Life on Ukraine’s front line: ‘Worse than hell’ as Russia advances

DONETSK REGION, Ukraine – The artillery fire begins just before dawn. A soldier steps into a darkened trench and lights a cigarette, carefully cupping the flame with his free hand. A boom and crackle of outgoing fire sound in the distance.

Viktor, the infantryman, ducks his head under a canopy of camouflage netting and looks up at the brightening sky. The incessant buzz of a drone sounds overhead, moving a dozen meters from one end of the trench to linger just above him.

Viktor swallows. A moment later, the buzzing sound moves on.

“One of ours,” the 37-year-old soldier says, bringing the cigarette back to his lips.

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The sun finally rises and the noise of war picks up. For weeks, Viktor has barely slept as Russian drones and artillery continually target his position. During the day, he watches for attempts by Russian troops to cross a minefield that separates the two sides. At night, he picks up a shovel to dig and fortify his trench.

“They’re constantly firing, constantly probing,” he says. “We have to survive somehow, and we have to hold the line.”

It is the start of another draining day on Ukraine’s eastern front line. Monitoring his scratchy radio, Viktor will try to move as little as possible in a trench less than 800 meters from where Russian soldiers are massed. For seven months, Viktor’s unit has held this sector of the front, repelling a relentless onslaught of Russian assaults.

Now in the third year of full-scale war, Ukraine’s top military leaders openly admit that the battlefield situation on the eastern front has deteriorated. Two years of war have sapped Ukraine’s ammunition and manpower, while the country’s failed counteroffensive last year sank morale.

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As Reuters traveled along the eastern stretch of Ukraine’s 1,000 kilometer front line in April, soldiers in infantry, artillery and drone units all expressed exhaustion. They spoke of an acute shortage of ammunition and an urgent need to replenish troops. A new push by Moscow in May near Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, is likely to further divert precious ammunition and personnel from other sections of the front, stretching Kyiv’s military thin at a critical moment in the war.

Though Congress finally greenlit a long-delayed $60 billion U.S. military package in April, analysts say that a severe worldwide shortage of artillery shells means Ukraine will likely be outgunned by Russia for the remainder of the year as Kyiv’s allies ramp up production. Reuters could not independently establish how much new U.S. weaponry has made it to the front line. On a May visit to Kyiv, Secretary of State Antony Blinken assured Ukraine that the delayed aid was “now on the way” and some had “already arrived.”

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Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said recently there were no reports of artillery shortages. But in an interview last week with Reuters, he called on Western allies to speed up aid, saying every decision they’ve made on military support for Ukraine has been “late by around one year.”

With the possibility of Donald Trump, who has questioned American military aid to Ukraine, returning to the presidency later this year, many Ukrainians fear the continued support of their most powerful ally hangs in the balance.

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Russia, meanwhile, has continued to batter Ukraine with seemingly endless resources.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, riding high as he begins his fifth term, has redoubled his war effort. In 2014, Russian-backed separatists staged a battle to control the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine. Since 2022, Putin has made clear his aims to annex the entirety of the area, known as Donbas. To that end, Russian forces have made steady advances in recent months. In February, they captured the eastern city of Avdiivka.

Now, Russia is trying to seize Chasiv Yar, a strategic hilltop city that, if captured, would allow its troops to more easily advance toward the remaining cities of the Donetsk region. Russia’s recent incursions in Kharkiv have distracted the world’s attention from the heavy battles being waged in the Donetsk region, Zelenskyy told Reuters.

The Ukrainian armed forces and the Russian defense ministry did not respond to questions for this story.

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Freezing in the trenches

Before Russia launched its full-scale invasion two years ago, Viktor, the infantryman, was working as a window framer outside of Uman, a city in central Ukraine. His wife had just given birth to a baby daughter. (Like all of the Ukrainians profiled in this report, Viktor asked to be identified by his first name only, in keeping with military protocol.)

Viktor received his mobilization notice four months after the beginning of the war. He was quickly sent to an area in northern Ukraine that borders Russia to dig trenches. Later, he was transferred to Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, where mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner group were fighting to capture the city. Last September, Viktor was handed a Browning machine gun and taught how to clean and maintain the weapon. A week later, he was transferred to the front in Donetsk without having fired a single practice round.

When Viktor’s infantry unit first arrived here, thickets of oak and birch trees lined the grassy fields. There were still birds in the trees then and the leaves were just starting to change color. The soldiers dug trenches into the tough black soil but had no time to cover them with wooden planks before the Russian bombardment started. Through winter, the Russians’ near-constant shelling reduced the trees and fields to ashes, leaving only a tangle of charred stumps.

In winter, temperatures in Viktor’s trench fell as low as minus 15 degrees Fahrenheit. On warmer days, shin-high water pooled at the bottom of the canal, mixing with the earth to turn into slushy mud, soaking everything. All the while, Russian drones flew overhead, hovering above the open trench and dropping grenades.

At the beginning of this year, Russian forces attempted yet another assault, driving an armored personnel carrier into a field just meters from Viktor’s position. He fired at the vehicle with his machine gun and diverted it to a minefield, where it detonated a mine and exploded.

Several of the Russian soldiers died in their vehicle, Viktor and his commander said. Others survived with serious injuries and tried to crawl through the minefield back toward the Russian positions. One of them, a former convict from Russia’s Buryatia region, was taken prisoner, Viktor says. Immediately afterward, Russian attacks on Viktor’s position intensified.

“So of course the Russians were angry. They lost equipment, lost people, so of course they started shelling with everything they have,” Viktor says.

In the heat of battle, all you can do is pray, he says. Around his neck, Viktor wears silver medallions of the Virgin Mary and the crucifix. But when the situation is truly dire, he will pray to every God he knows.

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After Russia’s failed assault, their drones started dropping gas canisters into Viktor’s trench. A colorless, odorless gas would quickly fill the trench as Viktor and his partner fumbled in the dark for their gas masks. Coughing and sputtering, Viktor would crawl into a hole dug into the side of the trench just tall enough for him to crouch in and grab his phone. There, using candlelight, he would flick through photos and videos of his now 2-year-old daughter.

The Ukrainian military says Russia has ramped up its use of riot-control chemical agents to clear trenches on the front line. The U.S. State Department says Russia is deploying a choking agent called chloropicrin against Ukrainian troops, in violation of the international chemical weapons ban. The U.S. allegations were unfounded, the Russian foreign ministry said.

When spring finally came, nothing flowered. All Viktor sees now are the outlines of blackened tree trunks on the horizon.

His exhaustion is palpable – the result of months spent holding the line against an enemy with seemingly endless manpower and weaponry. Death and injury are constant and every day is a reminder of the asymmetry of the war.

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A declassified U.S. intelligence report in December assessed that Russia had lost as much as 90% of the personnel it had at the start of the 2022 invasion, with 315,000 soldiers killed or injured. Despite the losses, Russia is still estimated to have almost 500,000 servicemen in Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, and has continued to replenish its troops, recruiting heavily from prisons and from the general public. Ukrainian officials say Russia is planning to add an additional 300,000 soldiers in time for its summer offensive.

Russia’s new defense minister said there were no plans for a new mass call-up of troops. Russian officials also say Western estimates of Russian losses are inaccurate.

Zelenskyy recently signed off on a long-debated mobilization law to bolster Ukraine’s armed forces, which number around 800,000. The law, passed in April, lowers the draft age to 25 from 27. The government hasn’t said how many new conscripts the law would yield, and how soon they can reinforce the troops already on the front line.

“It’s not like how it looks on a map, with all these pretty lines and arrows,” Viktor says. “I see my friends, what’s happened to them, what we’re fighting. It’s hell. It’s worse than hell.”

'Death can come at any moment'

In February, the constant Russian assaults, sleep deprivation and fear finally got to Viktor. He woke up one morning frozen with terror, physically unable to go to his position.

“I couldn't calm myself down,” he says. “Not even that I didn’t want to go, but I couldn’t go. I was physically and mentally tired.”

Viktor was paralyzed by anxiety. What if he failed to do his job properly, what if something went wrong with his gun, what if he let down his comrades, whom he calls his “brothers” and considers his second family?

He shared his concerns with his company commander. Despite a severe shortage of soldiers on the front, the commander gave Viktor a few days of rest and time to talk with a psychologist. That short reprieve saved him and helped reframe his fear of death.

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In the past, he used to think of death as a distant possibility. “But in a war, you’re completely unprotected,” he says. “Death can come at any moment. I’m starting to get used to the idea of death … that it can happen, and you can’t escape it.”

“The psychologist said that a person who has faith understands that in death the spirit leaves the body and only a shell remains on earth,” he says.

Viktor’s ideas are blurrier when it comes to what follows death, but he knows, with certainty, that there is no salvation for the Russian soldiers who marched into Ukraine.

“I think they’re churning in hell,” he says.

Viktor’s eyes suddenly flick up. The whistle of incoming artillery makes him duck for cover.

“Get in the hole!” he yells, his voice drowned out by a shattering boom as he flattens himself against the dirt floor of the trench. Another whistle, this time closer, then a sound of impact, of metal meeting earth. The dirt walls of the trench vibrate. Then all is quiet for some time.

A little while later, the exhausted voice of a Ukrainian soldier crackles over the radio, asking for help. The soldier’s position, a few hundred meters away from Viktor’s trench, has been hit by what appear to be Russian suicide drones, which smash into their targets laden with explosives.

“One 200, three 300s,” the soldier says over the radio, using military code: one dead and three wounded.

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“What are my instructions?” he asks, panting slightly. The soldier is ordered to hold his position and not attempt to cross the minefield.

“Plus plus,” he sighs, acknowledging the order.

A few minutes later, the same soldier’s voice returns to the radio.

“What are my instructions?” he asks again, audibly out of breath.

“He’s concussed,” Viktor says, noting the soldier’s confusion and slurred speech, signs of possible head trauma.

He slumps against the white sandbags that line the walls of his trench and takes off his helmet. “They’re not going to be able to rescue them until dark.”

Over the radio, the injured soldiers are told to wait until nightfall – more than eight hours – for a medevac team to extract them. From there they could be taken to a stabilization point, a medical facility close to the front line where wounded soldiers receive emergency aid. The commander says another group of men will be transported to hold the position at the same time.

“Do not leave your post,” he tells the soldier on the radio, instructing him to drink water and stay awake.

Several more explosions are heard from the injured men’s position. “They’re trying to finish them off,” Viktor says, as the radio crackles again with the voice of the soldier. Several more Russian drones are swooping on their position and dropping munitions.

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Viktor takes another drag of his cigarette. He’s lost count of the soldiers he’s seen injured or killed. There was a cheerful soldier in his 20s he shared a trench with last fall. He was killed in a heavy mortar attack while Viktor was away from the position for a few days of rest.

Asked for the young soldier’s name, Viktor hesitates and squeezes his eyes shut.

“I can’t even remember,” he says after a pause. “I can’t even remember where he was from.”

More than anything, Viktor wishes he could go home, but he says the chances of another soldier replacing him soon at his front-line position are slim.

The final mobilization law passed in April did not include a provision in an earlier version that would have rotated out soldiers who had already served 36 months of duty. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry is now considering a new law that will address demobilization.

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Even with the mobilization push, many young Ukrainian men do not want to be sent to challenging front-line trenches like Viktor’s, soldiers and officers in his brigade say.

“No one will trade with us,” Viktor says. “Who would want to come here?”

So, he stands guard at his Browning, listening and watching. For hours, the radio crackles on as the injured soldiers wait for the skies to darken. Viktor, ever alert in his trench, looks up at the midafternoon sky. A deeper buzzing sound can be heard approaching, a sound that resembles a larger drone carrying a heavier payload. The sound comes closer, then hovers, suspended above the trench.

Viktor strains to hear against the wind. The buzzing moves away, toward the Russian position.

“Ours,” he says.

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Drones dominate the war

Drones have been used in wars before, but their use has exploded in the war in Ukraine. Russian and Ukrainian forces are now racing to develop and deploy a variety of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, that can carry out precision attacks, destroying everything from dugouts to multimillion dollar tanks.

Ukrainian soldiers and commanders say aerial vehicles initially gave them an edge over Russia. They now say Moscow is far outpacing their ability to produce them, in particular the lower-cost first-person view drones, or FPVs, which can be laden with explosives and crashed into targets.

One of the most potent weapons in the war has been FPV drones.

They have made it almost impossible for both Ukrainian and Russian troops to move on the battlefield without being spotted from above. These drones, which carry explosives, can be guided to a target kilometers away, and cost as little as $500 to produce. Russia, like Ukraine, aggressively targets soldiers’ positions and equipment with FPVs. Doctors and staff working at medical stabilization points in Donbas now say most of the battlefield injuries they treat are from such drones.

There are no reliable estimates of how many FPV drones Russia is able to manufacture every month. Ukraine plans to produce a million FPVs this year, but soldiers and commanders in drone units say they need to double or triple this number if they hope to keep up with Russian troops.

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To more quickly supply Ukrainian brigades with drones, former jewelers and mechanics sit in a village house near the front line, soldering parts for FPVs that can immediately be deployed. Brigades also collect downed Russian drones, which are then taken apart and examined by army engineers who are desperate to keep up with the pace of development on the Russian side.

“If I see someone is dead, if we’ve killed someone, I have zero moral satisfaction, it’s just like a video game,” says Roman the 38-year-old commander of a drone platoon. Often, he wonders what will actually satisfy the anger and sadness that he feels.

“So your friend is gone. How many invaders do you have to kill to avenge him? 10? 100? 1,000? You’re not going to get your friend back,” he says.

Though he’s not interested in demobilizing and leaving his men behind, Roman agrees that Ukraine needs a way to help fighters rest. Some of Ukraine’s most motivated men and women were the first to volunteer in 2022. Now, so many of them are dead, injured, or exhausted. It’s not enough just to draft more people to take their place, Roman says; they need to be properly prepared and trained.

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“You can’t keep the same people constantly on the front line,” he says.

But the decision of Ukrainians like him to continue fighting isn’t really a choice, he says. It’s a question of life or death for his people and his country. And if Russia prevails in Ukraine, he’s convinced no one in Europe will be safe.

“For Europe and the whole world, we’re on the front lines defending it,” Roman says. Putin “will never stop just in Ukraine,” he adds. “If you let him get away with it, he’s not going to stop over here.”

'It's endless'

In an area north of Roman’s command center, artillery units defending Ukraine’s eastern front waited for new deliveries of ammunition to arrive.

Ukraine’s shortage of artillery shells has become a decisive factor in its struggle to repel Russian advances. Russia’s new offensive outside of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine is likely to put further strain along the eastern front, where artillery units have been carefully prioritizing targets and rationing shells. In an April interview, Zelenskyy said Russia was firing shells at a ratio of 10 to 1 to those of Ukraine.

One of Russia’s targets is Kupiansk, a northeastern city in the Kharkiv region that was captured by Russia in early 2022 and retaken by Ukrainians later that year. Today, Russian forces are about 10 kilometers away. Oleksii, a soldier in an artillery unit in the 57th Motorized Brigade, is preparing to return to his position in the city after spending a few days resting in a nearby village house.

Oleksii, 27, volunteered to fight five years ago after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. Since then, the town in the Zaporizhzhia region where he grew up has been reduced to rubble. His comrades are all motivated and want to fight, he says, but their biggest concern is the acute shortage of shells.

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“When you work and when you have enough shells, you can work and you understand you are destroying the enemy,” Oleksii says. In 2022, one artillery installation could fire 40, up to 100 shells a day. Now, the number has been reduced to two or three shells a day, maybe a dozen on a busy day, he says.

In February, Zelenskyy said Ukraine had received just 30% of the 1 million shells the European Union promised to deliver by March. The European Commission did not respond to questions about the shell delivery.

By the time Oleksii arrives at one of the brigade’s artillery positions, a spring storm has started. Rain is falling and thunder cracks overhead. The hulking 2S1 Gvozdika, a self-propelled howitzer, sits hidden under a cluster of branches and khaki netting, while soldiers take shelter in a dugout nearby.

Stirring a cup of tea, one of the soldiers says the monthslong shell shortages have made Ukrainian forces on the front lines exceedingly vulnerable. Without shells, artillery units like theirs are unable to cover for infantry on the front lines.

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“If the Americans had passed the package sooner, Russians wouldn’t have gotten so close to Chasiv Yar,” says Yurii, the 53-year-old commander. “They wouldn’t have taken so many villages, and we wouldn’t have to fight to take back these villages.”

Russians have factories across their country where they can produce all manner of weapons and ammunition, Yurii says, while Ukraine is largely reliant on the goodwill of Europe and the U.S.

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“Russians can shoot their artillery like it’s a machine gun,” the commander says. “It’s endless.”

As the wind picks up outside, the men argue over the U.S. election in November and what Trump’s possible return would mean for the war.

“But he won’t win!” exclaims one of the soldiers.

“Even if he did, he’ll still have to help Ukraine,” another says. “When he’s president he won’t be able to ignore the opinions of his people.”

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told Reuters that the former president would make negotiating an end to the war “a top priority” in a second term and that European nations need to pay “more of the cost of the conflict.”

The problem, Yurii says, is that even after all of the horrors of the past two years of war, there are still so many people in Europe and the U.S. who do not accept all that Putin and the Russian military are capable of.

The horrific images of civilians slaughtered in Bucha after its occupation, the pulverized cities of Mariupol and Bakhmut. The tens of thousands killed, the endless portraits of dead Ukrainian soldiers shared on Facebook and Instagram, the never-ending funeral processions for fathers and brothers, the videos of children draped over their coffins.

“It’s not possible, I guess, just by looking at the photos” to comprehend the horrors, Yurii says.

The men fall quiet. They sit side by side on narrow military cots, taking sips from their cups. Suddenly, the radio comes alive with an order. The soldiers dash out of their dugout and prepare to fire.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Life on Ukraine’s front line: ‘Worse than hell’ as Russia advances