“We must get our fallen. Will you come with me?” That’s how Ivan greets us in front of his makeshift headquarters. His soldiers prepare an army-green pick-up truck with which they want to remove the bodies from the front lines. There is no room for Ivan there, so the six-foot-tall giant squeezes into our car.
The dusty path leads us past fields that have not been worked for a long time. The fields are bordered by strips of forest, the canopy of which offers a lot of privacy. Both warring factions use the forest areas for their positions, vehicles and guns.
The benefit of nettle
At a piece of forest we turn off and stop at a bunker. We park the cars under trees. A glance at the smartphone map shows that we are less than 500 meters from the nearest Russian trenches. The Russians are in the opposite forest area.
The shelter has a sour smell of sweat. At least ten soldiers spend the night here. A generator can be heard outside. Ivan connects his phone to the bunker’s radio network and receives real-time images of the Russian position after a few seconds. “We have reconnaissance drones in the air and are constantly watching the Russians,” says the 29-year-old. “If the battery of the drone is empty, a new one is used immediately.”
The software used by the Ukrainians to merge drone images and transmit target coordinates and other information is called “Kropiva” (nettle). It was programmed by civilian inventors years ago and has been continuously developed ever since. The system gives Ivan and many other troop leaders a huge digital advantage over the Russians, some of whom still work with paper maps, rulers and pencils.
Mercenary Group “Storm Brigade Veterans”
Since the company commander was recently wounded, Ivan now leads the unit as a deputy. The company belongs to the 225th Territorial Defense Battalion and consists of volunteers who were all civilians before the war. “I took two university courses in Kharkiv, we are not professional soldiers,” says the giant. “But we’ve learned a lot in the last 14 months.”
We follow Ivan’s tablet as the campaign progresses. The drone images show how the Russians are in their trenches. One man in uniform connects the other. “These Russians belong to the so-called mercenary unit” veterans “, continues Ivan. The “veterans” have taken over the position of Wagner mercenaries, so that they can now concentrate 15 kilometers to the southeast on the last Ukrainian bastions in the city of Bakhmut.
A long ditch leads from the woods with the dugout to below the Russian position. A Ukrainian main battle tank was also shot down by the Russians. Two guns now fire on the “veterans” in the forest, but the shells miss the Russian positions. After all, the mercenaries remain crouched in their dugouts and dens.
Now a group of Ukrainians cross the long trench and shoot a mine snake. This is a type of explosive-filled hose that is shot across a minefield and explodes upon impact with the ground. The Ukrainians approached the Russian trench through the resulting alley, but without directly attacking it. They cover their comrades, who now run to the destroyed battle tank and find one of the fallen tank soldiers there. They drag the corpse into the ditch with a long rope.
Soon after, Russian artillery began shelling the Ukrainians. Their shells are more accurate and the Ukrainians have to retreat. It was not until the next day that the 225th Battalion succeeded in storming the position. This is evident from a drone video that Iwan sends us later. This time the Ukrainian shells hit the Russian positions, and soon the attackers close in and smoke out the bunkers. The video also shows at least one Russian “veteran” mercenary surrendering.
A mousetrap?
The action of Ivan’s unit is significant because it brings the Ukrainians closer to Bakhmut and the salt mines of neighboring Soledar along a major highway. The Wagner group is making progress in the city of Bakhmut itself and is about to drive the Ukrainians out of the last buildings to the west. But the Russian flanks are increasingly crumbling under attacks such as that of the 225th Battalion.
The commander of the Ukrainian ground forces, Oleksander Sirsky, recently put it this way: Bakhmut is a mousetrap into which Russian troops rush in like rats. There are many indications that the Ukrainians, with the main objective of their spring offensive, are just waiting for the Kremlin to withdraw more troops from other sectors of the front to complete the assault on Bakhmut.
The Ukrainian brigades, freshly equipped with Western main battle tanks and armored personnel carriers, did not intervene in the fighting here. They have to wait for the right moment to strike elsewhere.
Soource :Watson
I am Amelia James, a passionate journalist with a deep-rooted interest in current affairs. I have more than five years of experience in the media industry, working both as an author and editor for 24 Instant News. My main focus lies in international news, particularly regional conflicts and political issues around the world.
