By Marc Santora
Following months of relentless pressure and brutal confrontations, Russian troops are advancing against numerous strongholds spanning over 100 miles along the fractured front in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region. For Ukraine, the loss of any significant defensive sites could drastically reshape the struggle for dominance in an area long desired by President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
In spite of staggering losses, Russian forces are launching armored offensives, dispatching waves of infantry via foot, motorcycles, and all-terrain vehicles to assault Ukrainian positions from Chasiv Yar in the north to the southern stronghold of Vuhledar, which faces the possibility of encirclement, as reported by Ukrainian troops and combat footage.
With assaults taking place across fields littered with their own fallen, the Russians are hurrying to capture land before the seasonal changes strip the foliage they rely on for concealment and heavy rains transform farmland into muddy terrain.
Even with both forces weary, the combat in the east remains as lethal as at any previous stage of the conflict, according to Ukrainian soldiers and Western officials.
On each of two days in a recent week, the Ukrainian military indicated more than 200 skirmishes between the rival forces — the highest frequency observed in several months, based on data from DeepState, a group of analysts monitoring the battlefield.
At a site near the front where injured personnel receive care, the consistent arrival of the wounded during a recent weekend highlighted the ferocity of the clashes. In just a single day, small teams of medics treated over 70 soldiers.
Sergeant Valeria, a 23-year-old combat medic, listed the traumatic wounds sustained by the injured, which included critical head injuries and burns covering more than 20% of their bodies.
As exhausted fighters rested against a wall, hearing the cries of a soldier hurt in skirmishes near Vuhledar, she remarked that in the bleak calculations of her profession, screams signify a positive outcome.
“The most crucial aspect of someone who’s screaming is that they’re breathing,” she stated.
Valeria, like other soldiers met at the front, requested to be identified only by her first name or call sign, adhering to military guidelines. The New York Times was granted access to medics and soldiers at the facility on the condition that its location remained undisclosed.
While battles escalated back home, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy engaged in a diplomatic visit to the United States, which he characterized as equally critical.
He addressed the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday and met with President Joe Biden on Thursday, where he once again urged for the capability to penetrate deeper into Russian territory using missiles supplied by Western nations. He argues that without it, achieving an end to the war through negotiation with Russia will be increasingly challenging.
Biden has been reluctant to endorse such offensives, apprehensive of provoking Russia. On Wednesday, Putin indicated his intention to lower the threshold for nuclear weapon usage, a move intended to deter the U.S. from amplifying military support for Ukraine.
Along the eastern frontline, Ukrainian soldiers interviewed this month expressed feelings of fatigue, noting that securing one area often led to threats in another. The territory they are defending, the last remaining unoccupied sections of Donetsk, forms part of the Donbas region, once the industrial heart of Ukraine.
The cities and towns under attack hold strategic significance for various reasons, such as serving as vital hubs for troop and supply movement and providing advantageous positioning. The robustness of Ukraine’s next line of defense beyond these sites remains uncertain.
However, the Russians have struggled to translate previous gains into swift breakthroughs. They are also incurring substantial losses in personnel and equipment for every mile gained.
The Ukrainians have managed to hold back the Russians for months outside the devastated hilltop town of Chasiv Yar, but just 20 miles further south, Russian forces are making headway in intense urban conflicts now unfolding within Toretsk.
Just to the south, the Russian push toward Pokrovsk over the past seven months has resulted in a bulge approximately 22 miles deep and 15 miles wide, complicating the dynamics of the front.
Pokrovsk, a crucial rail and road nexus, is the last major urban center before the expansive plains that lead to the Dnipro region, which hosts Ukraine’s third-largest city and is essential to its economic vitality.
Ukrainian troops have temporarily halted the direct advance on Pokrovsk, but Russian forces are perilously close, reinforcing their positions around 5 miles to the east.
The city is subjected to daily bombardments. All highway overpasses have been reduced to rubble, prompting authorities to advise the remaining 15,000 residents to use winding dirt roads to evacuate while they still can.
“It’s very frightening,” said Kateryna Kandybko, a 34-year-old mother of two. Her family is packed and ready to flee, but they are holding on for the moment. “We really don’t want to leave at all. But we certainly don’t want to live under the Russian flag.”
Ginseng, the call sign of a 44-year-old master sergeant commanding an artillery unit from the 68th Jaeger Brigade defending Pokrovsk’s southern flank, indicated that Ukrainian forces had stabilized the front but described the ongoing conflict as a “nightmare.”
He gestured to a shotgun located near the entrance of his bunker, which he claimed was the most effective defense against small Russian drones when electronic jamming systems fail.
“They come in waves: One shows up, then 15 to 20 minutes later, another,” he explained.
His small team of soldiers operating a Soviet-design howitzer only emerges from the bunker when they receive targeted instructions from their own surveillance drone operators.
Even if they manage to maintain their positions, Ginseng worries that Pokrovsk’s fate is sealed.
“They’ll obliterate it,” he remarked. “I’ve witnessed countless cities being destroyed — it’s overwhelming.”
