His unit decimated by Ukrainian fire, the last surviving soldier in a Russian attack hid in a shallow crater while the Ukrainians shouted at him to surrender. As he hoisted two grenades into the air, a Ukrainian drone swooped overhead and exploded.
Soon, the smoke cleared, a surveillance drone appeared overhead, revealing the body of the Russian soldier. That day’s attack, just north of the ruined city of Avdiivka, was repulsed. But Ukrainians were under no illusions: There would be many more.
“They’re coming in waves,” said Lt. Oleksandr Shyrshyn, 29, the deputy battalion commander in the 47th Mechanized Brigade. “And they don’t stop.”
As the war enters its third year, Ukrainians find themselves outmatched and outgunned. After dominating the battles in the first year and fighting mostly to a stalemate in the second, they have given up momentum in Russia. Now they are digging and fighting to hold on.
Mortar crews must feed artillery shells. Troops are being rotated from units at the rear to join undermanned infantry units at the front, and there are shortages of critical supplies needed to repair and maintain Ukraine’s armored vehicles.
Because the Ukrainians are extremely short on ammunition, for example, they cannot afford to shoot only one or two advancing enemy soldiers, so the Russians have adapted and often move in small numbers to their most forward positions. They are trying to gather enough soldiers to storm a Ukrainian trench and overwhelm the defenders.
“Now, we don’t have enough equipment, enough people to go on the offensive,” Lt. Shyrshyn said. “So the main goal, for now, is to hold the position we have.”
Kiev recently announced nearly $500 million to build fortifications along its border with Russia and create a deeper defensive line in the eastern Donbas region that can serve as fallback positions in case the Russians make a breakthrough .
The focus of the fighting remains around Avdiivka in the eastern Donetsk region, where the Russians have mounted relentless attacks regardless of obstacles. They spent weeks fighting for control of a pile of industrial slag on the outskirts of the city, sending waves of troops up only to be cut down in terrifying fuselages. They crawl through tunnels under the city’s streets and direct unmanned vehicles packed with explosives into Ukrainian positions.
It’s all in the hunt for another annihilated city. But their attacks on Avdiivka and elsewhere along the front serve a larger goal: to take advantage at a time when US military support to Ukraine has stopped and overwhelm the Ukrainians in massive numbers.
While they are now engaged almost exclusively in defensive operations, Ukrainian soldiers interviewed along the front said that did not mean they could just die. They seek to inflict maximum pain on Russian forces while avoiding protracted battles that could result in heavy casualties of their own.
For now, Russian forces are making only marginal gains despite pouring massive amounts of resources into their winter offensive.
Last month, reporters from The New York Times were able to witness several recent battles with drone commanders and operators around Avdiivka and another ruined city, Vuhledar – two key hot spots on the eastern front. The extent of Russian casualties was evident in the fields of destroyed armor and the broken bodies of soldiers littering the snowy fields.
The Ukrainians use mines and other obstacles to funnel Russian tanks into kill zones, where they can be hit with heavy weapons almost every time they make an armored attack. They use Western-supplied offensive combat vehicles and tanks as hunter-killers when Russian troops approach Ukrainian positions.
With the Russians now able to fire five times as many shells as the Ukrainians in some parts of the front, according to artillery units working on the front, the Ukrainians have had to turn increasingly to bomb-laden drones piloted from remote control systems, known as FPV, to try to fill the gap.
But Ukrainian firepower is still limited. Major Serhii Bets, 30, the chief of staff of the 72nd Mechanized Brigade’s 48th Separate Rifle Battalion, said drones were an effective tool but could not compare to big guns.
“A first-person drone is not going to dismantle the dugout, it’s not going to cut the tree line,” he said. “It doesn’t put that kind of psychological pressure on the enemy. And we don’t have many FPV crews”
The Russians still dominate the skies and, after a brief lull after several Russian fighter jets were downed, airstrikes have resumed, soldiers said.
Dozens of giant craters left by the 1,000-pound bombs in obliterated villages testify to the destructive power Russia continues to bring.
While it is unclear how long Kiev can maintain its defenses if its Western allies do not continue to provide strong military support, Ukrainian forces continue to impose heavy damage to Russian forces while mostly holding the line.
Since Russia began renewed offensive operations in October, it has lost 365 main battle tanks and around 700 armored vehicles, “but made only minor territorial gains”, British military intelligence he said last Monday.
More than 13,000 Russian soldiers were killed and wounded in just two months of operations to capture Avdiivka, according to a declassified US intelligence assessment released in December. This yields about 3,000 Russian casualties for every square mile of territorial gain.
But Britain’s intelligence agency warned that Russia would likely be able to “continue this level of aggressive activity for the foreseeable future.”
“If the Russians are interested in a certain part of the front, they will raze it to the ground,” said Major Bets of the rifle battalion, pointing to a screen showing live drone footage to illustrate his point.
“Since mid-December, the Russians have completely destroyed that tree line,” he said. “If you look around the tree line in a 100 by 100 radius, there’s just plowed land.” But, he said, Ukrainian defenders are “digging holes to live somehow, holding it.”
However, even Russia’s small gains carry risks for Ukraine. The capture of Marinka—a town near Avdiivka outside the city of Donetsk—after years of fighting allowed the Russians to open a new line of attack on another town, Vuhledar, from the north.
“The enemy has partially succeeded,” said Major Bets. “We won’t hide it.”
They use their artillery advantage to “disorientate our guys in the trenches and then the infantry comes,” he said. “We are fighting the infantry calmly and holding our ground.”
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It’s no secret that the Kremlin’s strategy is to outflank the Ukrainians, and its forces are well aware of Ukrainian artillery deficiencies, soldiers said, repeatedly adjusting tactics to try to gain an advantage.
As cannon fire thundered above the ground last week in Avdiivka, more than 150 Russians entered through a narrow tube underground a major Ukrainian stronghold at a recreation facility called “The Tsar’s Hut.”
They emerged behind the Ukrainians and ambushed them, according to both sides. At a campaign event on Wednesday, President Vladimir V. Putin, who is running for re-election, appeared to cite the operation as proof of success on the battlefield, saying Russian soldiers “captured 19 houses and are holding them.”
With supplies and ammunition running low, the Ukrainians said they would have to pay a higher price in blood just to hold their lines.
Lt. Serhii Stetsenko, 40, commander of an assault platoon, said that even if the Russians manage to claw their way forward only a few feet, they dig in and fortify.
They often leave only two or three soldiers in these new forward positions. “They’re called camels,” he said, using a slang term for people who do tedious work while being treated like animals.
Those soldiers can spend several days digging while another team gathers before launching another raid operation, he said.
Sgt. Danylo, the commander of an aerial reconnaissance unit for the 47th who asked that his last name not be used for security reasons, said that if the defense works well, they will break up an attack before it fully begins.
“Defense operations are much more controlled,” Sergeant Danylo said during an interview at an outpost near Avdiivka. “You set the conditions for the terrain you control.”
But in battle, things can quickly get out of hand.
Lieutenant Stetsenko described a recent clash when a Russian tank managed to reach his position.
“The tank destroys everything in its path, so you won’t even stick your head out,” he said. “They jump out of the vehicles and rush into the trenches, destroying everything in front of them. Children who surrendered, they shot them all.”
Major Bets likened the confrontations to a boxing match. “The main thing is the ability to punch,” he said. “I can proudly tell the whole world that Ukraine knows how to pack a punch. But this is not the last round.”
Liubov Sholudko and Anastasia Kuznetsova contributed to the report.
