This is The Guardian.

Today, tracing the story of a Ukrainian soldier whose death might thrust him into the history books.

Before we begin, a quick heads up. This episode contains graphic descriptions of violence.

Go back one year to a Ukrainian military outpost close to the Russian border.

It's the 23rd of February. As a soldier, Dennis Katz, serving on a border checkpoint in the Hansk region.

It's come up to midnight. It's halfway through his shift.

Daniel Boffy is the Guardian's chief reporter.

Dennis' shift had been entirely uneventful. He spoke to his wife at 11 o'clock and then he settled down for some rest while his colleagues were trolled outside.

He rested and then it took 3am, word came through in the radio. He was working up.

That's unknown, unidentified, armed men have been spotted on the Ukrainian territory.

If he didn't panic these things in the start of the world, have happened since 2014.

Then it seems that about 3.40am, a group of men, pretty 5 or 6, of Russians in snow camouflage, was spotted creeping towards their position.

And the decision had to be made. Dennis ordered his 5 men to quietly, quickly retreat from the position.

In order to go back, to go to a position where they may fight if necessary, but to get out of immediate danger.

So, Dennis is the last one in his heart. He seems to have called out to his colleagues where's the machine gun and made a grab for the machine gun.

And it's at this point that the Russians unleashed hell.

A skate of Boffy's will seen by those who are running away from the heart, ricocheting off the hut, shredding it essentially.

While it's fizzing past the ears, they ran for their lives. Dennis was still in the hut. They have no idea of that stage what happened to him.

It was shortly after 3.40am, an hour and 20 minutes before Vladimir Putin announced his special military operation in Ukraine.

But actually this was the moment when the war began.

Dennis Cash was killed that morning. He was 36. One of an estimated tens of thousands of Ukrainian casualties in the years since Russia invaded.

And though that number is growing every day, history might record Dennis's death in a hut alone on that border as a terrible milestone.

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