HNUTOVE, Ukraine – Weighed down by heavy flak jackets and helmets, and shouldering Kalashnikov automatic rifles, Ukrainian soldiers trudge through a worsening blizzard towards the front line on Jan. 6, Ukrainian Christmas Eve.
Most wear snow camouflage uniforms, mainly white with streaks of black – to make it harder for the Russian snipers operating all along the front lines to spot them. The previous week, on the first day of 2019, Russian snipers a few kilometers from here shot a Ukrainian soldier – the first Ukrainian killed in action this year.
Tramping on, occasionally slipping on rocks, ruts and holes concealed under the snow, gunfire comes in staccato volleys from the Russian positions, several hundred meters beyond the Ukrainian trenches, muted by the swirling snow flurries.
Land bridge
The soldiers were heading to a forward operating base on the front lines, some 15 kilometers northeast of the Azov Sea port of Mariupol, a city of 446,000 located 800 kilometers southeast of Kyiv.
This is a place that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has been eager to capture since his forces invaded Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and occupied a large swathe of the country’s eastern Donbas region in 2014.
Putin needs Mariupol if he is to build a land bridge between the Ukrainian territory he has snatched in Donbas and Crimea. The port is also the gateway for a huge slice of Ukrainian steel and other exports, vital to the economy. Moscow has used its navy to impede foreign merchant ships sailing to Mariupol.
Citing Ukraine Business News, Swedish economist Anders Aslund notes that the 22-berth port last year only operated at 28 percent of capacity, and volume fell to 5.3 million tons, 10 percent below 2017 levels. And Aslund, again citing Ukraine Businss News, tweeted that a “second blow” to shipping came with Russia’s opening of the Kerch Strait Bridge with only a 35-meter high central arch, too low for 30 percent of the cargo ships that historically serviced Mariupol.
In November, Russian ships, helicopters and planes shelled and rammed three small Ukrainian Navy vessels trying to maintain Ukraine’s rights under international maritime law to navigate the area. The attack, which resulted in 24 Ukrainian crew captured and three wounded, has ratcheted up tension in the area.
Many fear the aggression, the first time Moscow’s military attacked Ukrainian forces openly instead of pretending it was the work of their “separatist” puppets, was a prelude to a major attempt to seize more Ukrainian territory.
In the trenches
Finally, the Ukrainian troops came to some steps carved out of the hard soil leading to a maze of trenches snaking between bunkers, where the Ukrainian forces last weekend faced off against Russian military and their proxies while the rest of the country celebrated Christmas.
The trench systems, with their slatted wooden walkways and buttressed by logs, would look familiar to soldiers transported forward a century from World War I battlefields of Western Europe. The conflict lines of that war were frozen for four Christmases. Here the network of trenches was seeing its fifth, with no end in sight to the conflict.
The lower walls of the bunkers are earth with, in places, roots protruding from long-gone trees. Hefty pine logs line the upper walls, and two layers of the heavy logs, laid perpendicular to one another and interspersed with waterproof materials, form sturdy roofs. Inside they look as if someone has sunk a log dacha cabin into the earth. Iron wood-burning stoves keep the temperature snug.
NATO help
Ukraine’s soldiers interviewed did not want to be identified by name for security reasons, including fear that Russian forces will harass the relatives of Ukrainian soldiers.
The commander of the more than 100 troops scattered along the line here was a 23-year-old senior lieutenant accepted into the Odesa military academy only in 2013.
He and his classmates had to perform some military duties like guarding Ukraine’s border with Russian-occupied sections of Moldova – a possible invasion route for Moscow’s forces, and securing arsenals in Odesa when the city faced separatist violence in 2014.
Despite their interrupted and somewhat shortened time at the military academy, those cadets also benefited from a large increase in resources for their training, as well as specialist courses provided by military trainers from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and other NATO countries.
“Everyone who has entered military academies since 2014 knows that they will likely have to serve at war, and they made their decision with that in mind,” said an army spokesman with the rank of lieutenant. “They are smart and patriotically motivated, are gaining battle-experience, and are eager to learn new techniques from our Western friends.”
The young officer class now forming may be fast-tracked for promotion and is already wiping away fossilized habits left over from Soviet military tradition, which hampered the Ukrainian military’s flexibility and initiative in the early stage of the conflict.
Respected leader
The post commander, although younger than many of his men, enjoys their respect. He spends much of his time in the control bunker talking over radios to keep track of what was happening in his area and issuing orders.
He also visits other sections of his line where men, stamping their feet to keep the cold at bay, man heavy-caliber machine guns, trained at the enemy just a few hundred meters across a mostly flat, snowy landscape. When he met men either at their posts or resting on makeshift bunks without mattresses, he asked how they were and distributed good-humored words of encouragement.
There isn’t much rest time for the Ukrainian soldiers. Western armies, like the Americans, have a variety of contractors to do the non-fighting jobs. There are people who build their defenses, cut down and haul into their camps the wood for fuel and construction, bring in water, food and ammunition, do the cooking and even the laundry.
In the Ukrainian military, the front-line troops do all that work themselves in the hours they are not on watch, scanning enemy positions through night vision binoculars or telescopic sights. That makes for a grueling day and much of any remaining time is spent grabbing badly needed rest.
But everyone was conscious this was Christmas Eve, and there was a contemplative atmosphere.
Another lieutenant said: “We try to make this evening a special one as much as we can. And our marvelous comrade and cook Roman Stepanovych has made special efforts this weekend. Sometimes people say his food is better than what is served up in their homes.”
As if on cue, the cook served up a delicious borscht soup and a dish made of mushrooms and potatoes. Both dishes, as Ukrainian Christmas Eve tradition demands, were meatless. Alcohol is forbidden.
Under fire
The soldiers on this section of the line take turns to eat in small groups in a dining area next to the kitchen. Some suspect that enemy forces have figured out the approximate location of that particular bunker, as it’s on slightly higher ground, directly facing enemy lines.
The gunfire from the Russian lines had fizzled outafter the troops arrived at their base. But now, as they eat, some bullets make their characteristically sinister insect whine as they fly past very close. Others hit the roof. Recently a mortar shell slammed into the bunker just above its curtained entrance and tore away a big chunk of wall.
Luckily nobody was hurt, but the commander of our section tells us to move into the lower, deeper levels of the trench system holding his command post, sleeping quarters and firing positions.
“This is my third Christmas at the front,” this lieutenant said. “There’s an unusual and perhaps attractive quality to spending Christmas at the front lines in a totally different way to how we celebrated the festival as kids at home. Nobody here is a conscript soldier in our unit. Everyone is here voluntarily under contract. This is our job, this is our profession, this is our duty. So morally we have no right to complain that we’re missing Christmas at home. I’d feel as if I was hiding if my comrades were here in the trenches tonight and I was celebrating elsewhere.”
Of course, as another soldier put it, most would have liked to have been in their own homes tonight with their families.
“But this isn’t the worst place to spend Christmas, with your comrades in arms,” the soldier said. “It’s not the place that makes it a special evening, it’s the company – and the company here are great guys.”
Defending Ukraine
Although there had been plans to put up a Christmas tree at the base, the unexpected bad weather made that impractical. But elsewhere along the front lines, Christmas trees had been erected – at another front-line base, a few kilometers away, the soldiers had put up a Christmas tree and lit it with battery-operated lights at night so their enemy could see it.
One of the soldiers there, a 24-year-old nicknamed “Gogi,” is half Georgian and wears a badge that features the flags of Ukraine and Georgia.
Pointing at the enemy lines, he said: “I joined the military because those ‘katsapy’ (a derogatory term for Russians) came to our country to try to steal our land. Everyone here is a professional and I don’t know anyone in our brigade who joined the armed forces just for the pay. Nobody would risk their lives for the money we get.”
To the sound of gunfire from the other side, he said: “We’re here to defend our country. It’s hard to understand what they’re fighting for. I don’t think they know themselves. I also believe that many of them are just losers or mentally ill.”
Gogi and another man from his platoon got close to their Christmas tree using the trenches and then did a zig-zag run to change the batteries for the lights.
“We want them to see it all bright. It’s there to show them that nobody here is frightened of them. We’re just waiting for the order to go in and clear them out.”
Unwanted enemies
The Russians seem to open fire with no rhyme or reason. The Ukrainian soldiers have various theories: Some think they’re new troops in the trenches for the first time who want to tell their friends they’ve been in a battle; others believe the Russian side thinks they are applying psychological pressure on their opponents.
Some thought the shooting on Christmas Eve may have been prompted by world Orthodoxy’s highest authority decreeing on Jan. 6 that Ukraine finally gain its own Orthodox Church, severing centuries of forced subservience to the Russian Church and causing fury in the Kremlin.
Yet another soldier in the unit is a computer and tech specialist who came to the base to set up a wi-fi connection for two hours so that the men could be in touch with their families on Christmas Eve.
As the war started in 2014, he had been on the point of emigrating to the United States, where he says he had a green card for residency and had been offered a job by tech giant Sprint.
“It was very tempting to start a new, well-paid job in America. But it wasn’t that hard a decision to stay on to fight for my country,” he said. “We know why we’re fighting but to tell you the truth I don’t know what the separatists want. They know that Russia doesn’t want to incorporate the occupied Donbas territories in Russia as they did with Crimea.”
“Sometimes, when I’m angry, I think that we should just wipe all of them out. But we can’t do that, I don’t want to turn our country into another, savage Lebanon. And if you start behaving that way you lose the whole purpose of the EuroMaidan (Revolution, which ousted President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22, 2014) and trying to turn Ukraine into a modern, democratic, civilized country.”
Returning fire
The shooting dies out toward midnight. Some men turn in, while others take their turn at four-hour shifts manning the guns and keeping watch. Inside the command bunker, men prepare tea and coffee and others not on duty drift through to chat or sit quietly or play with one of the many cats that inhabit the base – making war on the mice.
Despite all the Russian gunfire aimed at the base, the Ukrainians have not fired back at all. The commander says that under the Minsk Accords they can fire back with equal caliber weapons, but don’t bother if it’s just Kalashnikov small-arms fire.
The evening passes peacefully and pleasantly. The commander goes to sleep for a few hours after midnight but is up well before dawn.
At 7:45 a.m. on Ukrainian Christmas morning the Russian side opens up again with machine-gun fire, and then a few rifle-launched grenades explode close by. The commander gets on the radio to get reports from up and down the line – the base is approximately in the middle of the attack.
There is an expectancy among the men gathered in the command post, and then the commander gives orders over the radio for seven grenades to be fired onto the Russian lines. Most of the soldiers would have wanted a more severe response, but they look satisfied just to be returning fire.
“If not us, then who?”
As it’s Christmas Day, many of the fighters greet each other with the traditional “Christ is born” greeting and the response “Let us praise him.”
In fact, Christmas Eve, with its shooting, has not been much different from any other day – the cease-fire the Russians had promised for the New Year’s and Christmas period never took hold.
One of the soldiers said: “This is the third time I’m away from my family at New Year’s and Christmas. Next year I hope to be at my own table in my own home with my family. But if everybody asked to go home, where would we be? We’ve promised to serve, protect and fight for our homeland.”
“If not us, then who?” he asks, using the motto of the airborne forces he belongs to.
