NEAR MARINKA, Ukraine – Russian forces were so close that Boghdan, a Ukrainian soldier with the 79th Air Assault Brigade, could see them digging in.

Digging is the thing to do in this desolate strip of scorched earth in eastern Ukraine in order not to die.

Boghdan wants the Russians dead.

He then raised a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, ducked over the sandbags fitted to the edge of his trench, and fired.

Digging stopped.

Moments later, the Russian soldiers unleashed a barrage of automatic fire.

Then everything fell silent.

“We silenced them,” Boghdan said with satisfaction as he made his way to a deeper underground bunker.

“I just need to get some coffee.”

This is life in what the Ukrainian military calls the zero line position – the forwardmost end of the front lines – with the Russians barely 300 meters away.

In mud and muck, with chunks of frozen earth giving way to thick, sloppy clay, there are many ways to kill and be killed.

Russian helicopters regularly strafe Ukrainian trenches.

The Russians bomb Ukrainian positions with heavy artillery miles away and send small bands of soldiers to try and infiltrate Ukrainian trenches in the middle of the night.

Powerful remote controlled planes fly over the trenches performing surveillance and small tasks quadcopters They throw improvised explosives into the trenches.

Russian assaults can include armored vehicles and tanks, or they can come in waves of infantry trying to storm a trench.

The Ukrainians counterattack strongly.

And in this area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe front, near the destroyed city of Marinka in the Donetsk region, they largely frustrated all Russian attempts to conquer new lands for a year.

The New York Times had access to soldiers of the 79th Brigade, at the edge of the front line, to better understand how soldiers who are close enough to see the Russians through the torn lands of Ukraine they are determined to defend.

Soldiers’ full names are kept secret for security reasons.

Despite heavy fighting over the winter, Russia has captured only about 400 square kilometers of the entire Eastern Front since September, according to a report released in February by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

Visiting the trenches, it becomes apparent why breaking through entrenched and fortified lines is deadly work.

But maintaining land also comes at a huge cost.

Two days before the Times visit, the 79th Brigade had suffered heavy casualties, the toll of a incessant fighting evident in his dark, bloodshot eyes.

The troops said they were willing to die.

This is a war of survival, they said, not just for themselves, but for their nation.

The 79th is one of Ukraine’s elite units and its forces have fought the Russians in the steppes, through the forests and in ruined cities.

Now, the soldiers are accused of holding a position about 15 miles from the city of Donetsk, a stronghold of Russia and its proxy forces since 2014.

The town of Marinka no longer really exists beyond a point on a map, abandoned by some 9,000 residents before the war.

It has long since joined the list of places ravaged by Russian forces, whose buildings have either been razed to the ground or reduced to charred and empty husks.

But for the Ukrainians Marinka’s defense remained.

After failing in his attempt to break through the Ukrainian lines For nearly a year, the Russians have recently overhauled their tactics, resorting to small raiding parties trying to create gaps in Ukrainian defenses that they can try to exploit, according to a Russian manual captured by the Ukrainians.

The manual details how assault teams of 12 to 15 members can be broken up into battlegroups of just three people supported by additional firepower to infiltrate a Ukrainian trench.

Ukrainian soldiers started calling these groups “meat”due to the high casualty rate.

Ukrainian fighters who witnessed the attacks up close say the Russians often send a first wave of infantry storm a trench, knowing they are in danger of being killed.

Russian observers take note of Ukrainian firing positions and unleash a barrage of artillery and mortar fire against those emplacements.

A second wave of Russian infantry then rushes in, trying to infiltrate the trench.

As in the first war

This is a brutal tactic that would have been recognized by millions of soldiers huddled in trenches more than a century ago, during the WWI.

As a French officer, Captain André Laffargue, pointed out at the time in a pamphlet entitled “Attack in Trench Warfare”, breaking through well-defended trenches comes at a staggering cost.

“Infantry unit to disappear into the fiery furnace like handfuls of straw,” he wrote.

To reach the zero line outside Marinka, Ukrainian soldiers must cross a network of trenches in the rear, through gaps left for tanks and through destroyed villages.

The trenches are built with curves contain an explosion in the event of a falling mortar or shell.

In some places, nets and brambles are placed to hide the outlines.

Ukrainian soldiers, intimately familiar with geography, have observers constantly alert to threats.

In quiet moments – and even in the most fought-over corners of Ukraine a lot of time is spent waiting for the next paroxysm of violence – soldiers eat from cans and stand guard over what they call the “Ukrainian war cats“who patrol the trenches for rats.

Although the front line stretches more than 600 miles, both armies have dug thousands of miles of trenches, tiered so that if the fence falls, soldiers can retreat to safer positions.

In addition to small-scale assaults, Russia has been trying for weeks to break through Ukrainian lines with more comprehensive attacks that include armored columns.

Shortly after the Times’ visit, reconnaissance units from the 79th Brigade detected movements of Russian tanks and armored vehicles in the vicinity.

The Russians tried to go around the flanking trenches to “launch a mass assault“, according to a statement from the brigade.

But they were surprised, and the paratroopers using Javelin anti-tank missiles damaged several Russian tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, the demolition captured in video released by the brigade.

Back in the trenches, the soldiers know the Russians will keep coming.

And they say they are prepared for the day when they themselves will go on the attack.