It is an ordinary Ukrainian village, that is to say, in these times of war, very depopulated and very militarized. In the center, a cafe, still surprisingly open despite being only ten kilometers from one of the most violent fronts in the country, welcomes soldiers who are resting for a few hours. They buy vitamin drinks and protein cereal bars, and cigarettes. Many leave quickly. Some take the time to drink a coffee at the two tables set up on the terrace, while the sound of cannons roars a few kilometers away, Ukrainian jets regularly fly over the area, and a helicopter arrives at low level to evacuate the wounded from a field hospital.
The village of B. is at the heart of the Ukrainian counter-offensive waged since August 29 against the Moscow army in the Kherson region, in southern Ukraine, and it is the rear base of troops who have reached to break the Russian defense lines and to reconquer several villages – the places and the interlocutors are covered by anonymity, the Ukrainian general staff having officially prohibited journalists from circulating near the battlefield and soldiers from communicating with them .
At the end of a week of offensive, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Monday 5 September that “the Ukrainian flag is getting back to where it should be”specifying, after a meeting with the staff, that “the information is good”. Moscow announces for its part that the counter-offensive would have already failed.
V., an officer of a combat unit who agrees to brief regularly The world on the evolution of the battle, believes that “The Russians have put a lot of means, village by village, in the fortification of their defenses”in a region where they intended to hold “self-determination referendums” in the near future in order to legalize the military occupation (a Kherson official, Kirill Stremoussov, indicated on Russian television that “due to current events”the organization of such a vote would mark ” pause “…). “In almost every village, continues V., we face tanks, artillery, minefields. » Once past the first trench, progress is necessarily very slow.
“In every village, the Russians are fighting”
“We feel that we have created a sense of panic on two levels in the Russian army: in the very front line, where soldiers are considered cannon fodder and often run away without a fight, and, according to our military intelligence services, in the staffs, where the officers are surprised by our attacks in depth and do not understand our battle plans”says the officer.
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