Soldiers of the Ukrainian Army fighting on the Eastern Front warn in EFE statements of the Russian quantitative superiority in men, weapons and ammunition, and ask for more military material and technology from Kiev’s Western allies in order to continue having options for victory in the war. .
“The enemy is bigger, there are more of them than us, and to win we have to use technology better and prevail in the intellectual race,” explains a young veteran of the war against pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine (2014-2022) who returned home from Ireland to re-enlist in the Army after the large-scale Russian invasion.
The assessment of this fighter now deployed near the city of Bakhmut (in the eastern province of Donetsk) and who last year participated in the liberation of kyiv and Chernigiv in the north coincides with what the head of the Ukrainian Army himself has made publicly. , Valeri Zaluzhni.
According to Zaluzhni’s analysis, the war has entered a “positional” phase after this summer’s Ukrainian counteroffensive failed to achieve the expected results, and the only way to break the stalemate on the front in favor of Ukraine is to achieve clear technological superiority over the Russians.
“Our victory remains a real possibility if the quality of support we receive is adequate,” explains the Ukrainian soldier, who does not want to give his name due to the “secret” nature of many of his unit’s missions.
Also fighting in the Bakhmut region for months is former Colombian soldier Fabián Coy, who at the beginning of the invasion left his life in Spain out of sympathy for the Ukrainian cause to join the defense of the country attacked by Kremlin troops. Coy agrees with the Ukrainian soldier on the difficulties of fighting against a numerically superior enemy that has no qualms about sending thousands of its soldiers to their deaths.
“In artillery, we have always been at a disadvantage,” Coy told EFE during a visit to kyiv to attend the funeral of two companions of the International Legion, the foreign volunteer corps in which he serves.
Coy calculates the ratio between the Russian and Ukrainian artillery of 5-2 in favor of the Russians, which greatly complicates the consolidation and defense of their positions for kyiv’s troops and reduces the chances of success of their attacks. Ukraine partially offsets that disadvantage with the better accuracy of Western artillery, but needs more systems and ammunition. The Colombian soldier also alludes to the Ukrainian air inferiority, which forces them to advance without air cover.
If the forecasts are met, Ukraine will begin receiving the long-awaited F-16 fighter jets from its Western allies in 2024. It took kyiv months to convince its partners of the appropriateness of this measure, and Ukraine had to launch its counteroffensive last summer without planes to protect advancing soldiers from the air.
As in other points on the Eastern Front such as Marinka, Avdivka or Kupiansk, Russia attacks with renewed impetus in Bakhmut since kyiv’s counteroffensive peaked at the beginning of autumn.
“Our counterattack did not go as it should because we did not have enough weapons,” says the Ukrainian who returned from Ireland to fight. The Western reluctance and delays in sending weapons, the soldier continues, gave the enemy time to “build several lines of defense” before Ukraine launched the attack even though it had shortcomings.
After more than four months on the offensive in which Ukraine made discrete advances in the south and east, Russia seems to have regained the initiative and is now the one pushing at a very high casualty price that does not seem to matter in Moscow.
“The enemy launches constant attacks on our positions; they die in much greater numbers than us, but Russia has never counted the casualties and losing an entire regiment means nothing to them,” says the young Ukrainian veteran.
Asked about the possibility of the tap of Western military aid being turned off, this Ukrainian soldier is convinced that the Ukrainians “would continue fighting without their support”, but warns: “If they stop helping us now, in a few years they will have to be “They are the ones who fight.”
