By Eldin Yovlz Photographs by Tyler Hicks | Nov. 20, 2024 Updated 7:31 a.m. ET
Overextended Ukrainian forces lack manpower and artillery against Russian forces willing to absorb staggering casualties.
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, the 30-year-old 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 on Sunday when the United States, after months of pressure from Kyiv, said it had granted permission for Ukraine to use American-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 J. Trump to the American 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 by more than six to one 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,” Captain 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,” Captain 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, a 33-year-old 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 percent 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,” Sergeant Major 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, everything is thrown at us,” he said.
But drones alone, soldiers said, will not stabilize defensive lines.
“Nothing can replace infantry,” Captain 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.
At the moment, Russia is still a long way from achieving the Kremlin’s aims of seizing Ukraine’s two most easternmost regions, Luhansk and Donetsk.
Despite their struggles, Ukrainian forces continue to make the Russians pay a high price for every advance, using their fleet of drones to slow the Russian onslaught.
“Our pilots and everyone working here knows that if we don’t stop them while they’re advancing, they’ll reach our positions 100 percent, and a gunfight will begin,” said Sergeant Major Vasyl. “It’s relentless: 24/7.”
He said he had taken part in some of the deadliest battles of the war but that the intensity of the Russian assaults in the southern Donbas was unlike anything he had witnessed.
“Once, they dropped off 30 infantry soldiers from an armored personnel carrier, and we took them all out in one spot,” Sergeant Major Vasyl said. “Another A.P.C. came in immediately after and unloaded 30 more soldiers. We lost count of how many times they sent more troops to the same spot. In half a day of fighting, the Russians lost more than 200 men.”
“In another six-hour clash,” he added, “we recorded a record 132 infantry killed.”
“These are staggering numbers,” Captain Viacheslav said.
But at the end of each engagement, the Russians took the land.
“If they’re willing to lose that many men just to advance, I’m not sure what could stop them,” he said.
His claims of Russian fatalities could not be independently verified.
Ukraine does not provide casualty figures, but soldiers say they also suffer grievous losses in each clash. Russian drone pilots attack them with the same ferocity with which the Ukrainians attack the Russians. The relentless attempts by Russia to storm Ukrainian trenches lead to deadly close-quarter combat that can favor the larger attacking side. And Russia has used its advantage in the air to pound Ukrainian fortifications with powerful guided bombs.
The Ukrainian soldiers shared drone video documenting the recent battles and allowed The New York Times to watch live video being streamed from the front at a command post a few miles away. Drone pilots targeted one group of Russian soldiers one after another, hour after hour.
While it was not possible to verify the precise death tolls, the scores of lifeless Russian soldiers scattered across fields, tree lines and roadsides offered a gruesome window into the extraordinary violence playing out across hundreds of miles of the front every day.
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 five-kilometer 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.
Liubov Sholudko contributed reporting from eastern Ukraine.
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