Ukraine’s frontline troops say they are facing intensifying attacks by Putin’s forces – and ammo’s running out
As all eyes are on Israel and Gaza, Askold Krushelnycky speaks to military officers in Ukraine about facing Russian forces from multiple sides in the northern and eastern battlegrounds – and their fears that US support for Israel’s war on Hamas could drain the flow of essential munitions for their fight
While the eyes of the world have turned towards the dreadful scenes in Israel and Gaza, the fighting is fierce across multiple points on the hundreds of miles of front line between Ukrainian and Russian forces. Troops say they are facing Russia’s troops in multiple directions in some areas, while others have said they facing a shortage of ammunition.
The clashes stretch from Ukraine’s northern borders with Russia to southern battlefields in the Zaporizhzhia region, where Kyiv’s forces are trying to punch their way through to the Azov Sea in an effort to break Russia’s land bridge with Moscow-occupied Crimea.
Russia has redeployed significant forces from the south – where the two armies appear to be locked in a bloody, attritional stalemate – further north to threaten towns including Kupyansk, Svatove, Kreminna, Lyman, Siversk and Avdiivka. These towns straddle three regions: in the east, Donetsk and Luhansk, and Kharkiv in the northeast.
The Independent has spoken to Ukrainian troops of different ranks at some of these positions – and almost all display startlingly high morale. A platoon leader commanding troops in one of the hottest areas of the current fighting, Stepan Barna, voices the reason given by many Ukrainian soldiers for continuing to fight: the wanton destruction Russian troops have committed against the country’s people and land. “We’ve seen what the Russians have done. They don’t know any other way of fighting, and we know what would happen all over Ukraine if [Russian president Vladimir] Putin won. So there isn’t any alternative to fighting and defeating the Russians.”
Barna and his men are based in a rural settlement called Spirne, at the sharp end of the Ukrainian front jutting into Russian-held territory near the eastern town of Bakhmut in Donetsk, which itself has seen months of bloody fighting – some of the fiercest of Russia’s invasion so far.
He says: “We have Russians in front and on both sides of us, so we’re always conscious there’s a danger of being surrounded.” He tells of repeated frontal assaults by Russian troops, who keep coming despite being mown down in large numbers. Barna is confident that he and his men will be able to hold out, but he admits that, although much lower than on the Russian side, the number of Ukrainian casualties is high.
Ukraine is said to have taken about 370 square kilometres (140 square miles) of territory from Russia since its counteroffensive began back in June.
Barna was a prominent politician before the full-blown Russian invasion began on 24 February last year. His career included being governor of the western Ukrainian region of Ternopil, and he is still a member of the regional council there. He presented himself for military duty on the day of the invasion.
In the first months of the conflict, he was fighting against Russian forces who were attacking the capital, Kyiv, from the northwest. Last summer, his brigade was transferred to eastern Ukraine, and deployed around Bakhmut, where it has stayed ever since. His brother, Oleh, a former member of Ukraine’s parliament, also fought against the Russian invasion and was killed in combat earlier this year – a sign of just how tough the fighting has been.
In recent days, Russian attacks seem to have reached a peak, with Moscow’s focus on Avdiivka, which is practically a suburb of the eastern city of Donetsk. According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, there were several days when Moscow was losing nearly 1,000 men daily in repeated assaults, as well as scores of armoured vehicles. The fog of war has rendered it impossible to establish the accuracy of those numbers.
The Ukrainians have said that their forces have repelled dozens of Russian attempts to seize Ukrainian positions around Avdiivka and along the front lines northward. These attempts resulted in large numbers of Russian casualties and no significant change in territory held by either side, although Kyiv said its forces had edged forward around Bakhmut. The Institute for the Study of War think tank, which monitors movements on the front line, concurred with Kyiv’s assessment.
One of the factors driving the surge in Russian attacks may be the onset of bad weather, which will typically turn the largely flat, steppe battlefields into churning mud that is impassable for many vehicles – and then frozen, snow-covered terrain as winter fully sets in.
There is speculation among Ukrainian sources that Putin is pushing for something, however insignificant in the big picture, that he can portray as a victory to his countrymen before Russian elections, which are expected to take place next spring. As Putin has demonstrated, his calculations take little account of casualties among Russian soldiers. In a recent update, Britain’s Ministry of Defence said it was “likely” that Russia had suffered between 150,000 and 190,000 permanent casualties – either dead or permanently wounded. That figure expands to between 240,000 and 290,000 if you include those who are wounded but have the potential to return to the battlefield.
All the while, there has been no abatement in Russian missile and drone attacks against civilian targets. One missile hit a post office depot near the city of Kharkiv on Sunday, killing six personnel and injuring others. On Monday, Ukraine said it had shot down 14 attack drones and a cruise missile fired by Russia at its south and east overnight, but debris from a downed drone had damaged a warehouse in the Black Sea port of Odesa.
Air defences brought down nine Iranian-made Shahed drones over the southern region of Odesa, which is home to Ukraine’s main Black Sea ports, and no one was reported injured, governor Oleh Kiper wrote on the Telegram messaging app. The regions of Kherson in the south, Donetsk in the east, and Sumy in the northeast were also targeted in the attack, Ukraine’s interior ministry said.
“Western weapons have proven and continue to prove their effectiveness on the battlefield,” Mykola Oleshchuk, commander of the air force, wrote in a statement on Telegram.
However, in many places visited by The Independent, Ukrainian officers and soldiers said there was a shortage of ammunition, especially for artillery. Many have voiced frustration that while some Western observers have labelled Ukraine’s offensive as stalled or even a failure, Kyiv’s allies have not provided enough of the resources – such as long-range weapons and fighter aircraft – that are needed to force the Russians out of Ukraine and to the negotiating table.
Most Ukrainians have been shocked by the savagery of the Hamas attack against Israel earlier this month, and compared it to the atrocities inflicted by the Russians in their own land. They know that Ukraine’s biggest ally, America, will devote a lot of military support to Israel.
One colonel voiced the concern of many others when he wondered whether the conflict in Israel would divert attention from the war in Ukraine and drain supplies from the Ukrainian military as allies share weapons and ammunition that had been earmarked for Ukraine with Israel.
Andrii Gota, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration told The Independent that for its expected ground attack against Hamas in Gaza, Israel can deploy 400,000 troops, hundreds of top-range tanks and fighter planes. He is sure the Israeli forces will be successful but it could take them a couple of months to complete their task.
He said Gaza is about half the territory of the city of Kyiv and Ukraine has had to fight what was thought of as Europe’s most powerful army, Russia’s, with a fraction of the resources Israel will use.
He said that Ukraine had already demonstrated how efficiently it has used the American ATACMS missiles supplied recently. Before their presence in the country was announced, the Ukrainian military used them to strike at two important targets in the Russian-occupied cities of Luhansk and Berdyansk. The devastating attacks reportedly destroyed nine Russian helicopters, other sophisticated weaponry and equipment and a munitions depot.
While praising the provision of the ATACMS, Mr Gota said that those supplied had a range of only 160 kilometres (100 miles) and only some 20 had been delivered. He said that Ukraine needs the most powerful versions, which can hit targets 300 kilometres away.
And he said that large quantities of the missiles were needed to eliminate the Kremlin’s logistics along its vital “land bridge” for military supplies between Russia and Crimea, including the hundreds of large and small supply depots along the route.
He said that his personal belief was that Ukraine must destroy much of Russia’s Air and Naval capacity to inflict a convincing defeat on Russia.
Gota said: “Throughout Russian history its navy - founded by Tsar Peter the Great – and their aviation, which they built up in the Soviet era, has been at the core of their belief in Russian ‘greatness.’ They are the two vital components of what they think of as their military prowess. It’s a big part of their psychology”
“If their navy and aviation is destroyed they haven’t got the facilities or economic ability to rebuild. Destroying a significant part of their air power and fleet would be a blow they couldn’t recover from. Russia will forever cease to be a military threat to the whole world.”
He added: “Imagine how we could defeat Russia if we had all the weapons we need to do the job.”
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