With a deafening roar the rockets erupted from the launcher on the back of the Mitsubishi. The pickup truck was parked by a field of blackened dead sunflowers on territory that had been seized back from Russian forces in the Kherson region in south Ukraine just two weeks ago.
Barely 30 seconds later, the two 122mm missiles, arcing through the heavy grey sky, devastated a makeshift Russian headquarters that had been a base for about 100 soldiers in an abandoned school in the village of Dudchany, five miles south-west.
Ukraine’s forces now have every intention of taking Dudchany back within the next few weeks as they attempt to push west towards the city of Kherson, the eponymous regional capital, and the first city to fall to Russia after Vladimir Putin’s February invasion.
This is the frontline in the great advance by Ukrainian forces on the Kherson oblast. In recent days, Sergey Surovikin, the newly appointed commander of Putin’s forces, who made his reputation as ‘General Armageddon’ in Syria, has admitted that there are “difficult decisions to make” in the region. The Russian-appointed civil authorities have ordered an evacuation from the parts of Kherson city that lie north of the Dnieper.
Ukrainian soldiers believe the momentum is with them. “We have a window,” says Max, 38.
Max commands a unit of 30 men, soon to be 54, that pilot the reconnaissance and attack drones that provide the Ukrainian artillery on this flank of Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s counteroffensive with the locations of Russian troops and hardware.
He fed the artillery hitting the Russian HQ in Dudchany on Wednesday with the coordinates before he and his men raced for cover to avoid return fire.
“You can call us the legendary battalion 248,” he said with a laugh. “We always hit the target.” The unit also goes by the name of “the Karlssons”, after a 1950s Swedish storybook character able to fly thanks to a propeller in his back, popularised in this part of the world through Soviet cartoons.
In a dark world, a little childishness goes a long way. “I used to work for my family company making fertilisers,” says Max. “You still do in a way,” joked Shannon, 39, a New Zealander from Christchurch, who joined the unit in August.
The Karlssons lost one man to a grenade over the summer and two soldiers were hospitalised two weeks ago after their vehicle drove over a mine. As a reconnaissance unit, they are high-value scalps.
Shannon, a former soldier in his own country, and Aaron, 25, an ex US Marine from New England who joined at the same time this summer, had a close reconnaissance mission to accomplish later that day. They had to creep within 1km (0.6 miles) of their Russian target. “We have had some close calls,” said Aaron. “I found some shrapnel in my pocket after one. Kept that for good luck.”
Kherson’s value as a big strategic and symbolic target for Ukraine was perhaps only strengthened by Putin’s announcement of its “annexation” along with Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia. The proclamation was met by world condemnation and mockery given the ongoing fighting.
The top third of the Kherson oblast in southern Ukraine is cut from the rest of the province by the Dnieper river. Russia has held both the two-thirds below the river and, until recently, much of the rest of the territory north of it since shortly after the war began.
But the Ukrainian counteroffensive launched in August has eaten heavily into that top section, leading western officials to suggest that Kherson city itself, or at least the northern part, could be taken within weeks.
“Now we have an opportunity to take the right bank [the north of the Dnieper river],” Max said. But the fighting is tough. Communications intercepts reveal that Russian morale is breaking in some parts of the line in Kherson. But not on this flank of the oblast where Max and his men are operating. “They are a very good squad. In many places they are ready to surrender but over here they are ready to fight until the end,” he said.
A further threat to the Ukrainian advance is the fear that the Russians will blow up the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station further down the Dnieper river from Dudchany. That could turn passable land into a swamp. “It is possible as it doesn’t matter to them. They don’t care. If they are losing the areas they don’t mind making the situation for Ukrainians worse.”
There is also a shortage of drones. Much of the Ukrainians’ hardware is funded from outside the state through crowdfunding. They have had up to 20 shot down or made ineffective due to Russian cyber technology. A small four-rotor drone, used earlier on Wednesday from the garden of an abandoned home in a recently liberated village to inspect Russian troop and artillery positions on the other side of the Dnieper, is Chinese-made. It flies up to a height of 1.5km (one mile) and has a 200x zoom allowing it to see across the flat plains of this part of the country for about 40km (25 miles). “But we don’t have any US or British drones and we would really love to have some,” Max said.
The Karlssons nevertheless keep moving and chalking up the successes. The abandoned Russian trenches, tank helmets, flares for guiding helicopters and rations that lie around the fields in which they operate bears witness to the freshness of those victories and value of their work. The absence of their friends alongside them reminds them of the risks they take.
