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DNIPROPETROVSK REGION, Ukraine — The quality of Ukraine’s armed forces, once seen as a significant advantage over Russia, has been marred by a year of losses that has removed many of the most experienced fighters from the battlefield, prompting some Ukrainian officials to question Kiev’s readiness to do so to face launch a much-anticipated spring offensive.
US and European officials have estimated that up to 120,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded since the Russian invasion began early last year, compared to about 200,000 on the Russian side, which has a much larger military and roughly triple the population of conscripts pull. Ukraine keeps its ongoing casualty numbers secret, even from its most staunch Western backers.
Stats aside, an influx of inexperienced conscripts deployed to help shore up losses has changed the profile of Ukraine’s armed forces, which also suffer from basic ammunition shortages, including artillery shells and mortar bombs, according to military personnel on the ground.
“The most valuable thing in war is combat experience,” said a battalion commander of the 46th Air Assault Brigade, identified only by his call sign, Kupol, according to Ukrainian military protocol. “A soldier who survived six months of combat and a soldier who came off a firing range are two different soldiers. It is heaven and earth.”
“And there are few soldiers with combat experience,” added Kupol. “Unfortunately, they are all already dead or wounded.”
Such gloomy assessments have spread a palpable, if largely unspoken, pessimism from the front lines to the corridors of power in the capital, Kiev. An inability by Ukraine to launch a much-touted counteroffensive would fuel fresh criticism that the United States and its European allies have waited too long, when forces were already deteriorating, to deepen training programs and deploy armored fighting vehicles such as Bradleys and Leopard main battle tanks .
The situation on the battlefield right now may not reflect a full picture of Ukraine’s armed forces, as Kiev is separately training troops for the upcoming counteroffensive and is deliberately holding them back from current fighting, including the defense of Bakhmut, a US official speaking on the condition said of anonymity to be frank.
Andriy Yermak, head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said the state of Ukraine’s armed forces does not diminish his optimism about an impending counter-offensive. “I don’t think we’ve reached our potential,” said Yermak. “I think that in every war there comes a time when you have to prepare new personnel, which is what is happening.”
And the situation for Russia could be even worse. During a NATO meeting last month, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said that 97 percent of the Russian army was already stationed in Ukraine and that Moscow was suffering from “the attrition of the First World War”.
Kupol said he hopes Washington will provide better training for Ukraine’s armed forces and that Ukrainian troops being held back for a coming counteroffensive will have more success than the inexperienced soldiers now occupying the front lines under his command.
“One always believes in a miracle,” he said. “Either massacre and corpses or professional counter-offensive. There are two possibilities. There will be a counter-offensive one way or another.”
Just how much of a spring offensive the increased Western military aid and training will tip remains uncertain given the wear and tear that is beginning to show.
A senior Ukrainian government official, speaking on condition of anonymity to be frank, described the number of tanks promised by the West as a “token” amount. Others privately expressed pessimism promising supplies would even reach the battlefield in time.
“When you have more resources, attack more actively,” the senior official said. “Those who have fewer resources defend more. We will defend ourselves. Therefore, if you ask me personally, I don’t believe in a major counter-offensive for us. I’d like to believe that, but I look at the resources and I’m like, “With what?” We may have some localized breakthroughs.”
“We don’t have the people or the guns,” the senior official added. “And you know the ratio: when you’re on offense you lose twice or three times as many people. We cannot afford to lose that many people.”
Defending Ukraine’s “highway of life” – the last road out of Bakhmut
Such an analysis is far less optimistic than the public pronouncements of Ukraine’s political and military leaders.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called 2023 “the year of victory” for Ukraine. His military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, pointed to the possibility that Ukrainians could vacation this summer in Crimea, the peninsula that Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine nine years ago.
“Our president inspires us to victory,” Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrsky, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, said in an interview with the Washington Post. “Basically, we all think the same and understand that it is of course necessary for us to win by the end of the year. And it’s real. It’s real when we get all the help that our partners have promised us.”
At the front, however, the mood is gloomy.
Kupol, who agreed to be photographed and said he understood he could face personal backlash if he gave an open assessment, described going into combat with newly drafted soldiers who had never fired a grenade thrown, who willingly gave up their positions under fire, and who lacked confidence in the use of firearms.
His unit withdrew from Soledar in eastern Ukraine over the winter after being surrounded by Russian forces, who later captured the town. Kupol recalled how hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers in units fighting alongside his battalion simply abandoned their positions even as fighters from the Russian Wagner mercenary group rushed ahead.
After a year of war, Lieutenant Colonel Kupol said his battalion was unrecognizable. Out of about 500 soldiers, about 100 were killed and another 400 wounded, leading to a complete turnover. Kupol said he was now the only military professional in the battalion, and he described the struggle of leading a unit made up entirely of inexperienced troops.
“I’m getting 100 new soldiers,” said Kupol. “They don’t give me time to prepare them. They say, ‘Take them into battle.’ They just drop everything and run. That’s it. do you understand why Because the soldier doesn’t shoot. I ask him why and he says, ‘I’m scared of the sound of the gunshot.’ And for some reason he’s never thrown a grenade. … We need NATO trainers in all our training centers, and our trainers have to be sent to the trenches over there. Because they failed in their task.”
He described serious ammunition shortages, including a shortage of basic mortar bombs and shells for US-made MK 19s.
Traumatic stress, an invisible wound, leaves Ukrainian soldiers limping
Ukraine is also facing an acute shortage of artillery shells, which Washington and its allies have been trying to remedy, with discussions about how to shore up Ukraine’s stockpiles dominating daily White House sessions on the war at the White House National Security Council. Washington’s efforts have kept Ukraine in contention, but usage rates are very high and shortages persist.
“You’re in the front lines,” said Kupol. “They’re coming at you and there’s nothing you can shoot with.”
Kupol said Kiev must focus on systematically better preparing new troops. “It’s like we’re just doing interviews and telling people we’ve already won, just a little further away, two weeks, and we’re going to win,” he said.
Dmytro, a Ukrainian soldier whom The Post identifies by his first name for security reasons, described many of the same conditions. Some of the less experienced troops serving at his position with the 36th Marine Brigade in the Donetsk region “are afraid to leave the trenches,” he said. The shelling is sometimes so intense, he said, that a soldier has a panic attack, “the others get it.”
When he first saw his comrades very shaken, Dmytro said he tried to explain to them the reality of the risks. Next time, he said, they “just ran away from the position.”
“I don’t blame them,” he said. “They were so confused.”
The challenges come from high losses. General Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s supreme commander, said in August that nearly 9,000 of his soldiers had died. In December, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskyi, said the number had risen to 13,000. But Western officials have given higher estimates, and in any case the Ukrainian numbers have excluded the far larger number of wounded who are no longer able to fight.
A German official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Berlin estimated the number of Ukrainian casualties, including dead and wounded, at up to 120,000. “They don’t share the information with us because they don’t trust us,” the official said.
Meanwhile, according to Syrsky, a Russian offensive has been building since the beginning of January. Budanov, head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, told the Post last month that Russia had more than 325,000 troops in Ukraine and another 150,000 mobilized troops could soon join the fight. Ukrainian soldiers report that they are outnumbered and have less ammunition.
A year in the trenches has hardened the Ukrainian president
The stakes for Ukraine are particularly high in the coming months as Western countries supporting Kiev assess whether Ukrainian forces can resume the initiative and retake more territory from Russian control.
Russia, too, faces ammunition, manpower and motivation problems – and has made only gradual progress in recent months despite the strained state of Ukraine’s armed forces. As bad as Ukraine’s losses are, Russia’s are worse, the US official said.
“The question is whether Ukraine’s relative advantage is sufficient to meet its objectives and whether those advantages can be sustained,” said Michael Kofman, a military analyst at Virginia-based CNA. “It depends not only on them, but also on the West.”
Despite reports of untrained mobilized Russian fighters being thrown into battle, Syrsky said those now arriving were well prepared. “We have to live and fight in these realities,” he said. “Obviously that’s a problem for us. … It forces us to be more precise in our firing, more detailed in our reconnaissance, more careful in choosing our positions, and more detailed in organizing interactions between units. There is no other way.”
Russia’s recent gains – particularly around Bakhmut – have not materially tilted the battlefield, and US military officials have said that even a Russian capture of Bakhmut would be of little strategic importance. But given the heavy casualties Ukraine is suffering there, officials in Washington have questioned Kiev’s refusal to back down. The United States has been advising Ukraine to withdraw from the city since at least January, the US official said.
A Ukrainian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the battle over Bakhmut had exhausted Russian forces there – mostly Wagner fighters, who have been Moscow’s most effective of late – and that Ukrainian units are now defending the city should not be used in upcoming offensive operations anyway.
Ukraine has lost many of its junior officers who received US training over the past nine years, undermining a corps of leaders who helped distinguish Ukrainians from their Russian enemies early in the invasion, he said Ukrainian officials. Now, the official said, those forces need to be replaced. “Many of them are being killed,” the official said.
At the start of the invasion, Ukrainians rushed to volunteer for military service, but now men across the country who didn’t volunteer have begun to fear being handed draft slips on the street. Ukraine’s internal security service recently shut down Telegram accounts that were helping Ukrainians avoid places where authorities were handing out subpoenas.
Initially, the United States focused its training on new weapon systems that Washington had made available to Kyiv, such as M777 artillery pieces and HIMARS missile launchers. In January, after nearly a year of all-out war, the United States began training Ukrainian forces in combined warfare. Only one battalion of around 650 people has so far completed the training in Germany.
Additional Ukrainian battalions will complete training by the end of March, and the program will be adjusted as Ukraine’s needs evolve, said Lt. Col. Garron Garn, a Pentagon spokesman.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin “remains focused on making sure Ukraine gets the training it needs for the current fight,” Garn said. The United States is “working around the clock” to meet Ukraine’s security needs, investing billions of dollars in the production and procurement of artillery munitions, he said.
“The bottom line is that we’re getting Ukrainians what they need, when they need it,” Garn said. “And as President Biden and Secretary of State Austin have repeatedly emphasized, we will support Ukraine for as long as is necessary.”
Even with new equipment and training, US military officials say Ukraine’s forces are inadequate to attack along the vast front line where Russia has built substantial defenses. Therefore, troops are trained to look for weak points that will allow them to break through with tanks and armored vehicles.
Russia advances into Bakhmut, sending waves of mercenaries to certain death
Britain is also training Ukrainian recruits, including around 10,000 last year, with another 20,000 expected this year. The European Union has announced that it will train 30,000 Ukrainians in 2023.
Ukraine is holding back soldiers for a spring offensive and training them as part of newly formed assault brigades. Kiev is also organizing battalions around the new combat vehicles and tanks that Western nations are deploying.
Syrski said he is focused on holding the line against Russian attacks while his deputies prepare soldiers for the next offensive.
“We need to buy time to prepare reserves,” Syrsky said, referring to the Ukrainian soldiers who are now training abroad with Western weapons. “We know that we must withstand this attack in order to properly prepare the reservists who will take part in future actions. … Some defend, others prepare.”
US officials said they expect Ukraine’s offensive to begin in late April or early May and recognize the urgency of supplying Kiev as a protracted war could favor Russia, which has more people, money and arms production .
When asked at a recent congressional hearing how much more US aid might be needed, Pentagon policy chief Colin Kahl told House lawmakers he didn’t know. “We do not know the course or course of the conflict,” said Kahl. “It could end in six months, it could end in two years, in three years.”
Sonne and DeYoung reported from Washington. Souad Mekhennet in Munich, David L. Stern in Kiev and Siobhán O’Grady in Kharkiv, Ukraine, contributed to this report.
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