A battalion commander’s view of Ukraine’s desperate fight against Putin’s forces: ‘Russian corpses everywhere’

Thousands of Ukrainian troops, many wounded more than once, all mentally drained, with Russian corpses piling up in front of them, are putting up a desperate fight to keep Vladimir Putin’s forces from advancing in eastern Ukraine.

That is the picture painted by Lieutenant Colonel “Kremen”, the codename of the commander of a Ukrainian battalion on the front lines southwest of the town of Avdiivka, which has become symbolically significant to both Kyiv and Moscow. He says one thing is clear, that in the days after Ukraine withdrew its forces from the town – in the Donetsk region – his men have come under heavily intensified attack from the Russians.

Kremen believes his battalion is now facing Russian men and weaponry freed up by the capture of Avdiivka to attempt further advances while they believe Ukrainian forces are reeling and off balance. Moscow sees Avdiivka as a stepping stone as part of its broader war aim of taking control of the whole of the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. But given the town has been destroyed in months of intense fighting, for Kyiv it is about showing it can keep Moscow’s forces at bay, while the withdrawal from Avdiivka gave the Kremlin a propaganda victory.

Speaking at a base behind his portion of the front line between the towns of Hulyaypole and Malynivka, he says: “Their intensified attacks on our positions are linked to their success at Avdiivka but these increased attacks are happening at many places along the front lines.

“The fighting has been so fierce that this is the first time I have felt able to leave my post at the front line since Saturday. It’s stabilised somewhat for the time being.”

Kremen says: “The Russians have thrown themselves at our lines very vigorously and are launching intense assaults with reckless charges, regardless of their high losses.”

He adds that the Russians attacking his positions may have also been reinforced with some completely fresh forces. “They are using the same human wave tactics they used for months against our defenders at Avdiivka. The areas in front of our lines are covered with their corpses. But they still keep coming.”

Kremen says that as well as men, the Russians appear to be transferring weaponry – tanks, artillery, drones – that were previously dedicated to the attempts to capture Avdiivka, virtually a suburb of Moscow’s most important prize in eastern Ukraine, the city of Donetsk, taken by pro-Kremlin forces in 2014 and held since.

Kremen’s 74th Battalion of the 102nd Separate Brigade, Territorial Defence, was formed just before Russia’s full-blown invasion on 24 February 2022 and is made up of mainly infantry. Its home base is in the picturesque, mountainous Ivano-Frankivsk region of western Ukraine and that’s where most of the battalion hail from.

He says most of his men were volunteers with no previous military experience and were given little training before being deployed to trenches, where “they had to learn to fight quickly during real battle conditions”.

“We’re operating near a fairly dangerous place, Huliaipole. This area is important because we have, close by, the Zaporizhzhya region and 14km [9 miles] in another direction, is the Donetsk region.”

He says that the Russians were particularly keen to regain control of the village of Robotyne in the Zaporizhzhia region. The village’s capture was one of the few inroads into Russian-occupied territory made by Ukrainians in their offensive last summer. However, the military otherwise failed to liberate much occupied territory or to achieve its main goal of severing Moscow’s vital land supply corridor along the Azov Sea coastline from Russia to Crimea.

Kremen says that only officers in the Ukrainian military’s general staff knew how many of their soldiers were killed or captured in the fall of Avdiivka.

Some outlets have reported, citing anonymous Ukrainian and US sources, that many Ukrainian units were told to retreat from Avdiivka when they were almost surrounded by the Russians, leading to a chaotic withdrawal. That led to many Ukrainians being killed and, according to The New York Times, up to 1,000 captured.

Ukraine’s highest commanders have refuted the numbers of Ukrainian dead and taken prisoner as exaggerated and influenced by Russian disinformation actors, who were seen to go into overdrive to capitalise on one of the few victories Moscow can boast of as the second anniversary of their invasion arrives.

Dmytro Lykhovyi, a spokesperson for what the Ukrainian military designates as the “Tavriisk Group of Forces” – which includes Avdiivka and the area being defended by the 74th Battalion – said that although some Ukrainian soldiers were captured, reports that they numbered in the hundreds were false.

He pointed out that when the Russians finally captured the Ukrainian city of Mariupol after a long and brutal siege in 2022, they had paraded the surviving defenders in front of TV cameras and would have done the same if they had captured droves of Ukrainian prisoners at Avdiivka.

The respected Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which tracks the conflict, said that it had not seen signs of a disorderly Ukrainian retreat from Avdiivka and that the Ukrainians had prepared positions to fall back to after quitting the town.

What seems sure is that some Ukrainian prisoners were executed soon after they had surrendered. One soldier was speaking to relatives on his mobile phone as he told them he and his comrades had been ordered by their commanders not to resist and to surrender. The video on the phone showed a Russian soldier telling the soldier to switch them off. That was the last time he was seen alive and pictures of his corpse were later shown by Russian bloggers.

But like other Ukrainian military and civilians, Kremen blames the fall of Avdiivka largely on the impasse in the US House of Representatives where Republicans, led by Donald Trump-supporting members, have for months blocked approval of aid to Ukraine.

America has been the most important, and largest, single provider of the ammunition and weaponry that has enabled Ukraine to resist the Russian invasion. Western-provided artillery and the ammunition for it, explains Kremen, were key in defending Ukrainian positions and in making dramatic advances against Russian forces in 2022 and early last year.

Kremen hopes that the hold-up in the US Congress can be resolved soon. He says that although the Russians were firing five to ten times as many artillery shells as Ukrainian guns, the much more sophisticated and accurate American and other Western shells for Himars (high mobility artillery rocket system) weapons could do a better job with a fraction of the ammunition.

He adds, though, that drones have come to dominate the battlefields and his country needs as many as possible to counter the huge number the Russians were able to manufacture themselves or to acquire from allies. Especially effective, he says, are FPV [first-person view] drones flown by operators who use video goggles. Kremen says the drones, carrying bombs and flying at speeds of 60mph, have been decimating armoured vehicles and artillery pieces. They can chase humans or tanks and other vehicles and can even enter bunkers and explode before those sheltering inside can escape.

He believes that technological innovations and acquiring technologically superior weapons will be key in determining how the war proceeds.

“We need as many drones as we can get. Drones, especially FPVs with night vision cameras, are the most effective for eliminating armoured vehicles. An RPG [shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenade used to target armoured vehicles] can maybe operate at 600 meters whereas an FPV drone, flown by a skilled handler, can destroy a target at 8km. Imagine that – it’s like firing an RPG with a range of 8km,” he says.

“Another thing that we all need is to rest because people are very tired. Soon, we will have been at the front for nearly two years with little leave and each day is psychologically, as well as physically, very hard to handle.

“Many people have been wounded more than once and even if the wound is relatively light, everyone knows a psychological trauma is likely to emerge at some point,” the colonel says.

Kremen says that the battalion has faced an uptick in the number of dead and wounded since the intensified Russian assault began last Saturday, although he would not give figures. At the base where The Independent meets with Kremen, there is a sombre atmosphere as some of his staff work to contact relatives of the dead and transport the bodies home for burial.

But Kremen says that despite recent setbacks, morale among his troops is still high and nobody wanted to start negotiations for peace with the Kremlin.

“How can you hold talks with the Russians when they have never abided by previous agreements? You’re only fooling yourself if you trust them. They have no intention of honouring agreements.”