The new Donbas defensive line scars the endless snow-covered countryside like a wound. Multiple rows of barbed wire, anti-infantry traps and anti-tank ditches stretch for 120 meters across the landscape. A few dozen meters further back, concealed beneath a hedge of trees, lies a second line of trenches and underground fortifications, where Ukrainian soldiers prepare to keep the Russian invaders under fire.

Built in the Dnipropetrovsk region, now 35 kilometers from advanced Russian positions, this section is part of an expanding network of several hundred kilometers of deeply layered defensive lines, meant to contain the Russian army’s push westward, toward the Dnipro River. The vast scale of the project reflects the conviction, within the Ukrainian General Staff, that Moscow’s forces have no intention of halting their aggression any time soon.

“We’re facing five or 10 more years of war, until the Russians find some other bone to gnaw on,” said Oleksandr, press officer for the DSST, one of the two branches of Ukraine’s military engineering corps. “What will stop Putin is not some so-called peace deal or cease-fire, but brute force. The disintegration of Russia or a collapse of the regime.”

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