After the flooding of the Dnieper delta, soldiers must start from scratch in an unrecognisable landscape. Wendell23 reports for 1843 magazine
and causing toxic oil leaks. “The landscape has changed,” a fisherman told me. “Where there were docks, there are now beaches. Where we used to catch fish in the reeds, there are piles of sand.”
The four men on this team traversed the river in a dinghy at midnight, carrying all the supplies they needed. The crossing takes around ten minutes. During this time, the team are at their most vulnerable. On the first morning of his mission, Beaver looked out over the desolation the flood had wrought. He showed me a video clip on his phone: warped wooden houses silted up to their windowsills, torn corrugated-metal roofing, half-buried wooden steps, tree branches, flotsam and debris strewn over a mudscape.
The banks of the mighty Dnieper lie out of bounds. The streets leading down the hill towards it are exposed to Russian positions on the other side. Here, as it reaches the Black Sea, the river forms a delta, carved with channels and rivulets, and fans out several kilometres wide. Sand-bar islands are clustered with dachas and surrounded by marshland.
Before the flood, the Ukrainians had slowly been driving the Russians off the islands. Beaver fought in Donbas in eastern Ukraine before the full-scale invasion in 2022 and was awarded a medal for his leadership in the fight for the Dnieper delta. But he could tell the Russians were learning from their adversaries how to drop grenades from drones and jam signals, as well as devising methods of their own.
South Africa Latest News, South Africa Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Ukraine busts bot farm spreading Russian propagandaUkraine busts bot farm spreading Russian infowar propaganda and fraud
Read more »
Scots soldier in Ukraine has shrapnel lodged in throat from Russian bombA brave Scots soldier fighting on the frontline in Ukraine says he is “lucky to be alive” after he was hit by shrapnel in a Russian bomb blast
Read more »
Terrifying clip shows moment Scots soldier in Ukraine hit by Russian bombTerrifying footage has captured the moment a brave Scots soldier fighting on the frontline in Ukraine was hit by a bomb in a Russian attack
Read more »
Oligarch challenges Russian sanctions at High CourtThe Russian-born oil tycoon says his family's lives have been disrupted and his reputation shattered.
Read more »