Along the 1,000 kilometers of front line, winter has arrived. The cold is biting, snow and mud cover everything, the wind pierces the body. Twenty-two months after the Russian invasion, on February 24, 2022, Ukraine settled into the prospect of a long war. This autumn, The world went to meet officers and soldiers belonging to combat units. Encountered several times throughout the war, they speak freely, without control from their command. Some must preserve their anonymity.
“WarWar”, a soldier in a special unit of the military intelligence services, is fighting on the Zaporizhia front, where the Ukrainian army hoped, in June, to make its main breakthrough towards the south, without success for the moment. “The situation is more intense than last year, because of Russian kamikaze drones. It’s difficult because we can no longer ride freely. Now you have to walk for miles. » If he finds this “hard to admit”“WarWar” confides that “Russians are improving faster than[’eux]and have more capabilities than before.
Master Sergeant Sergiy Vengerskiy “Zakhar”, soldier in the 518e infantry battalion of the 1D special brigade, returning to kyiv after eighteen very tough months of combat on all fronts in Ukraine, also recognizes that “the summer was very difficult” – particularly in the Lyman area, where he was last deployed, in the eastern part of the country. “We don’t have enough soldiers, nor enough artillery. At the end of the summer, there were only fourteen of us, compared to about one hundred and fifty Russian soldiers. Their shots razed the forest, there was no longer a single tree standing. » “Zakhar” describes “Russian assault waves rolling in” on the Ukrainian lines. “Without more artillery to kill them all, he said, we won’t make it. »
An observation shared by Sergeant “Dizel”, soldier in the 49e infantry battalion, “Carpathian Sich”: “The Russians are sending so many men to attack, it’s crazy. And despite our artillery fire, those who survive continue to advance. I don’t really understand why. I think they must be cams. »
Many injured
Colonel Oleh Uminskiy, who commands the 1D special brigade now deployed on the Bakhmout front (east), in turn evokes the difficulties encountered. “The fighting is very tough, without one side managing to be superior to the other. One day they [les Russes] move forward, one day it’s us who move forward. The forehead is like in In the west, nothing is new [roman d’Erich Maria Remarque, 1929], as during the First World War. Except instead of deep trenches we live and fight in foxholes. And we can’t have electricity, fire or heat, because we would be spotted by the enemy’s thermal vision drones. You have to go 5 to 10 kilometers back to warm up and eat a hot meal. »
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