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The Ukrainian counter-offensive has now been going on for more than a month and after the initial heavy losses of military equipment suffered by the army under General Valeriy Zalushnyi, the Ukrainians have changed their strategy.

Rather than drive mechanized units into heavily fortified Russian defenses and be wiped out by helicopter gunships and artillery fire, Kiev’s troops have recently resorted to advancing with smaller infantry units. Meter by meter they crawl through the Russian minefields and conquer the trenches of the occupiers.

The bloody battles can be seen on social networks, where videos of Ukrainian armed forces are uploaded daily. The footage, captured by surveillance drones and bodycams, shows Russian soldiers holed up in the trenches being shot down and killed with hand grenades. The war has long since become a first-person shooter drama from a bird’s eye view, like in a video game. Only real people die every time.

New York Times reporters are now reporting what the Ukrainians found after capturing the trenches, using the example of the hotly contested region of Zaporizhia.

By the time the tea is ready, they may already be dead

Among the relics encountered by Ukrainians are military equipment and other Russian products. Homemade cranberry syrup from Siberia, mounds of dirty socks and tea bags from the Russian army with the inscription “For Victory!”.

That the five minutes that the tea steeps can often make the difference between life and death is evident from other finds made by Ukraine in the trenches and shattered shelters. dead soldiers. Hundreds of young men die every day on both sides. Not just in the trenches.

In the village of Novadarivka, the liberators found about seven bodies of Ukrainian comrades who had been lying there for a year. The Russians had not buried them, but left them lying around. The bodies of the men have decomposed beyond recognition and only a DNA test can clarify their identities. “They were just skeletons,” a Ukrainian army soldier told the New York Times. “It’s Really No Fun”

The result is a long, tenacious trench warfare

At present, the war is proceeding in waves in many sectors of the front. Sometimes one side gains a few yards, sometimes the other. And there are always many dead. According to the newspaper, the Ukrainians try to bury the fallen Russians immediately or at least cover them with earth, so that the decomposition process in the summer heat does not proceed too quickly. But there is often no time for that because the Russian artillery has already launched the next shells. And so there is “a pungent smell of decomposition in the air”, as the newspaper writes.

“We push them back, they push us back, we push them back again, they push us back again. And so on,” another Ukrainian fighter told the New York Times reporter. “They’ve had plenty of time to dig in.”

In fact, the Ukrainian counter-offensive had started surprisingly late. Recently, President Volodomyr Zelenskyj also complained about the long wait for the reconquest efforts to start. Meanwhile, the Russian occupiers managed to create very effective defense lines. The result is a long, hard trench warfare that will claim many lives.

(t-online, cc)