Start of the end? Ukraine’s Front-Line Soldiers Eye Russia talks to Hope

Large plumes are visible on a screen that offers a live feed from Ukrainian drones that float over the edge of the eastern city of Pokrovsk, one of the most intense front lines in Ukraine.

A few seconds earlier, Ukrainian artillery strikes Russian positions, places where we had seen Russian soldiers passing while they are trying to move on to an important road to Pokrovsk.

At least one Russian soldier is injured, possibly dead after the strike.

It is horrifying to view the live images. It drives the bloody consequences of the war that Russia started, in which hundreds of thousands have been killed so far, a “never -ending massacre” as US President Donald Trump calls it.

We have been converted into a command center in a rural house for the 155th mechanized brigade of the Ukrainian army. It is a few kilometers from Front-Line artillery positions.

The size of the destruction that we completely flattened on the scenes, houses and buildings is much greater than what we saw six months ago.

It is proof of the fierce battle that has been fought in recent months to defend Pokrovsk, a crucial transport hub in the Donetsk region.

This week there is careful optimism, even with skeptical soldiers who have witnessed the hope that a ceasefire will be poured over and over again, because diplomatic efforts from the US, Europe, Turkey and others have pushed Russia and Ukraine to lead conversations for the first time in three years.

“I think something should happen, because Russia was the first to insist on these conversations. I mean, since 2022, they have refused to go into contact,” says an officer who wants to be referred to his call sign “Kozak”.

“I want to believe that this would be the beginning of the end of the war.

“But now I see, we have been successful in destroying their back positions and their supply lines. Russia does not have the same power and power that it had in the beginning. So I think something will happen.”

Yurii, 37, used to work in a technology company before the full invasion of Russia in Ukraine. “She (Russia and Ukraine) have to start talking. American soldiers, we want this war to end. But it is important to remember that we cannot stop because we have not started it,” he says.

He looks up at the screen and sees Russian soldiers moving again. He and his colleagues calculate the coordinates of their positions and pass them on to their artillery unit.

We drive from the command center to the artillery position, on mud tracks that run through a wide vastness of open fields. Climbed mud flies in the air, our car slides and slides while we move as quickly as possible. The speed is a mitigation against drones strikes, which have a greatly increased fatalities for both Russia and Ukraine, because they were used in large numbers in 2023.

And war technology continues to evolve. Now there is a new threat – drones equipped with a real fiber optic cable that rolls out while they fly. “We cannot detect or neutralize them, so there are probably many more drones in the area at the moment than we know,” says Yurii.

While we enter the artillery position hidden under trees and bushes, soldiers draw all the gun. It is a French made self -driving artillery pole called the “Caesar”. Scores have been used in Ukraine since the start of the war and France is trying to increase production.

“I am very impressed by the accuracy and we can use a large number of ammunition. The most important thing is that it is very fast to fight. It is much more effective than the old Soviet equipment that I used,” says Kozak.

Ukrainian soldiers fire four rounds, each sending out a deafening sound. From around us we also hear the sound of incoming shells. The battle is raging further.

“As you can hear, there is a wave of attacks from the enemy and we need a lot of ammunition to suppress that. We hope that our international partners can give us as much ammunition as possible, because if we have to start choosing priority and non-priority goals, the enemy will be successful,” says Kozak.

We ask the soldiers how they think about suggestions that Ukraine should make concessions, that it might have to give up land to secure peace.

“It is painful to hear that. Even I want to go home to my family. My daughter is eight and I miss her so bad. But we have to be strong. I don’t believe that if we give up some territory, they will stop. They will return and start again,” says Yurii.

“A person who did not come here, who has not felt the consequences of Russian aggression, who say armchair commentators that you can give up and everything will be over. They will never understand how many brothers and friends we have lost. We should not give up a single meter from our country,” says Kozak.

The costs that Ukraine has paid to defend his country is visible everywhere, the most acute in the pictures of smiling, young soldiers placed by the side of highways, on commemorative walls in central city celebrations and digging freshly dug in the land in rows and rows.

Yana Stepanenko lovingly buys her son’s favorite delicacies – a cup of steaming hot chocolate and a chocolateel.

Then she drives to a cemetery in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia and places them neatly through the 22-year-old Vladislav’s grave. She and her daughter, 13-year-old Nicole, sweep the grave with wet tissues. It didn’t take long, they break into battle with each other’s arms.

Vladislav was a drone operator at the Ukrainian army. He was killed on February 21 this year in the fight in a Russian strike.

For Yana, the news of direct conversations does not bring hope.

“It seems to me that this war is eternal. Of course I hope they will find a solution. Because people die here and there (in Russia). But Putin is greedy. His hunger is insatiable,” says Yana.

Parts of the Zaporizhzhia region are currently occupied by Russia, the front line less than 40 miles from the city. But Russia has demanded control over the entire regions of Zaporizhia, Luhansk, Donetsk and Kherson as part of a peace agreement.

“Really not. I want to live in Ukraine, not in Russia. We have seen what they do under occupation, what they did in places like Bucha – their cruelty and torture,” says Yana. “Can you imagine that they have not even saved this cemetery,” she adds, pointing to a large crater in the neighborhood where a bomb exploded a few months ago.

Tears roll over her eyes, she adds.

“I hope that my child died for nothing. That there will still be a victory and the whole of Ukraine will be free.”

Additional reporting by Ixogen Anderson, Volodymyr Lozhko, Anastasiia Levchenko, Sanjay Gangly