Gennadiy may be wounded in hospital, but he has still found a way to participate in Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive. Sitting on a crowded ward at a medical facility in Dnipro, the commander unexpectedly pulls out his mobile to reveal live footage of green fields and tree lines in a newly contested part of the front.
Although he was hurt in an artillery strike overnight between 2 and 3 June, as Ukraine’s attacks on the southern Zaporizhzhia front stepped up, Gennadiy, 51, says that when required he watches the phone screen to help soldiers on the ground. “I’m still working, still correcting artillery fire,” he says. “This is not just so I can watch.”
It is extraordinarily strange to be staring at live warfare, handheld. The images are deceptively undramatic: a camera restlessly scanning, focusing in and out of green trees and bushes, watching, waiting for unexpected movement or targets. Dozens of scorchmarks from past artillery strikes pockmark the ground.
A series of attacks at multiple points on the southern front on 5 June is considered to be the starting point of Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive: a critical moment in the near 16-month war, when Kyiv needs to show it has a pathway to victory – rolling back the Russian invaders – using the western weapons it has been supplied.
Gennadiy (Ukraine’s military allows only first names or call signs to be used) and other soldiers the Guardian spoke to paint a slightly different picture of a gradual buildup. “A month ago we started to increase the intensity of our attacks,” he says, describing operations where he was based with the 114th brigade around Novodarivka, a village on the southern front declared liberated by Ukraine on 4 June.
Progress has been measured, acknowledges the wounded veteran, saying it took 10 days for Ukrainian soldiers to capture Russian trenches in the next tree line. “Why did it take so long to take that one position? We wanted to minimise our losses,” he says, showing me the location in question by switching to the Deep State mapping app, used to track developments in the frontline.
His comments may help explain some of the wider reality. Over the past fortnight, Ukrainian units and leaders have announced the capture of a handful of largely deserted villages, with the gains amounting to four miles (6.5km) at the furthest point, south of Velyka Novosilka. The open fields of Novodarivka are nearby, about eight to 10 miles (13 to 16km) to the west, while a small bulge of Russian forces is positioned in between.
Gennadiy also describes determined opponents, notably using some weapons for which his brigade had no effective counter. “There are constant attacks from helicopters, three or four times a day,” he says, describing the Russians’ deadly use of Ka-52 attack craft in and around the frontline, and admitting they are difficult to shoot down from the ground, eluding his own efforts on the battlefield.
The hospital in Dnipro is one of many places deep behind the lines where the wounded, once stabilised, come for further surgery if needed and rehabilitation. Like in many Ukrainian hospitals, conditions are cramped at the best of times, but local sources say the facility has been filling up with wounded soldiers over the past fortnight as the counteroffensive has begun.
Firm data about casualty numbers is not provided by the Ukrainians, however, although the grim reality is that attackers expect to suffer more losses in war. Morale nevertheless remains relatively high even among the wounded, and many in the Dnipro medical facility keep up with military developments constantly, texting, calling and even fundraising for buddies at the front.
Viking, 33, sitting in a wheelchair after being seriously wounded by mortar fire in the northern Luhansk sector of the front at the beginning of June, said he had just been “trying to get spare parts” for a car his unit was using near the frontline to extract the wounded, complaining it had been bought only two weeks earlier and already needed to be repaired. So cash-strapped is Ukraine’s military that the parts would be paid for by the soldiers and wounded soldiers themselves.
From a distance, the war in Ukraine can easily be portrayed as a battle that will hinge on the provision and use of western tanks, rockets and other equipment. But on the front, as significant are other locally developed weapons – most notably the new $400 (£312) or $500 drones being used not for surveillance but in attack.
Four drone operators, led by Shved, whose call sign means “the Swede” on account of his blond hair, promise to take the Guardian to a base five miles (8km) from the Zaporizhzhia front, though at the last minute it is decided the trip is too dangerous because Russian reconnaissance drones were spotted over their dugouts. Instead, he meets the Guardian in a nearby village, a similar distance from the zero line, with outgoing artillery audible in the distance.
The squad are from Ukraine’s 1st brigade, a mechanised force using Czech-modernised, Soviet-standard T-64 tanks, and the drone operators’ job, in part, will be to act in tandem with the armour “as their eyes” when they are deployed to attack.
But the surprise, given the importance attached to drones by Ukraine’s military, is that the soldiers themselves have to fund the effort because the army cannot afford them.
“We pay up to 70% of our salaries to buy drones,” said Shved, particularly citing the new “first-person view” attack drones.
“That’s why you use these drones like a bomber, not kamikaze, because you don’t have the money to keep replacing them,” said another crew member, Spielberg, so nicknamed when the other soldiers learned he had video-editing skills.
Later at a drone command point about 30 miles (48km) away from the frontline, the squad demonstrate a modified fast-flying $400 Ukrainian-made Aquila, piloted with a controller and goggles. Some of the extra parts, such as the bomb release, are made using a 3D printer, the ink for which was also paid for by the troops themselves. The Aquila can carry one or two grenades and flies at 100kph (62mph) to evade the enemy. The soldiers say it can fly about 3km (1.9 miles) into Russian-held territory and believe it could be a cost-effective alternative to often inaccurate artillery fire.
Drones like this will be a critical part of the fight to come – and here there is nothing the west can teach the Ukrainians, because such drones represent an innovation. “It’s 21st-century warfare,” says another team member, Doshch. And although some of the overwatch can be conducted remotely in bunkers, most of the drone teams (typically four-strong, they say) have to work about 1km behind the front.
Back in the village, the soldiers will not say if they have so far been involved in the counteroffensive, though the impression formed is that they are waiting for an order to go in with the brigade’s tanks. All leave has been cancelled, and the group has had little time at home before that. Shved says sadly: “My 18-month-old daughter didn’t recognise me, and called me ‘uncle’ [a word used to denote a stranger] when I saw her,” although he believes he has no choice but to serve in the army.
They say the counterattack remains at its preliminary stages – “we haven’t seen much of a fight involving western tanks yet,” Shved argues, and only modest numbers have so far been seen on the battlefield – but despite the gradual progress so far, the group argue it is going better than the slow rate of village capture might suggest.
“Maybe it is not very obvious because we are not moving very fast, but we destroy equipment, tanks, everything,” says Spielberg.
It is their job to be optimistic, given what is at stake. But they also know they are in danger. “We are drone operators, we are target number one, high priority for the Russians. So as soon as we are detected, they will shoot everything into our location,” says Shved, arguing near-misses are not uncommon.
“I have no doubt we will defeat them,” adds Spielberg, “but I don’t know if I can survive until that time.”
