War enters 3rd year with Russia in ascendancy
\nUKRAINE
\nAs the Ukraine war enters its third year, the infantry of 59th Brigade are confronting a bleak reality: they\u2019re running out of soldiers and ammunition to resist their Russian invaders.
\nOne platoon commander who goes by his call sign \u201cTygr\u201d estimated that just 60-70% of the several thousand men in the brigade at the start of the conflict were still serving. The rest had been killed, wounded or signed off for reasons such as old age or illness.
\nHeavy casualties at the hands of Russian forces have been compounded by dreadful conditions on the eastern front, with frozen soil turning into thick mud in unseasonably warm temperatures, playing havoc with soldier\u2019s health.
\n\u201cThe weather is rain, snow, rain, snow. People get ill with simple flu or angina as a result. They\u2019re out of action for some time, and there is nobody to replace them,\u201d said a company commander in the brigade with the call sign \u201cLimuzyn\u201d. \u201cThe most immediate problem in every unit is lack of people.\u201d
\nOn the cusp of the second anniversary of its Feb. 24 invasion, Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russia is in the ascendancy in a conflict that combines attritional trench combat reminiscent of World War One with high-tech drone warfare that\u2019s sending tens of thousands of machines into the skies above.
\nMoscow has made small gains in recent months and claimed a major victory at the weekend when it took control of Avdiivka in the hotly contested eastern Donetsk region. A spokesperson for 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, one of the units that tried to hold the town, said the defenders were outnumbered seven to one.
\nReuters spoke to more than 20 soldiers and commanders in infantry, drone and artillery units on different sections of the 1,000-km frontlines in eastern and southern Ukraine.
\nWhile still motivated to fight Russian occupation, they spoke of the challenges of holding off a larger and better supplied enemy as military support from the West slows despite pleas for more from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
\nAnother commander in the 59th Brigade, who only gave his first name Hryhoriy, described relentless attacks from groups of five to seven Russian soldiers who would push forward up to 10 times a day in what he called \u201cmeat assaults\u201d\u2013highly costly to the Russians but also a major threat to his troops.
\n\u201cWhen one or two defensive positions are fighting off these assaults all day, the guys get tired,\u201d Hryhoriy said as he and his exhausted men were afforded a brief rotation away from the frontlines near the Russian-occupied eastern city of Donetsk.
\n\u201cWeapons break, and if there is no possibility of bringing them more ammunition or changing their weapons, then you understand what this leads to.\u201d
\nThe Ukrainian and Russian defence ministries didn\u2019t immediately respond to requests for comment on the state of the play on the frontlines and how both sides intend to prosecute the war through to the end of the year.
\nWanted: fighters and ammo
\nKyiv relies heavily on money and equipment from abroad to fund its war effort, but with $61 billion in U.S. aid held up by political bickering in Washington it is looking more exposed than at any time since the start of the invasion.
\nA soldier serving in a GRAD rocket artillery unit, whose call sign is \u201cSkorpion\u201d, said that his launcher, which uses Soviet-designed ammunition held by few of Ukraine\u2019s allies, was now operating at about 30% of maximum capacity.
\n\u201cIt became like this recently,\u201d he said. \u201cThere aren\u2019t as many foreign munitions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
War enters 3rd year with Russia in ascendancy UKRAINE As the Ukraine war enters its third year, the infantry of 59th Brigade are confronting a bleak reality: they\u2019re running out of soldiers and ammunition to resist their Russian invaders. One platoon commander who goes by his call sign \u201cTygr\u201d estimated that just 60-70% of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388639,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-388626","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n