This is Popular Front, a podcast focused on the niche details of modern warfare and underreported conflict with me Jake Hanrahan. Today we're speaking to journalist Danny Gold. He's

going to be talking to us about his recent trip to the front lines in

Dombas in East Ukraine, an area that is being

absolutely smashed right now by Russian forces. Unfortunately a lot of the

Ukraine conflict is slowly slipping out the news, but Danny's been there

he's going to tell us what's actually happening in the

east how the situation is amongst the soldiers there. If you like what we're doing here

at Popular Front please consider supporting us at patreon.com slash popular front or

popular front dot c.o slash support So you've very recently just got back from a long trip reporting in Ukraine.

You spent quite a bit of time in the Dombas, particularly in some very hot areas.

Just firstly, give us an idea of like what the status is at least in the areas you were in like where you were like give us an idea of what it's like at the minute because I think people are getting a slightly warped perception at the moment through social media as opposed to

actual listening to reporters like yourself who are actually there so yeah give us an idea what was it like?

Yeah you know I bounced around a bit and I was when I was in Harkey it was kind of a very

optimistic situation right the Ukraine forces had had recently pushed the Russians

back significantly to a situation where the city itself wasn't being

shelled that much I mean the especially the outskirts of Hartkever hit really really hard for a long

period of time it was quite. And I was kind of there

maybe like a month, month and a half ago when they were liberating these areas and pushing them back.

And I think they were able, Russians came back a little bit more and then were pushed back again.

But it was very optimistic.

And in the east, it's a very different situation, right?

The situation, the Don Bass is, it's really intense.

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