Ukraine War: BBC on the front line as Ukraine attacks Russian trenches

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By Quentin Somerville Blahodatny, Ukraine

33 minutes ago

Image source, BBC/Darren Conway

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Fighting in recently recaptured areas was close

Two weeks into the counter-offensive, Ukraine is making modest but steady progress in three offensive zones across the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line.

The forces launch probing attacks, while most Ukrainian forces are held in reserve, waiting for a large enough opening in the Russian defenses to launch a main attack and try to recapture territory in the south of the country.

The fighting was hard, with heavy casualties on both sides, and the opposing armies claimed the upper hand. Ukraine’s advance in southern Donetsk has faltered, but is continuing.

The BBC joined the 68th Jaeger Brigade as its combat forces sought to extend their control eastward over the recently recaptured village of Blahodatne.

In their sights were a series of trenches to protect the Russian forces on the nearby hilltops.

Men from a specialized drone unit wield cameras and rolling cables and load up a pickup truck with cans of ammunition and boxes of smoke grenades and armor-piercing rounds.

Apart from them, there are few signs of life in Blahodatne. Down a lane, the stranded wreckage of two heavily armored American MRAPs, one with a burning shell. There are more of these MREs idle in the fields outside.

Image source, BBC/Darren Conway

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The landscape around Blahodatne is littered with destroyed vehicles

“Get away from those, the Russians keep hitting them,” we were warned. Russia has suffered a lot of losses in tanks and vehicles donated by the West, even as Vladimir Putin admitted that it has lost dozens of tanks since the start of the counterattack on June 5.

The forces attack at three points: Bakhmut, where they advance north and south of the city, which is still firmly under Russian control; South Zaporizhia. and in the south of Donetsk, where a number of villages have been returned.

Blahodatne is one of those. Another batch entered, and the soldiers were sheltering in the basement of a destroyed house.

A dirt floor corridor lit with oil lamps, and the soft yellow light along it casts a hearth of stone and iron with three strong pots above it. Towels hanging from a clothesline. A rough wooden door opens and Nina Fedorievna appears in a veil.

She has been living here for the past year. She says that the Russian soldiers came only once.

She didn’t even think for a second about leaving the village.

Image source, BBC/Darren Conway

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Nina Fedorievna refused to leave Blakhodatny

The barrage of artillery left us through the alley at the end of her house. Three Russian corpses lie in a ditch, behind Nina Fedorivna’s vegetable patch. Nearby is a truck bearing the symbol Z, which was used by Russian forces, riddled with bullet holes and shrapnel. The fighting here was at close quarters.

Roses bloom all over the village – but the stench of corpses catches the back of your throat.

There’s no time for delay – Soldiers have an air of focus and purpose. They are clearly preparing for something.

They turn east, leaving Blahodatne behind. The two-car convoy is well spaced out in case of a Russian attack. The surrounding fields are heavily mined, and the red and white stripe poles have cleared the ground.

As we approached another abandoned American armored vehicle, there was an explosion, wreckage was lost. Likely from a Russian drone.

I was in this area back in March. After that, the front lines had barely moved a few meters in months. Russia was using far more artillery than the Ukrainian forces, who were essentially holed up in trenches waiting for the bombardment to end. At that time, one of the commanders told me that they were saving their shells for the counterattack. On this visit, the Ukrainian guns did not stop for the two days I was with the brigade.

Cars speed into a network of trenches hidden in a row of trees. There, the company commander, Staff Sergeant Andrey Unstrat, 49, directed his men through their next mission—a Ukrainian attack planned for the next day on the Russian trenches, 3 kilometers (1.8 mi) away at the foot of a low ridge to the south.

In their attempt to widen the front, sections of the 68th Brigade would attack from the countryside east of Blahodatny and Makarievka, through minefields and directly into the Russian line of fire.

The Onistrat sergeant works through the drone team’s communication protocols and objectives. The department loses up to five drones a day. Tanned and with a radiant white smile, he looked at his somber-faced men and gave one last order: “Smile—why are you so serious? We are winning the war.”

Twenty-four hours later, most of the same men were in a sweltering dugout. The attack is underway.

On their security cameras I can see two armored vehicles making their way slowly through the minefield. Drone after drone is sent over the Russian positions to drop smoke grenades, creating a smokescreen along the Russian-occupied trenches to allow vehicles to advance and overwhelm enemy anti-tank weapons. As I watch, Ukrainian shells repeatedly hit the tree line.

Yuri, a young soldier, runs in and out of the bunker, changing drone batteries and sending them flying, while barking voices and targeting locations via radios. Mosquitoes and horseflies feast on the men, but still Frisbee, from western Ukraine, has taken off his shirt in the heat.

Their enemy does not back down. As I stood outside, a Russian volley fell close enough to throw dirt into the ditch. Zheka stands on lookout with rolled-up shadows and no body armor.

Another Russian shell landed close to me and I fell down. I searched and Zika did not recede. He yells in English — swearing at Russians — and raises two middle fingers in the air. Grad missiles raining down on the Ukrainian sites.

Image source, BBC/Quentin Somerville

photo caption,

Ukrainian forces launch drones to drop smoke bombs near Russian positions

On a larger scale, the counterattack was made more difficult by the lack of Ukrainian air power. The West has promised F-16 fighter jets but they will not arrive until later this year.

Back outside in the trenches, another soldier, Yaroslav, explains: “Russian helicopters, Russian jets firing over every area, every day.” It was interrupted when another strike landed nearby. “Go to the shelter,” he says, “good luck.”

When President Volodymyr Zelensky announced, on June 3, that Ukraine was ready to counterattack, he mentioned Russian air superiority and warned of the loss of many Ukrainians. Such was the case for the 68th Brigade.

Sergeant Onistrat says this weighs on him. “The severity of today depends only on one thing – the number of people we lost. Last week was very difficult. We lost a huge number of people.”

On his head he wears a bulletproof helmet, the size of which is very small. I remember her and he started crying. He says, “It was my son.”

Ostap Onestrat, 20, was killed in a drone strike not far from where we are talking, two days before the counterattack began. He’s been in the army for a year.

His father is still in the throes of grief. “A kamikaze drone flew at them and actually hit him head on. It was impossible to identify him. He was buried in a closed coffin,” says Sergeant Onestrat.

Image source, BBC/Darren Conway

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Sergeant Onestrat lost his son Ostap (right) a few days before the start of the counterattack

I ask how it continues. “I made a commitment. You know, we’re here to win. Not to sit back, not to run away. I just think everyone here has to do their job professionally. There’s nothing heroic about it. I just have to finish this job.”

When I asked him if he was looking for revenge, he replied firmly: “Revenge is a sin.”

“My job is to finish this story. I want to participate in the victory parade. I want us to win, and I want to lose fewer people.”

We leave the front, and the offensive continues. Later, I received a message telling me that they had taken the Russian positions.

Back at the command post, Sergeant Onistrat’s car escorting us swerves and stops abruptly. He, along with the others, quickly gets out of the car. I wonder if we also need to hide.

Then I see what caught their eye – the cherry trees.

Like children, they giggle for a moment as they snatch handfuls of dark red fruit from shady boughs, while artillery and mortar fire continues to batter the Russian positions on the hillside.

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