Amid the ruins of a roadside restaurant, once used as a base by Russian paratroopers and now strewn with torn uniforms and empty combat ration packs, certain truths about the war are evident to the battle-hardened Ukrainian sergeant.
Stepping triumphantly through the rubble, Sgt. Yuri Yunko Cherkonov enthuses about the two American-supplied HIMARS rockets that killed an estimated 20 to 30 elite Russian soldiers here on the northeast outskirts of Kherson, on the eve of Russia’s humiliating retreat last November from the southern city.
But even as he voices optimism that Ukraine will ultimately prevail, Sgt. Cherkonov acknowledges that his troops have sustained substantial losses and been exhausted by a war now grinding into its second year. And, he readily admits, as both sides prepare spring offensives, Ukraine’s eventual victory depends on the continued flow of Western weapons.
Why We Wrote This
What does it take to win a war? In a tour of Ukraine’s eastern front after a year of conflict, fighters say they still have determination and hope. What they need is more and better weapons.
In visits to multiple points along Ukraine’s 600-mile eastern and southern front with Russia – from snow-encrusted trenches to frigid artillery and tank positions that rely on captured Russian hardware and ordnance – the optimism, the exhaustion, and the urgent need for the West’s more advanced weaponry are spoken of over and over.
“If not for the U.S., we would not be here now,” says Sgt. Cherkonov, wearing a green hat and red beard to ward off the cold, and a blue and yellow Ukrainian trident tattooed on the left side of his neck to signify his loyalty.
“I am so tired, and everyone is so tired,” he says of his last eight months in the trenches. He has been concussed, and carries pieces of shrapnel in his body.
He echoes voices heard elsewhere along the front – Europe’s longest and most active since World War II – when he says Russian military weakness demonstrated in the past year has provided Ukrainians with battlefield confidence. Such weakness resulted, for example, in sweeping Ukrainian counteroffensives last fall that recaptured swaths of the northeast Kharkiv region and liberated Kherson.
The message here is consistent: There is gratitude for $105 billion in U.S. weaponry and aid, granted or pledged, along with some $40 billion more from European allies. But to advance, Ukraine needs more main battle tanks, artillery systems, and ammunition. And to advance faster – to end the war sooner and save lives, the view here holds – requires even faster deliveries.
“We are still enthusiastic. … Tell [President Joe] Biden that we are standing for every human being,” says Sgt. Cherkonov, framing the conflict, as Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy often does, as a fight for freedom and democracy against out-of-date imperial authoritarianism. “The only thing that worries us is receiving the tanks, artillery, and longer-range shells in the time we need it.”
The frozen tank line
That timing, and the issue of quality versus quantity, are on the mind of one Ukrainian tank commander on the southeastern Donbas line. Falling snow piles up on his two T-64BV tanks, which left trails of crushed branches as they backed into forested hiding places, safe from Russian drones.
One is under repair, and the commander, who gives the name Yegor, jokes that 80% of any tanker’s life is spent keeping his armored beast alive. While these tanks are updated versions of a 1960s Soviet design, they still lack many capabilities of the Western tanks that Ukraine is seeking.
“This is the same as comparing a [Soviet-era 1970s] Zhiguli car with a Mercedes S-class 2021,” says Yegor. “With the technology that Western tanks have, I am sure that the level of success eliminating the enemy would be up to 90%.”
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He recalls the lopsided tank battles of the 1991 Gulf War, during which American and British tanks easily destroyed hundreds of Iraqi tanks – most of them T-72s acquired from the former Soviet Union.
“This is all the math you have to think about,” he says. “These [Russian tanks] are not made for quality. The Soviet Union and Russia think more about quantity.”
As snow gathers on his clothes and his fingers turn purple with cold, Yegor speaks about the sacrifices of Ukrainian tankers, and about fighting with “one spirit” against a foreign invader.
“I don’t speak to my family about the war. War is not something you can be proud of. We are doing the job that we have to do, because we are fighting for our survival,” he says.
“If we have all the Western weapons, at least in the numbers that [Ukraine] requested, then we will finish this quite soon,” Yegor says. “If we have more, this will be even faster.”
The “trophy” artillery
Feeding a campfire they built on frozen ground some 40 miles east of Yegor’s unit, members of the 1st Artillery Battery of Ukraine’s 59th Brigade wait for targets in the early morning sun, quaffing Red Bull and playing a popular combat video game on their phones.
The game draws players from around the world, and sometimes they are randomly paired on a virtual team with an actual Russian soldier, and keep striking at each other online, even when ostensible teammates. Other times there is laughter when a Ukrainian kills a Russian on a rival team.
The real war is only a few yards away, where this unit’s captured Russian 152mm cannon – acquired with 10 other Russian guns early in the invasion near Kherson and dubbed “Revenge” – waits to be dragged into position through icy ruts.
“It is a pleasure for us to kick the Russians with Russian weapons,” says Ivan Moroz, adding dried branches to the fire.
After a year of fighting, the trajectory is clear, says Nikita Bilinsky, the rat-a-tat of a video game gunbattle coming from his phone.
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“It was not Ukrainian strength that surprised us, but Russian weakness,” he says.
Suddenly, information for a target comes in, and the men mount up quickly for the ride to an open field, where the gun is set up for a target 14.8 kms (9.25 miles) away, toward Donetsk, which has been controlled by Russian-backed separatists since 2014.
The unit commander is Oleksandr, whose call sign is “Kirik.” A cigar-smoking joker with a few gold teeth and a growing TikTok following, he paints shells with messages for the “Sign My Rocket” crowdfunding website, to raise donations for everything from drones to medical supplies.
“The more weapons we receive from the West, the more lives we can save,” he says. “I don’t even need a new gun, but I need shells” to augment captured Russian stockpiles that are being quickly depleted.
Kirik calculates that his team members have fired 3,000 shells from this cannon in the eight months he has commanded it. The record was 98 in a single day against 30 targets, in the fight for Kherson.
“I love my trophy gun,” he says. “I can hit … a mosquito at 21 km. I have been offered better, but why take it?
“Why did the stupid Russians bring this gun here, so we can kill their own people – and they keep giving us ammo?” says Kirik, of the captured ordnance. “Do you know how many Russians we have killed with their own guns?”
Life in the trenches
The zig-zag trenches dug along Ukraine’s southern front area of Druzhba are immaculately cut, packed with freshly trodden snow, and marked by trees and branches smashed by daily exchanges of fire with Russian troops.
It’s a grim existence that smells of soil and late-winter cold. A soldier who gives the name Mykola dries his boots behind a blanket in a trench. His heater is fashioned from strips of cardboard rolled into a tin can and filled with wax.
“Last night there was shelling all night,” says Mykola, who has been here for 3½ months. He says a rotation of Russian troops, or a fresh ammunition delivery, triggers an increase in attacks from the Russian trenches, just 1,200 yards away.
For the Ukrainian infantrymen here, Russia’s invasion is reduced to a fundamental determination to persevere, no matter the cost along the 30 kms of front that their unit controls.
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“Mortars, tanks. Everything that Russians have in war, they use here,” says Andrii “Wolf” Vovk, whose sharp middle-aged eyes peer unblinking from his trench. He tenses instinctively at the sound of a launched Russian mortar and his eyes dart up, until it is clear that it will land elsewhere.
“Of course, I am confident because I am on my own land, and protecting my motherland,” says the railway repair worker. “We know that when an enemy comes to our land, we need to eliminate them.”
The Ukrainians only return fire if Russian forces advance and expose themselves, says the local commander, called Vladyslav. This line has not moved in more than five months, but firefights are frequent.
“They have more people. They have more guns, bullets, and shells, so we can’t go forward,” says Mr. Vladyslav. “We need to wait. We need to exhaust them, then we can walk across.”
Responses to Grad rockets
Some 45 miles northeast of those trenches, carefully hidden beneath white camouflage netting strung up in trees between snow-covered sunflower fields, the Ukrainian BM-21 multiple-rocket launcher is fully loaded with 40 rockets.
The firing team stands beside a deep pit bunker, where a fireplace has been dug into the dirt wall. There is a constant risk of Russian drones, and concern that ammunition stores might not be replenished in time for heavy spring fighting. The U.S. alone has sent 50,000 of the 122mm rockets for this type of Grad launcher.
“There is never too much ammunition,” says the unit leader who gives the name Andrii. “We always need more.”
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A firing order comes to hit a moving Russian infantry target and the netting is pulled back, the truck driven quickly into an open position. It fires four rockets at the target, this time about seven miles away, in the direction of Donetsk.
Even before the truck reverses back into hiding, an incoming shell strikes the next field. In the next 20 minutes, Russian artillery rounds fly toward targets in a nearby village. The whistle of shells causes a reaction among the soldiers, who anxiously gather closer to the entrance of their bunker.
Commander Yuri, who wears a skull patch on his uniform, jokes: “That’s the Russians inviting us to send more rockets.”
A forest of hidden tanks
Tucked away in a cold pine forest, on the northern fringes of the Donbas front toward Kreminna, is a company of Ukrainian tanks waiting for orders to redeploy – their numbers swollen by 16 captured Russian tanks.
The “trophies” are T-72 and T-80 tanks, among the best in Russia’s arsenal. Indeed, of the Ukrainian company’s nine fully operational tanks, seven are Russian.
“We don’t have the capacity to absorb all of these, and they aren’t all usable,” says Volodymyr, who commands three tanks. “We would like more to push [Russian troops] all out. … We need weapons, weapons, and more weapons.”
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“Of course, we are pleased and surprised to have all these,” muses Maksym, the company’s chief mechanic, snow crunching underfoot as he moves from one tank to another. “It has its good side, but the bad side is it puts a lot of pressure to get trophy tanks working.”
For Denys, a bearded tank driver with black padded headgear, an abiding memory of the battlefield – and of the poor state of the Russian invasion force – came in December, near Kreminna.
Denys says it would be a “big mistake” to “underestimate the enemy.” But he also describes how his tank lost its way and rolled directly into a Russian position.
As the Ukrainian tank backed away, the crew was surprised to hear the sound of rifle rounds bouncing off their armored turret. They saw one soldier – who appeared to them to be a mercenary from the Kremlin-backed Wagner group – emptying one magazine of bullets after another, pointlessly, at the tank.
They also saw Russian troops running away and then falling, one by one.
“They were being shot by their own guys for retreating,” recalls Denys, still shocked. And the Wagner fighter?
“We killed him.”
Oleksandr Naselenko supported reporting for this story.