His eyes scan the sky before sprinting for his rifle.

“It’s a drone,” shouts Kostya, the commander of a Ukrainian artillery battery. His men run for cover. Hidden in a dugout on the right bank of the Dnipro River , experience makes all the difference here – a sharp ear is worth its weight in gold.

“It’s a buzz you can’t confuse with anything else,” says Oleksander, another gunman, hunkered down in his hideout, setting down his Kalashnikov. It’s a sound feared by soldiers and civilians alike in Kherson.

This city, the only regional capital Russia had seized since the start of its invasion , was recaptured by Kyiv in November 2022.

Since then, it has lived in a bitter limbo. Here, the front line is frozen.

The four-kilometre stretch of river and islands between the Kyiv-held and Mos

See Full Page