FOR THOSE arriving on the lunar, pockmarked terrain of Ukraine’s eastern front lines, life is often short. “The experienced soldiers fear getting to know the newcomers,” says “Artem”, a soldier once attached to the 59th brigade south of Pokrovsk, in the province of Donetsk. “Your fate is decided in the first few hours. Five, ten minutes, that’s really all it takes.”
Artem recalls seeing “perhaps 200 abandoned [kit] bags” with surnames in one forward bunker. Getting to positions is only half the story. Once in the crusty burrows that make up the front line, you have to deal with what some soldiers call vinegret, a beetroot salad; the putrid mix of metal, rubbish, branches, blood and human remains. “It’s impossible to hold positions as so many have fallen, and no one recovers the bodies.”
Russia’s summer offensive, unlike Ukraine’s counter-offensive last year, was never announced. Its most intense phase has been going on in the Donbas region and Kharkiv province for three months now. Beset by a shortage of weapons and men, Ukraine has steadily lost ground since falling back from Avdiivka in February: a village here, a bungled rotation there. It is now retreating by up to 1km a day. Fighting has intensified all along the front line. On July 30th President Volodymyr Zelensky said Pokrovsk, a town of 60,000 people before the war, had become Russia’s main target
Russia’s advance has been piecemeal and has come at a high price. At this rate it will be years before it completes its seizure of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, its long-stated aim, if it can do it at all. Its losses, dead and wounded, run at several hundred a day, five to ten times Ukraine’s. Its armoured vehicles are being methodically destroyed by drones. It has thrown everything it has at the Donbas, leaving vulnerabilities elsewhere—a fact that seemed to trigger a raid by Ukraine at least 10km into Russia’s Kursk region on August 6th that it is struggling to repel.
But Russia’s tactics are working. Relentless waves of soldiers, thrown at Ukrainian guns, get through by sheer weight of numbers. Glide bombs and a 4:1 superiority in artillery shells demolish positions. Drones imperil supply roads. “They attack our weak spots all along the front line,” says Serhiy Tsikhotsky, an officer in the 59th brigade. The Russians appear to be targeting units with low morale or command tensions, using disinformation and guns to weaken them further. The 59th has been a particular target following the public criticism of its commander for an allegedly cavalier approach. Mr Tsikhotsky says this was unfair. “Right now commanders are having to decide between the difficult and extremely difficult.”
A security source in Pokrovsk blames much of the downturn on a “devastating” hold-up of weapons by America’s Congress this year. But the most pressing problem is the failure of Ukraine’s mobilisation programme. Russia has more men. Morale in Ukrainian ranks has dropped accordingly, he says, though the extent varies wildly depending on the brigade.
Three years of attrition can wear down even the best units. A commander of the 24th brigade, recently transferred from Niu-York to Chasiv Yar, two of the hottest sections of the front, says battalions in his brigade are now fighting with just 20 people in position, less than a platoon size. He asks to remain anonymous to express his anguish in full. “Call me Syrsky,” he quips, his voice laced with anger towards Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief. He says his brigade, which mostly uses now-rare Soviet-era weapons, has been rationed to two-to-six shells over eight guns per day. The result is about 15 casualties for every fighting day in the brigade. “It’s madness. We are fighting with cooks, electricians and mechanics.”
The recent setbacks have prompted senior commanders to send in crisis managers, with some success. Among them is Colonel Pavlo Fedosenko, who twice played a crucial role in defending Kharkiv from Russian attacks, most recently in May. His appearance at Krasnohorivka, a critical sector, has coincided with its stabilisation. Ukraine is now holding off the Russians from advancing farther. It still controls about 10% of that town.
“The command was weak,” he says in a rapid interview near the front lines. “I’ve given each unit clearer instructions on their tasks, the location of reserves, the enemy’s position, and where Russian drones are operating.” Colonel Fedosenko insists that the stabilisation must be followed by a push against Russian lines. “We need to regain the initiative. If we don’t, they will continue to set the terms.”
Pokrovsk, like many towns and cities in Donbas, waits. Its eastern supply road to Kostiantynivka is already in the range of Russian drones. Ballistic missiles are a daily threat. Before the fall of nearby Avdiivka in February, two-bedroom apartments here sold for $25,000. Now, they are $7,000-10,000. A chimera of civilian life remains in the centre of Pokrovsk, but sadness is etched on every brow. The source in the security services predicts life will change even more definitively here within a couple of months. “They’ll get to certain positions,” he says, “and then Russian artillery and FPV drones will start landing.”
The grinding Russian offensive is posing many questions of Ukraine: of its people, politicians and soldiers. Artem came to a dramatic conclusion. He fled, using the pretext of picking up a parcel from the nearest town. “I wouldn’t be talking to you now if I hadn’t done it,” he says. But even he believes Ukraine must continue fighting, rather than seek peace, and he would do so under a better leader than General Syrsky. “As a commander I see the need for negotiations,” says Colonel Fedosenko. “But as a fighter, a patriot, and a Ukrainian, I’m dead against them.” ■
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