It has already been two months since the Ukrainian soldiers suffered the Russian assaults. In the east of the country, on this burning front of the war, kyiv troops have been trying for two weeks to contain the breakthrough ordered by the Kremlin. In this region where the Russian offensive is now concentrated, the morale of the troops is deteriorating.
“In terms of morale, the situation is complicated. It’s not rosy at all,” Iryna Rybakova, the 93rd brigade press officer, told AFP. “Of course, we were prepared for this war, especially for the professional army, but for the mobilized, it is more complicated”, explains the soldier.
Localities that fall little by little
Moscow announced on Friday that it wanted to establish total control over the Donbass and southern Ukraine to “ensure a land corridor to Crimea”, already annexed by Russia in March 2014. Several localities such as Izium and Kreminna have fallen in the last two weeks and the Russian army continues to nibble, pocket by pocket, while for the Ukrainians, it is a question for several days of containing this advance. “We have a very fragmented front line, which does not follow a river, a road or a highway. Now it’s a village for us, one for them, one for us, like on a chessboard,” summarizes the officer of the 93rd brigade.
All the axes of the region, are already modeled to slow down a probable arrival of the enemy. Everything has passed there: bits of rails, clods of trees, defensive trenches for miles, blown up bridges and small squares of concrete cut out on the roads, ready to receive mines which will explode as Russian armored vehicles pass. . In this battle for Donbass, the losses are already high, recognize the soldiers met by AFP, while the local military administration refuses to give a figure.