Under the cover of darkness, bent forward under the weight of knapsacks and rifles, a squad of soldiers walked through a muddy lane and slipped into a village house.
They were Ukrainian infantrymen of the 117th Separate Mechanized Brigade, gathering 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 in silence as the intelligence officer briefed them on the new route to their positions.
"Morale is fine," said the deputy battalion commander at Shira's call sign, standing nearby as he saw the men off. "But we are physically exhausted."
Ukrainian troops along most of the 600-mile front line are officially on the defensive. Only in the southern region of the Kherson region do they continue their offensive in a dense assault across the Dnipro.
Taking the town of Robotyne in the southeast of the Zaporizhzhia region is what Ukrainian troops managed to advance in the summer counteroffensive. There was no breakthrough. Now, Russian units are advancing in the trenches around Robotiny every day. Ukrainian troops try to counterattack immediately if they lose positions, commanders say.
"This is something like a game of ping pong," said the commander of a platoon of the National Guard of Ukraine, who uses the call sign "Tablet". "There is a 100 to 200 meter section of land that is always being taken and taken away," he said.
Indeed, Ukrainian soldiers and commanders interviewed in recent weeks across a large stretch of the central and eastern front said Russian attacks were so intense that operating near the front line had never been more dangerous.
Well-accustomed to Russian artillery fire, the soldiers said that since March they have been exposed to the additional destructive power of hover bombs, half-ton explosives dropped from planes that destroy underground bunkers.
"They sent two, eight an hour," says a 27-year-old soldier of the 14th Brigade of the Red Viburnum National Guard, known as Keith. Like the others interviewed, Keith gave himself his call sign, according to military protocol. "It sounds like a jet coming at you," he said, "like the gates of hell."
In the cities and villages near the front line, the destruction caused by the planning bombs is visible. The town of Orihiv, about 12 miles north of Robotyny, once served as a command center for the counteroffensive. Now it is an empty shell, the main street is deserted, the school and other buildings are separated by huge bomb craters.
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 the use of FPV kamikaze unmanned aerial vehicles by Russia, due to which Ukrainian soldiers mostly left the equipment on the front lines and operated on foot.
A low-cost 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 a target by a soldier sitting in a bunker a few miles away.
The military units of both sides post videos of successful strikes on the network, which end with a black screen at the moment of the explosion. Several Ukrainian drone units allowed The New York Times reporters to observe the operations live from positions near the front lines as they tracked Russian soldiers and attacked selected targets.
In one unit, they showed a video of a well-aimed 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 radio jammers before impact.
The soldiers of the 117th brigade, who went to the front line in the Zaporizhzhia region last night, faced a four-kilometer hike through rain and mud, the intelligence commander said. If they are wounded and captured, Russian troops will execute them, he warned.
Adolph, a 23-year-old company commander, said the long, hard work of delivering ammunition and food to support the troops and evacuate the wounded was one of the reasons Ukraine could not withstand its counteroffensive.
Ambulances and supply vehicles came under fire from kamikaze drones so often that his unit stopped using them, resorting instead to a four-wheel buggy that volunteer engineers had rigged up to transport stretchers. Buggy was hidden under trees near his command post a few miles from the front line.
Ukrainian units apply the same treatment to FPV drones on Russian lines and say they were the first to use drones to attack targets. But the Russians have copied this tactic and in recent weeks have filled the frontline with lethal drones, Ukrainian soldiers and commanders say.
"My impression is that Russia is interested in drones at the state level," said the soldier, known only as Keith, 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 the ruse of playing drone footage of gunfire to trick Ukrainian soldiers into thinking they were under attack, leave their bunkers, and reveal 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 felt like tear gas.
"It causes a very bad pain in the eyes and a fire like a piece of coal in the throat and you can't breathe," he said.
Casualties are heavy for all units along the front. According to the soldiers, in recent months almost all of them were injured or barely survived.
"We don't have enough people," the intelligence commander of the 117th brigade, who goes by the call sign "Banderas," said after the actor. "We have weapons, but not enough people."
However, many remain optimistic. Further east in Donetsk Oblast, Maj. Serhiy Bets, battalion commander of the 72nd Separate Mechanized Brigade, set off before dawn last night, driving over ice-covered dirt roads to test his drone units near the front line. He invited New York Times journalists with him.
Crews work underground, in bunkers lined with tree trunks and covered with earth. On the computer monitor, the commander turned on the live broadcast from drones from the neighboring brigade, where the battle was taking place.
Mice were scurrying through their bunker, rustling in a garbage bag, and the newly deployed team, fresh from training, were fiddling with wiring and switches to get the FPV into the air over the Russian positions for their first strike.
They were too slow and their first two flights crashed due to Russian radio jamming.
But the major was satisfied. "We are developing," he said.
