- Drafting
- BBC News World
Lieutenant Yevgen Gromadsky, 21, belongs to the seventh generation of the military in his family.
In the first days of the invasion, Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine, fought once morest a Russian armored column. Since then, it has suffered nightly Russian airstrikes and bombardments, with dozens of civilians killed and hundreds wounded. BBC correspondent Quentin Sommerville and cameraman Darren Conway have spent this week with Ukrainian forces as they fight to stop a new Russian advance.
Warning: This information contains material that some viewers may find disturbing.
The first casualty of war is time. Ask the young soldier on the front lines when an attack occurred or the old lady in the hospital bed when her house was bombed, and they will look at you confused. Was it 24 hours ago or 48? The days have become one, they tell you.
In Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine, time is elastic. It is close to the Russian border and the nightly bombardment by Russian artillery and warplanes does not let up. The last two weeks have seemed like an eternity, but the peace can be remembered like it was yesterday.
In a frozen landscape on the northeast edge of the city, 21-year-old Lt. Yevgen Gromadsky stands with his hands outstretched. There are trenches dug nearby. “Outgoing,” he says, raising his right hand to accompany the fiery blow from his positions. “Incoming,” he says, and his left hand dials up. With a crack, Russian shells are fired from their positions 900 meters away across snow-covered fields.
The offensive continues like clockwork on the edge of this bombed-out town: “In, out, in, out,” Lieutenant Gromadsky waves his hands to the sound of each attack.
We met this followingnoon, but I already know that his father, Oleg, he died last week defending the city and that Lieutenant Gromadsky belongs to the seventh generation of military men in his family. He plans an eighth, in a free Ukraine.
He describes the fight thus far: “The sabotage groups are testing our lines [de defensa], we have direct tank battles. They fire mortar shells at first and then the tanks fire at our positions.”
white flag tactic
We move along the front lines from one position to another.
Inside his armored car, a Russian army cap – a trophy from his first capture – hangs from the ceiling and he continues: “We are firing with anti-tank guided missiles and also with the usual small arms. They dismount and scatter. There are always a lot of people “, he comments.
Kharkiv has suffered severe damage from Russian attacks.
Inside the van are Mexican Day of the Dead air fresheners. Grinning skulls hanging from every corner as we bounce down a bumpy dirt road. On the floor of the vehicle, rocket-propelled grenade launchers roll.
From the front passenger seat, Lieutenant Gromadsky says, “Sometimes they use this tactic: First, they raise a white flag over their team, then they close in on our positions. When we approach and take them as prisoners of war, they begin to open fire on our troops.“.
The position was attacked on Monday (or was it the day before, he wonders), two Russian tanks and one armored vehicle. “Don’t worry, we’re well defended,” he says, pointing to a stack of American-made Javelin anti-tank guided missiles. “Lockheed Martin, Texas” is written on the casing of it.
Nearby is a stack of new-generation British Light Anti-Tank Weapon (NLAW) missiles. “It kills even the most advanced tanks,” promises its manufacturer, Saab, on its website.
It is very cold and two puppies are playing at the feet of Lieutenant Gromadsky. His shoes are a pair of white Puma sneakers: “Here you have to be fast,” he says.
The Ukrainians are improvising in this war. His government has been criticized for being ill-prepared and there is now a rush to bring men to the front lines. The regular army is being merged with the civil defense forces.
At a rally point on the eastern edge of the city, I see buses arriving with hundreds of newly equipped soldiers. “Where’s my bulletproof vest?” one asks. “You’ll get it at the front,” an officer yells, and moments later they’re gone.
Some will join Lieutenant Gromadsky’s unit and work alongside a medic who calls himself Reaper. [una referencia a “grim reaper” como se conoce en inglés a la Parca]. “You’ve heard of the angel of death, right?” she asks. He is also in command of this defense line on the edge of a town. Many of the houses have been destroyed or damaged by Russian bombing.
How are the Russians fighting, I ask. “They fight like stupid animals,” Reaper says. “They fight like it’s 1941: they have no maneuverability, they just come to the front and that’s it. They have a lot of people, a lot of tanks, a lot of vehicles, but we are fighting for our land and we are protecting our families, no matter how they fight because we fight like lions and they are not going to win.”
At the rear, the kitchen is in a cafeteria. The army cook is reassuringly large with a knitted hat on his head. He offers bowls of steaming borscht (beetroot soup): “Wipe it down with sour cream,” he insists. There are lots of cakes and cookies made by local factories for the troops.
Battalion Commander Sergey.
I sit next to a 30-year-old battalion commander named Sergey. “We see the enemy, we kill the enemy, there is no conversation, that’s it“, dice.
He wants to know where I’m from. I tell him and he asks if it is true that British volunteers have come to fight for the Ukraine. “What plane did you give us?” he says as he finishes his borscht.
But in eastern and southern Ukraine, Russia has been making headway. The Russian Army has met more determined resistance than expected, but the cities continue to fall. And for all their courage on the front lines, it is recognized that the Ukrainian troops’ skills on the ground will not be enough. Soldier following soldier says they need air defense, a no-fly zone.
I get into another armored vehicle, which two weeks ago was collecting cash from banks in the city. They have also now put him at the service of the war effort. As we drive through the city, with its wide boulevards and beautiful buildings, we come to a Soviet-era apartment complex. And there I meet Eugene, a big man like a Viking, heavily tattooed with an orange beard.
“If Kharkiv falls, then the whole of Ukraine falls.”Eugene, 36, tells me. He is part of a reconnaissance team that works near blocks of residential buildings. Some of the apartments have received direct hits and in the parking lot a car lies wrecked by another missile strike.
Eugene is part of a reconnaissance team.
What is not here in Kharkiv is surprise at the Russian attack. “Since 2014 we knew they would come, maybe in 1 year, 10 years or 1,000 years, but we knew they were coming.
At 04:55 on February 24, Eugene received a call from a friend telling him that the attack was regarding to begin. “Then I heard the rockets attack our city,” he says. Like everyone else, he hasn’t come home since.
Leaving the front to return to the center of the city is almost like entering another world. The relentless Russian bombardment has caused most of the population of 1.5 million to flee.
Few neighborhoods have escaped some kind of damage. First thing in the morning you can still see queues at pharmacies, banks, supermarkets and gas stations, to which those who stayed behind go to stock up. A huge logistical and humanitarian effort is going on behind the scenes to keep Kharkiv running.
Before curfew I head to the city’s Hospital Number 4 to meet Dr. Alexander Dukhovskyi, head of pediatrics. Beneath his hospital whites, he wears a Miami Beach 2015 jersey, emblazoned with the American flag. He hasn’t been home in weeks.
He laughs when I say that Russia says it is not targeting civilians. Then, in silence, he leads me through corridor following corridor of victims of the Russian attacks. These wounded are in the corridors because the Russian shells have landed nearby, so the patients are not safe in the wards with large windows. Most here were injured while at home.
The intensive care unit for children is on the ground floor. Its narrow windows catch the bright light from the snow outside.
In a nearby bed is eight-year-old Dmitry. His toes stick out from under the blanket and a hand, bruised and bloody, also sticks out. His face is scraped and scarred with hundreds of marks..Sor right eye is not completely closed. A few days ago, doctors removed a bullet from under his skull and vertebrae.
He is expected to make a full recovery, but for now he is in a sorry state, with tubes draining fluids from his tiny body into plastic bottles hanging under his bed. The thin blanket with tiny roses rises and falls with her mechanical breathing.
Dmitry in intensive care.
Vladimir Putin said he wanted to demilitarize Ukraine, but instead he is creating a no man’s land. At night, the city is in an almost total blackout. A constant barrage of Russian attacks falls overnight.
Kharkiv was once the capital of Ukraine: it has the parks, cathedrals, museums and theaters you’d expect, as well as the Antonov aircraft factory and factories for tanks and turbines.
The whole city is now aforehead of battle.
And this should not surprise us either. The Russian war game manual has been perfected in Syria over the last 10 years. Surround, besiege and terrorize the population. In Ukraine, as in Syria, the population is being driven from their hometowns as Russian forces continue their advance.
But Ukraine still resists.
I meet an intelligence team driving around with ready-to-use anti-tank missiles in the back of their vehicles. Again, I make my way to the edge of town and pass through the front lines into a scraper. There are two gas stations on the outskirts of the city that have been destroyed by shelling and gunfire.
Lying in the snow, there are a dozen frozen Russian corpses. The men lie like wax figures, some with outstretched hands, their matted beards frozen and stiff with cold.
The entrails of one are scattered across the front yard. There are blood-red footprints around his corpse. Their weapons have been taken from them and I ask Uta, one of the officers, what will happen to the bodies.
“What do you think will happen? We’ll leave them for the dogs,” he says with a shrug.
And in this miserable place on the edge of Kharkiv, nondescript to its normality two weeks ago, surrounded by frozen corpses, it is as if time has stopped.
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