As President Biden is rallying support in France for Ukraine’s fight against Russia, ammunition and weaponry from an aid package approved by Congress this spring are arriving to the front lines in sufficient quantities to help stabilize defenses, soldiers and commanders said in interviews.
Russia, however, still has an advantage in artillery, which has been key in the war in Ukraine.
Lt. Denys Yaroslavsky, commander in northeastern Ukraine, where Russian forces attacked across the border last month and threatened to advance toward Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, said Thursday that Ukrainian artillery teams are now they could fire more frequently at Russian forces.
The Russian advance has largely stalled. But south of Kharkiv, in Ukraine’s Donbas region, Russia has renewed its attacks on Ukrainian lines.
Overall, the front line has not changed significantly in more than two weeks, despite fierce and bloody fighting, according to soldiers on the front lines, military reports and satellite maps of the battlefield compiled by independent monitoring groups.
Here’s a look at the state of the battlefield.
Kharkiv region
Russia attacked across the border into northeastern Ukraine on May 10, raising fears that its forces could advance toward Kharkiv, or at least within artillery range of the city. Bringing artillery pieces such as howitzers closer to Kharkiv would allow Russian forces to bombard the city more intensively and effectively. Currently, Russia has to rely on aerial bombs and longer-range missiles, which are more expensive than artillery shells.
But to get within artillery range, the Russian army would need to advance at least as far as it has in the past three weeks.
Russian troops advanced about six miles into Ukraine before becoming bogged down when confronted by more heavily fortified Ukrainian positions, according to Ukrainian commanders. Commanders also said that more Ukrainian troops had arrived to slow the Russian advance and that more American ammunition was reaching front-line positions.
Last week, Ukrainian forces had enough ammunition to keep Russia in its current position, Lt. Yaroslavsky said in an interview. “Our artillery is attacking concentrations” of Russian troops, he said.
Fighting is fiercest on the streets of Vovchansk, a city about four kilometers south of the Russian border that is divided between the two armies, according to the Kharkiv regional military administration. After four weeks of fighting, the city is deserted and practically destroyed.
Still, Ukraine could hold onto the positions its soldiers maintain in the city, where they fight from basements and in the ruins of buildings, disrupting nearby Russian logistics with attacks inside Russia, Lt. Yaroslavsky said. In a policy shift last week, the Biden administration, along with half a dozen other Western allies of Ukraine, allowed such attacks using weaponry it had supplied to Ukrainian forces.
“Before, our artillery batteries were very cautious about the number of shells they could use and did not try to shoot at a few Russian soldiers,” said Lieutenant Yaroslavsky. He said the artillery had changed tactics and was now again targeting attacks on Ukrainian lines by small Russian units.
Lt. Oleksandr Buktar of the Ukrainian National Guard, who is fighting near the village of Lyptsi, said he was awakened on Wednesday around 7 a.m. by a radio message: a unit of seven Russians had reached a Ukrainian trench and a shootout was taking place. In an interview, he described these types of battles as common. “We have two or three infantry attacks a day,” he said.
Lt. Buktar said he responded with a practiced procedure, highlighting the importance of artillery ammunition. He ordered a drone to fly over the trench and then ordered his artillery to attack the area just in front of the Ukrainian trenches, where the Russians were advancing. “We use everything we have,” he said of the artillery ammunition.
Donbas region
Russia’s strategy of opening a new front north of Kharkiv, according to Ukrainian and Western military analysts, was aimed at expanding Ukraine’s limited forces and weakening defenses to the south in the industrial and agricultural Donbas region.
Russian forces have been advancing in the region with small, slow but bloody steps.
After capturing the town of Bakhmut in Donbass a year ago, Russia advanced about five kilometers over open fields to reach the eastern edge of the town of Chasiv Yar, but then stopped near an irrigation canal.
The defense of Chasiv Yar is considered strategically significant, because the city is on high ground and its loss would open the door to further Russian advances towards larger communities to the west and north. The latest Russian ground movements toward Chasiv Yar occurred last week, according to satellite maps of the battlefield.
That pause was a sign, according to Rob Lee, senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia program, that Russian forces “have not capitalized on the Kharkiv offensive, even though they managed to get Ukraine to move several forces from Donbas.” ”.
Southern Donbass has been the scene of the most intense fighting in recent weeks, according to satellite maps.
By capturing the town of Avdiivka in February, the Russians broke through a first defensive line and have continued to advance ever since, taking village after village. They have yet to reach a second Ukrainian defense line, near the village of Karlivka.
During the night from Wednesday to Thursday, the Russian army made another small advance in that direction near the village of Sokil, according to Ukrainian soldiers.
In that engagement, the Russians attacked the Ukrainian rear near Sokil in an armored personnel carrier. Troops from Ukraine’s 47th Brigade attempted to counterattack with a U.S.-supplied Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, according to a brigade sergeant who asked to be identified by his call sign, Sapsan. But the Bradley’s gun misfired and the Russians dismounted and attacked a position.
It was an example, Sapsan said, of the Russian tactic of mounting probing attacks to find weaknesses. Typically, these attacks were “a one-way ticket for the soldiers” involved, he said. But, he added, they gave the Russians intelligence to prepare for attacks by larger forces.
“They are always doing this, poking around our positions and ready to destroy an armored personnel carrier and the personnel to do it,” he said, referring to Russian losses. In contrast to the fighting north of Kharkiv, Sapsan said that in its Donbas campaign, Russia had also carried out larger attacks, with battalions of up to 500 men.
“The enemy does not stop advancing and continually bombards our positions,” Colonel Nazar Voloshyn, spokesman for Ukraine’s eastern military command, said in an interview.
The Russians are now advancing on two medium-sized cities, Pokrovsk and Kurakhove, and a highway between Pokrovsk and the city of Kostiantynivka that links southern Donbass with northern cities, he said.
Analysts said the arrival of Western aid had made it easier for Ukraine to defend its positions, but had not yet had a decisive effect. “Biden’s decision marked the major change not on the battlefield but among all the other countries that followed suit,” said Ben Barry, senior fellow on land warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Lee said Russia retained a significant advantage in personnel and firepower and would likely remain on the offensive for most of the year. “But at some point,” he said, it could face a shortage of tanks and armored vehicles. “We have seen a really significant number of tanks and armored vehicles fighting on the Avdiivka front since October. And those loss rates are probably not sustainable in the long term.”