Ukraine counteroffensive: ‘I’m ready to die . . . 90% of the guys here will die too’
Elite Ukrainian troops tell Anthony Loyd the terrible price they are paying to break through Russian lines during the summer counteroffensive
Careless of life, drained of fear, intimate with killing and death: the blank-eyed soldiers of the elite “storm” units in the vanguard of Ukraine’s counteroffensive have a very different battlefield prognosis from that of their generals and political leadership following the breach of Russia’s first line of defence at Robotyne.
“To fight and stay effective in this place you have to run after death, not let death run after you,” said “Boyets”, a 23-year-old storm group member from the Skala Battalion, a special tasks unit fighting on the main axis of attack south of Robotyne. “I am ready to die, only because I have to be.”
“Ninety per cent of the guys here will die too,” added the young fighter matter-of-factly, looking around his comrades as the Skala battalion’s storm troops waited to receive orders for another night attack on Sunday. “We know that. Sure, we’ve breached the first line of the Russians but f***ing hell. What a cost.”
On Sunday Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskiy, Ukraine’s top general commanding operations in the south of the country, said in an interview with The Observer that he believed the Russians had expended 60 per cent of their resources on their primary defensive position around Robotyne, suggesting that in the limited time before the arrival of the October rains the next phase of the Ukrainian counteroffensive towards the coast of the Sea of Azov, 55 miles to the south, may be smoother than the first. It was an optimistic beat in a day that later included the dismissal of
Oleksii Reznikov, Ukraine’s minister of defence, whose ministry had become submerged in a sea of corruption allegations.
Yet the Ukrainian soldiers in the vanguard of this offensive talk of the battle around Robotyne and beyond in different terms, describing levels of doctrinal confusion, attritional warfare and massed casualties that have exhausted the Ukrainian armoured units upon which hopes were first pinned to accelerate the progress of the three-month counteroffensive.
Early hopes that the operation could be carried by Leopard tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles to have a decisive impact by the end of the summer now appear forlorn.
Instead the conduct of the campaign has been thrown into the realm of men on their feet, the storm groups such as those of the Skala battalion, infiltrating through minefields under the cover of darkness and fighting desperate close-quarter struggles to clear Russian trenches by night before armoured vehicles can be brought forward.
“Bradleys and Leopards are great until they hit a mine and can’t move and get smothered by Russian artillery,” said Boyets, whose unit joined the counteroffensive after Ukrainian mechanised units became repeatedly bogged down in minefields along the Robotyne front. “Really, our big lesson of the summer is that mostly we go in on an attack at night carried by just our own legs. The armoured vehicles come up later.”
The success of these highly committed assault troops may be the key to further breaches of Russian lines but it is also needs-must fighting that ensures Ukraine will have secured only the slenderest of breakthroughs in Russian lines before the autumn. The great hopes that were originally put on Ukraine’s western-equipped armoured formations, such as the
47th Mechanised Brigade, have crumbled in the face of the realities.
If fear and horror have flatlined through repetition on Ukraine’s southern front, however, the soldiers fighting there still have enough emotional reserve to express scorn for those in Ukraine and abroad who believed that a fast handout of western war machines would bring quick results to a war that few on the front see an end to.
“When I hear of people sitting on their sofas at home or further afield saying, ‘Oh, the Ukrainian army have got Bradleys and Leopards now, they’ll show the Russians what’s what,’ I clasp my head in my hands,” said Boyets, sounding suddenly exhausted as he stood up to receive his orders for the night’s attack. “And I wish only that they could come here and see the reality of our fight.”
Украинските војници во интервју, не го делат истиот наратив на украинскиот штаб и официјалните лица за ,,успешноста" на контраофанзивата.