Making Firewood Near the Front

By Matthew Parish

Friday 27 September 2026

There is a point on the roads east and south of Kharkiv where the landscape begins to change. The villages become smaller, the traffic becomes stranger and the ordinary infrastructure of civilian life starts giving way to the improvised architecture of war. Above and alongside stretches of road hang the great anti-drone nets, suspended from poles and trees like an enormous artificial canopy. They are intended to interfere with the FPV drones that have transformed the battlefield and everything around it. Driving beneath them produces the uncomfortable sensation of entering a tunnel whose purpose one would rather not contemplate.

Just off one of these roads, a dirt track disappears into the forest. There is nothing remarkable about it at first sight. The ground is churned earth, mud and old leaves, scarred by tyres and scattered with branches. The trees stand close together and the autumn light struggles through them. Yet this unremarkable patch of woodland has acquired a practical purpose. Winter is coming to Kharkiv, and wood is needed.

So the trees have to be cut.

The work is brutally simple. Fallen trunks and suitable timber are dragged together and the saws begin. The noise of a chainsaw tears through the peculiar quiet of the forest, rising and falling as the blade bites into the wood. Sawdust sprays across boots and trousers. Logs accumulate slowly in rough piles, each one representing a little stored heat for somebody several months from now. There is no romance in the labour. The pieces are heavy, the ground is uneven and after a while one’s arms begin to complain. Then another trunk is pulled into position and the process starts again.

This is firewood for Kharkiv. That sentence would once have sounded almost quaint. Kharkiv is one of Ukraine’s great cities, a centre of universities, science, engineering, literature and industry. Before the full-scale invasion, gathering wood in a forest so that people in Kharkiv might remain warm through winter would have seemed an anachronism. Yet war has a habit of pushing sophisticated societies backwards towards the most elementary human requirements: warmth, water, food, shelter and a place to sleep without fear.

The forest is not peaceful. Beyond the trees lies the road beneath the nets, and every few minutes another military vehicle roars past. Sometimes the sound begins as a distant mechanical growl before swelling suddenly into something enormous. Heavy engines labour along the road, tyres hammer against broken surfaces and then the noise recedes again towards the front. One cannot always see the vehicles through the trees, but there is no mistaking them. The sound rolls through the woodland and for a few moments overwhelms even the chainsaws.

Then there is silence again, or something resembling it.

The contrast is unsettling. Here we are sawing timber into manageable lengths, engaged in an activity humanity has undertaken for thousands of years. A few dozen metres away is a twenty-first-century military road protected against remotely piloted explosive aircraft by nets hanging over the carriageway. Diesel engines carry soldiers, equipment and supplies towards positions where warfare is increasingly conducted through thermal cameras, electronic warfare systems, satellite communications and cheap drones carrying explosives. Ancient necessity and technological war exist within earshot of one another.

The dirt road itself seems to belong to neither world. It winds between the trees, rutted and brown, occasionally disappearing beneath puddles and churned mud. There are no cafés, petrol stations or signs advertising the next village. There is only forest, machinery, damp earth and the knowledge that the main road nearby is covered in nets for a reason. Every mundane task is performed beneath an invisible calculation about distance from the front, drone range and how long it is sensible to remain in one place.

Yet people continue working. That is perhaps the most striking aspect of life around Kharkiv after years of war. The extraordinary becomes incorporated into the ordinary. Military vehicles thunder past while people cut firewood. Air-raid alerts sound while shops continue serving customers. Volunteers load vans while artillery can sometimes be heard somewhere beyond the horizon. The rituals of civilian existence do not disappear in wartime; instead they adapt themselves around the machinery of war.

Firewood is particularly evocative because it is an investment in a future that everyone assumes must somehow arrive. Nobody cuts and stacks wood for tonight. It must be collected, transported, dried where necessary, divided and distributed. It exists for cold days that have not yet come. Every log thrown onto the growing pile therefore represents a small assertion that there will still be households to heat when the temperature falls below zero, that there will still be people living in Kharkiv and that they will still need to boil kettles, warm rooms and get children through another freezing night.

Ukraine’s winters have themselves become part of the war. Energy infrastructure has repeatedly been attacked, and electricity and heating can no longer be regarded as invisible certainties. A radiator is useful only if the systems behind it continue functioning. Firewood is different. It is primitive, cumbersome and inefficient, but reassuringly physical. A pile of logs cannot be switched off remotely. It does not depend upon a transformer remaining intact somewhere kilometres away. If there is a stove, a chimney and dry timber, there is heat.

That explains why an afternoon spent sawing trees beside a dirt track matters. It is easy to describe wars through maps, offensives, weapons systems and political declarations. From a distance, the front appears as a coloured line advancing or retreating across a screen. Up close, war is also composed of countless practical tasks that rarely make the news. Somebody has to drive the van. Somebody has to pack the boxes. Somebody has to repair the vehicle. Somebody has to find the elderly people who refuse to leave their villages. And somebody has to cut the wood before winter arrives.

There is something bleak about the forest. The light is poor beneath the trees and the dirt road seems to lead nowhere. The anti-drone nets are visible through occasional gaps towards the main road, an ugly reminder that the sky itself has become dangerous. Another military vehicle approaches, its engine growing steadily louder until conversation becomes impossible. For several seconds there is only the tremendous roar of machinery heading towards the front. Then it passes, the sound fades and the forest returns.

The chainsaw starts again.

Another trunk is divided into logs. They are lifted, carried and stacked. There is no ceremony and there is no sense that anything heroic has occurred. There is simply another small quantity of fuel ready to be taken back towards Kharkiv.

Winter is coming, and people will need to be warm.