The Ukrainian soldiers thought the Russians would quickly retreat from Neskuchne, a small village in southern Ukraine, especially after a coordinated artillery attack and a missile attack on their headquarters. .
Instead, the Russians dug in, fighting for two days before abandoning the village last month, leaving rotting corpses by the roadside and piles of used ammunition around the defense system. their temporary keeper.
The loss to Russia, June 9, was Ukraine’s first victory in prolonged counterattack has entered its fourth week but moves at a slower pace than expected. In that respect, the battle for Neskuchne was an early warning that the hopes of Kyiv and his Western allies of a quick victory were unrealistic and that every mile into Russian-occupied territory would very tired and contentious.
The multi-day battle was fought primarily by an army of volunteers who attacked with infantry, not by large NATO-trained brigades armed with Western tanks and armored personnel carriers that the leaders of the Soviet Union were fighting for. military analysts say will lead the long-awaited offensive.
Soldiers described the fighting, along with visual evidence of the battle still scattered around Neskuchne two weeks after it ended, making it clear that Ukraine’s success depended on the ingenuity that helped the forces. Russian forces caught off guard.
In the days following the “liberation” of Neskuchne, announced on 10 June, Ukrainian forces recaptured several villages further south. But since that first winning streak, the Ukrainian offensive has been slow. Ukrainian forces were bogged down by Russia’s solid defensecasualties increased and field after field of land mines.
The battle for Neskuchne pitted about 70 Ukrainian soldiers from the 129th Territorial Defense Brigade against about 150 Russian soldiers from the 60th separate Motorized Rifle Brigade, as well as a team of soldiers who had became a Russian prisoner known as the Storm Z unit.
“We had to liberate house after house,” said Valeriy, a soldier from the 129th brigade who took part in the fighting and, like others in this article, is identified only by name for reasons safe, said. “At the beginning of the counterattack, we thought there were no more than 20 of them.”
Neskuchne, a village of about 500 people, has been occupied by Russians since the early months of the war, leaving plenty of time for Moscow’s forces there to dig in. The terrain around the village — rising to the west and Mokri Yaly River to the east — means that Neskuchne serves as the gateway to a chain of villages to the south. In short: There is only one entrance and one exit.
The Russians knew this and they expected that a Ukrainian advance into the village would be supported by tanks and other heavy equipment on its main north-south road. Ukrainian soldiers involved in the battle say that Russia’s defenses include anti-tank mines and stockpiles of anti-tank missiles, some of which are still at Russia’s headquarters as seen by The New York Times.
But the attack, at least in the early stages, did not incorporate “combined weapons” or NATO’s military strategy of combining artillery fire with troop and tank movements commonly used by military analysts. Western and American officials cite as crucial to Ukraine’s counter-offensive success.
Instead of using tanks, which could be easily seen from the air or heard on the ground, the Ukrainians quietly entered the village, on foot and in small groups of infantry, after a World War-style shelling. the first.
However, unlike the mass saturation of artillery fire commonly seen in that war, the Ukrainian attack on Neskuchne also incorporated a guided missile strike. Missile, fired by HIMARS provided by the USattacked the Russian headquarters — a command post in the northeast corner of the village that used to be a school — and damaged the building but failed to destroy it.
Most of Neskuchne’s approximately 200 houses and shops are single-story structures common in rural Ukraine, which means the two-story schoolhouse is of strategic importance to any form of defense. . Much of the battle for the village was focused on driving the Russians out of the Neskuchnenska school, which was closed after the invasion.
Russian soldiers from the 60th brigade prepared the building for any form of attack, smooth passages between the classrooms so soldiers could move around without getting hit – a tactic that used by Islamic State fighters in the battle for the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2017. The defenders also set up their barracks in the basement and drilled holes in the wall to place machine guns.
A machine-gun nest, built into a sandbag staircase and a small firing slot, headed for the north-south road, the only access to the village. The site was littered with hundreds of shell casings, a clear sign that the school was still occupied and protected after the HIMARS attack.
Dmytro, a soldier from the 129th brigade who also took part in the battle, said: “After the headquarters was hit by a HIMARS missile, they continued to defend themselves. “Only after using more artillery,” he said, “we were finally able to get them out of the school.”
After the initial shelling, which focused on destroying the mines located around the outskirts of the village as well as the Russian defenders within, dozens of Ukrainian soldiers spread out from the northwest corner of Neskuchne, which towards overgrown lawns and smoldering debris. Then they attack.
The Ukrainians communicated via walkie-talkies as they advanced, while keeping in touch with drone pilots operating small, readily available devices. Drones prove essential as the battle drags on: The Ukrainian military relies on drone pilots and those watching the battle via video stream to communicate — using Starlink satellite internet — with artillery batteries to support the attack.
On the second day of fighting, the 129th brigade was reinforced by 20 men from a nearby tank brigade as they tried to dislodge the Russians.
The battle almost ended on June 9, when Russian forces retreated from the danger of encirclement. More than a dozen Russian soldiers were killed or wounded, while Ukrainian soldiers said some drowned while trying to flee across the Mokri Yaly River. At least six Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the fighting.
“The Russians did not leave their positions until the last minute,” said Dmytro. The Russians left behind a stockpile of ammunition, machine guns, rifles, and artillery shells. The spoils have since been divided among the Ukrainian units taking part in the battle.
Now, the front line was about 5 miles from Neskuchne. The sound of cannons in the distance was a near-continuous soundtrack, mixed with the sound of shells firing from firing positions around the village.
Almost every house in Neskuchne was damaged or destroyed, and the last person living there was evacuated after the battle. Unfed cats roam the streets. The school is a burnt, damaged building. Small evidence that this was once a place of learning includes torn pages on the floor, a charred ping-pong racket and a half-deflated soccer ball thrown among grenades, masks. gas chambers and discarded bandages. suck chest wound.
