Front line – In Orikhiv, in the trenches with Ukrainian soldiers

– In Orikhiv, in the trenches with the Ukrainian soldiers

A few hundred meters from the Russian positions, a brigade defends this lock which protects the town of Zaporijjia. Some have been living there for three months, in the mud and under the shells.

Margaux Benn – Orikhiv (Le Figaro)

Posted today at 08:27

Dmytro, a 42-year-old Ukrainian soldier, on the front line near Orikhiv, May 29, 2022. His group has been living in the trenches for more than three months.

MARGAUX BENN/LE FIGARO

On this Sunday at the end of May, the only soul that seems to populate the town of Orikhiv is a white cat wandering among the rubble. The painted wooden houses and the flowery gates are, for the most part, destroyed. The others seem abandoned, and will soon be destroyed in turn by Russian artillery.

While the latter is concentrating its operations in the Donbass, which it controls for the most part and which it wants to completely seize, it is also intensifying its assaults in the south-east of the country. The Orikhiv area, squeezed between the approaching fronts, is the last Ukrainian lock protecting the industrial city of Zaporijjia, a few dozen kilometers away.