On the ground in Ukraine, there’s one weapon troops want from the UK more than any other
On the frontline around Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, the scene of some of the war’s most intense fighting, soldiers are waiting for supplies from Britain. Without our missiles, they tell Askold Krushelnycky, advancing is more difficult – and every metre they take is ‘drenched in blood’
I am standing outside a base – concealed by camouflage netting – for soldiers of the air defence units belonging to Ukraine’s 10th Separate Mountain Assault Brigade. Beside me, the commander, a captain, identified by his war name “Kamin” (which translates as “rock”), reels off the impressive amount of Russian hardware his men have shot out of the sky. Eight fighter jets, six helicopters, and more than three dozen drones of varying types – worth tens of millions of pounds.
We talk not far from the front lines around Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, although Kamin has asked for the exact location to remain unsaid. The Brigade – consisting of thousands of men – was moved here last year to face some of the bloodiest, most intense fighting of Russia’s invasion so far. The job of Kamin’s four battalions? To protect from overhead assault the men, equipment, trenches and fortifications of the brigade, which stretch out across 20 miles of this key front line, as Ukraine pushes on with its counteroffensive to retake territory occupied by Russian forces.
Top of Kamin’s wishlist are British-manufactured “Starstreak” missiles – and preferably “Stormer” armoured vehicles, which are used as launch platforms. While the UK has been sending both Starstreak missiles and the Stormer vehicles to Ukraine for some time, Kamin says his men are yet to get their hands on them. The commander talks of the missile’s innovative targeting system that, once the plane or helicopter has been locked onto, cannot be shaken off easily by manoeuvring or countermeasures.
The missile, once launched, separates into three “darts”, increasing the probability of a hit. Each dart has a delayed detonation mechanism so that it penetrates the target before exploding. It comes in versions that can be carried and fired by one person, or shot from the Stormer, which Kamin says provides rapid mobility and protection and can carry eight Starstreaks ready to be launched (with another nine stored on board).
One of the air defence battalion’s most successful members, Sergeant “Boroda” (translating as “beard”) – who has shot down two jets and two helicopters himself – echoes the call of his commander. “What do we need? We need more of anything our allies can send... it would be very cool if they gave us Starstreaks. It’s a very good system, and we would need to receive training, but we can master new systems very rapidly. The more our friends give us, the more enemy aircraft we’ll be able to bring down.”
The conditions the Ukrainian soldiers are facing are stark. The Russian border is around a four-hour drive away, while the base sits about an hour’s drive from the nearest city, Slovyansk. The roads I’ve taken to get here are gouged by artillery shell holes and rutted by tank treads and countless heavy trucks. None of Kamin’s men flinch at the sound of exploding shells and bursts of machine gun fire all around.
Before I arrived, a lieutenant – not from the 10th Brigade – in a battalion deployed northeast of Bakhmut had let me know about the front: “Every metre of land we take is drenched in blood, and means death and maiming.
“At some points, we are 150 metres from the Russian lines. It’s true that their morale is not high, but it’s wrong to dismiss them all as incompetent idiots, and they have some good forces which fight fiercely,” he said.
The lieutenant said that although his own battalion had some sophisticated Western-supplied artillery, they did not have anywhere near their full complement of weapons. “Whereas we have to be very sparing with our ammunition, the Russians seem to have plenty of artillery and an endless supply of ammunition, and shell us without pause.”
I met the lieutenant before his own battalion, mostly from western Ukraine, was sent east. Speaking in a dulled, serious tone, he said that although his and other units were advancing, the Russians had densely sown the terrain between themselves and the Ukrainians with anti-personnel and anti-tank mines, rendering forward movement slow and deadly.
At Kamin’s section of the front, the commander explains that a variety of monitoring systems work to alert his units about incoming enemy aircraft, missiles and drones. He shows off a control centre containing video screens, some of which display data while others show live images of the areas under his men’s protection. This is where the alerts are quickly assessed and decisions taken about who is to intercept them, with what, and where.
The Independent is not allowed to photograph the room, although Kamin allows photographs of himself and his men to be taken, as long as they do not reveal clues about the base’s whereabouts.
Kamin, who had risen to the rank of officer in Ukraine’s armed forces in the 1990s, left after several years to start a business. Married with two children, he volunteered for service immediately after the invasion began last year. Going into more detail about his men’s exploits, he says the Russian aircraft they have downed include four K-52 “Alligator” helicopters, which Moscow had previously boasted were almost invincible, as well as at least one of Russia’s heavyweight X-31 rockets.
Most of the successes, he says, have been achieved with surface-to-air missile systems – shoulder-mounted and operable by one person, and comparable to a version of the UK Starstreak. Most of the missiles used have been supplied by Ukraine’s allies.
Beyond his hope for the UK weapons, Kamin’s highest praise is reserved for the simple-to-use Polish-produced “Piorun” rockets, although US “Stingers” and French “Mistrals” also get great reviews.
The sergeant, Boroda – younger than Kamin – was born in Ivano Frankivsk in western Ukraine, near the 10th Separate Mountain Assault Brigade’s home base. He had served as a fighter with a volunteer battalion in 2015 and 2016, but then left to become the director of a shop selling military wares. Like Kamin, he signed up for military service as soon as the Russians invaded last year. Boroda recently got engaged, but says that “the marriage will be only after our victory”.
He adds: “I had trained as an infantryman. So this anti-aviation work was completely new to me. I had some training with the division, and also went on courses elsewhere in Ukraine.”
When he modestly adds “With practice I became quite good,” some of his comrades smile, because his track record of four aircraft downed has ensured that he is much admired within the brigade and beyond. Boroda says he and his friends calculated the worth of the downed aircraft, but he has forgotten exactly how much it was. Although “it was quite a lot,” he adds. I calculate that it comes to at least $44m (about £34m).
Boroda downed the two jets and two helicopters with Piorun rockets. Although they are based on Soviet-era “Igla” surface-to-air missiles, he believes the Pioruns feature so much in the way of new Polish design that they probably constitute an entirely different and superior piece of kit. The four Piorun missiles used to take down the aircraft cost some $600,000 (about £460,000).
Speaking about the situation on the ground, Kamin says that both Ukrainians and Russians have adapted new techniques as the war has progressed. At the start of the invasion, Russian pilots felt confident that Ukrainian planes and air defences could not touch them. That has proved to have been a spectacular miscalculation, as according to Ukrainian official sources, the Russians have lost 315 planes and 310 helicopters since the war began in February last year.
Kamin says that the Russian pilots have become much more cautious, and know that they don’t own Ukraine’s skies.
He says: “They have learnt through some very hard lessons, and they have tried to adapt. Not all of them have learnt very well. We wait for them to make mistakes, and then we take them out.” He says that last month a fighter jet strayed almost over the heads of one of his units, which “put a rocket up his tail”.
Kamin says that most of the enemy aircraft try to make it back to behind Russian lines and crash there. Then, he says: “We can see a pillar of smoke about 50 metres high that burns for half a day.”
Occasionally, Ukrainian forces have captured pilots whose aircraft have been hit by the Brigade’s air defences.
Kamin adds that the number of downed aircraft does not tell the entire story of the effectiveness of his men. He says that “a very wise instructor”, who taught him years ago at Kharkiv’s military university, told him that you do not necessarily have to destroy a plane or helicopter to neutralise it.
“You can do that by preventing them completing their tasks,” he says. “The pilots flying these planes are human. When they find they are being shot at and they detect rockets coming at them, they often simply dump their bombs in a field and head for home. Well, that’s also an effective way of countering them.”
In the wake of the Nato summit in Lithuania last week, at which the members of the alliance refused to give Ukraine a timetable for membership even as they pledged their continued support, members of the brigade say that nobody really expected that a pathway to join would be set down – but they are pleased at the assurance of increased help.
“At the moment, because we have a limited number of weapons, we have to calculate very carefully whether to fire them or not,” Boroda says. “But if we have more, we will feel in a much better position, and – you’ll see – the results will be formidable.”
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