Ukraine Trench Warfare
Will the Ukrainian forces successfully capture Andriivka and cut off the Russian supply lines?
Plot: The story follows a group of Ukrainian soldiers during a counteroffensive in the war against Russia, focusing on their attempts to capture the village of Andriivka amidst fierce fighting and heavy casualties.
Characters: Key characters include Fedya, an officer on the ground, and various soldiers who share their experiences and struggles during the conflict.
Conflict & Stakes: The primary conflict is between Ukrainian forces and Russian troops, with the soldiers facing both external threats and internal struggles as they navigate the chaos of war.
Themes: Themes of sacrifice, camaraderie, the brutality of war, and the quest for identity and homeland are prevalent throughout the narrative.
Style: The film is shot in a documentary mode, capturing real-life events with a focus on authenticity and immediacy, alternating between intense battle scenes and quieter moments of reflection.
Message: The narrative conveys the profound impact of war on individuals and communities, emphasizing the resilience of the human spirit in the face of overwhelming adversity.
By summer and autumn 2023, Russia’s full-scale invasion had hardened into a grinding war of attrition across eastern Ukraine, shaped by drones, artillery, mines, and mass mobilization. The fighting unfolded amid shattered towns, displaced civilians, strained economies, and intense Western military aid debates over Europe’s post–Cold War security order.
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This film’s dominant mode is observational. Embedded cameras stay close to soldiers, tracking action and quiet pauses with minimal outside explanation. That immediacy makes viewers share their uncertainty and exhaustion, grounding the film’s point of view in lived experience rather than distant commentary.
Director & Year: Mstyslav Chernov, 2025. (Wikipedia)
Fedya: Fedya, 24, was a battle-promoted sergeant and the officer on the ground during the 2023 fighting toward Andriivka; he had worked in a warehouse before Russia’s full-scale invasion. (PBS)
Freak: “Freak,” 22, joined Ukraine’s Territorial Defense after the full-scale invasion began and later moved to the 3rd Assault Brigade; he was 12 when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014. (PBS)
Sheva: Sheva, 46, left a position in the military police to volunteer with the 3rd Assault Brigade at the start of the 2023 counteroffensive; he was later injured and died in a hospital five months later. (PBS)
Gagarin: Gagarin, 24, was Fedya’s friend and second in command who led a subsequent push through the forest toward Andriivka; he was from Polonne and had worked as a truck driver in Europe before returning to volunteer after the full-scale invasion started. (PBS)
Andriivka: In summer 2023, Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade fought a meter-by-meter advance through a mined forest belt toward Andriivka in Donetsk region — part of the push on the road to Russian-held Bakhmut, with Andriivka about 10 km (6 miles) south of Bakhmut. (AP News)
War & Region: The battles around Andriivka occurred during the Russo-Ukrainian war, after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022; Bakhmut fell to Russia in May 2023 amid continued fighting across eastern Ukraine. (AP News)
Topical context
Provides a granular, on-the-ground view of the Ukraine War’s defining characteristics—trench warfare, drones-and-artillery integration, minefields, and the human cost of territorial recapture around key nodes like Andriivka near Bakhmut
Within the collection, the film sits in the The New World Order educational pathway, .
Learning Throughlines
Drones and mortars have compressed the battlefield to meters, not miles.
The film’s soldiers measure distance in the seconds it takes a mortar shell to fly, and an overhead FPV drone forces the whole unit to freeze in place. This close, technologically saturated fighting — massed indirect fire paired with real-time aerial surveillance — is what connects Andriivka to the wider return of attritional, drone-shadowed warfare across Europe. An FPV drone overhead halts the unit — 'FPV, дрон, FPV'
Minefields, not manpower, dictate the axis of advance.
Approaching Andriivka, the unit is pushed off the roads and fields — mined by the retreating Russians — and funneled into a single narrow tree line as the only safe corridor forward. Breaching a layered defense here means threading a route shaped by engineers on both sides, long before any assault begins. 'The fields and the roads around were mined by the Russians'
Grief becomes a form of cohesion.
When a soldier known as “Gagarin” is killed, his hometown of Polonne — nearly a thousand kilometers from the front — turns out for his funeral, one of 56 such burials the town has already held. The film frames this communal mourning as part of what sustains fighters: proof the war is carried as much by grieving towns behind the line as by units in the trenches. Gagarin's funeral, 972 km from Andriivka — the town's 56th
A single village’s fate is weighed in NATO capitals.
The narration is explicit that a stalemate here would let “Western confidence… dip,” pushing Kyiv toward land concessions, and that if Ukraine’s lines collapse, Russian forces on Europe’s doorstep make it “NATO’s war.” Andriivka is framed not as an isolated skirmish but as one data point feeding Western aid and policy debates far beyond Ukraine. 'If Ukraine falls… it becomes NATO's war'
Related topics
Documentary Mode
This film’s dominant mode is observational. Embedded cameras stay close to soldiers, tracking action and quiet pauses with minimal outside explanation. That immediacy makes viewers share their uncertainty and exhaustion, grounding the film’s point of view in lived experience rather than distant commentary.
Key Facts
Director & Year: Mstyslav Chernov, 2025. (Wikipedia)
Fedya: Fedya, 24, was a battle-promoted sergeant and the officer on the ground during the 2023 fighting toward Andriivka; he had worked in a warehouse before Russia’s full-scale invasion. (PBS)
Freak: “Freak,” 22, joined Ukraine’s Territorial Defense after the full-scale invasion began and later moved to the 3rd Assault Brigade; he was 12 when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014. (PBS)
Sheva: Sheva, 46, left a position in the military police to volunteer with the 3rd Assault Brigade at the start of the 2023 counteroffensive; he was later injured and died in a hospital five months later. (PBS)
Gagarin: Gagarin, 24, was Fedya’s friend and second in command who led a subsequent push through the forest toward Andriivka; he was from Polonne and had worked as a truck driver in Europe before returning to volunteer after the full-scale invasion started. (PBS)
Andriivka: In summer 2023, Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade fought a meter-by-meter advance through a mined forest belt toward Andriivka in Donetsk region — part of the push on the road to Russian-held Bakhmut, with Andriivka about 10 km (6 miles) south of Bakhmut. (AP News)
War & Region: The battles around Andriivka occurred during the Russo-Ukrainian war, after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022; Bakhmut fell to Russia in May 2023 amid continued fighting across eastern Ukraine. (AP News)
