As we reach 150 days of war in Ukraine, what does the future hold?
Ukrainian commanders say Western weaponry is making a significant difference to their fight, reports Kim Sengupta, but they do not expect the violence to end soon
As dusk falls on another fiery summer’s day in the Donbas, Captain Oleksandr Radchenko gives orders for his unit to open fire with their M142 Himars missile system. The six rockets burst up in a spray of orange flame from the back of an M1140 truck, to the cheers of Ukrainian troops.
There is an even louder cheer as the 227mm GPS-guided missiles hit their target, a Russian 2S19 Msta self-propelled howitzer. Russian forces have been using it to attack villages around Lyman and Slovyansk for weeks, killing and maiming people and destroying property. Now, at last, the Ukrainians can hit back.
At this time, the rate of casualties among Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine is horrendous: more than a hundred troops are being killed each day, with around another 350 wounded. Of nine soldiers we meet in the cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk in a three-day period, four are subsequently killed and two others are wounded.
The Ukrainians tell us repeatedly that they are being outgunned; that they are being hit from a distance beyond the range of their own artillery and missiles. The pleas for help, desperately urgent, come from those who have survived the barrages and are still fighting; from others who have been wounded and are being evacuated; and from the families of those who have died.
Bogdan, a 19-year-old marine, received shrapnel injuries to his back during fierce clashes near the village of Bohorodychne that lasted for hours, during which some of his comrades were killed.
“The shelling is brutal. They focus on a target and they just keep pouring in round after round; that gets very hard to face. They are mass-firing into our positions before advancing. We simply haven’t got enough weapons to counter that, so we are losing a lot, dead and injured. Unless we get modern weapons, many of us will be killed – it’s that simple,” he says.
Capt Radchenko, serving in a volunteer battalion, and speaking after a day of fighting in Lysychansk in which one of his men has died and another five have been injured, has a similar message.
The attrition, he wants to point out, is having a deep psychological as well as a physical impact. “How long can we keep on like this? These are all young guys. Is it fair to keep them facing these attacks unless they have a fighting chance?”
As well as the lack of long-range weaponry, there is an acute shortage of ammunition. We see, on several occasions, how for every 10 incoming Russian rounds, the Ukrainian troops are restricting themselves to three or four in response. The official figures, according to Kyiv, show that the Ukrainians are firing 6,000 shells a day compared with the 20,000 being fired by the Russians.
Both Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk have been captured by the Russians, giving them control of the Luhansk Oblast. The Kremlin’s forces are now preparing for an offensive to try to take the rest of the Donbas.
But at the same time, Western artillery and missiles are coming through in greater numbers, giving the Ukrainians the opportunity to resist. Along with the 12 American and British Himars rocket launchers, there are howitzers – US 155mm and French Caesars – and more Javelin, Milan and N-Law anti-tank missiles, as well as Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.
The US is due to send Phoenix Ghost “suicide” drones to Ukraine, and more Turkish Bayraktar drones are expected. The US House of Representatives has authorised $100m (£83m) to train Ukrainian pilots to fly advanced warplanes, opening the possibility that F-15 and F-16 fighters could be provided for use in the conflict.
The next few months will help to decide whether these Western weapons can help turn the tide. The next stage of the Russian offensive seems likely to involve an attempt to capture the remaining cities in the region.
Slovyansk, in particular, is of strategic as well as symbolic significance. The city, alongside its neighbour Kramatorsk, the region’s capital, is key to Moscow seizing the east.
The Russians are now just 10 miles from Slovyansk. That is where the 2014 insurrection, which led to the formation of the separatist “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk, began. I watched then as the separatists, well armed and drilled, took over the police headquarters, the municipal building, and the offices of the intelligence service, the SBU, over the course of a weekend.
It was reminiscent, on a much smaller scale, of what we had witnessed a few months earlier: the takeover of Crimea by the Russian “little green men” who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere to seize control.
The strife in the Donbas, a hard land of coal mines and steel plants, is not going to end in the near future. It is vicious and personal: communities, even families, have turned against each other.
When Leonid Gubarov died fighting the separatists, posthumously receiving a “Hero of Ukraine” award, his father was on the front line fighting for the other side. Anton Diachenko, a gunner in Lysychansk, speaks of the half-brother he grew up with who is now serving in the forces of the “Donetsk People’s Republic”. Bogdan, the injured marine, tells me of his attempts to reach his mother and 15-year-old sister, who are trapped in a separatist area of Luhansk.
The conflict, after being focused for two months in the east, is once again spreading to other parts of the country. A spate of missile attacks on Vinnytsia and Kharkiv, Dnipro and Mykolaiv has killed dozens of civilians. The Kremlin’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, has announced an intensification of attacks “in all operational sectors”. The order followed strikes on 30 Russian logistical and ammunition centres by the Ukrainians using Western missile systems.
The Ukrainians are not going to stop hitting these targets; it is a highly effective tactic. And there are no signs, either, that Russia will stop its attacks, which have continued almost daily. Vladimir Putin declared recently that he intended to escalate the war. “Everyone should know that, by and large, we have not started anything seriously yet,” he said.
But in reality, Russia’s operation to invade and occupy Ukraine has amounted to a very serious attempt – and one that is failing, to the surprise not just of Moscow, but of its Nato adversaries.
In the early hours of 24 February, when I was in Kyiv experiencing the first Russian missile strikes, it seemed as though it would only be a matter of time before the capital fell. Ukrainian air defences managed to shoot down a large number of incoming missiles, but others got through – hitting apartment blocks, destroying homes, and killing and maiming women and men, the young and the elderly.
A 40-mile-long Russian military convoy headed our way. A terrible fate awaited us, warned Western politicians and military experts. The Ukrainian capital would be razed to the earth and left like Grozny after the Chechen war 20 years ago. And, as Moscow’s forces edged closer, to within 20 miles of the city centre, that seemed to be a distinct possibility.
Ferocious combat took place in the towns and villages outside Kyiv, and reporting on the fighting became difficult and risky. Five journalists were killed in one week. My colleagues and I found ourselves caught up in the fighting as we tried to cover what was going on in towns such as Irpin, Bucha, Hostomel and Makariv.
The Russians were carrying out offensives on multiple fronts. Kharkiv was a particularly sought-after prize. Ukraine’s second city, just 19 miles from the Russian border, was 74 per cent Russian-speaking, and a significant proportion of its population was considered to be sympathetic to Russia. But it is one of the tragic ironies of Putin’s “war of liberation” that two largely Russian-speaking cities, Mariupol and Kharkiv, took the worst pounding. The mood in Kharkiv changed to one of anger and defiance.
Kiril Semenov, a Russian speaker, was an example of that. He had been vociferous on a previous visit that he would “never take up arms against our Russian brothers”. Instead, the 48-year-old engineer became a volunteer, ferrying supplies and food to Ukrainian forces. “Putin bombed us into realising how Ukrainian we are,” he told me with a bemused smile.
Yet slowly, against the odds, amid much bloodshed, the attacks were repulsed. The Russian forces were driven out of the north around Kyiv, and then from around Kharkiv. For the first time, it seemed that Ukraine would survive Putin’s plan.
Evidence of horrific atrocities emerged as the Russians retreated: of murder, torture and rape; of victims being dumped in mass graves and left lying in the streets to be eaten by animals. Homes, schools, offices and factories had been looted and set on fire. The town of Bucha has become an emblem of this savagery. But I visited scenes of brutality in Irpin and Makariv, Cherniev and Hostomel, and in the villages around Kharkiv. There was also more overt evidence of mass killing, such as in the bombing of Mariupol and of Kramatorsk railway station.
Some of those killed in Bucha had their hands tied behind their backs; some were wearing hoods and had bullet holes in the backs of their heads. Some showed signs of having been tortured before their death. “They were left to rot after they died, as if they were bags of rubbish,” said Dimitrou Zamohylny in Vokzalnaya Street. “In that time, flocks of crows sat on the bodies, pecking out and eating eyes. I had never thought I would see anything like that happening, actually happening near my own house. How could anyone even imagine something so bad, in a place like this?”
More than 21,900 alleged Russian war crimes are under investigation at present, along with another 11,000 of what are termed acts against national security under Ukrainian law, and a further 800 acts of looting and theft. More than 6,000 civilians have died, including 348 children, and 7,571 have been injured, including 650 children.
Western states, including Britain, pledged at the Ukraine Accountability Conference in The Hague earlier this month to help hunt down those involved in war crimes.
Three days later, Volodymyr Zelensky sacked Iryna Venediktova, his prosecutor general, who had been leading the war crimes investigation, along with Ivan Bakanov, the head of the SBU. The dismissals – the latest in a series of purges by the Ukrainian president since the invasion began – will have an impact on the war crimes investigations, which already have a difficult path ahead in bringing those responsible to justice.
Authorities in Kyiv have identified 127 “credible suspects”, but only 15 are under detention in Ukraine. The Russians have been carrying out their own version of war crimes trials for foreigners they have captured fighting for Ukrainian forces. Three, including two Britons, have been sentenced to death. This process of show trials may ultimately end with an exchange of prisoners.
A more immediate issue for the West and its allies is that of sanctions on Russia. Waves of them have followed the invasion – on the Russian state, organisations, businesses, and individual oligarchs deemed to be close to the Kremlin.
The sanctions have undoubtedly affected the Russian economy. But they have failed to stop Putin adding $100bn (£83bn) to his war chest during the first 100 days of the invasion. The massive infusion of money came from sales of energy products, with Moscow taking advantage of a spike in prices and selling heavily discounted oil to major purchasers such as China and India.
Russia has sought to strengthen relations outside the West, via a series of talks with Beijing; a meeting of the BRIC group of Brazil, Russia, China and India; and a visit by Putin to Iran to meet the country’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, and Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The Russian president also met with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who gave his backing to the Ukraine invasion in an endorsement far stronger than that given by China or any other major country.
Meanwhile, in Europe, the rising price of energy for consumers, and the threat that Moscow might cut off gas supplies as winter approaches, may well sap some of the overwhelming support Ukraine has so far enjoyed in the West.
The European Union is discussing a voluntary target of cutting gas demands by 10 to 15 per cent, but that faces opposition from a number of member states. Two European leaders, Boris Johnson and Mario Draghi, have fallen. Right-wing political parties, traditionally more sympathetic towards Putin, are gaining ground across Europe. Kremlin allies such as Viktor Orban in Hungary crow that their position is being vindicated.
The Ukrainians can see the pitfalls ahead. The Kremlin will try to get Western governments, many of whom are facing a worsening economic and political situation, to try to pressure Kyiv into accepting a ceasefire, leaving swathes of Ukrainian territory in Russian hands.
Alexander Rodyansky, a senior adviser to Zelensky, is under no illusions: “The Russians understand how the system works, the pressure Western democracies face, and that's what they’re trying to exploit.
“The Russians want Ukraine to accept the status quo, the loss of sovereign land, strike some sort of deal. They will use the time of the ceasefire to regroup, rearm, and then restart their war of aggression. We know what kind of deal they want, and of course we can’t accept it – we’ll continue to defend ourselves.”
Western weaponry is making a significant difference in buttressing that defence, say Ukrainian commanders. There has not been any Russian advance of note in the Donbas over the past week. A Himars strike has damaged the important Antonovsky Bridge between Russian-occupied Kherson and Crimea. Anti-ship missiles will be used to hit the Russian Black Sea fleet, claimed deputy defence minister Volodymyr Havrylov. Some Russian vessels are being moved from the Crimean base of Sevastopol to the safer location of Novorossiysk in southern Russia.
A song about the Bayraktar drone became wildly popular in Ukraine at the start of the war. Now the songwriter, Taras Borovko, is composing one about Himars, with lines like “Our reliable comrade in arms comes from the West ... and it lets out all our rage ...”
But for Capt Radchenko and his fighters, this bloody and extraordinary war feels far from over. “Did anyone think, even a year ago, we’ll have this terrible war in the heart of Europe?” he wonders. “We need to win, there is no other option. Otherwise we will be destroyed as a nation. But this is going to go on for a very long time. I don’t know how many of us will be alive to see it to the end.”
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