VSolonel “Maestro” is a commander in the Kupyansk sector in eastern Ukraine. He has been fighting the Russians since their first invasion, in 2014. His car has a satellite dish for Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service, now ubiquitous along the front lines, attached to its roof. Thanks to its teams of intelligence drones, it can observe what the enemy is doing on the other side of the line in real time, “24/7”. During the night he watched 30 Russian men sent ahead. Two of them were killed. When this happened, the others marched on regardless and did not take cover. In the end, nine of them died. “Either they had no respect for their own lives,” he says, “or they were on drugs.”
January 30 Jens Stoltenberg, NATO‘s general secretary, said “we see that they [the Russians] prepare for more war, that they mobilize more soldiers, more than 200,000, and potentially even more. Mr. Stoltenberg is not the only one to warn that a new offensive is preparing; Ukrainian leaders, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, have said the same, and Russian artillery strikes have intensified sharply in recent days. But most Ukrainian soldiers on the eastern front seem oddly unfazed. Colonel Maestro’s point is that the reinforcements will not be highly trained professionals. Far from there. They are mobilized men, and many are convicts who have joined the Wagner mercenary group deployed in Bakhmut, as doing so is a way out of prison. Their motivation is weak, unlike that of the men they fight.
If even more Russians are thrown at them, says Oleksandr, a sniper serving under the colonel, it means the smell of rotting bodies left behind by their comrades will be “unbearable”. Meanwhile, Brigadier General Sergiy Melnyk, who oversees much of the Kharkiv region, including its border with Russia, says drones and satellite images have not indicated any new troop buildup there. . In fact, he says, the Russians are digging trenches and building defensive positions as if they were expecting an attack.
Ukrainian commanders say they believe the main Russian objective in trying to take Bakhmut is to present success to the public at home, especially for the Wagner band. “It’s in a valley,” General Melnyk says, so it will be difficult, but not impossible, for the Russians to advance from there and threaten the much larger towns of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, which would then become vulnerable. to artillery. It is possible that Ukrainian-held areas in the region will be surrounded. From a Ukrainian perspective, General Melnyk says the point of continuing to fight to retain the city, even at great cost, is also symbolic, but it plays an important role in tying up large numbers of troops Russians. General Melynk thinks that even if he is lost, he could be recaptured later. But not all commanders think it’s worth it in terms of heavy casualties. “If it was up to me, I would step down,” said another.
The general is quick to add that there is no room for complacency. He is preparing in case the Russians launch another push, he says, just as his own forces are preparing for their own counteroffensive to drive the Russians out of Ukrainian territory they occupy. It has been almost a year since the Russians began their full-scale invasion of the country, but the general says that since Ukrainian forces drove the Russians out of almost the entire Kharkiv region in September, and Ukrainian forces recaptured Kherson in November, psychologically everything changed. “We lost our fear of them. We understood that we could fight back and beat them.
The roads leading to the Eastern Front are full of military traffic. Traveling through the ruins of small towns, and past the incinerated remains of tanks and armored cars, there is a stream of trucks carrying munitions, cars full of soldiers, and transporters moving armored vehicles. So much different equipment has arrived over the past few months that soldiers are struggling to identify which is which. As a large Turkish Kipir armored car passes, two soldiers grab their phones to identify it.
Morale remains high and Ukrainian soldiers are learning from experience. Sergeant Vasyl Dubovyi’s team parked in a small wood overlooking frozen fields within earshot of Bakhmut’s front. Before the invasion, he was a business analyst. The team pulls a white strap over their vehicle to help camouflage it from Russian drones. In the distance, the sound of rocket and artillery fire can be heard. Until yesterday, a German-made howitzer supplied by the Dutch stood here. There remain stacked casings of US-made shells. The team car has an Irish license plate. It was bought for them by a group of Ukrainian volunteers.
Sergeant Duboyi pulls out a gadget. While his colleagues assemble their drone, he uses his device to scan the airwaves to determine if there is a Russian drone in the area, or electronic interference that could result in their drone being shot down. Two laptops sit on the open tailgate of the car, next to bottles of coffee and pastries. Once the drone is in flight, it begins transmitting video to computers. The equipment has become invaluable, says Colonel Maestro, and the software is infinitely superior to anything the Russians have. The nine soldiers his men killed hours earlier were spotted by one type of drone and picked up by another, directed from his command center.
Ukrainian drone equipment is a combination of local and Western kit. Everyone here agrees that the Ukrainian forces were only able to hold out thanks to the combination of their determination and Western weapons. There may still be setbacks, such as the loss of the small town of Soledar last month, for which the Russians paid a high price in terms of soldiers killed, and more casualties, such as Bakhmut or around the small town of Vuhledar. But now Ukrainian commanders don’t think the Russians have the capability to launch an all-out offensive.
Yet the Ukrainians say that while they have the weapons and manpower to hold off the Russians, they don’t have enough of the former to launch their own full-scale counteroffensive. This will depend on the alignment of three factors. Time, troops being ready (including those now overseas learning to use the new Western kit) and finally the delivery of the tanks and other equipment promised by the Western allies. “But,” asks Sergeant Dubovyi, “when will he arrive? ■
