In the two years since its formation, Ukraine’s 13th National Guard Brigade – called “Khartiya” – has gained a reputation not only for prowess in battle but also for its culture of respect and innovative approach to technology.
Khartiya helped to halt Russian forces who launched a surprise incursion last May that threatened to overwhelm Kharkiv, from where many of its original members come.
The brigade was deployed to confront the Russian incursion around the village of Lyptsi, north of Ukraine’s second-largest city, last June; the forested area has since been a pivotal battleground.
And it was there last week that Khartiya announced it had fought a battle for the first time using only drones – both unmanned aerial vehicles and robotic ground vehicles that sprayed the enemy using remote-control machine guns and laid anti-tank mines, inflicting large casualties and preventing a Russian attack without the loss of a single Ukrainian life.
The brigade’s spokesperson, Sergeant Volodymyr Dehtyarev, said Khartiya is committed to creating a “new Ukrainian army” using Nato standards of training that, unlike the Soviet-style hierarchical structures that still linger in many parts of the Ukrainian military, show respect for every member of the fighting force and use education and discussion to cultivate, rather than suppress, individual initiative.
He said that the brigade had particularly benefited from British training that emphasised the need for every soldier, of whatever rank, to be able to take part in the planning of a mission or battle and, if necessary, to take over leadership from a superior rank.
On Christmas Eve, The Independent was taken in a four-wheel-drive vehicle to one of Khartiya’s drone units covering a section of the brigades’s trenches and bunkers in the Lyptsi area.
After leaving the highway northwards from Kharkiv, our vehicles headed along country roads and largely deserted villages cloaked in fog as the temperature dipped toward freezing.
Along the way, we visited two bases where Khartiya brigade members were resting for a few days before returning to the front lines.
As in many other European countries, Ukrainians have their main festive meal on Christmas Eve rather than 25 December. Dinner traditionally consists of 12 dishes, one for each of the disciples. All 12 courses were not a practical proposition in the spartan conditions of the village houses being used by the resting soldiers. But the brigade provided some dishes while the soldiers themselves prepared others.
An essential ingredient of the traditional Ukrainian Christmas meal is kutia, an ancient sweet dish of grains, honey and poppyseed. Dehtyarev, accompanying The Independent, distributed some.
The mood was subdued but not sad. A company commander with the call sign “Czech” said: “Of course tonight everybody is thinking about the families they have left behind. I have a wife and a girl aged 18 and a boy 14 years old. I miss them and this is the third Christmas I will not be with them. But I have to be here as long as is needed and I know my family understands that.”
Czech said he and his men spent seven days at the front followed by seven days rest. Many of the Ukrainian soldiers have occupied trenches and tunnel networks abandoned by Russians they have driven out. Others they have dug themselves.
In a pattern repeated everywhere along the front lines, small groups of Russians, sometimes brought close to Ukrainian lines in armoured personnel carriers, or riding off-road bikes or quad vehicles, try to press forward despite horrendous losses.
Ukrainian and western sources estimate Russia’s losses are around 1,200 dead or wounded daily, with often more than 1,500 casulaties. Russian leader Vladimir Putin and his generals are indifferent to the high losses because Putin has eliminated all opposition voices so there is no political blowback for him.
Czech said: “The fighting is intense and the enemy is sometimes only 25 or 50m away. We can see them. There is no let up and after seven days everyone needs a rest.
“On a night like this, we’re also thinking about our comrades that have been killed and will never see their families again or those who have been badly wounded.”
One of the brigade’s chaplains, protestant Pastor Oleksandr, visited the bases talking with those who wanted to speak with him and leading a short prayer meeting. A family of four, dressed in traditional costumes, also visited the bases to sing carols.
Moving along narrow roads that had been turned to mud, Dehtyarev drove The Independent to a concealed location that is home to a drone unit.
As the fairy lights on the Yuletide tree in their bunker twinkled in the closing minutes of Christmas Eve, two soldiers, working above ground, adorned a large “Vampire” drone with a deadly 20-pound bomb intended to deliver a lethal greeting behind the Russian lines.
The black, lorry wheel-sized drone with six propellers is called Vampire because it is equipped with a thermal imaging camera allowing it to operate by night. The two soldiers worked using red lights that are less visible for an enemy to spot and which bathed the scene in a bizarre, almost festive glow.
Controlled by a third member of their unit, the Vampire’s propellers churned the air generating a surprisingly loud, intimidatory clatter as it lifted off the ground, momentarily hovered, and then swung toward its target in the battlegrounds around the village of Lyptsi.
Inside the bunker, everyone watched as Vampire was guided by an operator called Sova – owl, in Ukrainian – using a tiny joystick to keep the drone on course, plotted in blue on one of three screens. Two other screens showed a different version of the map with information about the drone’s height and speed.
But the skies over Lyptsi this Christmas Eve were murky with low clouds and fog. The target was a Russian bunker, spotted earlier by another unit operating reconnaissance drones. However, the camera showed the flashes of tracer bullets as the Russians, alerted by the noise of the Vampire’s propellers, tried to down the unmanned craft with machine gun fire.
Sova released the bomb around 20 minutes past midnight and into Christmas Day as the monitors showed the drone was precisely above its target.
This is only the second Christmas since Ukraine adopted the modern Gregorian calendar that celebrates Christmas on 25 December rather than 27 January. Even without direct sight of the bunker, Sova was confident some of the Russians 130ft below the drone would not live to see the remainder of Ukrainian Christmas Day, let alone the Russian one.
The unit’s commander, with the call-sign Makalatura, explained there had been unusually fierce battles raging all day on Christmas Eve as waves of Russian troops accompanied the Khartiya Brigade section he is responsible for protecting.
He said that usually, his unit launched planned attacks against targets that had been spotted by reconnaissance drones and scheduled for bombing days or even weeks before by the Khartiya Brigades headquarters.
But on Christmas Eve he had sent Vampire drones on three unplanned flights in support of his fellow Khartiya brigade members whose positions had been in danger of falling to Russian forces.
In between lethal bombing runs, Makalatura said they use the Vampires to fly food, water and other supplies to their comrades in outposts where deliveries by vehicles on the ground are suicidally vulnerable to the Russians’ own formidable drone forces.
The third member of the unit calls himself “Bandera”. Like the other two, he is in his early twenties and like them was thinking of family and friends far away. He said: “My wife and I had a child three and a half months ago, a girl. I’ve only seen her briefly once.”
And like most of the Ukrainian soldiers The Independent spoke to, Bandera longs for the war to end but only on terms that guarantee Ukrainian independence and security. “We have to make sure that my child and her generation don’t face another future Russian war.”
A few hours after The Independent returned to Kharkiv on Christmas morning the city was hit by at least six missiles as part of an intense aerial attack affecting much of Ukraine.
The Ukrainian air force said Moscow had launched more than 180 missiles and drones which caused many casualties and had targeted energy-generating facilities.
Moscow said it had “carried out a massive strike with long-range precision weapons and strike drones.”
