The Christian Science Monitor

For Ukrainians on the front line, Russian threat is just part of life

Andrei Vitaliovych peers through a handheld periscope over the top of a trench wall at a line of barren trees some 350 yards away. The junior sergeant with the Ukrainian army explains that the trees mark the front-line position of Russian-backed separatist fighters near this mining town of 13,000 residents in southeastern Ukraine.

“When the wind is right, you hear them talking,” he says, stepping down into the trench and sinking ankle-deep into mud as thick as clay. “They probably hear us sometimes.”

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