Russia regains the upper hand in eastern Ukraine as Kiev's forces battle
The Ukrainian soldier stared at the Russian tank. It was destroyed in the east of the country over a year ago and was now far from the front line. He shrugged and cut into the rusted hull with a blow torch.
The soldier was not there for the engine, the turret or the steps of the tank. They had already been recovered. He was there because of his thick armor. The metal would be cut and tied down to provide protection for Ukrainian armored personnel carriers defending the embattled city of Avdiivka, about 65 miles away.
The need to cannibalize a destroyed Russian vehicle to help protect Ukraine's dwindling supply of equipment underlines Kiev's current battlefield challenges as it prepares for another year of battles.
“If our international partners acted faster, we would have kicked them so hard in the first three or four months that we would have already gotten over it. We would sow fields and raise children,” said the soldier, who went by the call sign Jaeger, in accordance with military protocol. 'We would send bread to Europe. But it's been two years.”
Ukraine's military prospects look bleak. Western military aid is no longer assured at the same level as in recent years. Ukraine's summer counter-offensive in the south, where Jaeger was wounded just days after it began, is over, having achieved none of its objectives.
And now Russian forces are on the offensive, especially in the east of the country. The city of Marinka has almost fallen. Avdiivka is slowly surrounded. An attack on Chasiv Yar, near Bakhmut, is expected. Further north, outside Kupiansk, fighting has barely abated since the fall.
The joke among Ukrainian troops goes like this: the Russian army is neither good nor bad. It's just long. The Kremlin has more of everything: more men, ammunition and vehicles. And they are not stopping, despite the rising number of injuries and deaths.
But the soldiers' joke had another truth. Neither side has distinguished itself with tactics that have led to a breakthrough on the battlefield. Instead, it has been a deadly dance of small technological developments on both sides that have yet to turn the tide, creating a conflict that resembles a modernized version of the World War I Western Front: pure mass versus mass.
It is this tactic that gives Russia the advantage in securing Ukraine's eastern Donbas region, Moscow's main war target after its 2022 defeat around Kharkov, Kherson and the capital Kiev. Russia has a population three times that of Ukraine, and its military industrial base is operating at full capacity.
“The Russian advantage is not decisive at this stage, but the war is not a stalemate,” said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasian Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who recently visited Ukraine. “Depending on what happens this year, especially with Western support for Ukraine, 2024 will likely follow one or two trajectories. Ukraine could regain the advantage by 2025, otherwise it could lose the war without sufficient aid.”
For now, Ukraine is in a dangerous position. So have been the problems facing the military worsened since the summer. Ukrainian soldiers are exhausted by long battles and shorter rest periods. The ranks, thinned by the increasing number of casualties, are only partially replenished, often with older and poorly trained recruits.
A Ukrainian soldier, part of a brigade tasked with holding the line southwest of Avdiivka, pointed to a video he had recently taken during training. Trying to suppress their laughter, the instructors were forced to hold the man, who was in his mid-50s, so he could fire his gun. The man was crippled by alcoholism, the soldier said, insisting on anonymity to candidly describe a private training episode
“Three out of 10 soldiers who show up are no better than drunks who fell asleep and woke up in uniform,” he said, referring to the new recruits arriving at his brigade.
Kyiv's recruitment strategy is plagued by overly aggressive tactics and more widespread attempts to avoid the draft. Efforts to resolve the problem have led to a political debate between the military and civilian leadership.
Military officials emphasize the need for broader mobilization to win the war, but the office of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is concerned about introducing unpopular changes that could end with a push to mobilize 500,000 new soldiers. That number, analysts say, takes into account Ukraine's staggering losses and what it will likely take to push back the Russians.
Although the Ukrainian casualties remain a closely guarded secret, U.S. officials estimated deaths and injuries during the summer more than 150,000. According to these officials, Russian forces have also suffered huge numbers of casualties, but Kremlin forces have still managed to repel a joint Ukrainian counter-offensive, regroup and are now attacking in frigid winter conditions.
“We are tired,” said a Ukrainian platoon commander, speaking anonymously given the sensitivity of his comments. “We can always use more people.”
The troop shortage is only part of the problem. The other and currently more pressing problem is Ukraine's dwindling ammunition reserves, as continued Western supplies are anything but assured. Ukrainian commanders now have to ration their ammunition, not knowing whether each new shipment could be their last.
In late 2023, members of a Ukrainian artillery crew from the 10th Brigade sat in a bunker nestled in a barren treeline in the country's east, their Soviet-era 122-millimeter howitzer draped in camouflage netting and leafless branches.
It was only when a truck with two artillery shells arrived that the crew could start work for the first time in days. They quickly loaded the grenades and fired at Russian soldiers attacking Ukrainian positions five kilometers away.
“Today we had two shells, but some days we don't have any at these positions,” said the crew commander, who used the call sign Monk. “The last time we fired was four days ago, and that was only five shells.”
The ammunition shortage – and the changing momentum on the battlefield – means that the gunners are no longer supporting the Ukrainian attacks. Instead, they only fire when Russian troops storm Ukrainian trenches.
“We can hold them off for now, but who knows,” Monk said. 'We may not be able to stop them tomorrow or the day after. It's really a big deal for us.”
Near Kupiansk, a deputy battalion commander of the 68th Brigade, which goes by the call sign Italian, echoed Monk's concerns.
“I have two tanks, but only five grenades,” the Italian said as he walked through an exposed tree line splintered by shelling about 500 meters from Russian positions in the Luhansk region. “The situation is bad now, especially in Avdiivka and Kupiansk.”
This munitions imbalance is being felt across much of the 600-mile-long front line, Ukrainian soldiers said. The Russian units are in a position similar to that of the summer of 2022, where they can simply exhaust a Ukrainian position until Kiev's forces run out of ammunition. But unlike that summer, there is no longer a frantic battle in Western capitals to arm and re-equip Ukrainian troops.
And unlike that summer, drones have become a much larger presence in both sides' arsenals – especially the FPV racing drones that are packed with explosives and used as remote-controlled missiles.
These drones complement traditional artillery as both Russia and Ukraine struggle to stockpile enough shells to fight a protracted and bloody war. In the past nine months, the numbers of FPV drones have increased at least tenfold, and in some parts of the front, more casualties are caused by drones than by artillery, according to Ukrainian soldiers.
Even the tranche of Cluster munitions supplied by the United Statescontroversial because they harm civilians long after the end of a war, has lost some of its power on the battlefield.
“Initially we were able to hit large groups in September, but now they are attacking in much smaller units,” said the platoon commander, who was fighting outside Bakhmut. He added that the Russians have made their trenches even deeper and harder to hit.
Outside Avdiivka, where Russian forces concentrate much of their forces in the east, the rumble of artillery on a recent afternoon was virtually nonstop. It was a soundtrack not heard since the early months of the war, when Russian paramilitary forces attacked Bakhmut and eventually captured it.
The soldiers defending Avdiivka's flank said that on some days Russian formations had attacked in nine separate waves, hoping to break up the Ukrainian trenches. It is a tactic emulated at the front by the Moscow infantry, and there is little sign of stopping, despite the high attrition rate common to a force attacking entrenched positions.
Washington's suggestion that Ukraine go on the defensive in 2024 will mean little if Kiev does not have the ammunition or people to defend the territory it currently holds, analysts say.
“Our guys are taking a heavy pounding,” said Bardak, a Ukrainian soldier working alongside Jaeger next to the abandoned tank. “It's warm everywhere now.”
Finbarr O'Reilly and staff from The New York Times contributed to reporting.