It feels more like the early 20th century than a modern conflict, with tired, nervous soldiers grabbing their guns around him as they reach open ground and scanning the area for movement across no man’s land.
They know snipers, who are likely to be trained by Russians, say Ukrainian officials are looking for a chance to shoot. More than 20 of their comrades have already been shot this year.
It’s damn quiet with a shot from a gunshot in the distance that shatters the calm and keeps everyone on point.
This area near Mariupol is a risky place for the president of a country to visit, but it prevents Zelensky from giving CNN unprecedented access to his journey to the front lines, where he insists on going to the front positions.
“If I visit a military base, the guys will hear it right before and think I forgot about it,” Zelensky told CNN in exclusive comments over two days. “They need to know that they have political support.”
Zelensky, tied up in a camouflage coat and helmet, must jump over the open ground with his presidential security to get to the trench cover.
New boiling point in long distance
The brutal conflict in eastern Ukraine, between government forces and Russian-backed separatists, has been embroiled in a tense strike for years. Big battles, which have cost thousands of lives since 2014, have made way for a once deadlock. After the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, fighting broke out in the neighboring Donbas region – another predominantly Russian-speaking area of Ukraine with rebels demanding independence from Kiev.
But amid growing tensions with the United States and its Western allies, Russian troops have been spotted moving across the border again, causing the war to flare up again.
There is a cellphone video of Russian armored columns driving to the Ukrainian border. Tanks and artillery rifles were seen being transported by rail. An increase in Crimea has also been reported.
In Moscow, the Kremlin says the troop movements inside Russia are part of a planned military exercise and pose no threat.
But at the forefront, the Ukrainian president told CNN a Russian invasion is a very possible possibility that his country supports.
“Of course. We know it, from 2014 onwards we know it can be any day,” he said.
“They are ready, but we are also ready because we are on our ground and on our territory,” he told CNN.
Lt. Gen. Ruslan Khomchak, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, told CNN about 50,000 Russian troops had now gathered across the Russian border and on the Crimea. In addition, there are at least 35,000 Russian-backed separatists in areas in Ukraine held by rebels, he said.
Even before the current worrying increase in the number of troops under Moscow’s command on the doorstep of Ukraine, Zelensky called on the US to sell him weapons, such as spearhead tank tanks. These weapons have now been delivered, especially notorious in a telephone conversation with then-President Donald Trump.
Bending to the future
From the sky, above the muddy trenches, the seemingly endless flatness of eastern Ukraine is underlined by battered villages and the rusty industrial aids of the Soviet-era factories that made this war-torn region the economic backbone of Ukraine.
Military helicopters, deafening old MI-8s first developed during the Soviet era, painted in unnatural vivid combat camouflage, fly fast and low over the countryside to avoid ground fire. Every few minutes they crawl uphill to jump trees or power lines, and then quickly descend again within feet of the ground.
Aboard the aging presidential hack, which retains some worn-out ease, Zelensky shouts above the engine of how the US is a ‘good friend’ of Ukraine, but that President Biden should ‘do more’ around Russia and help this bring an end to conflict.
More weapons, more money to fight and, more importantly, more support to join NATO, the Western military alliance where an attack on one member commits everyone to responding, he explained.
“If they [the US] Ukraine sees in NATO, they should say it directly, and do it. Not words, ‘Zelensky told CNN.
But the chances of that happening are slim, amid concerns that Ukraine would draw closer to NATO membership, provoke Moscow and possibly fuel a broader conflict.
“Maybe you were right,” Zelensky replied.
“But what’s going on now? What are we doing here? What are our people doing here? They are fighting.”
At the front line, Zelensky observed a minute of silence for the cases.
With or without NATO, this is his country’s reality. Ukraine is at war.
CNN’s Zahra Ullah and Jasmine Wright contributed to this story.