After passing through Kyiv for a few hours for a funeral, Nick can’t wait. He doesn’t even have time to have a coffee. He has to run to his truck and undo the more than 700 kilometers to Kramatorsk, where his team of doctors and nurses are waiting for him. The counteroffensive that Ukraine launched at the beginning of June along more than a thousand kilometers of its extensive territory does not give them a truce. Every meter they retake requires a great sacrifice from the troops, including the number of wounded. And deceased.
Minutes ago they have been warned that they have to support a new offensive in the surroundings of Bakhmut that seeks to retake control of some of the hills that surround this town in Donbass, or the ruins that remain after the fateful battle that ended in May in favor of the Russians, but not before leaving it devastated. In recent weeks the Ukrainians have taken the initiative and seek to surround the Russian troops within the urban perimeter. “The Russian forces are trapped inside,” confirmed the week ending the commander of the Ukrainian army’s ground forces, Oleksander Syrskyi, who pointed out that the Ukrainians were within firing range of the access routes to the city.
Undoubtedly a significant – and morally symbolic – advance for the Ukrainian troops, although, like everything related to the counteroffensive, it comes at a great cost. “It is very painful to see the sacrifice behind everything our men are doing… But above all it is painful to see that people expect quick results without understanding that every meter of land is recovered with blood,” explains Tatiana, a young volunteer from Nick’s team helping with the evacuation efforts in this region of the country.
“But we have no other option if we want to retake the territories,” adds this 32-year-old woman who has dedicated the last 10 months to supporting the population and the soldiers. Tatiana’s vision is shared by different men and women along the front lines. “When the situation is very tough, I think of the joy with which people in towns like Izyum received us when she was released. They hugged us, they thanked us,” explains Oleksander, 33, who first enlisted in the army in 2014.
“We cannot abandon them,” he assured one afternoon in early June in the town of Yompil, under constant siege by Russian artillery.
The comments that the counteroffensive is going slower than expected, that the advances in these five weeks are few (although in reality the American Institute for War Studies calculates that it is 253 square kilometers, almost the same as the Russians retook in their winter offensive, which lasted until May), have echoes on the battlefield. And they even cause frustration among the soldiers who every day collide with the difficulties of each front.
An example is what is happening in Klishchiiva, seven kilometers southwest of Bakhmut, where Ukrainian troops have managed to take control of some sectors, but Russian forces are fighting back with great intensity. The artillery falls incessantly. The soldiers who manage to take control of nearby positions assure that many times the trenches are full of corpses.
Some belong to the Ukrainians who died in combat months ago and others to the Russians, who died in recent days. The continuous artillery attacks do not allow them to carry out the evacuation. To the stench that emerges from the decomposition of the bodies due to the heat is added that the Russian soldiers leave explosives or grenades inside the deceased. One more risk for the Ukrainians, who often have to spend nights and days in those trenches together with the inert bodies of the fallen.
A few days ago, a doctor who today fights with the army on another of Bakhmut’s flanks, and who identifies himself under the pseudonym Pájaro, said that it was extremely frustrating and painful for them to have to recover the remains of comrades who had died months before and were leaving. finding as they went. “Every time we come across the body of a Russian soldier we treat it as if it were an explosive, we have had colleagues who have been injured when moving those bodies,” he explained.
He also said that in recent weeks the days have been intense and each mission announced to the front is surrounded by the certainty that one of the comrades will be injured or die. “You never know when it will be your turn,” confessed Pájaro, who, like others at the front, called attention to the fact that one of the differences between the Ukrainians and the Russians is the value of the human being. “For us every man counts. They are our treasure. Not for them. Many are sent to die.”
Dmitro’s truck and his team are hidden inside some bushes on the road leading to Orihiv, on the Zaporizhia front. Before the full-scale invasion, he worked as a systems engineer and currently coordinates a drone unit. “They have to understand that it is a slow process. In every corner of the territory we are looking to find the weak point of the enemy, but it is a very painful process that has a high cost, ”he explains.
His work allows him to have a better idea, at least better than that of other soldiers, of the reality facing the Ukrainian army in these vast steppes where the only geographical protection is narrow lines of trees that divide the plains. The geography does not change until reaching the target cities of the Ukrainian forces, such as Melitopol, Berdiansk or Mariupol. “There ahead we only found obstacles. They clearly watch us when we advance because we have no protection. We are out in the open.”
This vast battlefront stretching across the width of Zaporizhia province was relatively static after the first few months of the full-scale invasion in February 2022. Since then the Russians have had time to build a long, sophisticated line of defense, divided into several stages, which means that each meter gained by the Ukrainians is considered a small great victory. Added to this are large minefields that make traveling through these fields a total lottery.
In an interview given by President Volodimir Zelensky a few days ago to CNN, he repeated that if the shipment of weapons by the West had not been so delayed, they could have started earlier and the Russian army would not have had time to prepare as it has done. In the past, he also acknowledged that the counteroffensive is going slowly, but in an interview given on June 29 to La Vanguardia along with other Spanish media, he assured that he would prefer it to be delayed for several months if this prevented the loss of human lives.
“Of course we are going slower than expected. But what we find ourselves in front of is hell. Every step is difficult,” explained Vitali, 36, who is in charge of an artillery unit near Orihiv. The difficulties of the fight that the soldiers talk about along the front are reflected in dozens of videos published by the different brigades and that circulate on social networks, including YouTube.
In a meeting held in the house that is the unit’s base, several kilometers from the front, through which the artillery he coordinates moves, Vitali said that at first they thought that by firing a lot of artillery they could cover the advance of the units. mechanized and infantry, but the problems they encountered along the way were enormous. In recent weeks they have modified their strategy.
They work in small infantry units looking to find the enemy’s weak points. His strategy is to surprise. “We know we don’t have planes, we know we don’t even have all the weapons and men we need, but we keep moving forward. It is difficult and expensive but we do it”, says this man who recognizes another reality that is spoken of in a low voice in Ukraine. At least in the vicinity of the battlefront. Many of the men who have just joined the military, and who are experiencing the reality of the battlefront for the first time, have had a more difficult time adjusting to the harshness of this war.
“It is not the same to be trained for two or three months in Europe, no matter how good the training is, than to fight in these circumstances. It has been hard for everyone at the time and you have to learn”, confirms Vitali, who says that as the days go by, the forces are more coupled. And the strategy has been redefined. But he does not deny that in the first days of the counteroffensive there were mistakes caused by the inexperience of some. This added even more drama while trying to move forward.
“It is normal for these things to happen. A counteroffensive is the joint work of many units and finding the right coordination is not always easy. But we are already achieving it ”, explained this man in mid-June. In a message sent this week he confirmed again that little by little his unit was advancing. He also confirmed that there were still many brigades to go into action, they are still training far from the battlefield.
Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Mailar, who continually reports on the progress of the counteroffensive, has assured that the “biggest blow” is yet to come. And this is an idea that is repeated over and over again among the Ukrainian authorities and military. And the chief of staff, Valery Zaluzhnyi, says that everything is going according to plan.
In another of the cities near the Zaporizhia front, Prokrovske, another soldier who also identifies himself as Vitali took advantage of the fact that he had a day off on June 21 to do some shopping and have a coffee. He is part of the special forces, he says, and cannot give any details of his work. But he does acknowledge that the Russian defenses and trenches are well built and that even the enemy seems better prepared than months ago.
“They still have a lot of problems, but we have noticed that they have learned from the mistakes they have made in the past. We cannot think that they are all inexperienced and sent to die”, explains this man, who is confident that as the weeks go by, Ukraine will find the gap through which to advance and retake the occupied territories.
“We have to be strong and continue. It’s not easy, but as soldiers we have to understand that our commanders have a much more complex picture of what’s happening on the ground. We only see what we have in front of us ”, he concluded at the end of his coffee. By then he had opened up a little more to the conversation and recognized the hardness of this war while he sentenced: “We have to fight and recover what is ours.”
