ANTHONY LOYD IN UKRAINE
Meet the Ukrainian mine-clearers who keep coming back for more
Young sappers on the front line tell Anthony Loyd how they persevere while dealing with extreme stress and fear
The Times
When he spoke about the most recent time he was blown up by an exploding shell, the sapper clutched his knees and rocked slowly back and forth. “Give me a minute,” he said twice as he collected himself, in a voice still slurred by concussion, before he could describe what had happened.
Three weeks earlier Artur, 25, a sapper with the 47th Mechanised Brigade, one of the vanguard units of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, had been sent on a night mission with ten men from a Skala Battalion storm unit to clear a Russian position at the edge of Robotyne. The obliterated village, whose subsequent capture has been described by Ukrainian officers as a key moment in the grinding campaign, straddles the first of Russia’s three
