On Donetsk’s ‘life or death’ highway with the Khyzhak brigade – photo essay

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“Holy yeah! Yeaaaah! Done!”

Booooooom.

“Easy peasy lemon squeezy!” Dzhango from the Khyzhak brigade shouts in English. He has just shot down a Russian FPV drone.

Dzhango firing to shoot down a Russian FPV-drone.

A drone in flames and smoke lies on a road.

The silhouette of a man with head torch in a passageway.

Dzhango loads a magazine while brushing his teeth in the dugout before the daily shift.

Inside the dugout of the mobile firing crew of Khyzhak brigade.

Young and Dzhango sit on the ground, one petting a dog.

A small moving target that wants to kill you is a challenge with an asterisk.

I don’t manage to photograph the drone above us, but I’m glad that Dzhango shoots more accurately. The normal rule is for everyone else is to stay under cover and not stick your head out.

The tasks of Dzhango’s mobile fire group are different – to stand watch and shoot down Russian drones.

The H20 highway runs from the frontline city of Kramatorsk to the battlefield in Kostyantynivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. The last road always becomes either the “road of life” or the “road of death”. Drone warfare is deadly simple – everything flies toward the road; any movement is a target. Us too.

The road is covered with scars: FPV drones, cluster munitions, artillery, glide bombs – a map of modern war. Pears on the ground are entangled with fibre-optic cable – this harvest will not be gathered. Anti-drone nets fall on to a highway strewn with burned-out ground robots, pickup trucks, and armoured vehicles. Donetsk is crumbling before my eyes.

A Russian fibre optic drone flies above the mobile firing crew.

Dzhango loads a magazine during the shift.

The fighters of the Khyzhak brigade are police patrol officers who joined up. The five of them share a dugout with Zhuzha, a dog that came to them in search of food and cuddles. A shower, a washbasin, a kitchen, even a plasma TV playing Michael Jackson’s They Don’t Care About Us – a parallel universe built underground. The peace sign on Jackson’s T-shirt contrasts with the sound of loading magazines.

Borya, a shooter from the mobile firing unit of Khyzhak brigade. His face is illuminated by the sun as he stands by a tree.

Soldiers talking to each other under trees.

Above, the kill zone, which lives by its own rules: food and water are delivered by ground robots, via electric scooters, or through the sky while Ukrainian Vampire drones carry supply packages above.

“We try as much as possible to shoot down whatever is flying toward us. We understand that it’s someone’s ground robot, or someone’s car, or even – someone’s life,” Dzhango tells me. He is 31, from Chernivtsi, which is more than 1,000km away.

In the morning he talks to his family on a video call – on the screen there’s a beach, white sand, colourful umbrellas, his son – a parallel world. “What I miss most is my family, my child … living through the coolest moments of his childhood from a distance. His first baby teeth fell out! And I wanted to pull them out with a string, as my father did.”

His son knows exactly what Dzhango’s job looks like and asks: “Bring me an FPV!”

Dzhango does not bring FPVs home.

His son’s birthday is tattooed on his right arm. On the left – a long scar and a tattoo: “Jump off the cliff and wings will grow.” It is a reminder of his father’s advice and of a police shift in Chernivtsi, when he was wounded – three bullets – and his 22-year-old colleague, Taisiia Tataryn, was killed. After a long rehabilitation, he joined the combat unit.

Young and Dzhango pass by a gutter scooter.

Fibre optic cable mixed with pears on the ground in Donetsk region.

Every morning we walk the same streets and tree lines, but the landscape changes – fresh craters, fallen trees, smoke on the horizon. The remains of drones and munitions form a map of the area – here a Molniya, a Russian kamikaze drone, is stuck in a tree.

The body of a civilian covered with a plastic bag near the road to Kostyantynivka.

Here – since the beginning of July – a dead civilian has been lying under a black plastic bag. A little further on – a soldier from a neighbouring unit, his body will be evacuated in a couple of days. In the tree line – a burned scooter, an FPV strike; a fighter from another unit was evacuated, but the soldiers will say that he died in hospital that night.

“Something’s flying!” – within seconds the guys start shooting.

Dzhango’s comrade, 41-year-old Young, associates every successful shoot-down with adrenaline and a rush. He served almost eight years in the police and almost two years in the Khyzhak brigade.

Young, a shooter from Khyzhak brigade, on duty with the mobile firing crew.

Young sitting down with his back leaning on a tree trunk.

On his very first combat mission, two small fragments entered his body; he calls it luck. On the next one – an FPV drone hit the side window of his armoured vehicle – the shaped charge flew inside. “A flash behind me – out of the corner of my eye I see that something exploded inside. Sparks, smoke, you can’t see anything, it’s impossible to breathe,” he recalls.

The silhouette of Young against a cloudy sky.

One of his brothers-in-arms died instantly; a second was seriously wounded: “I guess the shaped charge passed through him, and then hit the floor where another fighter was sitting … And it exploded between his legs.”

Now his task is to make sure another FPV does not reach his comrades’ vehicle.

The only intact building among the erased skeletons of houses is the church.

Dzhango lighting a candle in the damaged church.

A holy image inside the damaged church near the road to Kostyantynivka, Donetsk region.

The eye from the holy icon in the damaged church.

A blue eye looks out. Some of the saints are on the floor, others remain by the altar. Dzhango lights a candle – according to tradition, a candle is lit either for the health of the living or for the repose of those no longer here. Half an hour later, the artillery shelling will begin, and the church will come under fire. A week later I receive a short message: “The church burned down.”

While waiting for the rotation out, we sit along the highway on scattered chairs and stools under the dense cover of the trees.

Tsygan from Khyzhak brigade is driving soldiers for rotation on the road towards Kostyantynivka, Donetsk region.

Soldiers from Khyzhak brigade after the rotation.

Dzhango plays Madonna’s Music from his phone, then Justin Timberlake’s Mirrors, and dances a little. From time to time he pauses – to stop and listen whether something is flying.

Then he turns the music back on and sings along again.

Even in abnormal circumstances, inside war – at least you can always choose the soundtrack.