Where the Shelling Never Stops: Near the 'Zero Line' With Ukrainian Soldiers Trying to Maintain in..

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Danny Gold
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My final piece from Ukraine, spending time with some of the soldiers tasked with holding out against intense Russian artillery bombardment, is out at @RollingStone:

rollingstone.com
Where the Shelling Never Stops: Near the ‘Zero Line’ With Ukrainian Soldiers Trying to Maintain in...
Life inside a bunker with Ukrainian PHD students attempting to hold on against overwhelming firepower and devastating Russian bombardment
6:40 AM · Jun 21, 2022

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/ukraine-2-1368541/

No paywall
https://archive.ph/PoYvu



“It’s been like a million times,” says Oksana as loud booms echo outside the ad hoc shelter we’re in. “I’m bored of the shelling.” At this second line position in Ukraine’s Donbas region just south of the Russian occupied city of Izyum, the artillery fire is nothing if not consistent. Upon our arrival, the whistling and subsequent explosions make it clear that it’s also decently close to where we’ll be spending the night in an abandoned farmhouse-turned-Ukrainian military bunker.

“It’s the first city that’s after the zero line, it’s constantly being shelled,” she adds. For many soldiers, this is supposed to be an area of respite, home for a short 3-day rest away from the intensity of the zero line, what they call the front. For the 26-year-old Oksana, it’s been nearly two months of non-stop barrages as her and her fellow soldiers attempt to hold back a better armed and increasingly successful Russian assault in Ukraine’s southeast. President Zelensky has admitted to Ukrainian forces taking massive casualties, with upwards of 100 soldiers killed a day and 500 injured, as Russia makes incremental gains. As debate rages in Western halls of power about supplying Ukrainians with more weapons, it’s left to Oksana and the others stationed here to hold the line.

It has now been over 110 days of war since Russia’s full scale invasion has started, and despite Ukraine’s success in pushing Russia back from cities like Kyiv and Kharkiv, war is settling into the east for a very bloody and protracted battle. It’s turned into what Ukrainian soldiers describe as a ‘war of vehicles’’ of dueling artillery and planes and drones, a 21st century war of attrition, which finds the Ukrainians heavily outgunned and outnumbered. Towns and villages ping-pong back and forth between Russian and Ukrainian control every other day, but Russian forces are also successfully clawing away territory as they try cut off sections of Ukrainian soldiers from reinforcements. The question now is, which force can outlast the other, both in terms of manpower and equipment?

The initial Russian strategy plan saw a massive attack spread out across nearly the entirety of Ukraine, stretching out supply lines and spreading their forces thin, a strategic blunder that led to massive retreats and pullbacks. Now, as the Russian military has regrouped in the Donbas, the tactics have changed. Gone are the rapid, lengthy advancements. Instead, they are making use of their advantage in heavy weaponry, both with artillery and the skies, heavily bombarding cities and towns before slowly moving forward.

*snip*

[Raine]

1. Thank you for this link. nt

[Nevilledog]

2. YW