DONETSK PROVINCE, Ukraine — Red flames crackled in the golden wheat field, targeted by Russian artillery a few minutes earlier. Nearby, the commander of a Ukrainian front-line unit was eating his lunch of pasta from a tin bowl. As more incoming shells exploded in the fields, his men took cover in their bunkers.
Life on the front lines in the eastern region of Donetsk has been slow in recent weeks. Ukrainian soldiers serving there say they live under near-constant Russian artillery and aerial bombardment. The fields and hedges around it are charred and smoldering. Their days and nights alternate with the sharp blasts of outgoing Ukrainian artillery and the deeper, rumbling bursts of incoming fire.
“It’s tense,” said Commander Samson, 55, who, like most members of the Ukrainian military, requested to be identified only by his code name in accordance with military protocol. “There is daily mortar fire, planes, helicopters, ‘Grads.’ They have a lot of ammunition.” Grad, meaning hail, is the Russian acronym for a commonly used multiple rocket launcher system.
After Russia launched an offensive against eastern Ukraine in April, Russia made progress at a steady, if grueling pace. But since they took control of Luhansk province two weeks ago, the Russians have lost some of that momentum. Ukrainian forces, forced to move to the second and third line defensive positions, have largely held up despite the assault of mortar shells and rockets.
The lingering battle in Donetsk is taking place amid ominous signs that Russia’s war in Ukraine is intensifying on other fronts.
After a series of deadly Russian rocket attacks on civilian targets in recent days, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is begging his people to heed air-raid sirens and seek shelter. In some cities, Ukrainians have grown not only complacent about the danger, but too tired of the war to respond to the threat of attacks.
The Ukrainians are outnumbered and outgunned, the Ukrainians say that the success or failure of their struggle will depend on getting more and better weapons. But they say they are determined to preserve every inch of what is left of them in Donetsk province, despite heavy losses, and dismissed the suggestion that they are ceding territory or giving up the battle as ludicrous. They have the conviction of their cause, they said, while the Russians have no target.
“There is no choice,” said Serhii, 44, a one-unit career soldier. “We protect our country.”
Ukrainian troops were dug into the forests and villages and fought off a Russian attack in early July, knocking out a group of tanks in a battle in the farming village of Verkhnokamianske, according to different accounts. The blow halted the Russian advance and caused a lull in places on the front lines, soldiers said. Military doctors said they saw a drop in casualties from the front a few days after the battle last week.
Elsewhere, soldiers and officials recounted other successes. The Seversky Donetsk River and the swampy land in the north of the province remain a natural barrier. The deputy commander of a National Guard unit said his men prevented an attempted river crossing by Russian forces last week, destroying tanks and a pontoon bridge.
Another volunteer unit said they had stopped Russian tanks already advancing south of the river from entering from the northwest as well.
Both sides depend on long-range artillery and missile strikes. Russia has stepped up strikes against the next set of target cities in the eastern part of the province — Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and Bakhmut, among others — and the Ukrainians have hit ammunition depots deep in the Russian-controlled area with the HIMARS attack. missile system received new from the United States.
Understanding the war between Russia and Ukraine better
On the ground, the battle is about the villages on the outskirts of the big cities. There, Russia has made little progress, taking only one village south of Bakhmut in two weeks of fighting the length of the front line, stretching for hundreds of miles.
Serhiy Haidai, the head of the Ukrainian civil-military administration of the neighboring Russian-owned Luhansk province, confirmed that the Russians had suffered several setbacks on the battlefield and in their rear bases from the added artillery systems in the past two weeks, but said the fighting was not a turning point in Ukraine’s favour.
“I don’t think this is the time,” he said. “We have western artillery, and thank you for that, but it is not enough to reverse the progress of events.”
Privately, Ukrainian officers serving in eastern Ukraine said they believed the West was deliberately providing only enough aid and equipment to delay, not defeat, the Russian offensive.
Nevertheless, despite punishing battles and heavy casualties defending the last towns of Luhansk province until May and June, Ukrainian troops said they were holding onto their new positions and not ready to give up.
A unit that fought for 18 days in the city of Sievierodonetsk, which fell to the Russians at the end of Junerested in a camp in the woods a few miles back from the front line, recovering from having been ordered to withdraw from the city in the last week of June.
They were in bad shape when they came out, a unit press officer said. “They didn’t want to back down and the fighting was tough too,” he said. “They’re doing better now.”
The men themselves seemed to have accepted their fate.
“We were ready to fight to the end,” said their commander, Serhii, 52. “But I didn’t feel bad about leaving. It was better to save lives.” He said he had served for 34 years, first in the Soviet army and then in the Ukrainian armed forces, but he said he had learned from NATO officers the importance of keeping his men alive.
The Russians do not have the same concern for their men, he said: “They have quantity. They get hit and just throw in another battalion.”
Serhii, the 44-year-old professional soldier in his unit, said it made sense to retreat to stronger defenses in the surrounding countryside, where they could more easily hit Russian armor with artillery.
“We went out of town to lure the Russians into the fields, where it is harder for them to fight,” he said. The Russians sent reconnaissance teams and diversionary groups forward, but the Ukrainians adjusted their tactics, he said. “We have learned how to fight.”
Kum, 47, deputy commander of a National Guard unit who fought in eastern Ukraine for months, showed an equally unwavering stance. His battalion had suffered losses, but had seen no desertions, he said. The men are still committed to the fight, including on the front lines, he said, whom Ukrainians call ground zero.
“A lot of people are tired, but everyone knows we have to keep going,” he said. “If someone is really tired, we try to give them some rest. But all the men are at zero and still fighting.”
“We are soldiers,” he said. “When we are told to hold something, we hold it.” But he grimaced when asked if Ukraine could hold the rest of Donetsk province in a massive Russian offensive. His face seemed to say no.
On the rolling hills in the north of the province, the cornfields have been burned in large parts and smoke has drifted over the forest where the Russian cluster and incendiary bombs had fallen one morning last week.
Nearly everyone in a volunteer unit guarding the area had suffered concussions in recent weeks, said a soldier, Oksana, 27. She and her husband trained as criminal lawyers for the 2013 democracy protests and joined to fight in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea for the first time and Russian-backed separatists seized power in eastern Ukraine.
The unit successfully blocked a Russian attack in late June, said her husband, Stanislav, 35, who commanded a forward defensive position.
“In the early morning I had 33 people. By early evening I had lost 19,” he said. “It was very difficult – they fired non-stop at our positions for six hours.” Twice Russian tanks tried to flank their positions, but they saw them and aimed. artillery fire on them, pushing the Russians back, he said.
The unit seized one vehicle and found Russian documents, including a list of the troops in the battle group it belonged to. “Most of them were marked with 200,” said Oksana, a term in the Russian military that denotes someone killed in action. Other names were marked with the word “Otkaz” or “Refusal,” which Oksana said could mean the soldiers had refused to fight or participate in an operation.
They lost a good friend in battle, Stanislav said. And some of their volunteers had quit, or simply hadn’t returned from a rest period after experiencing life at Ground Zero, Oksana added. They had a five-week trial before that, which was good, she said. “They come here and test themselves.”
But there are signs that Ukraine’s armed forces are exhausted and increasingly resigned to an unequal struggle.
Samson, the commander who sat near the burning wheat fields, is a recent recruit, as is his assistant. Samson, a German teacher in civilian life, enlisted in April. Next to him, Chorny, 30, a driver, was called up in May.
“They shoot more often than we do because they have more ammunition,” Samson said of the Russians. “They have large supplies from the Soviet Union. They were better prepared for war than we were.”
He continued: “We will not let them pass, but it depends on the help we get and the amount of weapons.”
Mark Landler contributed reporting from London and Kamila Hrabchuk from the Donetsk region.