Light in the Trench

On the positions of the motorized infantry battalion of the 24th Separate Mechanized Brigade named after King Danylo, near Chasiv Yar, day and night blur together with explosions and brief moments of silence. The infantry here fortify themselves in narrow corridors carved between layers of earth and timber, catch their breath and prepare for battle.

Today, it’s nearly impossible for journalists to reach positions like these — Reporters is publishing images by photographer and serviceman Oleh Petrasiuk.

In the dugout, a muted red light glows. The air smells of earth and metal. You hear the infantrymen’s jokes, quiet conversations over a cigarette and a tin cup of tea. Their daily life is simple and unguarded: steam rising from a pan where fatigue slowly melts away, feet warmed by a trench candle and the soft purring of a cat rescued from the ruins of a shattered house.

The candle warms their feet, lights up the trench walls reminding that even underground, there is room for life. Alongside all this, up above — kilometres of fibre-optic lines from enemy drones and a treeline shredded by shrapnel.

Here, on the front line, amid a destroyed forest and scorched earth, the soldiers build their positions, reinforce them, maintain communication — and, ultimately, take the fight. Despite the cold, exhaustion and constant fire, in rare moments of respite, the infantrymen think of home.

These are not just photographs of war, but fragments of the soldiers’ lives — traces of humanity preserved where so many forces try to break it. Life survives here, a few metres underground, in the warmth of a candle, in a brief joke between shellings.

Here, where the trench light flickers and the Ukrainian infantry stands its ground, we all hold on.