gunfire but the team is split up after the first strike, and some of us are left exposed, out in the open. gunfire he breathes heavily whoa! explosion whoa! that shell hits just a few metres away. dima and my colleague darren conway call us towards the trench.
every waking hour in ukraine. a day on the zero line can feel like a lifetime. but the cover of darkness brings dima relief. ..for now. in the gloom beyond lies a constant threat. russia could attack again at any moment. and while its guns are silent, dima shows us the path out. distant explosion but dima will stand his ground here. and he s not alone. a shift change brings fresh reserves to the front. for the defenders of donbas, this is more thanjust the fight of their lives. their country is at stake, but so too is the right to live free for generations of ukrainians
a couple of casualties here in the last week. he breathes heavily you all right? yeah. keep down. - there s no time to pause for breath. dima leads the way to better cover. these few logs offer some protection, but it s already packed tight in here. explosion that was even closer. they grab every inch of shelter they can. explosion and when the next distant boom might end in a direct hit, it s hard not to flinch.
that we went through. and in that particular set of trenches down in the south of donbas, the men have been dug in there for about seven months. and actually, as i was going through that area, they were digging the trenches deeper. and the reason they were doing that was because they re facing relentless russian fire every single day. and the russians are throwing everything at them, whether it s automatic grenade fire, artillery fire, tank fire, grads everything is being fired at that particular unit. and they re saying that whereas they do respond, they can in no way match the kind of firepower that the russians have. does dima think russia could win here? translation: it s a good question. this question does need to be addressed to the senior military. oh, that was close. later in that report, dima said to me, the russians have warehouses full of these shells. and certainly russia has lost its capability in some of the most sophisticated weaponry.
dima is only 22 years old. he is escorting us forward. he has just told me the village over here is half held by the ukrainians and half held by the russians. explosion. artillery fire. that s two russian shells that have just come in. i think it s tank fire. the safest place for these men is in the trenches. and quentin sommerville is with us now. quentin, we got a flavour of it there in that clip. what is life like down at trench level? well, frank, it s very muddy and very dangerous. we ve just moved from winter into spring, so there was this thick mud all over every battlefront