After five grimy days on the frontline, Slava Vladimirovich stripped to his underpants and plunged into the gleaming Torets River. A seagull flapped over the water and willow trees. “Life goes on, even in wartime,” Slava said. Wringing out his khaki T-shirt, he added: “In battle there is nowhere to wash.”
Slava ran up a muddy embankment and showed off his armoured transporter. On the roof was a joystick-controlled machine gun. Shrapnel had dinted the vehicle’s right side. There was a crack in a porthole-like window. “A Russian rocket landed 20 metres from us. We were OK but two civilians got killed,” he said.
