Braving Russian shelling, three women walked for several hours from their homes on the front line in the southern Ukrainian village of Kamianske on a recent morning to collect supplies from a humanitarian drop-off point in the village of Stepnohirsk, about five miles away.
Svitlana, Lesya and Natasha live in the so-called gray zone, a buffer area between the Ukrainian and Russian positions on the Zaporizhzhia front in southern Ukraine.
The front line has changed little since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, when Kyiv’s forces stopped the Russian advance by blowing up a bridge in Kamianske.
Russian troops are ranged south of the village, and trade artillery shells day and night with Ukrainian troops positioned to the north and east.
The front line area has come under increasingly heavy bombardment since January as Russian forces prepared to defend against the long-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Persons:
Lesya, Natasha
Locations:
Ukrainian, Kamianske, Stepnohirsk, Ukraine, Russia