Revealed: the Ukrainian facility where UK engineers help fix vital weapons

For safety reasons, other countries have often preferred to repair kit outside Ukraine, leading to longer journeys and delays. Photograph: Jędrzej Nowicki/The Guardian

In an unmarked and undisclosed location in western Ukraine, British and Ukrainian engineers work side by side to fix damaged military hardware, crawling under the chassis of artillery systems and pulling apart the insides of British-donated howitzers.

Until now, the existence of this facility, along with three other similar sites inside Ukraine, has been kept quiet, buried in neutral language to avoid drawing too much attention to the sites, given the sensitivities of all military-linked work inside Ukraine.