Half of all cases of AWOL and desertion occurred in the first nine months of 2025. Through the stories of individual servicemembers, Frontliner examines what drives battle-hardened, respected soldiers to go AWOL.
At night, Yuliia Yatlova runs down the stairs from her ninth-floor apartment, carrying her 3-year-old son. She tells Frontliner why she no longer feels safe at home, how difficult it is to find a daycare in a city under fire, and why putting on makeup has become part of her daily routine.
The situation in the Oleksandrivka direction has been steadily worsening in recent weeks. Russian forces are pressing forward with infantry assaults, attempting to break through Ukrainian positions using motorcycles and light armored vehicles, while covering their advance with attack drones from above.
The sky over Kostiantynivka is swarming with FPV drones, hovering before striking vehicles. The anti-tank warheads attached to them pierce straight through armored cars, while ordinary ones are shredded to pieces.
Russian occupiers have been attacking Pokrovsk for over a year – since the summer of 2024, when they launched a major offensive in this direction. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, the city’s population has fallen from over 60,000 to barely a thousand (according to the latest data from the Donetsk Regional Administration).
They consider themselves lucky – those who are living out their days with care and under a roof. Across Ukraine, shelters for people with disabilities and pensioners are overflowing. With each year of war, the situation worsens.
Artist Valentyna Huk decorates the streets of Kharkiv with mosaics she has created herself. Today, six patterns made from the debris of windows that did not withstand Russian shelling hang on the city's buildings. Valentyna spends several weeks of painstaking work on each one, starting with searching for pieces of glass in the ruins and ending with assembling them into unusual “puzzles.” The artist showed Frontliner how sharp shards become “loud” street art under her delicate fingers.
