For a whole month, New York Times correspondents watched the progress of the struggle on the Ukrainian front. Enough time to talk about the problems with the military and draw your own conclusions. Human losses, accumulated fatigue, mismatched old equipment and ammunition collected from all over the world, a determined enemy and his fortified positions hinder the achievement of the goals of the counteroffensive.
Thomas Gibbons-Neff
A month of reporting by New York Times journalists has shown that the fighting has mostly reached an impasse, and Ukraine has faced many obstacles in the fight against a determined enemy.
Report from the vicinity of Avdiivka, Ukraine, July 23, 2023
The headquarters of one of the battalions of the 53rd Mechanized Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine smells of freshly cut pine trees. The smell comes from the wooden support beams in the maze of trenches of the unit near the city of Avdiivka, where the fighting is taking place.
In the main command post, computer monitors broadcast images from small drones via satellite Internet for a group of Ukrainian soldiers monitoring their part of the front line. Basically they see a brutal dead end.
As the war enters its 17th month, the fighting has acquired a clear rhythm. Russia and Ukraine are stuck in a deadly series of attacks and counterattacks. <...> Ukrainian forces are fighting with strong Russian defense, continuing the offensive to the south, slowed down due to dense minefields.
Small territorial acquisitions are too expensive. Field hospitals that were closed after the battle for the eastern city of Bakhmut have reopened, volunteers said, and Ukrainian soldiers described a determined enemy.
"We are exchanging our people for their people, and they have more people and weapons," said one Ukrainian commander, whose platoon has already lost all its people twice since Russia launched its own last year.
This analysis of the war, conducted by the New York Times, is based on dozens of trips to the front line and interviews in June and July with Ukrainian soldiers and commanders in the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions, where there is fighting.
These business trips have shown that the Ukrainian military is facing a number of new problems that are slowing down the offensive.
Ukraine has learned how to defend itself well — it has connected the Starlink satellite Internet, publicly available software and has prepared drones to constantly monitor Russian troops from command posts. But offensive operations are different: Ukraine has achieved little success in the ability to coordinate the actions of troops in the offensive.
The Ukrainian infantry is increasingly focusing on trench attacks, but having suffered tens of thousands of casualties since the beginning of the war, its ranks are often replenished with less trained and aged soldiers. In addition, if Russian forces are forced out of a position, they shell it with artillery so that Ukrainian troops cannot stay there for a long time.
Ammunition is in short supply, in addition, they are brought from different countries. This has led to an increased consumption of projectiles to hit the target, the Ukrainian military say, since the accuracy of different projectiles varies greatly. In addition, some old shells and rockets sent from abroad damage equipment and injure soldiers. "This is a very big problem right now," said Oleksiy, the commander of the Ukrainian battalion.
Finally, in the summer months, camouflage and greenery remain decisive factors for the success of the operation on the battlefield. The defending forces almost always have an advantage, whether because of invisible trenches or camouflaged electronic warfare units that are used to push back the attacking forces.
Getting coordinates and shooting
The scheme that a soldier named Valery observed in the command center is typical for most Ukrainian units fighting in the east. Unlike the United States and other NATO countries, which use sophisticated military communications equipment to monitor the battlefield, Ukrainian troops use easy-to-use programs such as smartphone messaging apps, private Internet chats and small Chinese-made drones to monitor what is happening on the front line.
This is a special but effective communication package, which is overlaid with software developed in Ukraine, which allows you to determine the location of your units and the expected positions of Russian troops.
The disadvantage of this system is that it is almost completely tied to the Starlink satellite Internet. This means that when Ukrainian units attack — in the absence of a Wi-Fi router — it takes longer to transmit important information, such as artillery targets, because attacking troops have to contact someone who has an internet connection to call for support.
Ukrainian troops are also struggling with Russian means that jam soldiers' walkie-talkies that connect them to their comrades via the Internet.
"Basically, we get the coordinates via the Internet — it's safe, and as soon as they are transmitted to us, we immediately use them," said Anton, head of the automatic grenade launchers unit.
There is a known case when the AFU soldiers tried to connect the Starlink Internet to an armored personnel carrier to storm a Russian position, but the antenna was shot through by friendly fire during the attack.
This month, the system has worked properly. A Ukrainian drone watched as the earth from the shovel of a Russian soldier accumulated next to the trench he was digging: this was a priority goal. The new trench meant that Russian troops were approaching Ukrainian positions and would become another fortification for attacking Ukrainian troops.
The coordinates of the trench were sent via a smartphone, and a few minutes later explosions from an automatic grenade launcher Mk 19 were heard on both sides of the Russian soldier.
Clearing trenches: dangerous and necessary
A detachment of Ukrainian soldiers from the 59th Brigade was soaked with sweat. It was the end of June, and they were doing the same exercise — just a few miles from the front line, they stormed the training trench countless times, making their way through overgrown grass, imitating the firing of Kalashnikov assault rifles, resting and doing it again and again.
The purpose of the repetition was to automate the actions, and when a new group of mobilized soldiers aged 25 to 40 finally reached the front line, they did not flinch, attacking a well-protected Russian trench.
"We haven't participated in the fighting yet, but we are preparing for it," said Nikolai, one of the junior soldiers in the group.
Since the war is in its second year and both armies have mastered the construction and protection of fortifications well, storming trenches has become one of the most dangerous and necessary tasks for Ukrainian troops trying to regain territory. Training in more specialized skills, for example, for snipers, has been sidelined in favor of trench attacks.
In the area of the town of Bakhmut, which was captured by the Russians in May, Ukrainian forces made progress on the flanks of the town because Russian forces had less time to dig in. Some elite Ukrainian units in this area are able to attack Russian trenches, as they have good communication and skills.
But other Ukrainian formations in other parts of the front, exhausted by months of fighting, had problems replenishing their ranks with soldiers capable of successfully attacking. The new arrivals are mobilized older recruits.
"How can you expect a 40-year-old to be a good infantryman or machine gunner?" — asked the Ukrainian commander, whose platoon lost dozens of people. Youth means not only better physical strength, but also that young soldiers are less likely to challenge orders.
In recent days, Ukrainian casualties have been increasing around Bakhmut, which is a side effect of Ukraine's strategy of shackling Russian forces in the vicinity of the city during a counteroffensive in the south of the country. Russian forces have moved more artillery units into the area so that, even if they lose a trench as a result of the Ukrainian assault, they can quickly fill up their lost fortifications with artillery shells, forcing Kiev troops to retreat from the recently retaken territory.
"Green zone"
Outside the eastern city of Seversk, a unit of the Ukrainian military with American 105-mm howitzers heard their "neighbor", a self-propelled howitzer, fired several shots. Then the 105-mm guns unit received its firing task via a smartphone and the Internet Starlink to work on a Russian mortar.
The crew threw off the camouflage net, fired twice and hid again. The firing task was completed successfully. But for many Ukrainian gunners, not everything is so simple.
Ukrainian calculations are guided by the assortment of ammunition brought from Pakistan, Poland, Bulgaria and Iran, making adjustments to the sight depending on which country the ammunition is from, and sometimes on their release date.
Frequent shooting almost always triggers a retaliatory strike. Twenty minutes after the Ukrainian 105mm howitzer fired a salvo, the Russians returned fire, covering the position with cluster munitions - the kind of shells and missiles that explode and scatter smaller explosive devices over a large area. Both Russia and Ukraine have used these weapons, although they are banned in many countries.
According to the artillery crew, the Russians used cluster munitions because they did not know exactly where the Ukrainians were, so instead they decided to cover the territory with them in the hope of hitting a target somewhere among the trees.
One of the defining features of the summer battle in the east of Ukraine is foliage. Covering a tank or artillery piece with camouflage is called "camouflage" by Ukrainians, and this procedure is crucial to avoid detection by drones and artillery fire, which will surely follow. The fields and forest belts around Bakhmut are known to the Ukrainian military as the "green zone".
According to soldiers of the 100th Territorial Defense Brigade, outside the Russian-held city of Kremennaya, to the north, where pine forests predominate, Russian troops often fire incendiary ammunition at trees to burn through the foliage. On this front line, the Ukrainian military often go so far as to bury their garbage in order to hide from drones.
Often, for shooting or maneuvering, Ukrainian combat vehicles have to abandon any type of camouflage, exposing them to the risk posed by other weapons that have spread throughout the front line in recent months: Russian Lancet drones with GPS guidance.
Often called kamikaze drones, they forced the Ukrainian artillery and tankers to take large-scale measures to conceal their positions. Some tankers even welded makeshift defenses to their turrets to try to stop the self-exploding vehicles.
About 40 miles away, on another section of the front line, soldiers of the 15th Separate Artillery Reconnaissance Brigade were monitoring the radio frequency range from their computer screens and trying to figure out how to deal with the Lancets. It was impossible to drown them out, at least for now.
According to the Ukrainian military, Lancets are difficult to shoot down because they look more like guided bombs than drones. Instead, their NOTA electronic warfare system is trying to jam the nearest Russian drone, presumably sending coordinates to the Lancet. But this is a difficult science, the soldiers say.
"We don't know exactly how they communicate," said Marabou, a junior sergeant serving in NOTA.
Another electronic warfare specialist added that they can only see the Lancets for a short time on their screen when it turns on the connection to streaming video, but usually it only lasts about 15 seconds.
Electronic warfare is the hidden hand behind most of the war, and Russian capabilities are superior to those of Ukrainians. Russian forces can detect mobile phone signals and jam GPS and radio frequencies, and they often look for Starlink Wi-Fi routers to fire artillery at them.
"This is a very big problem for us," Marabout said, referring to the ability of Russian troops to switch the output frequency of their drones. This makes it difficult for the NOTE to determine the location of the drones.
This month, Marabou observed a Russian reconnaissance drone somewhere over the city of Svatovo. Where the NOTA radar was not jammed, Marabou could only watch the red dots cascade onto the blue background on his screen: a Russian drone was communicating with its operator, sending grainy footage of the war below.
