Under cover of darkness, leaning forward under the weight of their backpacks and rifles, a detachment of soldiers walked through the mud down a lane and slipped towards a village hut.
They were Ukrainian infantrymen of the 117th Separate Mechanized Brigade, gathered for a final briefing and roll call a few miles from the Russian positions before heading to the front-line trenches. Clumsy men in helmets and rubber boots, they listened silently as an intelligence officer briefed them on the new route to their positions.
"Morale is fine," said the battalion's deputy commander, call sign Shira, standing nearby, escorting the men. "But we are physically exhausted.".
Ukrainian troops are officially on the defensive along most of the 600-mile front line. Only in the southern Kherson region are they continuing their offensive in a tight assault across the Dnieper.
The capture of the town of Robotyne in the southeast of Zaporizhia region is what Ukrainian troops managed to advance to in the summer counteroffensive. There was no breakthrough. Now Russian units are advancing daily in the trenches around Robotyne. Ukrainian troops are trying to immediately counterattack if they lose ground, commanders say.
“It’s kind of like a game of ping-pong,” said a platoon commander in the National Guard of Ukraine, who uses the call sign “Tablet.” “There’s a section of land 100 to 200 meters away that’s always being taken up and taken up,” he said.
Indeed, Ukrainian soldiers and commanders interviewed in recent weeks across a large swath of the central and eastern fronts said that Russian attacks were so intense that operating near the front lines had never been so dangerous.
Well accustomed to Russian artillery fire, the soldiers said that since March they have been exposed to the added destructive force of glide bombs, half-ton explosives dropped from planes that shatter underground bunkers.
“They sent two, eight per hour,” says a 27-year-old soldier from the 14th National Guard Brigade, “Chervona Kalina,” known as Kit. Like others interviewed, Kit gave himself by his call sign, in accordance with military protocol. “It sounds like a jet flying at you,” he said, “like the gates of hell.”.
The towns and villages near the front line are marked by the devastation caused by the flying bombs. The town of Orikhov, about 12 miles north of Robotyne, once served as a command center for the counteroffensive. Now it is an empty shell, the main street deserted, the school and other buildings divided by huge bomb craters.
The soldiers moved cautiously in the area, mostly living in basements and staying under cover, out of sight.
This is due to the fact that the latest threat is Russia's use of FPV kamikaze drones, which has caused Ukrainian soldiers to mostly leave their equipment on the front lines and operate on foot.
A cheap commercial drone, FPV — for first-person view — has become the newest weapon in the Ukrainian war. It can fly as fast as a car, carries a deadly load of explosives, and is guided to its target by a soldier sitting in a bunker a few miles away.
Military units on both sides are posting videos of successful strikes that end with a black screen as the explosion occurs. Several Ukrainian drone units allowed The New York Times reporters to watch the operations live from positions near the front line as they tracked Russian soldiers and attacked selected targets.
One unit showed video of a successful strike that destroyed Russian surveillance cameras and an antenna on an office building. Another targeted a Russian bunker in a strip of trees, although the drone was deflected by Russian electronic jamming before the strike.
The soldiers of the 117th Brigade, who were leaving for the front line in Zaporizhia Oblast last night, faced a four-kilometer march through rain and mud, the intelligence commander said. If they were wounded and captured, Russian troops would execute them, he warned.
Adolf, the 23-year-old company commander, said that the continued hard work of delivering ammunition and food to supply the troops and carrying out the wounded was one of the reasons why Ukraine was unable to sustain its counteroffensive.
Ambulances and supply vehicles came under fire from kamikaze drones so frequently that his unit stopped using them, resorting instead to a four-wheeled buggy that volunteer engineers had adapted to carry stretchers. The buggy was hidden under trees near his command post a few miles from the front line.
Ukrainian units are using the same treatment with FPV drones on Russian lines and say they were the first to start using drones to attack targets. But the Russians have copied the tactic and in recent weeks have filled the frontline with drones to lethal effect, Ukrainian soldiers and commanders say.
“My impression is that Russia is interested in drones at the state level,” said the soldier known as Kit, but by contrast, Ukraine still relies heavily on volunteers and civilian donors for its drone program. “I believe,” he said, “that the government should do more.”.
According to Planshet, the Russians also used trickery by playing recordings of drone fire to trick Ukrainian soldiers into thinking they were being attacked, leaving their bunkers and revealing their positions.
Some members of his platoon said the Russians used drones to drop smoke bombs into their trenches. One soldier, who uses the call sign Medic, said it looked like tear gas.
“It causes a very intense pain in the eyes and a fire, like a piece of coal, in the throat and you can’t breathe,” he said.
The sacrifice is great for all units along the front. According to soldiers, almost all have been wounded or have survived with a narrow escape in recent months.
“We don’t have enough people,” the 117th Brigade’s intelligence commander, who goes by the call sign “Banderas,” said after the actor. “We have weapons, but not enough people.”.
But many remain optimistic. Farther east in Donetsk region, Major Sergei Betz, a battalion commander with the 72nd Separate Mechanized Brigade, set out before dawn yesterday, driving over dirt roads covered in ice, to inspect his drone units near the front line. He invited New York Times reporters with him.
The brigades are working underground, in bunkers lined with tree trunks and covered with earth. On his computer monitor, the commander turned on a live broadcast from drones from a neighboring brigade, where the battle was taking place.
Mice scurried through their bunker, rustling in a garbage bag, and the newly deployed team, fresh from training, fiddled with wiring and switches to get the FPV airborne over the Russian positions for their first strike.
They were too slow, and their first two flights crashed due to Russian electronic jamming.
But the major remained satisfied. “We are developing,” he said.
