By Marc Santora
A small band of Ukrainian soldiers was trapped. They were holding the line on the battlefield, but Russian forces had managed to creep in behind their trench and encircle them.
“Even if the position holds, supplies — ammunition, provisions — eventually run out,” Capt. Viacheslav, 30, the commander of an elite drone unit, said last week as he monitored events from an outpost a few miles away in eastern Ukraine. “Any vehicle attempting to reach these positions will be ambushed.”
“We are always getting stuck in these kinds of tough situations,” he said.
As the war in Ukraine enters its fourth winter and the first snowfall blankets cratered fields strewed with bodies, the situations are only growing tougher for Ukrainian forces.
Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s top military commander, recently said his forces were fighting to hold back “one of the most powerful Russian offensives from launching a full-scale invasion.”
Ukraine got a boost Sunday when the United States, after months of pressure from Ukraine, said it had granted permission for Ukraine to use U.S.-provided weapons to fire deeper into Russia. On Tuesday, they used American-made ballistic missiles, called ATACMS (for Army Tactical Missile System), in an attack on a munitions depot in Russia.
But the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency this month injected an extra dose of uncertainty over the fate of the Ukrainian war effort.
While questions over whether the United States would continue to provide robust military support to Ukraine have resulted in a frenzy of diplomatic activity around the world, nowhere will those decisions be felt more acutely than on the front lines, where beleaguered Ukrainian troops are engaged in a fierce and bloody defense of their land.
Outnumbered more than 6-to-1 along some stretches of the front, soldiers and commanders say they are hindered by a lack of combat infantry after years of heavy fighting and, just as important, by a shortage of experienced platoon and company commanders to lead untested recruits into battle. That has led to a fraying of Ukraine’s lines that has allowed Russia to make its largest gains since the first weeks of the war.
“Brigades that have been fighting for a long time are simply worn out,” Viacheslav said, echoing concerns voiced by more than a dozen commanders and soldiers interviewed along the front last week.
The soldiers, identified only by their first names in accordance with military protocol, said they were speaking publicly about problems in the hopes of driving home the urgency of the moment to the military and civilian leadership as well as the public.
“We’re stretched thin,” Viacheslav said. “People need to step up and serve. There’s no other way.”
As well as being short of personnel, Ukraine lacks the medium- and long-range weapons needed to conduct a consistent and effective campaign aimed at Russian logistics, command and control centers and other key targets.
More than a dozen Ukrainian soldiers on the front noted a marked decrease in artillery fire from their side in recent weeks, including the U.S.-made multiple rocket launching system known as HIMARS.
“HIMARS — I barely hear them at all anymore. They’re almost nonexistent,” said Sgt. Maj. Dmytro, 33, a drone operator and company leader. “If we had more munitions, it could compensate for the lack of people.”
Given the shortage of artillery, drones now account for 80% or more of enemy losses along much of the front, commanders said.
That has made the drone operators prized targets. “It’s a constant struggle for survival — every day is a question of luck,” Dmytro said.
A veteran drone pilot and platoon leader, Sgt. Maj. Vasyl, said the Russians were even dropping thousand-pound guided bombs to try to take out small drone teams, with one falling just a few hundred feet from his position last week.
“If they detect a drone operator, everythng is thrown at us,” he said.
But drones alone, soldiers said, will not stabilize defensive lines.
“Nothing can replace infantry,” Viacheslav said, adding that drones “cannot realistically stop the enemy.”
Russian forces are concentrating much of their efforts on capturing the last Ukrainian stronghold in the southern Donetsk region, Kurakhove, and opening a path to attack the strategic city of Pokrovsk from the south.
Russia is still a long way from achieving the Kremlin’s aims of seizing Ukraine’s two most easternmost regions, Luhansk and Donetsk.
Ukrainian soldiers said the best way to stop the Russian advances was not by engaging in head-on clashes — which would always favor the larger Russian forces — but by weakening the enemy’s combat capabilities.
The lack of artillery compromises that effort. With no signs of the Russian offensive easing, Ukraine is racing to fortify defensive lines across the front. Tree lines are being cut down to limit places the Russians can hide. Tank traps are being dug deep into the ground. New trenches branch off from roadsides in all directions. And fertile fields are lined by concrete dragon’s teeth and seeded with mines.
But troops are still needed fill the trenches.
Brigades normally charged with controlling a 3-mile stretch of land are sometimes asked to hold a line two or three times as long, soldiers said.
When reinforcements are added, they lack combat experience, and each passing month, as Ukrainian losses mount, there are fewer battle-hardened veterans to help guide them.
Effective communication has also become an issue for Ukraine. When units from different brigades are dispatched to help fill gaps along the front, it can lead to a breakdown.
Junior Sgt. Denys, a drone operator working around Kurakhove, described an example of the problem.
When he detects enemy movement using a thermal imager, he only sees a heat signature.
“I don’t see the uniform and insignia,” he said.
To be sure he is not targeting friendly forces, he asks his commander if they have any troops in the area. But his commander needs to reach out to another battalion commander who in turn has to ask yet another.
“It takes time for this information to get back,” he said.
Time, however, is not a luxury soldiers under assault can afford.
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