KHARKIV OLYMPIC, Ukraine — After months of tough fighting, Ukrainian forces are pushing back Russian forces in Kharkiv Oblast. “Things are a bit better, but we're still firing one shot for every 10 they take,” said Roman, an artilleryman with the 406th Artillery Brigade, who gave only his first name in accordance with Kyiv military regulations.
In late July, I visited the troops at a garrison outside the city of Kharkiv, near where Russian forces opened a new front line in May. The attack caused near-panic conditions among Ukrainian troops as Russian forces crossed the border and overwhelmed weak Ukrainian defenses.
A determined defense by elite Ukrainian forces has halted the Russian advance at the towns of Vovchansk and Liptsy, and now the situation is looking up, thanks in large part to weapons donated by Western countries, including towed M777 howitzers – weapons that until a few years ago were considered relics of a past war.
The M777s were fitted with their own special type of high-performance munitions, which initially proved highly effective: artillery units fired GPS-guided Excalibur shells with pinpoint accuracy, destroying key Russian positions and making it difficult for the invading forces to advance. Meanwhile, in Washington, U.S. officials relaxed warnings that had previously barred Ukrainian forces from targeting Russian troops firing across the border, lifting important restrictions on building defenses here.
“This gives us a chance to stop them and slow down their advance. They are insecure on the border and cannot mass forces there without major problems. Basically, this gives us an opportunity to destroy them deep inside their territory and prevent them from properly preparing,” Ukrainian military spokesman Vitaly Sarantsev said.
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But now the Russian military has succeeded in screwing up the magical math of Western high-tech weaponry. Russian electronic warfare systems have improved significantly, allowing them to jam technologies like those used to guide Excalibur.
Without satellite communications, the much-vaunted bullets are nothing more than expensive pieces of metal. “They fire but they don't explode,” Roman said. “So when they hit the ground, they're just duds.”
The M777 still uses standard unguided explosive rounds and remains an important weapon, but it no longer has the same impact as when it was first introduced.
The broader implication of this is that Western assumptions about technological superiority have a limited shelf life here.
The recently introduced ATACMS missiles, supplied by the US, remain in service, but many analysts believe it is only a matter of time before Russia finds a counter to these cutting-edge technologies.
“War is about speed of adaptation,” former Air Marshal and British Ministry of Defence official Edward Stringer told The Wall Street Journal. “When you give antibiotics intravenously every week, you're actually training the pathogens. And we trained the pathogens. … We didn't need to give them that time, but we did.”
NATO standard weapons still have important advantages over their Soviet counterparts. First, they are light and maneuverable. It takes a Ukrainian soldier about 90 seconds to carry an M777 to and from a firing position. When not firing, the equipment is meticulously camouflaged.
But artillerymen here predict that the days of their weapons are coming to an end. When Ukraine was suffering from serious ammunition shortages, due in large part to gridlock in the U.S. Congress and Republican unwillingness to approve additional military aid, it made up for the shortfall in artillery consumption with drones. Now the skies above the battlefield are filled with Mavics, first-person drones, Vampires, and all sorts of cheap equipment, much of it repurposed from civilian models available on Amazon.
Aerial drones have become a ubiquitous sight on the battlefield, rivaling artillery in destroying enemy armor and killing combatants in numbers. Crucially, they are not subject to the domestic political whims of Ukraine's Western allies.
Soldiers here claim that artillery still has many advantages over drones: for example, it can hit targets much faster, its shells have enough explosive power to shatter armored vehicles, and its hail of shells is extremely terrifying and has a huge impact on enemy morale, something that drones still cannot match.
While Ukrainian forces have stabilized the front line near Kharkiv, Russian forces continue to advance in other areas.
Russian forces have recently expanded their territorial reach in the Donetsk region, closing in on the vital logistics hub of Pokrovsk, and while the Russians are suffering heavy casualties, they appear to be able to afford them.
“As long as we have enough ammunition here, we will fight until we win,” says Roman, the artillery commander.
It's a familiar phrase repeated dozens of times on this battlefield, each time more tired than the last, a little less hopeful. Ask soldiers what they need from the West, and the answer is the same: shells.
Soldiers here accept the logic of a fierce war of attrition, where one side wears down the other. Despite that dynamic, not a single soldier interviewed here is ready to accept the idea of a peace deal that would cede Ukrainian territory to Russia. At least, none of them are willing to acknowledge it.
According to a poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, more than 30 percent of Ukrainians would consider ceding Ukrainian territory to Russia to end the fighting.
Roman soldiers despised the idea: when asked what they thought about people offering to cede territory for peace, one soldier grinned and said, “I want to punch those guys in the face.”
Meanwhile, in the city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian urban life continues. On a warm evening in late July, a newly-wed couple can be seen walking around the streets after a 30-minute wedding ceremony with only close friends and family to avoid being targeted by Russian missiles, while air raid sirens wail in the background, birds chirp and casual conversation can be heard.
Despite the fears, crowds flocked to the bars and clubs that line Kharkiv's main street. “If a bomb falls on the next street, people will turn around and look, then go back to partying,” one festival-goer said.
The fight for the right to party here is being fought only by men like Roman who defend the front line against a never-ending stream of Russian soldiers.
