It’s the 103rd day of war in Ukraine, and the battle for Sievierodonetsk continues. Fighting continues in the east, in the Donbass. Yesterday, Volodymyr Zelensky went to the front line, with his troops to encourage them. RFI traveled to the east of the country, to the front line, to meet the battalion of Karpatska Sich volunteers.
From our special correspondents in Barvinkove,
It’s a village like there are dozens on the front line. The houses are almost all destroyed. But under an anonymous building partly collapsed, the headquarters of the Karpatska Sich battalion manages the situation at the front, where the Russian forces are constantly bombarding.
►Also read: In the Donbass, the Karpatska Sich battalion against the Russians on the northwestern front
” We hold on No piece of land is being abandoned despite Russian attempts to advance. They use all kinds of weapons. Artillery, tanks, mortars, different types of rockets. In short, their entire arsenal », explains a platoon leader.
“ We are on our territory. People are motivated to protect their families, their land, our country. In 1991, our territory simply separated from the USSR. But today it’s a real war for freedom, to live in a free country, nation, land “, he continues.
A life in a seedy basement
The soldiers live in a shabby basement, sitting on broken chairs or lying on wooden planks. They rest, play on their phones or prepare their weapons. Age of 30, a soldier nicknamed Vedmid“the bear” in Ukrainian, does not hide his apprehension at each passage on the surface.
” I think about death every day. This thought never leaves my mind. It will arrive perhaps by a bullet, perhaps by a shell. It can fall on you, without you even knowing where the shot came from, ”he notes.
For now, the Ukrainian army has succeeded in stopping the enemy advance and the front has remained stable for several weeks. Army pants, green T-shirt, their nicknamed leader seed has marked features after eight years of war in the Donbass. Looking stern, he is far from declaring victory and rejects any counter-attack immediately.
” We are in a difficult situationnoted Seed. Because the enemy is gathering forces, they have a lot of weaponry and we have to face it. We are attacked from different directions and we must stop them. They bomb all the time, they renew their forces all the time, and they always try to look for our weaknesses to focus their attacks on them. Any counter-attack must have a meaning. If you have a reason, you do it, if it’s useless, we don’t do it. My priority is to save the lives of the members of my unit, and to destroy the most material of the enemy and his soldiers. Forward and backward is secondary. »
The walls of the bunker vibrate with each explosion
In the bunker, the walls vibrate with each explosion. Today, the men will go very little on the surface because the Russians have decided to shell the area. However, Vlad, nicknamed “Detroy”, a former gym teacher who took up arms, says that it is the Ukrainians who have the advantage.
” The Russians have no business here. We must send them to the farthest point in our universe. To forgive them it may be necessary to wait 10 generations, no less. Even kids today will hate them. From our positions we can see them in the neighboring village which is 2 km. You can even see them with infrared binoculars. But they spend their time bombing, they don’t move during the day, because they wear their pants he laughs.
After the failure of the blitzkrieg, the Ukrainian conflict became a war of position. With slow, laborious progress, carrying their share of death and destruction.