‘Putin’s forces fire 22 shells for every one we have’: Ukraine’s troops dig in to keep Russia from key target

Kupiansk, in northeast Ukraine, has been ravaged more than most cities since Moscow’s full-blown invasion began two years ago.

Russian troops poured in from across the border 30 miles away and within days occupied Kupiansk. However, in September 2022, Ukraine recaptured Kupiansk and other large areas of Kharkiv region the Russians had seized.

Since then, the Russians have been trying to wrest back Kupiansk because it is an important railway hub, supplying troops that would allow Moscow to try and make further advances. Therefore, Kupiansk has become a symbol of Ukraine’s determination to resist Moscow.

The noise of explosions provides a constant backdrop to anyone in the area, and much of the city has been destroyed. The Ukrainian government has repeatedly advised people to evacuate the city and only a few hundred of its 27,000 pre-war population remain.

As Captain Maksym Radchenko of the 123rd Kupiansk Battalion of the 113 Kharkiv Territorial Defence Brigade explains, the Oskil River on the eastern edge of the city has helped Ukrainian forces keep the Russians at bay. “The river is a natural defence system for us because crossing water is very difficult for an attacking enemy force,” says Radchenko.

“Wherever they have tried to breach our lines, we have repelled them,” the captain adds. “They have tried to storm our lines with mass assaults. Their commanders don’t care how many men they lose. They leave their dead and even wounded behind them and the areas in front of our lines are full of their corpses.”

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The Ukrainian forces’ general staff said recently that one of the main areas that the Russians were concentrating on was along a front line which has Kupiansk at its northern end and threads into neighbouring Luhansk region. Luhansk is one of two eastern regions, alongside Donetsk, which Moscow is desperate to gain total control of.

The Ukrainians believe that the Russians could take advantage of Ukraine’s severe shortage of artillery and rocket systems ammunition caused by delays in the supply of fresh, significant American military aid due to political wrangling in the US Congress.

Radchenko says that the battalion’s artillery units are having to use their remaining ammunition – sometimes just several rounds – very sparingly. A soldier, using the war name “Vegan” [based on his diet], says the lack of ammunition is a struggle. “Around here the Russians use some 22 shells for every one our artillery fires. We can’t use more because we simply don’t have them. That is a vast difference in firepower and a lot of explosive coming your way.

“For us to advance without huge loss of life, we need weapons. Particularly ammunition. If we don’t get the ammo, then the enemy will make advances. If Ukraine falls, then Europe will automatically be next on Putin’s list.”

Radchenko shows The Independent how defences are being beefed up with more bunkers, trenches and miles of razor wire and metal “dragon's teeth” aimed at ensnaring any Russian tanks that try to break through.

“We are constantly improving our defences and we are ready if the Russians change their tactics or launch a large-scale assault,” the captain says, adding that his soldiers are prepared to keep digging in, literally. “Every infantryman knows that the best piece of equipment is a shovel.”

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In addition to assaults by troops, artillery barrages and plane drone attacks, the Russians have lately begun the large-scale use of guided aerial bombs around Kupiansk.

These are deadly modifications of conventional gravity bombs designed to be dropped by aircraft. The Russians have fitted them with fins and some with guidance systems of various sophistication, transforming them into unpowered guided missiles that can glide some 10 miles and blast through five-foot-deep reinforced concrete at full payload. They are launched by fighter-bombers flying at 1,600ft to 16,000ft from far behind Russian lines at a distance beyond the reach of Ukrainian air defences.

Kyiv hopes that later this year, Western-supplied F-16 fighter planes flown by Ukrainian pilots will have the range to intercept and destroy Russian aircraft launching aerial bombs, which are difficult to deal with otherwise.

One of those bombs landed some 30 yards from a bunker that is home to three of the battalion’s soldiers – Vegan is one, as well as two men using the war names “Kandahar” and “Medok”.

Kandahar said: “These KABs [the Ukrainian acronym for guided aerial bombs, they are also known as FABs] are being used more frequently and they are very dangerous. They will destroy a bunker and everything in it if there’s a direct hit. We haven’t got a way of shooting them down and you don’t hear them coming. There is little we can do other than to remain in our shelters.

“As much as for protection, we avoid unnecessary movement above ground that could give us away to surveillance drones which are constantly trying to monitor our positions. We feel better when the weather is cloudy or foggy because drones can’t see far in those conditions and there are less of them in the air.”

The trio are all volunteers. Vegan and Kandahar both saw stints in the army before the full-blown invasion on 24 February 2022 while Medok did two years of mandatory conscription when he was a teenager.

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Vegan, 43, once studied law but volunteered for the army in 2014 and fought against the Russians in and around Donetsk and Luhansk, collectively known as Donbas, preventing Moscow from grabbing the much larger swathe of eastern and southern Ukraine that the Kremlin had planned to occupy. That is why the full capture of both regions is a priority for Moscow now.

Vegan joined the territorial defence forces in his native city of Kyiv two days into the invasion. After the Russians were driven back from the Ukrainian capital, he asked to be transferred to the east. “I didn’t care what sort of battalion but I wanted to go where the active fighting was,” he tells The Independent.

Kandahar, 46, is from Kharkiv. He is married and has a 20-year-old daughter who is also in the Ukrainian army. His nickname was given to him by Ukrainian Afghan war veterans who trained him when he joined his country’s armed forces following Russia’s initial invasion in 2014.

Like many of his comrades, Kandahar has been puzzled and disheartened by the reduction in America’s weapons supplies to his country but hopes the situation will change for the better. He is, nevertheless, grateful for all the foreign help which has poured into Ukraine and had particular praise for Britain, saying: “The weapons sent by Britain are excellent and the moral support is something that is very valuable for us. Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have also been great friends. If the Russians attack there, I will go to defend those countries.”

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The troops in the battalion have seen plenty of loss and Capt Radchenko says it is sometimes difficult to collect their dead. “A close friend of mine was killed advancing in November. We could see his body but haven’t managed to retrieve it. I want to do that so we can bury him properly and give peace of mind to his wife. We need to get his body so that he can be officially listed as dead.”

Medok – whose nickname is a play on the Ukrainian word for honey because of his profession as a beekeeper – is 46 and has a wife and two adult children.

He says: “The Russians got within 25 kilometres of my village near Kharkiv a few days after they invaded. I wasn’t going to sit at home and needed to take a gun and fight. Who’s going to go if not us?”

Medok, whose mother is Russian, says he has been appalled to discover that many of his Russian relatives had been “completely brainwashed” by Kremlin propaganda and, in telephone calls at the start of the war, had been convinced that Ukraine had attacked Russia.

“Since then, some of them have learnt what’s really going on,” he says. “But they are afraid and know they would be clapped into jail if they dared to protest.”

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Medok says he has taken heart from French president Emmanuel Macron’s recent raising of the possibility of Nato soldiers fighting alongside Ukrainians. “If Ukraine falls, then Western Europe will automatically be next on Putin’s list,” he says.

Capt Radchenko, who worked in the world of finance before the war, says the outcome of the conflict will likely be decided by who makes the swiftest technological advances and innovations and that, in turn, would depend on economic strength.

He says that the European Union’s economy, plus that of the US, is 20 times bigger than Russia’s. “So for me, as a financier, it’s unbelievable that economic heft so much more powerful than Russia’s cannot swat off this fly that’s attacking an elephant,” he adds.

“We have many dead. We are losing the elite, the best of our nation – young heroes,” lamented Radchenko. He said matter-of-factly: “Unless the democratic world increases its help, then we will die and the Russians will take Ukraine and simply move onto Western Europe.”

The last word is from Kandahar. He says that although conditions seem grim presently, none of his comrades have countenanced surrender or peace negotiations forcing Ukraine to cede territory.

“Nobody knows how things will develop,” he says. “But everyone has seen the destruction and experienced the grief that the Russians have caused ... The only thing to do is to give us weapons so that we can kill these enemies. We have to destroy them – not all the Russian people but their army.”