Ukrainian soldiers with the 22nd Mechanized Brigade at an artillery position outside Chasiv Yar, Donetsk region (Photo: NYT).
The pain surged before knocking out a wounded Ukrainian soldier lying in the back of an ambulance. The driver struggled through crater-filled fields on muddy roads, escaping Russian artillery fire north of the city of Avdiivka, while hoping to avoid being spotted by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
“They (Russian forces) are leveling everything,” said the driver, named Seagull. “I have never seen anything like this.”
Russian forces have been conducting fierce attacks around Avdiivka for more than a month and have recently launched simultaneous attacks across eastern Ukraine in what military analysts say is an attempt to regain the initiative as winter approaches.
Ukrainian forces are putting up fierce resistance, probing for openings in the counteroffensive in the south and attempting to cross the river near the port city of Kherson.
Ukraine's top military commander, General Valery Zaluzhny, recently said that the war had been at a stalemate with intense and exhausting battles but no progress.
For Ukrainian forces on the front lines, the fight to retake key positions has been anything but quiet.
“Of course, things are getting harder,” said Oleksandr, 52, a doctor at a medical base a few miles from the front. “We understand that the war will be longer, harder and there will be more casualties.” But, he said, there was no choice but to fight. “We will stay here as long as necessary.”
The reality is that the fighting between Russia and Ukraine continues to rage, with neither side making much progress while the number of casualties continues to mount. According to soldiers and military analysts, Ukrainian forces have largely stopped Russian attacks, using a combination of UAVs and cluster bombs to inflict some of Moscow’s heaviest losses of the war.
But Russian attacks continue to increase and Ukrainian soldiers are also suffering terrible injuries.
As the Seagull drove the ambulance to the medical site, a medical team waited next to a stretcher stained red from other wounded earlier. The doctors had to move quickly because of the risk of being spotted by UAVs and still being within range of Russian artillery.
“His lower limbs were shattered by the mine. The whole team raced to bandage the young soldier and do what they could to ease his pain,” said Dr. Oleksandr. Within 15 minutes, Seagull was back in the ambulance, speeding to a hospital a safer distance from the front.
Another wounded soldier was quickly brought in. “It was difficult. We hardly slept at all,” said Oleksandr, who had been a thoracic surgeon before the war.
New front in the war
The current intensity of Russia's offensive across eastern Ukraine, as well as Kiev's efforts to seize control of the eastern bank of the Dnipro River in the south, could open a new front in the war, showing how precarious the situation remains on both sides.
“The war in Ukraine is not a stable stalemate,” Frederick W. Kagan, director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote last week.
The balance on the battlefield could easily be tilted in either direction by a number of factors, he said in an interview: the strategic choices of Ukraine and Russia, the level of Western support and the Kremlin's willingness to mobilize its full force.
“On the one hand, the Western arsenal is needed to address almost all the challenges facing forces in Ukraine. On the other hand, Russia’s mobilization of the entire economy and society” could tip the balance in Moscow’s favor.
Ukrainian soldiers fighting in the war are acutely aware of how dependent they remain on Western support. “There is little Ukraine can do to turn things around; it is up to the allies,” said Synoptic, a soldier with the 110th Mechanized Brigade, which has defended Avdiivka since the start of the all-out war last year.
But even in such conditions Ukraine continues to conduct offensive operations in certain areas.
“It was an evolution of war,” said Mr. Carbonara, another soldier with the 110th. “We started fighting better than them, they started fighting better than us.”
More than a month after Russia began its offensive to encircle and seize control of Avdiivka, it is closing in on the vast industrial plant on the outskirts of the city. But the campaign has so far been the most notable, with staggering losses on both sides.
Two camouflaged soldiers, one carrying artillery shells, outside the entrance to the underground bunker (Photo: NYT).
In a statement last week, Gen. Zaluzhny said Russia had lost more than 100 tanks, 250 other armored vehicles, about 50 artillery systems and seven Su-25 aircraft since October 10. However, there is currently no independent source to confirm this figure.
Meanwhile, the US government says more than 90% of the military budget approved for Ukraine has been spent, and delays in approving assistance to Ukraine have begun to be felt on the battlefield.
“This war will end exactly the way Western policymakers want it to end,” said Philip M. Breedlove, a retired US Air Force general and former NATO commander. He added that if the West continues to give Ukraine “what they need to stay in the war rather than what they need to win,” Ukraine will ultimately find it difficult to win against Russia.
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