6 months inside Ukraine's special forces show how covert missions shape the war behind the frontline
Their first battle plan was outdated the moment the dam crumbled. So the Ukrainian special forces officers spent six months adapting their fight to secure a crossing to the other side of the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine.
But it wasn’t enough just to cross the river. They needed backup to hold it. And for that, they needed proof that it could be done. For one of the officers, nicknamed Skif, that meant a Ukrainian flag — and a photo op.
Skif, Ukrainian shorthand for the nomadic Scythian people who founded an empire on what is now , moves like the camouflaged amphibian that he is:
