Tuesday, February 3, 2015

On Front Lines in Ukraine, Rebels Are Upbeat and Eager to Advance

 

The rebel commander casually led the way down a muddy trench, shoulder high with shaved walls of moist earth, his boots slapping at wooden slabs sunk into the muck. Finally, he reached an earth-covered observation post.

“There, you see,” he said, pointing a gnarled index finger, its brown nail twisted after 30 years in the coal mines. A few hundred yards away, across an icy lake and a field, were some scattered office buildings, close enough to count the windowpanes.

“There are the Ukrainians,” said the commander, whose real name is Pavel and who asked that his surname not be used, for fear of reprisals. His fighters call him Batya, an endearment for father in Russian and a common nom de guerre for rebel commanders in eastern Ukraine.

The smack of artillery fire rose from a village in the valley below, captured just a few days earlier by Batya’s rebels. A nearby crack, a tense pause, then a distant thud somewhere beyond the lake.

More @ The New York Times

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