Troops battled darkness, rotting corpses and poison gas to drive Russian soldiers out of a ten-mile tunnel of death
Note : the following article is copiously illustrated with photos, videos and diagrams. To view them all, go to :
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/ukrainian-pipeline-war-russia-45-days-hell/
By Antonia Langford near Kupyansk.
Iva Sidash Photographer
Published 12 November 2026
After six days navigating the dark depths of an underground gas pipeline, “Hamster” is glad to be back beneath the open sky.
“Honestly, it feels like I stepped into a different world,” says the 33-year-old Ukrainian infantryman, his eyes bright against his face streaked with black dust and chemical residue.
Hamster and a fellow soldier, who has the call sign “Tom”, have just completed a mission to recover the body of a comrade in the tunnels near the front-line city of Kupyansk.
They are among dozens of Ukrainian soldiers who formed part of Operation Veles, a covert military counter-offensive conducted entirely underground, which saw 100 Russian soldiers killed and 30 captured.
Hamster’ and his fellow soldier ‘Tom’ enjoy a cigarette after spending six days below ground to recover the body of a comrade CREDIT: Iva Sidash for The Telegraph
The Ukrainians, some of whom spent 45 days underground, told The Telegraph how they fought in the cramped decommissioned gas pipelines barely wide enough to crawl through.
One described lying between the corpses of three Russian soldiers for 24 hours in the pitch black, unable to make a sound for fear of being killed.
They spoke of the terror of being in confined spaces, knowing that the only thing separating them from the Russians was a pile of sandbags.
When they did come face to face, the soldiers fired small-calibre guns and launched grenades into the black tunnels, choking on the dust and deafened by the explosions.
They describe the dizzying rancid smell of natural gas, chemicals, corpses and human waste, and a wall of dust that never disappeared.
Some passed out in the tunnels from toxic gases released by the Russians and others were treated for infections after days underground.
This is the new reality for Ukrainian soldiers. As drones pierce the skies, troops are fighting underground in a form of subterranean warfare that is transforming the battlefield.
The soldiers fighting in Operation Veles managed to claw back just over nine miles of territory from Moscow’s grip with the help of assault groups and drone operators above ground.
First, Ukrainians entered the passageways and used unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) armed with explosives and machine guns to destroy Russian barricades and push back soldiers.
At the same time, above-ground assault teams and drone units struck logistics behind enemy lines, leaving subterranean Russian troops cut off from food, water, medicine and ammunition.
The process was arduous, and after the initial push soldiers fought fiercely for every inch, pushing the Russian barricades back a few metres at a time.
It turned the tide against Russia’s forces, who had long exploited the tactical advantages of using the pipeline.
Operation Veles was named for the Slavic god of the underworld who, in ancient belief, shepherds the souls of the dead to eternal green pastures.
But the underworld beneath Kupyansk in the Kharkiv region could not be more different from that idyll.
Soldiers move through tunnels standing between one and 1.2m in diameter. They’re forced to crawl through deep mud or travel on makeshift buggies nicknamed the “Kupyansk metro”.
Kort, the 22-year-old commander of an infantry platoon of the 13th Khartiia Brigade, spent 18 days inside the pipeline last month.
During his deployment, Ukrainian forces advanced 500m and Kort, a recent military academy graduate, managed to take three Russian soldiers prisoner.
He described how Ukrainian and Russian troops are separated in the pipeline by barricades of sandbags. Both sides use them as flimsy shields from shrapnel and bullets as they fire rounds at their adversaries. Thermal monitoring cameras are fixed on the outside of each barricade so troops can follow movements on the opposite side.
Occasionally, troops will clamber over the barricade to mount assaults, attempting to push the enemy back a mere few metres, or install or adjust cameras. But the intimate closeness of the two sides means that even the slightest whisper of movement can be heard in the darkness, triggering intense exchanges of fire.
Kort recalled one 24-hour stretch when, pinned between the barricades as he attempted to find a vantage point from which to attack the Russian side, he was left hemmed in by three Russian corpses. He was forced to sleep between them: two in front and one behind.
“It reeked for the entire 24 hours,” the young, green-eyed soldier said, his expression solemn. “I spent one night sleeping there and then I said, ‘We need to assault now because there’s no way we’re sleeping there again – it’s just f—ing hell.’”
Kort described the physical toll of living in the Soviet-era tunnels as a nightmare. He said soldiers’ immune systems have been weakened to the extent that they repeatedly vomit, develop skin damage, cough up blood, and in some cases, lose consciousness as their bodies struggle to cope with the lack of oxygen.
Lifting his shirt to show thick scars on his side, he said the wounds had become badly infected in the pipeline’s filthy conditions. In pictures he showed to The Telegraph on his phone, they oozed pus.
Another soldier, with the call sign “Viking”, was a shoemaker before being mobilised earlier this year as an infantryman.
The 51-year-old’s first mission was in the pipeline. He has spent three stints inside, one for 45 days and two for 21 days each.
He arrived at their position on a buggy. “We were all covered in mud, covered in filth and there were corpses just lying around,” he told The Telegraph. “They said, ‘we’ve made it’ and I just collapsed on top of the cart and passed out.”
“The smell of gas… it takes three or four days just to get used to it,” the bespectacled soldier added, taking a long drag from his cigarette. “Because there’s nothing to breathe – plus there’s constant dust hanging in the air.”
“It’s total discomfort. But, well, I see the goal… and it has to be done. Everything else, all the emotions, get pushed to the background.”
“Vepr”, a 27-year-old senior company combat medic whose call sign means “wild boar”, spent two rotations in the vast network of pipes lasting 23 and 43 days.
Treating fellow soldiers in the pipeline meant battling fast-growing infections and respiratory complications caused by toxic gases released by Russian forces – all in the darkness of the subterranean passage with only torches for light.
He described it as nothing less than a “total s—show” and a “complete clusterf—”.
On one occasion, Vepr passed out after dragging a wounded soldier 100m to a makeshift medical point for treatment. He said: “They had to bring me around using oxygen… I regained consciousness and kept working.”
However, as harrowing as conditions in the pipeline were, one soldier, 1st Sgt “Santa”, said he preferred life in the tunnels to serving in the “kill zone” above ground, where troops are stalked from above by enemy drones.
“It’s damp, it’s dark, it reeks, there are corpses lying around,” the 29-year-old, who previously worked as a sous chef, said. “But actually I felt safer there under a ‘closed sky’. The absolute worst horror in the war today is drones.”
Throughout the history of warfare, armies have been driven below the earth. During the First World War, troops dug deep beneath no man’s land to place explosive charges under enemy trench networks. During the Soviet-Afghan war, Afghan fighters used underground aqueduct systems to evade Soviet forces.
But what is emerging in Ukraine is of an entirely different order. Rather than isolated networks, underground infrastructure could stretch across vast sections of the 750-mile front, adding a new dimension to a war already fought under the constant threat of drones and aerial surveillance.
Well-placed military sources told The Telegraph that they expected subterranean warfare to become a greater feature of fighting across the front. Despite the challenges, moving operations into underground networks would facilitate logistics and enable evacuation efforts currently rendered impossible by the ubiquity of aerial drones.
Ukraine’s forces are already adapting to the unfolding mode of warfare. Specialists from Khartiia’s Lava Unmanned Systems Regiment said on Sunday that they were adapting combat robots built to hunt Russian troops and conduct reconnaissance inside the pipelines.
For “Zanuda”, or “Killjoy”, the lead planning officer of the 13th Khartiia brigade, sending soldiers into the pipeline has solved a key logistical problem that has long hampered troops fighting in the Kupyansk sector.
“Initially, the Russians were completely inside our operational area – specifically, inside the pipeline,” he told The Telegraph from his underground command post.
“Our plan was to push them out, which we have now accomplished. This allows us to use [the pipeline] to our own advantage – to use it against them.”
Yet he said units were still adapting to hostile, unfamiliar environments. The duration that can safely be spent in the pipeline varies from soldier to soldier depending on his “physical constitution”. Sections of the pipeline are flooded, while Russian forces continue to pump poisonous gas into others to halt further Ukrainian advances.
Communication is another challenge. The pipeline’s enclosed structure carries sound over considerable distances, making it difficult for Ukrainian troops to coordinate without giving away their positions to the Russians.
Despite the punishing conditions, several soldiers who had spent prolonged periods underground said they understood the operation’s necessity and would do it again if asked.
Tom and Hamster, the two infantrymen The Telegraph met just after they had left the pipeline, said the ordeal had been worth enduring to bring home the body of a brother-in-arms so his family could lay him to rest.
“That was what weighed most heavily on my soul,” said Hamster, as Tom nodded emphatically.
Not long ago, their lives had revolved around considerably more ordinary pursuits: Tom was a truck driver, Hamster a vegetable seller.
Now, wiping a face blackened with soot and chemicals, Tom said he had just three things on his mind: a wash, some sleep, and going home to his family.
Visual storytelling by Fred Pipkin
There were many brilliant comments to this outstanding report. Here are just a few :
Antonia Langford
TELEGRAPH
Hi everyone! I’m a freelance reporter for The Telegraph, based in Kyiv. For this article, I travelled near to Kupyansk in Kharkiv region with photographer Iva Sidash to speak to soldiers who had fought in underground pipelines. They told me harrowing stories about life inside the claustrophobic tunnels, where they would fight against Russian soldiers just metres away from them in the pitch black.
I’m going to be here answering your questions in the comments for the next half an hour. Let me know your thoughts?
Henning Dräger
Thank you team Telegraph for your continuous, dedicated and impactful reporting on this terrible war of aggression and heroic Ukrainian defence. Glory to Ukraine!
Star comment :
Artemus Prime
Forty-five days in unimaginable conditions, fighting through darkness, death and poison gas to defend their own country against an invasion that should never have happened. The courage and resilience of these Ukrainian soldiers defy comprehension. Meanwhile, the architects of this barbarity sit comfortably in the Kremlin, insulated from the suffering they have unleashed. May history never forgive them, may justice eventually find them, and may the gutter filth responsible rot in hell for eternity.
Another star comment :
Hilary Deighton
What astonishing men. I bow in deepest respect to your courage and to your service, you extraordinary Ukrainian people. The fact that men like Tom and Hamster went through such hellishly awful conditions not just to stop the enemy but to retrieve a comrade’s body tells you so much about the difference between Ukraine and the Russians, who discard their disposable men’s bodies, boobytrap their disposable men’s bodies, falsify, or just don’t even make, records of their disposable men’s deaths.
Victory to Ukraine, and a free, peaceful, shining, prosperous future for such an admirable people.
John Dumfries
If Trump wasn’t a Russian stooge this war would have been over long ago .tThe only way to deal with Putin is by showing strength not by appeasing him.
Andrew James
Dear God Almighty this is raw unvarnished courage. We should be backing Ukraine with everything they need because they are demonstrating the future architecture of a particular type of warfare and in doing it they are also fighting one of our principal threats, Russia under Putin.
Kremtroll vermin :
GPG NA
This woman writes nonsesne. It’s all out of date. The russians have now taken all of kupiansk. The ukos are being smashed to pieces. The russians are taking uko territory every day and destroying their economy. No amount of DT BS can change that. Ukraine has already ceased to exist as a functioning country. It’s just a dictatorship propped up by the eu. For all the uko supporters posting here and living in fairy land take a look at the real world.
Hilary Deighton
Reply to GPG NA
Oh dear, how embarrassing for you to have to write such risible tosh.
Honza Osprycky
Reply to GPG NA
To be fair, if I were a Russian, I would rather be posting any nonsense from home than spend a minute on the front line.
Hairy Plotter
As always, Thank You Antonia Langford for always keepin it real. Especially noteworthy as well imo is your teaming up with Iva Sidash. Someone that I might never learned about otherwise. One of many ” Wow Women of Ukraine”. 🇺🇦 Слава Україні 💪
Alexandra Connor
The courage and tenacity of these brave men is impossible to overstate. God bless every one of them and their unflinching fight for their country. Ukraine must be proud of them setting such a great example to the world.
Ben Hewes
Outstanding article. It truly brought home the tragedy of Putin’s invasion.
And yet our President wants to ‘do business’ with him?
Words fail me.
Martin Taylor
The West has got so soft and stupid. We have running arguments over 3%, 3.5% defence spending, maybe in 10 years, maybe not. These Ukrainians are incredible. It’s still quite disgusting that some Western politicians are still harping on about aid to Ukraine being diverted to corruption (Farage!), while Ukrainians are quite clearly fighting tooth and nail for their very existence.
“Outstanding” just doesn’t seem to be enough to describe the article or the men involved in these activities. Maybe exhilarating, electrifying, epic, spectacular, etc. unreal….thanks for sharing.
Brendochka :
11/13/26: No Matter What He May Believe, Vladimir Putin Is Not a God
It is written in the Old Testament (Book of Job, Chapter 1, Verse 21) that “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.”
Unfortunately, there are those in this world who believe it is also their prerogative to give and take what they please, when they please, and to or from whomever they please. These people are variously known as autocrats, tyrants, dictators, ogres, and the like. And one of the most notable of that lot in our time is, quite obviously, Vladimir Putin.
When he (seemingly gratuitously) offers to undertake a second “humanitarian mission” in Ukraine — this time in the embattled city of Kostyantynivka — along the lines of the recently completed mission in Oleshky . . . well, you have to wonder what’s behind it. Because Putin is not, never has been, and never will be a humanitarian.
What he is, is a liar and a fraud.
While the six-day ceasefire at Oleshky enabled the de-mining of the surrounding roads, the delivery of desperately-needed aid, and the evacuation of busloads of desperate citizens, it also allowed Russia to continue its onslaught throughout the rest of Ukraine while simultaneously using the lull to bring in additional military equipment and rotate troops.
This week’s so-called peace talks at Abu Dhabi did not produce any substantive progress toward a settlement of the conflict; but it did result in a mutual agreement for a major exchange of prisoners in the near future.
But before you view this as a further indication that Putin may be growing a heart, take a look at what happened when Witkoff and his sidekick Jared Kushner traveled from Abu Dhabi to Moscow to meet with Putin.
After two and a half hours, there was an agreement that European representatives would take part in the next round of meetings, after being sidelined in Abu Dhabi. But Putin again insisted that the post-war presence of foreign (i.e., European or American) troops in Ukraine was not acceptable, claiming that their deployment would pose a threat to Russia’s national security — thereby effectively diminishing, or completely neutralizing, the post-war security arrangements that Ukraine would require to prevent any future incursion by Russia.
Putin also continues to insist that Russia be granted, not only the territory it presently occupies in Ukraine, but additional territory it has been trying to capture as well, supposedly as a “buffer zone” — again, allegedly for Russia’s protection.
None of this, coming from Putin, is particularly surprising. What he proposes is that he be rewarded for having invaded a peaceful sovereign nation, slaughtered hundreds of thousands of military personnel and civilians, destroyed vital infrastructure and historic treasures, and threatened Europe’s future security.
He offers to give a little — a bit of humanitarian aid here, a prisoner swap there — and seeks to take an immeasurable bounty in return.
He really must think he’s a god . . . which may explain why his big orange American friend keeps trying to offer him Ukraine as a sacrifice.
The bloated orange turd needs to be arrested, along with his bum-chums.
Collaborating with Nazis is a mortal sin.
Mykhailo Rohoza :
🇺🇦 President Volodymyr Zelenskyy:
“My job is not to make Trump happy. My job is to save my country.”
The free world stands with the people of Ukraine. 🇺🇦
Illia Ponomarenko :
Enough with these ridiculous headlines like “Is a peace deal for Ukraine getting closer?”
No. It isn’t.
And every new act of buffoonery and total incompetence, every act of shameless betrayal for the sake of five minutes of self-admiration in front of TV cameras, every attempt to give Putin everything he wants just to make a buck out of it, too, pushes the end of this war further and further away.
I’m afraid we don’t yet fully grasp the extent to which this monstrous farce has emboldened Putin to keep fighting this war to the bitter end, at absolutely any cost, and, worst of all, to expand his megalomaniacal ambitions even further.
Ukraine has a new ally :
Americans are thanking Volodymyr Zelensky after a historic blue wave, crediting Ukraine’s drone strikes on Russian data centers with landing a perfectly timed blow on the Kremlin’s online machine.
Donald Trump once sat in the Oval Office and told Zelensky he didn’t have the cards. Look who’s holding a losing hand now.
Ukraine hit Yandex data centers in Sasovo, Kaluga and Vladimir last month, starting on October 8, in retaliation for Russian attacks that disrupted internet service in Kyiv. Then Kyiv went after a Sberbank AI hub and a data center serving VKontakte, Russia’s biggest social network.
Zelensky told the Warsaw Security Forum that social media had become “a little easier to breathe on.” His office later said he was describing the atmosphere online, not a measured fall in bot activity.
Here’s what we can prove, and what we can’t. Automated traffic from Yandex’s network collapsed to roughly 0.4% of its recent peak. But that figure covers all automated traffic, not propaganda accounts specifically, and Snopes calls the claim that the strikes reduced right-wing activity unproven. Nobody can show that a single vote moved because a server in Russia caught fire.
What we do know is that Russia wanted in on this election. Bloomberg reported that Russian state-backed operators used bot networks to inflate views of fabricated videos targeting Democratic candidates, and U.S. intelligence named Russia the primary foreign actor using AI to erode confidence in American democracy.
It failed spectacularly.
Democrats flipped seven Senate seats and now hold 54, with Alaska and Mississippi still undecided. They passed 250 House seats, their largest majority since 2008. They won in Iowa, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas, beating candidates Trump hand-picked.
The biggest credit belongs to American voters, who were furious about affordability and fed up with Trump. Even JD Vance is blaming the Iran war for the GOP’s losses.
But Zelensky’s fans have a point about the bigger picture. Trump spent years bullying a country fighting for its survival. Ukraine kept fighting anyway, and it took the war to the servers of the regime that invaded it.
Trump said Zelensky had no cards. Ukraine kept playing, and American voters just cleaned out the house.
Slava Ukraini. 🇺🇦
US Democratic Socialists
I wouldn’t celebrate this comment. The US Democratic Socialist Party policy on Ukraine is as follows
Opposing Military Aid and Sanctions: While condemning Russia’s invasion, the DSA opposes sending U.S. weapons or billions in military funding to Ukraine, arguing that it fuels a protracted proxy war and enriches defense contractors rather than serving working-class interests. Many within the organization also oppose broad economic sanctions, arguing they harm ordinary Russian citizens.
Bullet Critique of NATO: The DSA platform calls for the U.S. to withdraw from NATO, framing eastward NATO expansion as an imperialist provocation that helped set the stage for the conflict.
Bullet Immediate Diplomacy: They advocate for an immediate ceasefire and negotiated settlement, alongside humanitarian aid and opening U.S. borders to Ukrainian and Russian war refugees.
I have posted a video of the vile Marxist scum party you are referring to before. They are a far left analogue of maga. They support putlerstan and Cuba.
But the post above is from an organization : US Democratic Socialists, that bases itself on Substack and FB. It is not a political party, but has millions of members, so it’s much bigger than the Marxist scum. More importantly it supports Ukraine.
Btw, I see from their posting history that they hate the DSA.
Thank you for the clarification