Olexander sits in the warm light of the kitchen with a cigarette between his fingers. His wife’s name is tattooed. “Come in, come,” he says, shaking Yevhen to smoke with him. He and his wife Natalia decided to let the soldiers stay free of charge in their homes. Vitalii, their own sons, comes naturally to offer some warmth to Yevhen’s unit, a place to rest, a place to rest, a place to rest, a place to rest.
Natalia prepares potato meatballs for her husband and soldiers.
The soldiers are eating and chatting with the old couple, but their work is not over yet. They prepare equipment and upload photos and videos collected from the drone. During the evening, the enemy Shahed Drones near the center of Ukraine set out.
A laptop screen, a laptop screen late at night, illuminates Serhiy’s face while lying on a sleeping bag, watching a movie. Yevhen looks at Serhiy’s shoulder while smoking. “This is my movie, or he says.
Orum I know, ”Serhiy answers with a grin.
Serhiy, Yevhen (left) and Dmytro on the laptop with the background, at the house of Oleksander and Natalia
Before the war, he was a yevhen actor. Again, he says “a different life” or “peace life .. He divided the war life into two unrecognized. “The director is now in the army,” he pointed out the screen. Then, “This actor was in the army. He was killed in Kupans.” A pause. “And he died too.”
Yevhen joined the army as soon as the full -scale invasion began. “When the war ends, I want to be an actor again, or he says. “But even if I could, I don’t know if I could shoot a movie now. I have closed my mind from some things in the war.
Yevhen now starred in the 2021 film “Rhino ile with Serhii Filimonov, a lieutenant in the famous Da Vinci Wolves battalion.
In the morning, the green minibus accelerates freshly excavated trenches, barbed wire curls and the lines of the dragon teeth to the stretch of the trees where the shelter of the unit is stored. The trees are shaking in the cold wind.
Men are moving along their usual routines, only a fourth member Volodymyr today. Today, the drone carries a bomb, which changes the launch procedure. It can explode a burden of mistakes, so Serhiy brings together a trebuchet that works with a car battery to safely throw it into the air.
Yevhen’s unit typically compares the drones with rocket -guided hand grenade war titles, but today they use disintegration shells. These were recovered from the unexploded Russian cluster ammunition rockets. Yevhen Güler said, “The Russians sent them here and did not work. No problem – we will recycle them and send them back to repayment.”
The cut parts of the RPGs and the scattered explosives are found in the garden where the unit prepares the ammunition.
In the van, a red warning along the screen flashes – slip bombs. A single shear bomb can balance an eight -storey building. The first two land on the horizon by sending black mushroom clouds. Then the air is the roofs above and the third hit the area next to them. The explosion throws dirt and shrapnel in all directions. The shock wave branches rush and men run into shelters and take a shrapnel shower.
Silence. Then Serhiy climbs, brushing dust from his jacket. When the shift bombs explode, he gets a rough shrapnel piece that descends less than a meter from where Yevhen stopped. The minibus is examining. “Are the wheels drilled?”
Yevhen is looking. “NO.”
No discussion anymore. After years of fight, close calls become routine. The men return to their work without a word. Serhiy controls the tension tension. Approved Dmytro drone systems. Yevhen shakes one last head.
“Three, two, one – damn.”
Serhiy and Volodymyr carry the Trebuchet to the edge of the area, where it will be used to throw the Pugac drone into the air.
Trebuhet stands out and shoots the drone into the sky. Fortunately, the clouds are high enough today. The screen shows a battlefield that has been carved until the war for months. Below, artillery shells explode along the front and send thick smoke clouds to the sky.
“We will hit the target, Ya says Yevhen.
Serhiy shruggings. “We will see what will happen.”
“You’re not romantic.”
I am a realist.
Men are laughing.
On the screen, the target appears – a trench line stuck under a sparse tree line. A red square with a crusade appears to be locked in the position. The drone slows down, stabilizes for decrease. The screen, “seconds to fall: 3, 2, 1” and then “the bomb fell.”
As the bomb falls, it turns slightly, shrinks into the following view and then fills an orange fire ball screen. The guys barely react.
The drone does not return, they begin to prepare for the next launch. Tomorrow will be the same – more drone launch, another long day spent to look at the screens and count back to the effect. The job is endless, but here is on the front, no one expects it to be otherwise. As long as they manage to survive, there is no great conclusion, no moment of certainty. Just the next task, the next drone flight and the ongoing war.
