Standing amid ruins in east Ukraine, Ruslan Mokrytskyi held a combat knife and concentrated on cutting onions without crying. As trivial as it seems on the front line, is still not easy.

The moustachioed 32-year-old in military fatigues instructed his comrade to get the right shot of him with his phone.

The angle matters. Mokrytskyi is one of Ukraine's soldier-influencers keeping up spirits in times of war and has 131,600 followers on TikTok.

"Take a close-up of my fingers," he told his friend, a cameraman for the day. "Lower the frame."

The shot showed his shrapnel-scarred hands as he peeled the onions carefully.

Mokrytskyi's social media profile describes his life as a part-time celebrity chef and soldier in a nutshell: "A cook from the hell of war."

The day AFP met him, he revisited an Italian classic, pasta all'arrabbiata.

Just 24 hours earlier, he was a drone pilot in what he called the "hell of Toretsk" -- defending the eastern city that Russia has been trying to capture for months.

At the front since the start of the war in 2022,........

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