Thunderous explosions shook the ground as the Ukrainian crew prepared to maneuver the American-made ship. Bradley fighting vehicle ran out of disguise and once again rushed into the fire.
The captain, a sergeant nicknamed Lawyer, looked worriedly at the sky. “If we are detected, KAB will come,” he said, referring to the one-ton bombs Russia is using to target Ukraine’s most valuable armor and defense systems.
What began as a minor Russian attack on the small town of Ocheretyne is developing into a significant breakthrough, threatening to break Ukrainian lines across a vast stretch of the eastern front. The crew’s mission is to help prevent a breach: protect unmanned and underarmed infantrymen, evacuate the wounded, and use the Bradley’s powerful 25mm cannon to counter The more Russians the better.
But the 28-ton vehicle was soon discovered. Mortars and rockets exploded all around, and the gunner was seriously injured, said the commander, who was identified only by his military protocol call sign.
The combat mission became a mission to rescue his comrades. The gunner survived and is now recovering, Lawyer said days later. But the Russians have gained territory and are continuing to try to move forward.
Ukraine is more than that vulnerable than at any time since the first harrowing weeks of the 2022 invasion, said Ukrainian soldiers and commanders from multiple brigades interviewed in recent weeks. Russia is trying to exploit this opportunity, stepping up attacks across the east and now threatening to open a new front by attacking Ukrainian positions along the northern border outside the city of Kharkiv.
The months of delays in US aidsome spiral of casualties and the severe shortage of ammunition took a heavy toll, evident in the exhausted faces and weary voices of the soldiers engaged in daily combat.
“To be honest, I’m scared,” said Lieutenant Colonel Oleksandr Voloshyn, 57 years old, commander of the veteran tank battalion of the 59th Mechanized Brigade. “Because if I don’t have artillery shells, if I don’t have people, if I don’t have equipment that my people can fight with…” he said, trailing off. “That’s it.”
Russia’s surprise attack passed topaz colorabout nine miles northwest of Avdiivka, in late April, showed that even a small crack in the line could have a ripple effect, as already stretched platoons risked being surrounded and Other units raced to block the breach.
“It’s like having the engine blow out in your car and you keep driving it,” said Lieutenant Oleksandr Shyrshyn, 29, deputy battalion commander of the 47th Mechanized Brigade. “The car still works but at some point it will stop. Then you will have to spend even more resources to restore it.”
“Similarly here, there are errors that don’t seem serious,” he said. “But they have led to the need to stabilize the current situation. And it’s unclear where that stability will take place.”
“Any event that you don’t foresee can turn your situation completely upside down,” Lieutenant Shyrshyn said. “And this is what happened at Ocheretyne.”
The influence spread to the people
After Avdiivka fell for Russian forces in February, the small town of Ochertyne served as a Ukrainian military stronghold along the highway. Most of the 3,000 residents fled. Abandoned high-rise apartment complexes and other urban infrastructure made good defensive positions and for two months the situation remained relatively stable.
But then something went wrong.
Russians appeared so suddenly in the desolate streets around Ivan Vivsianyk’s home in late April that at first glance, he mistook them for Ukrainian soldiers. When they asked for his passport, the 88-year-old learned that Ocheretyne’s defenses had collapsed.
“I thought our soldiers would come and defeat them,” he said in an interview after making what he called a harrowing walk across the front lines to escape. “But that did not happen.”
Three weeks later, what began as a small step forward for Russia has grown into one a bulge about 15 square miles wide that is complicating the defense of the Donetsk region.
Expanding the bulge further north could allow the Russians the opportunity to overcome some of Ukraine’s strongest fortifications in the east that have existed for many years. Now, Russia could also launch a new line of attack against Konstiantynivka, a town that serves as a logistics hub for Ukrainian forces.
The Kremlin’s effort to advance from one ruined village to the next was captured in hours of combat footage shared by Ukrainian brigades at the front.
Russian infantry walked across mine-strewn fields and used mountain bikes and dune buggies to try to outrun exploding Ukrainian drones. They attack in convoys of armored vehicles of varying sizes, with large attacks often led by tanks covered in giant metal sheds and equipped with electronic warfare equipment. Sophisticated to protect against drones. Western observers call them “turtle tanks.” Ukrainians call them “wundervaflia,” combining the German word for miracle with the Ukrainian word for waffle.
“We allowed their infantry to get closer to us, which created closer contact and direct firefight,” Lieutenant Shyrshyn said. “So our losses are increasing.”
The Russians are also paying a high price for every step forward. Some 899 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded every day in April British military intelligence agency recent report.
Despite sending many soldiers into the war, the Russians captured an area of only about 30 square miles in April, according to military analysts. And capturing Ukraine’s last bastion cities in Donbas – urban centers like Kramatorsk and Pokrovsk – will almost certainly entail long and bloody battles.
However, Russian advances in recent weeks in the east and northeast are beginning to change the shape of the front in dangerous ways.
Frayed road
“Look at the map, where we are and where Ocheretyne is,” said Colonel Voloshyn, commander of the tank battalion. He studied the terrain as he prepared for a mission targeting a house where 20 Russians were believed to be hiding. “Now I can assume that they can simply ignore us left, right. They were tactically successful, they had equipment, people, artillery shells. So we can expect everything.”
The lack of drastic changes on the horizon for more than a year has been obscured Fighting according to tiring positions necessary to maintain that precarious balance. In a war where the battle for a row of trees could go on for weeks, the Russian surprise raid in the area around Ocherytne was the most dangerous kind of problem – fast, deep and surprising.
There was a fierce debate about who was responsible for failing to hold the line there.
The Deep State Telegram channel, which has close links to the Ukrainian military, accused the 115th Mechanized Brigade left key positions without orders, allowing Russian troops to infiltrate and storm the settlement.
The brigade issued an angry denial, saying its soldiers were outnumbered 15 to one and held out as long as possible under withering fire.
“We want to emphasize that none of the regular units of the 115th Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine left or fled their positions,” the brigade said. A special military commission was established to determine exactly what happened.
Soldiers familiar with the war were hesitant to publicly criticize a neighboring brigade and said a range of problems – from poor communications to being outgunned – could all play a role. some game.
Lieutenant Shyrshyn of the 47th Division, who held positions next to the 115th Division, would not speculate on what happened, but said the consequences were immediate: It was clear that the 47th Division would have to withdraw otherwise risk encirclement and catastrophic losses.
“The Russians sensed weakness in that direction as they took advantage of the gaps to advance behind the Ukrainian soldiers,” he said. “Then we lost Ocheretyne, then Novobakhmutivka, then Soloviove.”
The lieutenant said that the Ukrainian high command does not want to cede any territory and added that “it is very complicated to argue with them and explain why it is not good to take this position.”
Lieutenant Shyrshyn hopes the situation will improve with the arrival of Western weapons but until then, he said, “we will continue to die, we will continue to lose territory.”
“The question is whether it happens at a slow and defensible pace,” he said. “Or quick and meaningless.”
Liubov Sholudko Contributing reports from eastern Ukraine. Anastasia Kuznietsova And Natalia Novosolova contributing research.
