For Misha Novitskyi, the question of whether Russia will invade Ukraine is not moot. The enemy is only 50 meters behind a concrete slab. Every now and then Russian voices strangely float through a wintry no man’s land of jagged trees and brush.

“When they light their stoves, you can see the smoke,” said Novitskyi – a senior Ukrainian army lieutenant – speaking from what is actually Europe’s eastern front with Russia. He added: “Every day they shoot us. “

The conflict between Kiev and pro-Russian separatists has been going on for almost eight long years. There are echoes of the First World War. The two sides clash along a fixed 250-mile “border”, or line of contact, that winds through Ukraine’s Donbass region.

There are muddy trenches, fortified command posts, and buildings destroyed by shellfire. Novitskyi defends an old textile factory. It is now a ghostly, roofless ruin. On one wall, someone jotted down a helpful reminder, “Fuck yourself and die.”

Everything is calm until it is not. On Thursday morning, Ukrainian soldiers marched to a nearby front position overlooking the city of Donetsk. The separatists are based at its destroyed airport, along what was once the runway. Three shots rang out: sniper bullets.

The soldiers quickened their pace. A pheasant passed a yellow field marked with red signs warning of mines and unexploded ordnance. Old-fashioned metal wires connect the brigade’s outpost – an anthill-like embankment with bunkers and ladders – to the nearby village HQ.

Much of the diplomacy over the past week is also reminiscent of a bygone era. Vladimir Putin made no secret of his contempt for Ukraine. It is, in his view, sub-sovereign: less a country, more a lasting area of ​​Russian imperial influence and control.

In 2014, Putin seized the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine and installed separatist proxies in Donetsk and Luhansk, Russia’s neighbor. What Putin intends to do next is worryingly unclear.

The signs are worrying. This fall, Moscow amassed troops and heavy weapons on both sides of Ukraine’s borders. Satellite images showing around 175,000 Russian troops frightened the United States and its allies. It is still unclear whether this is a negotiating tactic or a build-up of invasion.

Joe Biden spoke to Putin for two hours via video link on Tuesday. The US president reaffirmed his commitment to the territorial integrity of Ukraine. But he refused to offer Putin what he wants: an irrefutable guarantee that Kiev will never join NATO.

Biden briefed Ukrainian comedian-turned-president Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday of his talks with his Russian counterpart. Eastern European countries are concerned. They fear the United States is preparing to “accommodate” the Kremlin’s apparent security concerns – thereby rewarding Moscow for solving a problem it created.

Why Putin chose this moment to escalate tensions is a mystery. One theory is that he realizes that Ukraine is moving inexorably away from Moscow’s orbit. For his part, Novitskyi rejected Putin’s recent assertion in an essay that Ukraine and Russia are “one people”.

Novitskyi said: “Russia is stuck in the Soviet past. Ukraine is traveling in another direction, to the west and to Europe. We are an independent nation.

“Russia and Ukraine are not one people but black and white, yin and yang.”

Earlier this week, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov visited the front line where Novitskyi is based, in an industrial area in the town of Avdiyivka. A little further south is Donetsk, under rebel control since 2014.

Reznikov predicts that there will be a bloody massacre, if Moscow attacks both sides will suffer huge losses. For now, no one knows if Putin’s tanks will advance here, across a landscape of vast black fields, belching chimneys and Orthodox churches adorned with glittering gold cupolas.

The existing conflict may seem retro in nature, but it is indeed a 21st century war. “We have better weapons than in the past,” said Lieutenant Alexander Tymoshuk, standing in a trench corridor secured with netting and reinforced with metal plates.

In World War I, reconnaissance involved sending groups of men. Now, surveillance cameras could detect any movement or intrusion, Timochuk noted. Ukraine recently used a Turkish-made drone for the first time to detonate a Russian-made howitzer.

Paradoxically, those serving on the Ukrainian front line say they are not worried about the threat of an invasion. They claim the Kiev army is stronger, more experienced and better equipped than it was eight years ago, when it collapsed under Russia’s superior firepower.

According to Vitaly Barabash, mayor of Avdiyivka, Russia would soon find itself embroiled in partisan warfare if it captured more territory. He estimated that around 300,000 military veterans would take up arms – unlike in 2014, when some of the patriotic volunteers who fought and died were computer scientists from Kiev.

Too much blood had already been shed on the front, he said, and on the Maidan, the central square in Kiev where in 2014 anti-government demonstrators ousted the pro-Russian Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych. He added: “We will not be going back to Russia. No one wants to be Putin’s slave.

As Biden prepares to continue his talks with Moscow, including over NATO, people continue to die. Since September, 16 members of the Ukrainian forces have been killed, including a 22-year-old soldier who was shot dead last week. Most are killed by snipers or IEDs. Others are injured.

“It’s really difficult to claim victims. Some strings in me are broken. I became more cynical, ”said Lt. Ivan Skuratovsky, pointing to his living quarters in the basement. Two cats were dozing on his bed. The base has a small library and a refectory, its wooden pillars decorated with drawings sent by Ukrainian schoolchildren.

The civilian cost of this unresolved conflict with Russia has been enormous. Villages directly within range of hostile fire are mostly abandoned, although a few elderly residents refuse to leave. The front line crosses Timiryazev Street, named after a Russian botanist.

The once pleasant dachas on the street are all wrecks. The gardens survive. In the summer, soldiers collect nuts as they go on patrol. They also take care of dogs left behind when their owners have left in a hurry, never to return. In the absence of humans, nature flourished, with a few blue tits and many crows.

Since the start of the war, Avdiyivka’s character has changed. According to Mariia Lepilova, a former teacher, the younger generation is more pro-Ukrainian. The Donbass was formerly predominantly Russian-speaking. There had been a switch to the Ukrainian language in schools and shops, she said. Children learn Ukrainian in class from the age of six or seven.

Lepilova said she was forced to leave the city in the winter of 2014, when the shelling made life impossible. “There was no power. Our house was hit. My 10 year old daughter was very scared. Almost everyone is gone, ”she said. Fighting resumed in 2017. Since then, a large part of the population has returned, with reconstructed apartments and new investments.

Like many in the city, she has relatives who live in Donetsk, a pro-Russian enclave known as the DNR or Donetsk People’s Republic. She can no longer visit them but speaks on the phone. “We avoid politics and talk about our children,” she said. “People can get used to anything,” she added.

Previously, residents of Avdiyivka used to travel to Donetsk to go to a restaurant or a cinema, or to support the city’s famous football team, FC Shakhtar Donetsk, which played in the Donbas Arena. The nearest McDonald’s is now 190 miles away in the city of Kharkiv.

Lepilova said she misses the cultural life of the big city and its museum, especially its collection of Dutch paintings and Greek sculptures. “This is the city of my youth,” she said. Moscow’s attempt to claim the region for itself pushed people to adopt a Ukrainian identity, she added.

Back on the front line at the airport, there was more sniper fire. The commander of the local brigade, Major Sergei Kozachok, said his men were ready for anything the Russian side could throw at them. The separatists were constantly strengthening their positions, he said, with no visible increase in activity this week.

Kozachok said his soldiers obeyed the Minsk ceasefire agreement, signed by Kiev in 2015 under intense Russian pressure. It prohibits the use of heavy weapons. Recent tensions have brought the treaty to the brink of collapse. The Ukrainian side did not respond, he said, despite repeated “provocations”.

What would his message be to Putin, in the unlikely event that they met face to face? Kozachok thought for a moment and smiled. He replied, “I would punch him in the ear.”