Dispatch from Ukraine: Why U.S. military veterans are risking their lives in the most dangerous pockets of Ukraine
holliesmckay.substack.com
BAHKMUT, Ukraine – The overhead whistle. The uncomfortable few seconds of waiting and silence. Then the crash: searing, reverberating, the smell of burning buildings and visions of someone else's death. This is what it is like to still live in the Eastern Ukraine city of Bakhmut, wedged into the Donbas oblast of Donetsk, 450 miles from the relative civilization of the capital Kyiv. There are no communication signals; there are no lights, no power, no heat to counter the freezing temperatures, and the first flutters of snow turning black on the mud-lathered pavements. There is nobody to collect the piles of trash mounting on burned and blistered street corners. Every structure has been fissured, ripped apart, wracked by destruction.
Dispatch from Ukraine: Why U.S. military veterans are risking their lives in the most dangerous pockets of Ukraine
Dispatch from Ukraine: Why U.S. military…
Dispatch from Ukraine: Why U.S. military veterans are risking their lives in the most dangerous pockets of Ukraine
BAHKMUT, Ukraine – The overhead whistle. The uncomfortable few seconds of waiting and silence. Then the crash: searing, reverberating, the smell of burning buildings and visions of someone else's death. This is what it is like to still live in the Eastern Ukraine city of Bakhmut, wedged into the Donbas oblast of Donetsk, 450 miles from the relative civilization of the capital Kyiv. There are no communication signals; there are no lights, no power, no heat to counter the freezing temperatures, and the first flutters of snow turning black on the mud-lathered pavements. There is nobody to collect the piles of trash mounting on burned and blistered street corners. Every structure has been fissured, ripped apart, wracked by destruction.