I joined the Ares battalion of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army as they and the 35th Marine Brigade assaulted and then liberated Staromaiorske. It was a bruising, infantry on infantry battle after artillery had pounded the village.
The only good use for western vehicles on these narrow streets was to drop off troops and collect casualties. Stay any longer and they are vulnerable to anti-tank weapons. In previous villages the Russians had been hunkered down in building that were levelled
But this time the Russians dug trenches in gardens, vegetable patches and animal enclosures and waited until the Ukrainians were upon them to open fire. “They let us approach as close as 20 metres before shooting,” UVA soldier Oleh tells me. “They got smarter after Neskuchne."
Neskuchne is where the Russians built their first line of defence on this route to Mariupol. The Ukrainians have had to obliterate it to liberate it. The manoeuvre warfare of the Kyiv and Kharkiv counteroffensives has been replaced by Soviet-style tactics — attrite and advance.
Over the past eight weeks the Ukrainians have fought south down the T01508 road to Mariupol through Blahodatne, Storozheve, then Makarivka, now Staromaiorske. Cottage by cottage, Oleh’s platoon fought the Russians there with rifles, grenades and portable anti-tank weapons.
A trench would be taken one night, then the Russians would hit them the next day with artillery. After that they would come back to try and retake them. Some of the battalion’s positions would be cut off for days, with soldiers eking out an existence on tiny sips of water.
For one week, Oleh’s unit experienced hell, he said. He saw his comrades carried away bloodied, concussed or shell-shocked. One was killed. Then, when a Russian armoured personnel carrier rolled into the village, they thought they were done for...
The marines closest were armed only with rifles and a heavy machine-gun, and could only watch as it rolled up to the village school, its gun pointed in the direction of the Ukrainian positions.
They braced for it to fire. Instead, five Russian paratroopers emerged from the building and dashed into the vehicle’s protective hull. The Russians were withdrawing. On Wednesday night the UVA’s thermal imaging drones captured them on camera as they fled.
They shared the livestream with a Ukrainian artillery unit, which hit them as they went. By Thursday the Ukrainian forces were able to pull out those in Oleh’s platoon who were still standing, rotating in fresh troops to fortify the damaged positions they had taken.
By Thursday night, Ukraine controlled every village street and the UVA and the 35th hoisted the Ukrainian flag. President Zelensky commented on the victory: “Our south! Our troops! Glory to Ukraine!”
The Ares battalion of the UVA, a territorial defence unit composed mostly of men and women from the nearby city of Kryvyi Rih, Zelensky’s home town, were sent into Staromaiorske because they are highly motivated. They are also resourceful.
An artillery crew showed me how they had taken launch tubes from a burnt-out Russian Grad rocket launcher and welded them to the back of a pick-up truck to create their own multiple launch rocket system.
In the neighbouring village of Storozheve, we hunkered down with the UVA drone team, the thud and crash of incoming artillery far too close for comfort. An elongated splashing noise denoted the sound of Russian cluster munitions bursting nearby, said Father Serhii, 29.
Occasional bursts of automatic weapons fire startled the team. Then a call came through on the radio — Ukraine had taken casualties inside the village and an armoured vehicle would evacuate the wounded from the battlefield. One pilot, Kipesh, beckoned me over to watch the stream.
We saw a US-supplied armoured vehicle stopped on outskirts.“This is good time to have a drone in the air because Russian artillery tries to hit the medevacs as they leave, we can spot where they are firing from and direct our artillery against them,” Kipesh explained.
Yet the vehicle did not move. More calls came through — Russian drones were operating in the area too, dropping fragmentation grenades on Ukrainian positions where the wounded men were taking cover. A move into the open would be too risky, they would have to wait for nightfall.
That would be too late for us to leave, so we pulled back to where Thor, a Ukrainian special forces team, were waiting impatiently for a mission.“We have a no-fly zone over our troops now and we can’t use our mortars when they are advancing, said the team leader.
They’re moving quickly and there is a chance of friendly fire.” The UVA and the marines took one week to take the village, he said, and there are 12 more down the road. He looked up and grinned. “At this rate we’ll soon be in Mariupol.”
Read the full dispatch here:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...ines-slow-bruising-counteroffensive-kppm5vmz9
