On a spring morning in Ukraine, the checkpoint is busy. A green anti-drone net waves gently above our car. The soldier finally lets me and my translator, Alexei, proceed into “the Red Zone”, a term applied to areas of Ukraine that are under frequent Russian attack. We are heading to Marhanets, a small city in the southern Dnipropetrovsk district, which literally means “Manganese” on account of its mining history. The mine is sure to play its part in Trump’s new mineral deal with Zelensky.
The approach to Marhanets is lined with the pink blossom of Japanese cherry trees. We drive past the closed cinema, its European leanings expressed through the ten-foot-high reconstruction of the Eiffel Tower in its forecourt. The city is mostly deserted, many of its residents having fled to Dnipro for safety, but we pick up Maryna, the head teacher, outside an ornately-built but bomb-holed school from Stalin’s era.
The city is still reeling from the drone attack on 23rd April 2025 on a bus packed with workers heading to the mining plant. Nine employees were killed — seven were women — and over forty injured. The husband of the school’s librarian, Maryna reveals, has lost an eye and is in a coma.
In the city council bomb shelter, we have been granted a rare in-person meeting with teenagers who openly share their experiences of drones. One student, Elizaveta, had her apartment damaged in a Russian attack the night before her birthday. Maryna explains that there is a very fine balance between having a healthy fear of missiles and drones, and becoming too stressed by them. Life in the Red Zone is about trying to find a balance, trying to find laughter amidst the mourning. “The war is personal for us in Marhanets,” says Maryna, citing the near misses between life and death. She herself witnessed the stricken bus that April morning on her way to school. The grandfather of a student, Daniel, was on the bus behind.
Instead of the usual, “Have a good night,” the residents now wish each other “a quiet night”
The war has continued to deteriorate. Back in 2022, the Russians sent surveillance drones and the people of Marhanets initially hoped that their city wasn’t important enough to destroy. These days, a common target is the water supply. Instead of the usual, “Have a good night,” the residents now wish each other “a quiet night”. They can barely bring themselves to say, “Good morning” when things aren’t remotely good and have exchanged it for “Greetings to you”. On the positive side, they no longer have to endure the strain of constant air raid warnings which proved to be futile, given their proximity to the Kakhovka Reservoir where the Russians are ensconced.
The schooling itself is difficult, never mind the logistics of classes. The ten-year-old textbooks on Ukraine are completely outdated thanks to the war and Maryna notes the particular instability of geography as well as history. The teachers have adapted their curriculum to make it relevant to their students. Kateryna, for instance, uses her physics lessons to teach about the infrasound in explosions and radioactivity in the Russian-occupied Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant only twelve kilometres away. Iryna, who teaches literature, uses the famous writer Lesya Ukrainka’s sojourn in Balaklava to inform her students about the Russian submarine base stationed in the Sevastopol area. The tragedy is that the children are too young to have visited Crimea before it was occupied in Putin’s first invasion in 2014.
The teachers may not see many of their students face-to-face, but they Zoom or phone them after Russian attacks, even if they are far away. Sometimes, when talking to the Ukrainians, you are startled by their resilience. Churchill’s “We shall fight on the beaches…” has morphed into “We shall fight in the schools and in the Zoom rooms…” In this hybrid war, however, the Russians try to block GPS and target mobile phone towers in Red Zone regions. It’s all part of the psychological tactic to atomise the community.
Meanwhile, buses still head undaunted to the mining plant in Marhanets. Many workers now prefer to travel there by car and others, according to Maryna, are resigning. Kateryna pertinently asks, “Do you think in Europe people would just continue to bus it to work after such an attack? Why should we be expected to do it?”
As Alexei and I leave Marhanets, we pass the terracotta-coloured Palace of Culture, its walls pierced by two giant shells. We travel farther into the fecund fields of the steppes. The wheat growing along the roadside ravines is as tall and feathery as pampas grass. In one village, a stork nest tops a lamppost like a lookout tower and seems to be a portent for peace. Storks typically never nest in war-torn areas.
After many hours’ drive, we turn onto a mud track that leads to a small house. This is the home of a drone-hunting team. A Humvee is attached to a trailer with a Cold War anti-aircraft gun perched on top. Three soldiers in shorts and flipflops clutching tin cups of coffee blearily come out to meet us. As drones usually attack at night, the drone-hunters sleep by day. They only have a shack for a toilet and their clothes smell vinegary and pungent. The commander, Dmytro, strides to a nearby farm to get us some fresh goats’ milk for our coffee which he brings back in a jar. Mykola and Andriy are cracking open pumpkin seed shells with their teeth and spitting them out as we converse.
The mobile anti-drone team, Dmytro explains, works every night, but as Shaheds (long-range kamikaze drones designed by Iran) are increasingly flying during the day, the men are on call 24/7. They are an intrinsic link in “the wall of fire” that protects Ukrainian cities. Dmytro shows me the Russian-inscribed remnants of shot-down Shaheds. It’s important, he says, to avoid downing them in residential districts as they make waist-deep explosions when they crash. His team should ideally consist of five, but he has to make do with three — one to target, one to shoot and himself to facilitate the operation. He bemoans the fact that the targeter doesn’t have thermal imaging on his sights — there is never enough military equipment for the challenges they face.
Dmytro scoffs at the idea of a ceasefire. “What should I do? Go back home to my town and see murderers on the other side of the river? A peace deal wouldn’t make me happy at all. Seventeen men from my town joined the army on the same day as me in March 2022. Of our seventeen, six have memorials to them. Why should Putin get everything and Ukraine get nothing?”
Behind us, Mykola is trying and failing to start the Humvee. The Humvee arrived two months ago to replace their previous vehicle which kept breaking down. The breeze blows apple blossom onto the bonnet as Andriy goes back into the house to get a syringe full of oil.
Dmytro is equally dismissive of the USA mineral deal with Ukraine. “Our problem is not minerals,” he insists, “but a lack of weapons.” He shows us his tablet screen which is full of aeroplane symbols denoting Russian activity in the east. He points to the Azov Sea to indicate the route of Shaheds through the Russian-occupied territories. The Humvee finally springs into action, revs loudly and sets off into the setting sun. Dmytro likewise gets moving, fetching his Kalashnikov and battle rig from the house before following in his car.
Broken glass from windows had been swept into piles like teardrops along the pavements
The wind is strengthening, bending the branches of the silver birches. We leave the village behind, an outward haven of tranquillity with its rustic gardens replete with ladders, wheelbarrows and piles of chopped logs. The evening sky turns into a pinkish grey, troubled with clouds. A drone-jamming vehicle with green nubs attached to its roof overtakes us. Streaked with mud, it’s clear it has come from the front line.
Drone warfare may plague Ukraine, but early 2025 saw glide bombs pummel the industrial Shevchenko area of Zaporizhia, famous for aeroplane engines. On the day before the Marhanets drone attack, I also witnessed the aftermath of a missile strike on Kyiv. Twelve civilians died that night. By the time I arrived, the broken glass from windows had been swept into piles like teardrops along the pavements. In the epicentre, a children’s seesaw was the only solid thing in the upturned chaos. A rescue team was working feverishly on a collapsed building, shoveling black ash and throwing down bricks in their efforts to find victims while diggers raised up a pall of dust. I can’t forget the image of one rescuer standing on a set of concrete steps that no longer led to rooms but to the sky.
On the train back to Kyiv, I meet Anna, a young physiotherapist from Nikopol, another Red Zone city, who dearly wants a ceasefire, but not at the price of pandering to Putin. “We Ukrainians often joke,” she says with a rueful smile, “that we live in historical times when all we want is dullness!” She points out that the Russians couldn’t even manage to uphold a three-day ceasefire at Easter. “We can’t give our land away when so many men and women have died,” she explains. “Giving our land away would be a second death to us.”
