen before the invasion. “I saw many deaths while working in the emergency department. But it was in peacetime. Here’s how my boys fight. Their lives are destroyed by the injuries they sustain. It is the most depressing thing I have ever seen. It’s horrible to see the pain of our troops. It is horrible to see the trauma they go through in this war. The worst thing is to witness the suffering of our country. This is the worst. The rest is our job. A soldier was seen coming from an ambulance, his hand broken by a sniper bullet, a few minutes later.

Another soldier was brought in on a stretcher. He was soaked in blood and lacerated with multiple shrapnel injuries. Volodymyr quickly walked to the triage area and got to work. You would be disappointed if you expected the drama of TV mini-series emergency rooms. Volodymyr and Bakhmut’s medics were calm, spoke clearly, and worked quickly to stabilize the patients before any more men arrived from the front. The artillerymanTo reach the fighting, one must drive along tracks that are buried in the endless fields of farmland. Our BBC team was allowed to visit an artillery unit hidden in a valley in the woods. We promised to not reveal their location, except that it was near one of the Donbas frontlines. The constant soundtrack was sound of shellfire, which included close, loud, and sharp exchanges with Russians and bass notes coming from further down the long, active confrontation line. The unit was armed two BM-21 Grad missile-launchers. One of the men in charge of one of them refused to use his real name. He called me Lysyi, which he said was a nickname that meant “Bold”. Before signing a 2019 military contract, the artilleryman was an apartment renovator and builder. He now commands a highly destructive weapons systems. Its designers in the Soviet Union in late 1950s built an oblong array 40 missile firing barrels on a powerful truck. The BM-21 is a reliable killing machine. It can destroy an area of approximately a hectare (10000 sq m). This is a large number of vehicles and troops. Lysyi is in the early 30s. Lysyi supervised the loading of the Grad and fired it like a man who has had plenty of practice. It’s not complicated. His crew attached the fuses to the missiles’ fronts by hand, and then tightened a small fastening. They then loaded the missiles into their barrels. Lysyi pushed one of the missiles with his Wellington boot, an insulated, knee-high Wellington boot. They were worn by all the men, because the autumn mud was so viscous. “I was woken at 4:20 am on February 24th. Since then, I have been fighting. It’s the exact same as it was in the beginning. It’s monotonous. We move from one place to another. “What should I do?” We launch shells at the targets they give us and we go. We are fighting. This was not going to be easy. But we persevere.” Both the BM-21 launchers of the unit are parked in scrapes dug out of the hillside. They don’t fire from their camp. The target co-ordinates were sent and the truck and its missiles were pulled out of the scrape. A green monster emerged from the liquid mud, which was about halfway up its massive tyres. The Grad walked through more mud to reach a wider-open field on higher ground. It felt the impact of Russian shells from about 100 yards away and released two missiles. They had to quickly pack up and move fast in order to avoid being hit with counter-battery fire. As a result, I could see the smoke and flame from a few more Russian shells. Our Hyundai 4×4 was unable to start due to the struggle to follow the huge BM-21 through thick mud.

The incoming shells were absorbed by the mud, but it was still a good thing that the mud did absorb some of the force. Lysyi and his men stopped us before the Russian gunners could locate our range. They took us back to a safer area, then they returned to rescue the 4×4’s driver who had been under fire while trying to start it. My truck is 52 to 53 years old. It’s our lives at risk, so we repair it ourselves. “What about the operation that we just saw, firing missiles under fire and driving in a vehicle over 50 years old on a field that was clogged with mud from more shells landing? Everyone is scared. We overcome our fear and fight. There was shelling. It was nothing dramatic. We managed to escape the shelling. Our “old lady” helped us. We escaped. “Image source:. Teacher Liudmyla Mymrykova adores her village. Although it is largely in ruin now, it is easy to see how Myroliubivka was a peaceful oasis in rural Kherson. Each house has its own land. Wild birds perch on the woodpiles in search of insects. Ducks, chickens, and geese roam the overgrown gardens left by owners who fled several months ago. The few remaining houses with intact roofs and walls have been retaken by the Ukrainian soldiers who seized the village in September. One of them is Liudmyla’s, with neat rows and roses that need to be trimmed. She was living in a tiny house she was lent by family members. Anatoly, her great-grandson, was almost a toddler and gurgled in the room next to her. Liudmyla then told me how she longs for home and how her village became hell after the Russians took it in March. She told me how she survived months of terror and how she was beaten and raped in the privacy of her living room. Liudmyla, a 75-year-old widow, is composed and a calm woman. She was a teacher until her retirement, and is well-known locally as the village’s historian. She didn’t believe that Putin would send his men deeper into Ukraine with such terrible consequences at the beginning of the year. We considered them a fraternal nation. I could not imagine them doing such things to people. “The Russians arrived in Russia on 24 March. Liudmyla stated that the first Russians arrived through Crimea and behaved well. Frontline soldiers are often more disciplined than the rear echelon troops that follow them in wars. The east was dominated by militias that were raised under the pro-Moscow Ukrainian, separatist regimes in Luhansk, Donetsk. They terrorized the village, demanding vodka, wine, fuel, and looting homes. They took the men in hoods and tortured them until they died. Liudmyla claims that the Russian troops were too scary to consider the militiamen human.

The supposed allies fell out, drinking and brawling with one another, even exchanging gunfire. Liudmyla was able to leave for the territory of the Ukrainians with her daughter Olha a month after the occupation began. Olha tried to convince her to leave, but she refused. She was trying to protect her property and the documents she had compiled about her village’s history and her family’s past. After Olha and a friend who lived near her had left, Liudmyla was left alone. She was always afraid, took medication for high blood pressure, but found the strength to get through long, lonely days. Her dogs would bark at strangers. On the night of 13th July, “At half past eleven, I heard a loud knock at my windows. “My body stiffened. Who could it have been? My face, my body, my legs, my arms felt paralysed. I shut all the windows, but one was still open. There was a soldier. I hesitated about letting him into my home. What should I do next? I didn’t have any way to hit him. Would I be able cope with him? “When I opened the door, the man punched me in my face. He pulled out two of my front teeth and broke my nose. I was covered in blood. He began to beat me in the chest using the butt of his gun. He struck my body. He began hitting me on my head. I didn’t know what I had done wrong. He pulled my hair. He couldn’t see me in the dark kitchen so he stumbled around the furniture. Then he threw me on the sofa and began to strangle. Two weeks later, I couldn’t swallow water. “Then, he took my clothes off and raped him. He cut my stomach. My stomach has been scarred since then. While the deep cuts aren’t healing, the smaller ones have. “Liudmyla recognized the man, who was around 60 years old and smelled of alcohol. She believes he was from a separatist militia. He had already gone to her house and stolen diesel. Then he brought soldiers who stayed there until she convinced them to leave. When she didn’t have any, the rapist demanded that she get tobacco and beat her with his gun again. He opened fire and sprayed bullets throughout the room.

Liudmyla feared she would die. She thought about her family. “I said goodbye my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. I never thought that I would live.” She says he didn’t leave until 05:20 in the morning. He told her that if she reported the Russians about the incident, he would return to kill her. She stayed with her neighbours, claiming that she had fallen into a cellar to cover up her injuries. Luidmyla’s voice rang out to Olha, and she said that something was wrong. She pressed her mother and, in the end, it was a relief to Luidmyla to not have to hide the attack. She joined other Ukrainians to reach a nearby town, which was still under Russian occupation, but she was far from her attacker. From there, she was able to cross the frontline to reunite her daughter and her family. Liudmyla Mymrykova, a widow, sat in the kitchen of her borrowed home and explained why she wanted talk about her experience. Her eyes were filled with tears for the first time in an interview that lasted about an hour. She held a gun that the man had dropped in her hand before he left her home. “I want the world to stop this war and stop this bloody conflict as soon as possible. I want Russians to see how their husbands, sons, and parents torture Ukrainians. Were we guilty? We are peaceful, hardworking people. We don’t disturb anyone. “I asked Liudmyla what she did to keep going after she had gone through hell. “How do I stay strong? My land, my village, and my people. We are peaceful, hardworking and supportive of each other during occupation. They shared the last bit of bread. Many people were hungry. Because there was nothing to eat, we ground the wheat seeds that had sprouted in our coffee grinder and made cakes. She said, “This was a horrible, this was just a terrible,” “Putin, the Russians, will never be forgiven until their end… for what they did the Ukrainians. There will not be forgiveness.”