Dangerous situation of Ukrainian soldiers entrenched in Chasov Yar

An explosion lit up the night sky, sending flames hundreds of meters high into the air. Another explosion took place a few seconds later, then a third. Explosions echoed for miles across the fields east of Chasov Yar, and not long after, a fighter streaked past as if tearing through the sky.

Russian fighter jets are bombarding this eastern Ukrainian city with glide bombs, each carrying at least half a ton of explosives and capable of collapsing entire buildings with just one hit.

Ukrainian forces, with weaker firepower and fewer troops, are trying to hold Chasov Yar and counting the days while waiting for a new batch of weapons to arrive from the US.

Located on a mountainside overlooking Bakhmut, a strategic city in eastern Ukraine that Russia gained control of last year, Chasov Yar is another valuable “prize” for Moscow. If it loses the city, the remaining strongholds that Ukraine controls in the Donetsk region will become prime targets for an expected Russian attack this summer.

“It’s high ground. If the enemy takes Chasov Yar, their firepower will cover Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk and Kostyantynivka,” said Yury Fedorenko, commander of the Brigade’s Achilles unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) battalion. Ukraine’s 92nd Assault, operating around Chasov Yar, said. These are the largest villages near Chasov Yar, which are still controlled by Kiev.

The situation of the Ukrainian army around Chasov Yar is very difficult.

For every time Ukrainian artillery fires, Russia fires back 10 times as much, and soldiers in the area say that ratio is getting larger. In the front line stretching across the fields and villages east of Chasov Yar, the Russians were suffering heavy casualties but advancing steadily. Currently, they had reached the edge of the city.

Moscow is destroying buildings where Ukrainian soldiers could hide, the same strategy they used in Bakhmut, except that glide bombs allow them to do this much faster.

“Glide bombs have terrible destructive power, even in fortified areas,” commented Mick Ryan, a retired Australian military strategist and major general.

Ukrainian commanders say they can still hold off Russian forces. Offensive tactics are always more expensive than defense. To reach Chasov Yar, the Russians would have to cross a canal running east of the city, then climb a steep hill.

The weapons the US is preparing to provide will give Ukraine a better chance to maintain its territory, according to observers. Additional air defense systems are capable of intercepting Russian glide bombs, as well as dealing with fighter jets that carry them.

But the Ukrainian army is facing other problems that US aid weapons cannot solve. Ukrainian forces are exhausted after months of relentless fighting and Kiev is short of manpower to send to replace them. As a result, the process of deploying troops to the front, which used to last 5 days, can now take up to 10-15 days.

During that time, soldiers sometimes ran out of food, water and medicine. Attack UAVs regularly hunt for vehicles carrying equipment and new soldiers to the front lines. Wounded soldiers could die after days of waiting for evacuation because no one could reach them.

A 29-year-old soldier, codenamed “Nemo”, said his most recent shift on the front line lasted 10 days and he saw Russian troops advance more than a kilometer. They often advance at dawn and dusk, when UAVs are most difficult to observe. If Russian soldiers find a Ukrainian fortification, they will bombard it with attacks until the enemy retreats.

“They can shell a row of trees just for fun,” he said. “And we can only act when we are 100% sure about the target.”

Kypish, a 38-year-old soldier from another brigade, said Russian troops did not enter the area he defended last week. However, his unit is on the verge of failure. His company of 110 people currently has only 35 people capable of fighting, the rest are resting and recuperating. Four of the six people in the trenches with Kypish were injured by a grenade dropped by a Russian UAV.

“Even the commanders are with us because of the lack of troops,” he emphasized.

While Kypish spoke, in the basement of a building in Chasov Yar, an alarm sounded signaling a UAV nearby. He grabbed his shotgun and ran outside. Kypish said that the previous day he had hit a Russian attack UAV with mustard bullets.

Almost no buildings in Chasov Yar remain intact. Ukrainian soldiers mainly hide in basements. Steel mesh covers the windows to prevent UAVs from committing suicide.

A thin layer of dust created by the explosions covered almost everything in Chasov Yar, turning even the blooming lilacs an ashen gray color. Along the city’s main street, which was once a tree-lined boulevard, a statue of Russian writer Maxim Gorky was broken in half by a bomb.

A glide bomb recently fell near a local humanitarian aid center, leaving a crater more than 30 feet wide. Vitaliy Yeremenko, a 59-year-old former construction worker turned humanitarian volunteer, said he was lying in bed inside the center when the bomb fell. The shockwave knocked him to the floor.

“The walls shook so much that I thought the building might collapse,” he recalled. “We ran from basement to basement. That’s how we lived.”

According to Ukrainian officials, about 700 civilians remain in Chasov Yar, which had a pre-conflict population of about 12,000 people. Yeremenko said about 100 people come to his center every day to drink tea, eat porridge and charge their phones.

Mykola Mohylevskiy received calls from residents trying to evacuate, most of them elderly people without the means to move on their own. He did similar work in Bakhmut last year, but said Chasov Yar is now more dangerous because UAVs keep appearing.

“Two months ago, I could drive into the city, park my car and walk around,” he said. “Currently, I have to move quickly because the risk of UAVs destroying vehicles is very high. Sometimes they even attack civilians.”

Military vehicles operating around Chasov Yar are now fitted with electronic jamming devices that can disrupt communications between the UAV and its pilot. Even so, vehicles still stopped a few kilometers from the front line to drop off soldiers on foot, carrying supplies on their backs.

Serhiy Suprun, 48, commander of the medical team of the 41st Mechanized Brigade, said a soldier in his unit recently had to wait four days to be evacuated. The risk of being attacked by UAVs is too high for them to send vehicles. Ukraine solved it by sending UAVs to drop painkillers and antibiotics.

“There’s no way to reach them,” Suprun said. “There are always UAVs chasing each soldier. They react to even the smallest movements.”

Ukraine has its own fleet of UAVs, which makes resupply and evacuation of wounded soldiers equally difficult for the Russian military.

But Ukraine lacks artillery, which can cause much more damage than UAVs. An evacuation driver with the code name Chizhik said that while going towards the front to pick up the wounded, he called to request artillery support. Usually, the answer is no.

“They said ‘sorry, our amount of artillery shells is very limited’,” Chizhik said.

Ukrainian soldiers, commanders and assault forces all say that many of these problems will be resolved when their ammunition stocks are replenished with US aid. Once they had better artillery support, they would also suffer fewer casualties, helping to alleviate manpower shortages.

However, military analysts note that efforts to hold the city, as Ukraine did with Bakhmut for months, also come with huge costs. Russia, a country with four times the population of Ukraine, can cope with the loss more easily.

Ukraine’s leadership “will have to make some difficult political decisions,” said Ryan, a retired Australian army major general. “Do you want to hold on to your territory and sacrifice many lives? Or should you give up part of your territory and save your army? This is the quandary they are facing.”

Vu Hoang (According to WSJ, AFP, Reuters)