Will Kupyansk become a new Avdiivka?

For months now Russian forces are constantly attacking the town of Kupyansk. The eastern Ukrainian town is located around 100 kilometers from the country’s second largest city, Kharkiv. The invaders are now said to be fueling this inferno with thousands of newly acquired North Korean artillery shells, while the battle-weary Ukrainian troops on the other side wait for reinforcement and rotation.

“If you want to live, don’t go to the trenches,” I am advised during a trip to this lesser-known section of the 1,000-kilometer frontline, which has settled into place — for now, at least — since Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine in February 2022. 

A sense of the struggle

While the Ukrainian soldier’s advice was certainly appreciated, there is no way to get a sense of the struggle to stop the Russians from breaking through at Kupyansk without getting closer to the fight itself. At the time of my visit, some of the most intense combat is taking place in a village called Synkivka, which has a population of 300 people. It was occupied in the initial Russian advance before being retaken by Ukraine in September 2022. The hamlet again hangs in the balance between Ukrainian defensive lines and frenetic Russian infantry attacks.

Vollbildanzeige

The journey starts in Kupyansk, where I am meeting with two high-ranking officers. They do not take me to Synkivka, but to a different village — one closer to the edge of the battlefield, where detachments of Ukrainian soldiers take turns holding the line. They are supposed to be three days on the frontline and then have three days off. But in reality it could be seven days in – or even more –  and three off. Usually, it would be a ride of just a few minutes.  But in war times, it is more than an hour: Russia has destroyed all the bridges that once connected Kupyansk with the outlying settlements. We have to take several detours.

High-tech warfare meets traditional assaults

“This is the point when you should put your phone on airplane mode. Otherwise, the Russians can detect the signal and send a drone our way,” says an officer named Oleksandr, referring to the high-tech warfare that goes on here alongside more traditional bloody assaults by foot soldiers.

The officers say the Russians have recently ramped up their use of drones: “This is a war of technologies. No matter how physically fit you are, even if you are John Rambo, you can do nothing without technology.”

We are driving past numerous checkpoints, where the soldiers on duty ask for the code words to prevent unauthorized people from crossing. The landscape is decorated with blown-up houses, burned-out cars, tanks, and even bullet-ridden trains.

Finally, we get into the village, which I can’t name for security reasons. It is a picturesque place with pine trees not far away. It appears to have been a perfect place for the living until Russian forces ruined the peace.

Visit to a dacha-like army base

Around half a dozen soldiers live in an ordinary house. Some of the guys wear regular clothes. If not for the distant shelling of mortars, drones, and KABs — laser-guided bombs that can deliver a 500-kilogram payload to within a few meters of a designated target like us — the place would feel like a dacha filled with friends who come together to spend some quality time away from their families. There is a washing machine, a boiler, and a gas stove. The guys cook Ukrainian borsht, salads, and rice with meat.

Dinner is served. Every time they start eating, the soldiers honor their fallen brothers in arms with a minute of silence.

Then they start to  talk.

“I fly a drone, and I know every spot and every coordinate where my brothers in arms finally laid down their heads, but we just can’t get them all back,” a commander explains:

A mother of a fallen soldier told me about the dream she had. Her son was asking her to be taken back. ‘Mother, please, bring me back home.’ We found his body on that same day. We couldn’t do it before because the Russians wore the same uniform during that attack, and we could not tell where he was. He was taken home and buried in a closed coffin. ‘I want everyone to remember him the way he was when he was alive,’ his mother told me.

All of us are silent for a moment.

“You wanted to know about the trenches? At hot spots in our direction, Russians use 100–200 storm troopers and infantrymen every day,” a soldier starts. “We kill at least 40 people every day.” Calling to mind scenes from HBO’s “The Pacific,” a Ukrainian soldier tells me that in some places the line of sight from the trenches is obscured by piles of Russian dead. The stench is unbearable, and the enemy does not even try to retrieve the bodies.

Exhausted soldiers

The situation is intense, they say, but under control. Still, “we don’t know what will happen in the long run,” another soldier cautions. “Most of the guys have been serving since the first day of the full-scale invasion. They need a few months of rest. There are not enough new people. We have casualties as well; we are exhausted, and we can’t stop.”

I do not need to ask why not. After Bucha, everyone in Ukraine knows the answer, but the soldier, over soup, explains it anyway.

If we quit, they will come to our houses, rape our women and children, and kill them. Just imagine if we were to lay down our weapons. They know everyone who serves. They know every volunteer who helps the army. They will come after every one of us and kill us because they want to obliterate the Ukrainian nation.

Before Russia launched its full-scale invasion, the Kremlin’s propagandists attempted to spread the message that “The West” was plotting a war that would be fought “to the last Ukrainian.” Of course, the Ukrainian troops risking their lives everyday for more than two years understand that their real enemy is in Moscow, not Washington, but they are also increasingly aware that time may not be on their side.

The only option is to fight

“We need to preserve the backbone of the army, which is now tired and fighting with a shortage of bullets and shells. Otherwise, foreign troops would have to join in and protect what would be left of Ukraine,” the same soldier continues. “We’ll run out of people sooner than the Russians. We are mainly fighting with drones and mortars and getting shelled with everything, including KAB (gliding bombs). We need people and weapons.”

In Kyiv, the talk is now about the need to draft 500,000 new troops. My hosts, however, are bitter that this move did not happen earlier, when patriotic fervor was at its peak. “When the full-scale invasion began, there were crowds of people in every city standing in long lines to the military recruitment offices, waiting to join up,” they recall. 

But back then, only 10-15% of the willing were enlisted, as officers in the recruitment centers literally didn’t know what to do with them, the officers say — “We could have had a much bigger army from the beginning.”

A night at the frontline

After the long talk and heavy smoking shifts, all of us are preparing for nightfall. Most of the guys are glued to their smartphones, watching funny videos from TikTok or news from other parts of the front.

An 18-year-old, who just came from boot camp, is playing a shooter game on his smartphone and constantly calling his girlfriend. They play together, separated by 600 kilometers and dozens of checkpoints.

A question is dancing on the tip of my tongue: ‘Mate, you haven’t gotten enough shooting when you are on duty, really?’ But I choose not to ask it.

Instead, I crawl into my sleeping bag. The sounds of explosions become more intense. The windows and the chandelier are shaking. But my mind somehow interprets the explosions as thunder — some kind of natural phenomenon — and I have quite possibly the best night’s sleep of my life.