WAR IN UKRAINE: Three nights with the volunteer force supplying the frontlines

It’s nearly 9 pm when the Ukrainian commander who calls himself “The Greek” brings our group to a makeshift workshop in the east of Ukraine, where soldiers are tinkering with improvised explosive devices.

The apparent head of the workshop, an engineer in his life before the war, welcomes us into a room that’s been repurposed from its original, civilian use – its exact description withheld for security purposes – but it looks distinctly like an arts and crafts center of death.

Materials for mixing explosives and their components, grenades and fuses with English-language descriptions, are all neatly organized on book-shelves and in see-through plastic containers that one would find in a kitchen or classroom.