The last leg of our eastern Ukrainian road trip before we turned back towards Kyiv took us from Kramatorsk to Pokrovsk, both towns in the Donbas that the Russians are slowly pressing in on. Here we found exhausted soldiers and volunteers struggling to bolster their morale.
This close to the front there was less fighting talk and a growing realisation that Ukraine is slowly losing the war, as military aid remains blocked in the US congress and the scale of Russia’s resources in money, manpower and ammunition begin to tell.
After Pokrovsk we put our helmets and flak jackets in the boot of the car and headed west to Kropyvnytski to meet a group of veterans struggling to come to terms with their war trauma. The woman who leads the group, Natali, will be joining our Wild Bear Veterans programme this summer in Canada.
As we drove into the bomb-damaged eastern Ukrainian town of Kostiantynivka last week we could hear the impacts from the big Russian guns. Block by block they were blowing apart a small workers town just to the east called Chasiv Yar.
On the wall of a destroyed building a Ukrainian soldier had vented his frustration. “We are not asking too much, we just need artillery shells and aviation,” the graffiti read. “[The] rest we do ourselves.”
But even that sentiment is now starting to feel dated. A more accurate depiction of how Ukrainian frontline soldiers feel was probably the large phallus that had been spray-painted on top of the cri de coeur.
At first blush, it can be easy to miss just how desperate Kyiv’s plight has become. Many Ukrainian soldiers still repeat that mantra that they are strong, that they will win, and that Moscow will pay for its crimes.
We talked to Dmitro in Izyum, a town that has become a caravanserai on the road from Kharkiv to the Donbas. He had been given a couple of days off to get treatment for an eye infection.
“We are thankful to the west of course,” he said. “But we need more.”
Dmitro mans a 105mm US-made Howitzer which has a range of about seven miles. He showed us a photo of the gun.
“Our equipment is better than the Russians’” he said. “My gun is as accurate as a sniper rifle. But we are running out of ammunition.”
I asked Dmitro what would happen if Ukraine didn’t get more weapons.
“There will be a stalemate,” he said. “The war will continue for another 10 years.”
But even that view – broadly in line with predictions by western military analysts at the beginning of the year – is now beginning to look wildly optimistic.
Over the weekend Gen Oleksandr Syrski, Ukraine’s top commander, wrote on the social media site Telegram: “The situation on the eastern front has significantly worsened in recent days.”
The fear now is that, as the ground hardens, the Russians will ratchet up the pressure until the Ukrainian lines begin to buckle. And at that point advances could come quickly.
Broadly speaking there are three major problems Ukraine must overcome if it is to halt the Russians.
The first is that it needs ammunition. Ukrainian commanders are using drones to make up for the lack of artillery shells but that is merely slowing the pace of Moscow’s advance.
Ukraine’s air defence, meanwhile, is running low on missiles. As its defensive umbrella begins to fail Russia has been able to inflict major damage on its power generation capacity.
The second is that the Ukrainians need more strongpoints and fortifications. As we travelled the country we saw fresh trenches and command posts, but with a 600-mile frontline completing those works will take time.
And the third and thorniest issue is a lack of manpower. Last week a new law came into effect that brings the minimum age that a Ukrainian can be mobilised down to 25 from 27. But the military is still woefully short of men.
The result is that veterans who have been on the frontline for more than two years, and in some cases longer, are not being rotated out.
In Pokrovsk, a transport hub which the Russians have in their sights, I spoke to two soldiers who had taken part in the defence of Avdiivka, Ukraine’s most heavily fortified town that fell in February after a four-month battle.
One of them was Oleg, 54, a machine gunner’s assistant. “It’s too much,” he said. “Families are beginning to fall apart. We have been on the frontline too long and never get to see our wives or children.”
Andrii, from Lviv, was more bitter. “I am a stormtrooper,” he said. “I’ll be lucky if I even come out of this alive.”
“They have sent us in with almost nothing,” he added. “It’s like asking a man to fight a tank with a pistol.”
As we talked in the main square of Pokrovsk a veteran hobbled by on crutches. One of his lower legs was missing.
Nearby women were selling vegetables. A few dozen yards away a man took out a saxophone and began to play.
“I am a music teacher and I live about 40 miles away,” he said. “I come here and play for a few hours a week. It’s my contribution to the war effort.”
But such gestures, while they may be heart-warming, count for little on the larger military chessboard.
According to the latest western analysis, the Russian army is almost back to pre-war strength after its heavy losses in early 2022. Ukraine’s military, by contrast, is seriously depleted.
“Best case the Ukrainians will lose a bit of land this year,” a western analyst told me in Kyiv. “Worst case they will get swept away by the Russians.”
If Ukraine does fall under Moscow’s writ – either by conquest or a forced and unfavourable settlement - what happens next?
With the Kremlin nursing a fierce grievance against the west, a battle-hardened and replenished army at its disposal, and an economy retooled to support a military push, where will its advance stop?
“If we don’t stop them here, they will keep heading west,” Dmitro said. “Surely the west understands that.”
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Our next and last post from our trip to Ukraine will be about the war veterans we met further west and our Wild Bear Vets programme. It will come once we have finalised our arrangements for the programme, hopefully within a few days.
We have now both returned from Ukraine. Thank you to all of you who have a paid subscription to this blog. Without your generosity my reporting would not be possible. And special thanks to founder members who help fund these field trips.
PHOTOS, VIDEO & LINKS
Kim’s photos from this leg of our trip. Clockwise from top left: Andrii and Oleg in Pokrovsk, a town square in the Donbas, workers repainting a checkpoint barrier, a defiant Dmitro in Izyum, volunteers cooking vats of stew for soldiers, and graffiti near the frontline expressing frustration with the lack of military help from the west.
Driving into Kostiantynivka. The frontline is a few miles to our left.
For those who are FT subscribers there is some further analysis here.
Contrary to my initial intentions I did not manage to file every account on the day it happened. It ended up being too tall an order. I also wrote a couple of pieces from the trip for The Spectator although I hadn’t originally intended to. Readers of this newsletter are closest to my heart, but I also had it impressed upon me by Ukrainians that it is important to spread the word of what is happening in their country far and wide.
For those of you have been following my tempestuous relationship with the car hire hire company, I eventually returned the car to them in one piece and we kissed and made up. My thanks to Sixt - and especially their Kyiv office - for their forbearance.
So very sad