So what do you think will happen? Will an escalation broke out? Will US come to Ukraine aid? If not sending troops, perhaps train and equip Ukrainian force to ensure their self defend capacity? Will well trained and equipped Ukrainian force fought like their counter part in Afghanistan? Implication to India's arms deal with Russia?On Ukrainian Front, Grinding War and Weary Anticipation of Invasion
After eight years in the trenches, Ukrainian soldiers are resigned to the possibility that the Russian military, which dwarfs their own in power and wealth, will come sooner or later.
By Michael Schwirtz
Dec. 6, 2021
AVDIIVKA, Ukraine — Machine gun fire broke the stillness just after 8 p.m. when Capt. Denis Branitskii was midway through the evening patrol. The shots came in sporadic bursts and were close by, fired by Russian-backed separatists whose positions were obscured in the darkness. Only when the flash of a rocket-propelled grenade illuminated the newly fallen snow did Captain Branitskii break his stride, briefly pausing to take cover before moving on.
“This happens every night,” said Capt. Branitskii, a cleft-chinned company commander with the Ukrainian military’s 25th Airborne Brigade, positioned along the front lines in eastern Ukraine. “Sometimes it’s much heavier, sometimes it’s like tonight. Tonight, this is fine.”
This is what the war has been like for years, a slow, bloody grind that set in after both sides fought to a stalemate over territory seized by Russian-backed forces in 2014. Now Ukrainian and Western officials say something more ominous could be building.
In recent weeks, they have warned that Russia was erecting the architecture for significant military action, possibly even a full-fledged invasion. U.S. intelligence officials have assessed that Moscow has drawn up plans for a military offensive involving an estimated 175,000 troops to begin as early as next year. Recent satellite photos show a buildup in equipment, including tanks and artillery.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has countered that it was the Ukrainians with their American and Western European backers who were instigating a war, citing what he calls security threats to Russia, including NATO exercises in the Black Sea.
Amid mounting anxiety, Mr. Putin and President Biden will speak by video conference on Tuesday. The White House said Mr. Biden would “reaffirm the United States’ support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
Mr. Putin has made his position clear. “It is not we who are threatening anyone,’’ he said last week, “and accusing us of this, given the reality on the ground, or as we say to shift the blame from the person who’s sick in the head to the healthy one, is at minimum irresponsible.”
For the fighters dug into an ant farm of muddy trenches on both sides of the conflict in Ukraine, talk of a new war might seem puzzling. For them, the old one never ended. A 2015 cease-fire between the Ukrainian government and the Russian-backed forces in two separatist enclaves brought an end to the most serious hostilities in a conflict that has cost more than 13,000 lives. But it did not bring peace.
What is known as the “line of contact” separating the two sides regularly crackles with gunfire punctuated with the occasional boom of artillery. A handful of Ukrainian soldiers is killed each month, mostly by sniper fire. There were seven in September, two in October and six in November. Last week, a 22-year-old soldier named Valeriy Herovkin became the first killed in December.
So far, soldiers on the front lines said they had seen little evidence of escalation beyond this largely slow-moving war of attrition. Compared with the vicious fighting that preceded it, this is a holiday, several soldiers said.
But after eight years in the trenches there is a weary acceptance that the status quo cannot last forever, that the Russian military, which dwarfs their own in power and wealth, will likely come sooner or later. If that moment is now at hand, they said, so be it.
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The Ukrainian military has made significant progress since 2014, when it nearly disintegrated in the face of a lightning operation by Russian forces to seize territory, first by annexing the Crimean Peninsula and then by fomenting a separatist takeover in the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Ukrainian troops have since fought alongside NATO forces in Afghanistan and Iraq and trained with American military advisers.
If a full-on attack comes, Ukrainian forces are as ready to face it as they’ve ever been, said Gen. Oleksandr Pavlyuk, commander of the Joint Forces Operation battling the separatists. But even this, he acknowledged, will not be enough to hold off the Russian military without significant assistance from western countries, specifically the United States.
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