Opinion

‘Is This Real Life?’: Inside the Ukraine War’s Gray Zone

War is absurd sometimes.
‘Is This Real Life?’: Inside the Ukraine War’s Gray Zone
Ukrainian soldiers at the ferry crossing in Lobacheve keep an eye on separatist troops on the opposite shore. Nolan Peterson/The Daily Signal
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LOBACHEVE, Ukraine—War is absurd sometimes.

The SUV clambered along the pothole-speckled dirt road, which was now more mud than dirt in the wake of melting snow and spring rains.

The driver, a 30-year-old Ukrainian soldier named Andriy, held a pistol in his steering hand as he navigated through no man’s land near the separatist-controlled city of Luhansk. He had a green balaclava pulled down over his face.

Another soldier sat in the front passenger’s seat, and sitting beside me in the back was a 19-year-old woman, a civilian volunteer named Ivona Kostyna.

Ukrainian military vehicles never travel alone through no man’s land due to the ever present threat of ambush. So a pickup truck painted in camouflage trailed us. A soldier manned a machine gun mounted in the back bed, and five other armed soldiers rode in the cab.

As we approached the village of Staryi Aidar, a horse appeared. It was brown and looked beautiful as it galloped alongside the SUV. No one said a word; we just watched.

The horse cut toward the SUV. We could hear it whinnying and huffing as it crossed from side to side, licking and biting at the windows.

“Its mother was killed by artillery,” the soldier in the front passenger’s seat finally said. No one replied.

The horse trailed us for a few minutes. Andriy honked the horn to shoo it away, but the horse wouldn’t leave. Eventually Andriy stopped, threw open his door, and shouted something in Russian.

As the horse trotted away, Kostyna said: “Is this real life?”

Colorblind

We drove through the no man’s land separating Ukrainian and combined Russian-separatist military positions near the separatist-controlled city of Luhansk. The soldiers called it the “gray zone.”

The early March sky was overcast, and the day was drawing to a close. The fading light dimmed the few colors of this desolate landscape. Many trees were still leafless, and the fields of grass were still brown from the winter. Bare earth, if there, had turned to mud.

The sun probably was setting, but no colors of sunset suggested it. The world just got grayer and darker.

Ukrainian military vehicles never travel alone through no man's land; soldiers are always armed and ready to fight off an ambush. (Nolan Peterson/The Daily Signal)
Ukrainian military vehicles never travel alone through no man's land; soldiers are always armed and ready to fight off an ambush. Nolan Peterson/The Daily Signal
Nolan Peterson
Nolan Peterson
Author
Nolan Peterson is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and an independent defense consultant based in Kyiv and Washington. A former U.S. Air Force Special Operations pilot and veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Peterson has more than nine years of experience reporting from Ukraine's front lines.
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