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Hello, it's 394 days since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine.

And you, our listeners, have been asking when the long-awaited Ukrainian counteroffensive

will begin.

As we know, the fighting has never stopped, and the battle for back moot has been seemingly

endless, as well as fierce, with Russian forces occupying more and more ground there.

But elsewhere, in the Donbass, Ukrainian forces have largely held and taken back passes

of land.

We're talking here about land that you could measure in just pockets of forests and

pieces of fields.

Our colleagues from the BBC, Quentin Somerville and Darren Conway, have been embedded

with the Ukrainian unit on what's known as the zero line.

That's the final trench.

Just 700 meters from Russian troops, in the small town of Valoka, Nova Silka, land mines

and unexploded shells litter the ground.

Tree cover is replaced by modern bomb craters.

The soil is solid, and the sound of automatic gunfire is never far away.

The orders are get in, get out and take cover.

Open ground is their enemy's friend.

The town has already been reduced to rubble, and yet another mortar lands.

Even closer, in the town and on its outskirts, traveling in the open can be a matter of life

or death.

...