The sound of Ukrainian artillery echoes in the sky of the Kherson region. It didn’t take more than a few minutes for the response from the Russian troops to arrive. “Run! You have to go, they say it’s dangerous!” It is Sergeant Yuri, aka “Snowman”, who holds this Ukrainian position five kilometers from the front lines. “Snowman is because I have salt-and-pepper hair, so the boys gave me that name,” he explains, a big smile in his voice.
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On Wednesday, October 19, Russia decided to evacuate residents of Kherson, the only region’s capital captured from Moscow since the beginning of the war – what Kyiv has dubbed “deportation”. The situation there is “tense,” admits Russian General Surovikin, who is responsible for the offensive in Ukraine. The Ukrainians are only a few kilometers away and the Russian army has been losing ground since the start of the counter-offensive. Fighting rages around Yuri and his comrades-in-arms.
[THREAD] When civilian evacuation operations began #Kherson, General Surovikin, who has been in charge of Russian operations for 10 days, yesterday described a “difficult” situation on the ground. We’ve been on this floor for the last three days (1/7) pic.twitter.com/0vyLIDHn4A
— Thibault Lefevre (@thibaultlefevre) October 19, 2022
At his position, Yuri has a shelter dug into the ground, surrounded by ditches and protected by a tin roof and sandbags. This is one of the most advanced posts on the Kherson front. “I’m watching where the grenades hit. There, look, that is the orientation of the battlefields, and there is the border between our troops and the enemy,” he points out on a map, “it’s not far”.
Yuri is located about fifteen kilometers from Kherson. “We’re making progress step by step,” he explains, adding: “It’s not going as fast as on the other side, it’s progressing slowly but surely.” When he says “the other side,” Yuri means 150 kilometers east along the Dnieper River. Where Ukrainian breakthroughs are effective, dazzling and territorial gains are solid.
For almost a month and a half, dozens of villages have been retaken day by day by the men of the 60th Infantry Battalion. The fights are tough. The enemy is on the defensive, cut off from their rear base while Ukrainians are electrified by victories.
“The Russians are untrained and the newly mobilized ‘soldiers’ don’t know how to wage war. Ahead of us there is quantity but no quality.”
Edward, Ukrainian soldier
at franceinfo
Edouard takes a short rest day about ten miles from the front before going into battle. He, too, is motivated by recent Ukrainian advances. “On the contrary, there are fewer professionals now. They have died or gone to fight elsewhere. Most of those mobilized are alcoholics or drug addicts, which means they are useless,” he says. According to him, these new soldiers “have no motivation, they have arrived on foreign territory, they have understood that they were released like cannon fodder and that they are taking a country and its inhabitants hostage”.
But the Ukrainians are also suffering from the hardships of the fighting and are suffering significant casualties. After eight months on the Kherson front, half of Edward’s battalion’s 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers were dead or wounded.
Ukraine: Recapture on the Kherson Front – Report by Thibault Lefèvre and Arthur Gerbault
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