BROWN: Tucked away, on the far eastern edge of Europe, an extraordinary conflict is playing out. These men are the raw recruits in a showdown between Russia and the West. It’s Europe’s worst war since the Balkans, with almost 8,000 killed and yet the world seems to have largely forgotten about it.

The conflict is drawing a motley crew of foreign adventurers. 

RUSSELL BENTLEY (“TEX”): “You know we’re fighting a war here. We’ll take all the help we can get from wherever we can get it”.

BROWN: The rebels are backed by Moscow and there’s no prize for guessing how they feel about this man – Ukraine’s Pro Western President, Petro Poroshenko [using picture of his face as a target].

MAN IN UNIFORM: [picture of Petro Poroshenko’s face of where bullets have hit] “There’s one more in the head”. 

BROWN: This part of Ukraine is where flight MH17 was shot down last year, killing 298 people, including 38 from Australia. There’s a shaky ceasefire in place, but until recently, the outskirts of the regional capital Donetsk, have looked like this. No one is sure what all this is for – people here are living in limbo. 

We begin our journey to Donetsk on a humanitarian aid convoy from government held territory. The lead driver, Alexei has family in the east and knows life there is getting tough.

ALEXEI: “Now they are in a difficult situation – there is war, no jobs and they wait for this aid every day”. 

BROWN: Normally the journey would take a little under 4 hours, but with a series of checkpoints and dilapidated roads, it takes us 16 hours to reach Donetsk. The next morning in the basement of Donetsk’s main soccer stadium, the locals are busy repacking the aid and carting it out to their neighbours. This shipment is vital. The Ukrainian government has choked off normal shipments of food and medicine and red tape imposed by the rebels has prevented UN aid from getting in. As a result, the price of everything here has soared. Flour is up by fifty per cent and meat has doubled. 

[in the basement with the aid distribution] “This really is extraordinary when you remember that we’re in the middle of a modern eastern European city, in the 21st century, and people are still so hard hit that they need food aid. The organisers say around 500 people are involved in getting this stuff out and onto the trucks and out to the people in need, not one of them is being paid and they show up pretty much every day of the week to do this, and when you start talking to them, you find out nearly every one of them has been touched quite dramatically by the conflict”.

Volunteer, Anastasia, lost her stepdaughter earlier this year when a Ukrainian government rocket attack destroyed their home.

ANASTASIA: “She was 17 years old. She came out into the yard and was struck by shrapnel from a Grad rocket. We have nothing, can you believe it? No house – we don’t even have a picture of our parents. We’ve been left nothing, only a pain in our hearts, only pain – and we simply cannot forgive this. Personally, as a woman and as a mother, I will never forgive this”. 

BROWN: Donetsk is a pretty city in its own sort of way. It was once home to over a million people but with two thirds of them having fled, it’s become an eerie place. The trouble began last year after Ukraine’s pro-Russian President fled the capital Kiev in the face of a wave of protests. In response, Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and annexed it.

PROTESTOR: “Our patience has run out. It’s time for change. The Donetsk People’s Republic!”

BROWN: Then pro-Russian separatists here in the east took over Ukrainian government buildings and sent armed militias onto the streets. They declared it the Donetsk People’s Republic, an entity still recognised by no one – not even its sponsor in the Kremlin.

A year on, this is what’s now left of the city’s airport terminal, built for the European football championships in 2012 at a cost of more than 900 million dollars. The centre of town is quiet now but on the outskirts no one knows when the next bomb will fall. In the week we’re in Donetsk, the city experiences its worst shelling in a year. When the bombs fall, the residents start filming, posting their own unverified footage of the attacks on line and we set out to investigate the impact. 

[in village that was attacked] “Every night, somewhere on the outskirts a little town is being hit, sometimes by artillery, sometimes by rocket attacks like this one. In this case a man sitting just in his front room watching TV next door has been killed. 

LADY AT SHELLED HOUSE: “Those who kill children, women, men – it makes no difference… we’re people, we’re not meat. We are not in a slaughterhouse to be killed like cattle. There must be justice… punishment. They need to know exactly how it feels, how we feel”. 

BROWN: The residents here blame this attack on Ukrainian government forces. 

MAN AT SHELLED HOUSE: “All the children here screamed. Every night, every night – what the hell is this! I was lucky that the blast threw me away from the sofa. The windows exploded. The fragments were 25 centimetres. I doubt I could have survived. I took these fragments from the sofa. What for? Tell me what for?”

BROWN: The violence has reopened old wounds dating back to World War II when the Nazis occupied Ukraine. Many Ukrainians were accused of being collaborators. 

MAN AT SHELLED HOUSE: “They’re not humans, they’re damned fascists. You can’t call them anything else. They are fascists”.

WOMAN AT SHELLED HOUSE: “A child woke up at night trembling. She woke up screaming, ‘Mummy I’m scared, Mummy I’m scared’. And I tried to calm her down all night long. She sleeps and wakes up again screaming – ‘I’m scared’. What can I explain to a six year old child?”

BROWN: In Eastern Ukraine close to one and a half million people have been forced to flee their homes. Olga Kosse’s family and friends are amongst them. Now on her own, this young journalism graduate has taken the brave decision to stay behind to help those in need.

OLGA KOSSE: “I have a chance to help people. It can change something. We can’t help many people but for one person, for one family, for one street, we have to do something by ourselves”. 

[to Lidia sitting on a bed] “The shelling is getting worse isn’t it?”

LIDIA TUPIKAVA: “It’s been getting worse for the last 2 weeks”. 

BROWN: Lidia Tupikava found refuge in this hostel after a rocket destroyed her home in January and her grandson Igor was terribly wounded by the shrapnel.

LIDIA TUPIKAVA: [crying] “To see him like that… torn… covered in blood. When doctors couldn’t give him even a 10% chance to survive they told me – ‘Go to the church and pray for him. We can’t do any more’. Thank God he survived, thank God we live – and thank God there are people who help us”. 

BROWN: “Do you see a lot of people like this?”

OLGA KOSSE: “Yeah it’s a building which at every apartment the family is with the same story”.

BROWN: Before the war started, Igor was passionately interested in swimming and Tae Kwan Do. But Olga says since he was wounded the 12 year old has become withdrawn. 

OLGA KOSSE: “What do you want to happen to the people who did this?”

IGOR: “You mean what I would personally do with them? I’d like to have them cut into pieces. For dogs. Let their corpses lie in the dirt and dogs eat them completely, and not leave a single piece”. 

BROWN: At the little village of Nikishina, an hour and a half’s drive east and on the edge of the MH17 crash zone, the quandary facing these people is painfully clear. Many of the buildings have been destroyed and the villagers are badly in need of help. 

OLGA KOSSE: “Nikishina will disappear, I think, because a lot of buildings destroyed, so that’s why. If we don’t do anything now, we can lose this village, and lose its people”.

BROWN: Since the Ukrainian government forces were pushed out, officials from the self-appointed rebel administration are rarely seen.

OLGA KOSSE: “Sometimes I feel alone, and maybe sad – but I have a lot of work so that’s why I say ‘Oh, it’s okay. I have to do something… which will be better’.”

BROWN: Rebuilding Nikishina is an enormous task and for now Olga is just trying to help the community survive. 

OLGA KOSSE: [handing bag to nurse] “Here’s the medicine I promised you”.

BROWN: For the local nurse, Svetlana Marchenko, Olga brings essential supplies. 

OLGA KOSSE: “I need your signature here”. 

BROWN: Svetlana is another ordinary woman who’s made some extraordinary choices – when nearly everyone else fled, she stayed behind to tend to the sick and the old. She’s not been paid her government salary in almost a year. 

SVETLANA MARCHENKO: “My job is to help people. I can’t refuse to help. People are traumatised. If a person is panic-stricken they can do stupid things. So I try to calm people down and do my duty”.

[with elderly man] “Okay grandfather, here’s the spoon for you to serve”. 

BROWN: Svetlana is caring for her 81 year old father, Nikolai, a former Soviet Air Force pilot. During the worst of the fighting, Svetlana and her father survived by hiding in their cellar. 

SVETLANA MARCHENKO: “I had ten craters in my yard. A rocket exploded in my neighbour’s yard. I don’t know how we survived. The force of the blast lifted us up then dropped us down and the walls were shaking down here in the cellar”. 

BROWN: This was the pride of Nikishina, the local community centre which was built just 2 years ago. A tank round blasted through its auditorium. The roof is littered with empty shells from enormous bullets and anti-tank weapons. 

[walking in the rubble] “This region was a battleground for almost a year, because first, the government pushed the rebels back towards the Russian border and then around the time that MH17 was shot down just in the valley across the way, the rebels made their own counter attack. That’s why this village has taken such a beating”.

Just a few kilometres from Nikishina, at the crash site of MH17, there’s now a poignant reminder of Australia’s link to this war. The humble memorial reads simply, “to the 298 innocent victims of a civil war”.

SVETLANA MARCHENKO: “It was an awful tragedy. Our coal miners from Shaktarsk were asked to find debris, dead bodies. And it was horrible – men fainted from what they saw. We never thought that here in Nikishina there could be a war. We never thought about it. It turned my life upside down. Now I treat life differently, I’ve started to value life more”. 

BROWN: The locals might be struggling but for one group of outsiders, the war’s an opportunity to fight for their beliefs or simply have an adventure. Perhaps the most extraordinary is Russell Bonner Bentley – a native Texan with a colourful past – now fighting for the pro-Russian cause. 

RUSSELL BENTLEY (“TEX”): “I’m a patriotic American. I love America, I love the American people. I am a serious enemy of the fascist government of the United States. I’m their enemy and they’re mine”.

[singing] “You may be high, you may be low. You may be rich child, you may be poor”.

BROWN: “Tex”, as he’s known here, says he spent the first five months of this year fighting on the frontline, but now he’s taken to the airwaves to wage the information war instead. 

RUSSELL BENTLEY (“TEX”): [on radio] “Good evening ladies and gentlemen, this is Radio Free Donbass. We’ve got the DNR news service team in here again and we’re going to tell you the truth about what’s happening in Donetsk, Donbass and around the world”.

BROWN: Tex’s show from Donetsk is broadcast in English throughout the region and online.

RUSSELL BENTLEY (“TEX”): [on radio] “We’re here to prevent World War III from happening brother and that’s what we’re going to do. You can come here as a journalist, you can come here to just be a private citizen and see for yourself. You can come here and do humanitarian work or you can come here and be a soldier”. 

BROWN: Tex uses his show to counter what he says are Western media distortions about the war. 

RUSSELL BENTLEY (“TEX”): [on radio] “There was a major, major Ukrainian army artillery attack on the centre of Donetsk last night. People were killed, about 30 houses were destroyed but we’re still here and we’re not scared”.

“This is a worldwide war and it’s being fought perhaps even more so in the hearts and minds of people around the world as it is at the front with tanks and cannons and Kalashnikovs and the truth is on our side”.

BROWN: Tex is an interesting character to say the least. 

RUSSELL BENTLEY (“TEX”): “These people defeated fascists seventy years ago and we’re going to do it again”.

BROWN: Tex tells me the 911 terrorist attack on the US was the work of the US government and he reveals he was gaoled for five years for smuggling more than a 100 kilograms of marijuana across the Mexican border. But here in Donetsk, Tex has found new purpose and meaning.

RUSSELL BENTLEY (“TEX”): “We’re defending Donbass. We’re defending Russia because the reason that they’re trying to make Ukraine a failed state, another Libya or Iraq is so there can be chaos on the Russian border”.

(Footage of rebel soldiers training)

BROWN: With so many foreigners arriving to help them fight, the rebels are forming what’s been dubbed the Novo Russian Foreign Legion.

RUSSELL BENTLEY (“TEX”): “It is inspiring and invigorating the people that are coming here. I mean, the best people in the world are coming here now. I mean the bravest, the ones who understand that this is a war for the future of humanity”.

BROWN: Tex says he even has a couple of Australian mates on Facebook who he hopes will come to join the fray.

RUSSELL BENTLEY (“TEX”): “They’re the kind of guys that might just one day get fed up with seeing all this injustice and show up here and we’d be glad to see them here, Clint and Carl come on over bro we’ve got a place for you”.

BROWN: Russia and its supporters have steadfastly denied Russian troops have played any formal role here, but it is an increasingly difficult line to sustain. 

RUSSELL BENTLEY (“TEX”): “I’ve seen many volunteers from Russia, you know they’re guys that perhaps are veterans or, you know, have been in the Russian army, but they’re not in the Russian army now”.

BROWN: “But they can’t have kept up this war effort for so long without resupply from Russia. I mean that’s serious military equipment ammunition coming in from Russia”.

RUSSELL BENTLEY (“TEX”): “Well um… whoever’s sending us bullets, thank you. How many, how many millions and billions has Obama and the EU sent to the Nazis in Kiev? You know we’re fighting a war here. We’ll take all the help we can get from wherever we can get it”.

BROWN: But back in Nikishina, help is in short supply. In the centre of the village, Yefdokiya Kirienko sits in the only room of her house that remains intact – the rest was blown to smithereens. 

YEFDOKIYA KIRIENKO: “The barn is ruined, and I don’t have any coal or wood”. 

OLGA KOSSE: “Are you going to be here in winter?”

YEFDOKIYA KIRIENKO: “Yes, but where can I go? Look, I started buying coal but the sack costs 100 roubles and one sack is not enough”. 

BROWN: Like so many others, Yefdokiya’s family are living as refugees in Western Ukraine, barely able to walk, she’s been left here to fend for herself. 

YEFDOKIYA KIRIENKO: “Everything’s ruined, school is ruined, kindergarten is ruined. The medical clinic is ruined, everything is ruined”. 

OLGA KOSSE: “So now you can only walk with the help of this? [looking at walking frame - Yefdokiya nods] So I’ll come next week and bring your medicine”. 

YEFDOKIYA KIRIENKO: “I’m always here”. 

BROWN: On the edge of Nikishina, this is what’s left of a school that once housed hundreds of students. 

OLGA KOSSE: “It’s really sad because I feel that Nikishina is like a wounded child”.

BROWN: “A wounded child?”

OLGA KOSSE: “A wounded child and it needs help”.

BROWN: [in library looking at books scattered on ground] Olga’s desperate to score her own sort of small victory here, she wants to save all the books so she can rebuild a library. 

OLGA KOSSE: “I want to do something for this village. I want to do something for the kids because their lives are ruined. I understand what it means when you live in beautiful place and you see only destroyed buildings, only stones, in the place where you were born”.

BROWN: Both sides are to blame for this devastation and Olga makes a final plea.

OLGA KOSSE: “I want to say, Hey… hey, stop! We know that you can destroy everything, we saw it. It’s okay, you can destroy. But can you rebuild?”

BROWN: Russia’s done just enough to covertly stir up trouble here and destabilise Ukraine. It’s a warning to others in the region of what could happen to them. No one knows if the end game will be staying part of Ukraine, full independence or being swallowed by Russia. Those left trying to survive in this twilight zone, have no idea what might come next. 

BUSKER: [singing] “S.O.S. Save our souls. S.O.S. Nobody wants to die here. S.O.S. And to those who can hear these sounds, hurry up and lend a hand”.