‘There were many of them, and the grass was tall’: 505 nights under Russian fire
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| Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor Ukrainian infantry machine gunner Yurii Melnyk of the 30th Separate Mechanized Brigade has been recommended for the nation’s top honor by his commanders. Loading...
Aug. 05, 2026, 2:40 p.m. ET | Sloviansk, Ukraine
Of all his 505 nights under near-constant Russian fire, this was one of the toughest for Ukrainian infantryman Yurii Melnyk. It began with a routine Russian drone and artillery attack on his front-line post.
“There was a guy, a young guy … he was very nervous and we tried to calm him down, but he was afraid that he would be killed in that place,” says the soft-spoken machine gunner, whose career making tombstone memorials was diverted by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
As their dugout came under direct fire, the young soldier and two others suddenly thought it would be safer to run.
Many soldiers in Ukraine are spending long periods on the front lines, as Ukraine struggles against Russia’s numerical advantage. One infantryman, in the trenches for nearly a year and a half straight, tells us his story.
“Just when they stepped out, the three of them were killed by a drone,” says Mr. Melnyk. “We realized the Russians are coming for us.” They waited a few minutes, then raced to another hideout.
“It was nighttime, and five minutes later we saw five flashlights approaching our [previous] position,” says Mr. Melnyk. “If we had waited any longer, I wouldn’t be sitting here, talking to you.”
Even by Ukrainian standards, this soldier’s unbroken chain of nearly 1 1/2 years in the trenches is especially long, with Russian positions sometimes just 20 strides away. On July 30 Mr. Melnyk was awarded the Ukraine Order “for Courage” (3rd degree) – his seventh medal. His commanders have applied for the nation’s top honor for him, the Hero of Ukraine.
Mr. Melnyk doesn’t know how many advancing Russians he killed with his 7.62 caliber PKM light machine gun. “Who is counting?” he asks, speaking with other members of the 30th Separate Mechanized Brigade, in a shaded grove of trees at a rear position in eastern Ukraine. “There were many of them, and the grass was tall.”
But the experience of Mr. Melnyk, of monthslong tours in the trenches, has become increasingly common in Ukraine as the war has evolved.
Russian missile and drone strikes on Kyiv and the surrounding region overnight into Wednesday killed 17 people and wounded 44 others, according to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He’s calling on allies to provide more air defense interceptors, especially against ballistic missiles.
Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor In eastern Ukraine and the Donbas region, anti-drone netting is strung up over main roads and towns. On the front line, ubiquitous drones have expanded what’s often referred to as the “kill zone” into a 20-mile-wide swath all along the front, which means that for soldiers getting to and from front-line positions is often the most dangerous part of any mission.
Ukraine’s forces are vastly outnumbered by Russian troops, so those perils, and the lack of rotation, have also affected morale and complicated recruitment efforts. Ukrainian men between the ages of 22 and 60 can’t leave the country. Mobilization teams often pluck them off the streets, or at train stations, and send them directly to training camps.
Official estimates indicate some 1.6 to 2 million men in Ukraine have not updated their military registration details, or are wanted for evading conscription. Official statistics are classified, but the accumulated number of open cases for absence or desertion since 2022 is estimated to be as high as 300,000.
The war has “changed absolutely” because of drones, says Bohdan Mykolaichuk, who was in the infantry in 2022 and 2023, and is a lawyer with the Pryncyp organization, which lobbies for the rights of soldiers and veterans. His brothers-in-arms still fighting in the eastern Donbas region “say there is no front line, it doesn’t exist.”
There are “unique” Ukrainian soldiers he knows, who maintain high levels of motivation, and are tough, experienced survivors.
“But all the other guys that I know, they’re exhausted, weary, they maybe cannot feel anything,” says Mr. Mykolaichuk, speaking in Kyiv. “All they want is to see their families again, and to end this whole thing.”
Reforms in the military contract system, which offer a half-year break after 10 months of combat, have yet to yield many more recruits. Ukraine’s recently ousted commander in chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, issued an order this summer to impose a two-month limit on a single position.
“I know this doesn’t work … because sometimes people would rather sit longer on their [relatively safe] position than come out, to walk by foot for 6 or 10 miles under the open sky,” says Mr. Mykolaichuk.
Iryna Rybakova/Press Service of the 93rd Kholodnyi Yar Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces/Reuters Servicemen of the 93rd Kholodnyi Yar Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces fire a multiple launch rocket system toward Russian troops near the front-line city of Kramatorsk, Ukraine, Aug. 4, 2026. On the front line near Kramatorsk, Mr. Melnyk says he would have preferred to stay at the front, but adds, “if so many Russians weren’t swarming” his position.
When he began his front-line odyssey, there were 32 Ukrainian soldiers in his unit. By the time they withdrew in May – surrounded on three sides by Russian troops, under daily attack – their number had become five.
During their withdrawal they captured two Russian soldiers, then picked up three more Ukrainians in a dugout. In the final stage, under heavy attack, those eight Ukrainians were carved down again, to just three survivors – who still held the two Russian captives.
Still, there were moments of triumph, Mr. Melnyk says, such as when a Russian company of 100 men attacked relentlessly for four days, during a heavy fog, when drones…
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