niall78

Unmanned? Why must you stomp on my dreams of being a MechWarrior? 😀

Maybe it's time finally for the unmanned battlemechs to emerge and replace the tank, just need the artificial muscles that can carry the loads lol. Carry on, I'm playing a lot of battletech lately. 

PART 1
The secret diary of a Ukrainian soldier: learning to kill
An anonymous fighter prepares for war
Oct 6th 2022
By Anonymous (with Oliver Carroll)

When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th, Vladimir Putin turned life on its head for every Ukrainian – but none as much as for the soldiers themselves, including the many thousands who have joined Ukraine’s armed forces. First-time soldiers have come from every part of the country and every walk of life.
This is the diary of one of these soldiers from his month at a training camp. A man in his mid-30s, he had never seen himself as a fighter. Before the war he worked in the arts, had a taste for exotic cuisine and swanky clothes – often picked with the help of a stylist – and was averse to “taking orders or dumb-assed machismo”. But he felt compelled to enlist “to stop this ****ed-up evil that’s invited itself into our homes”. He has since gone to the front line.

Day 0
Mum can’t stop crying. Any sign of emotion or tenderness and the tears start flowing. She cries when I hug Fiona, our dog. She cries when Dad hugs me. I tell myself I’ll visit them more often when the war is over. Mental note: take Dad on a trip to Portugal.
I was afraid our goodbyes would be too final, too fast, too brutal. I tell them that I’m going to be away for a while. That I’ll be studying. I try to find a way of doing it that’s less painful. I hug them in the car park outside the military registration office. Then I walk on, alone.
The army officers tell me there’s been a change of plan. I’m no longer headed to artillery school and am going to a different military academy in the mountains. They’ll fill me in on the details later. In the meantime, I should stock up on wet-wipes for cleaning up “down there”. There won’t always be showers where I’m heading.
We board a yellow bus for the overnight trip to our new base. A senior lieutenant breaks the news to us: “You’re joining the air assault forces, lads.” He cracks some joke about maroon berets. I register only a few words, and I couldn’t tell you the punch line. For the first time in four months I’m overtaken with fear.
Everyone I spoke to before I joined up told me I needed to avoid the assault units.

Day 1
The morning begins with a sludge of rice porridge, plastic cheese, carrots, sausage and an apple that has seen better decades. Good food is for when the war is over. In the meantime, I have other things to think about. First, I have to pick a specialisation: forward reconnaissance or assault forces – not a great choice. Reconnaissance sounds just a bit too scary, so I choose the assault forces like everyone else. I undergo a blitz-medical. “Are you ok, healthy?” they ask. Yeah, I’m fine. Really, I’m fine.
A soldier from another regiment asks what my specialisation will be. “Assault forces? You’re gonna DIE”
For the next 45 days, I’ll be sharing our dugout with two dozen others. Imagine a hole in the ground with high ceilings and boarded-up walls. Almost the entire space is taken up with bunk beds. The guy next to me snores, of course. It’s unbearable, so I go outside. I bump into another soldier from the neighbouring bunker. He’s being sent to his unit in a few days and has been drinking. He asks me what my specialisation will be. “Assault forces?” he says. “You’re gonna DIE.”
I’m told half of the first intake has already been killed in action.

Day 2
Team-building. The smoking facilities provided at the base aren’t well thought out: pallets dug into foliage, with just a shallow hole to protect you from shrapnel. We decide to do a better job. By the time we’re finished, our smoking hut is twice as deep, with a neat staircase, and covered with cut branches. We huddle together to see how many of us can fit. Soldiers coming back from the firing range are full of praise for the new construction. “It will be easier to collect the bodies when there’s incoming fire,” they say.
The course officer runs through what we’ll be learning in the next few weeks. It’s a mind-blowing programme, he says. We’ll get to handle weapons supplied by nato, we’ll be “run over” by tanks (hopefully the tracks will pass either side of us) and we’ll be training using lasers. We’re excited, like little kids. It’s a bit pathetic.
Dad went back to Granny’s village to retrace some of the walks we used to do together. He’s sent me photos of ravines and wheat fields. I can see how hard he’s finding it, but he’s trying not to show his feelings and upset me or Mum. I show him our bunker on WhatsApp. I try to reassure him by telling him all about the other guys. I say the food is OK and I’m sleeping alright. “I don’t know what to say,” he writes. “I don’t want to live like this.”
There’s good news about my cousin, who has made contact for the first time since being deployed in the Donbas. Dad tells me by text. “Lyosha called to say he’s alive, healthy, but that things are difficult out there,” I sense Dad is depressed. I’m not going to tell him about the assault forces.
Dinner is stewed meat and potato, bread and butter, plain biscuits and heavily sugared tea. I never thought a reasonably tasty hot meal could make me so happy.

Day 3
The unexpected news of the day is that our training has been cut from six weeks to four. They announce the change during the morning line-up. I won’t tell my folks.
Training doesn’t start well. I’m old enough to know motivation comes from inside, but the first instructor doesn’t waste any time in being truly awful. He doesn’t even bother to tell us what he’s teaching (military tactics, we eventually work out). We check if he’s in the timetable for the rest of the week. Fortunately not.
The next guy is a change to the schedule. He’s supposedly here to talk about ethics and leadership but he’s like a hyperactive pastor. We’re treated to a sermon about the virtues and faults of President Volodymyr Zelensky and the armed forces’ commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny, about the rules-based system of law and the real reasons for the Russia-Ukraine war. Christ.
Colonel Pepper, a short, red-faced man with a permanent smile, is in charge of firearms training. He marks his arrival with a thunderous boom, firing his words like bullets into the sky. The years of service have made him a bit deaf, he explains. He pulls a Makarov pistol out of his holster and unloads it. “This pistol has three safety levels built in,” he says. “First, the safety guard; second, finger not on the cock; and third, ready to fire.” He injures himself while reloading, and blood starts running down his finger. He pays no attention to it.
At night the boots are brought inside and the foot-smell of an entire airborne platoon wafts around the dugout.
The colonel is very serious about wanting us to know he’s a very serious kind of guy. He calls Roman, a two-metre-tall trainee, to the front of the group. He demonstrates fighting pressure points. Judging by Roman’s reactions, not all of the points are painful. Pepper tries to break a few other trainees by shouting at them. I’m his last victim. He presses the palm of his bloodied hand against my nose. “It’s not sterile!” I say. He ignores me and presses his fingers into my chest.

Day 4
It’s baking! We were lucky that it was overcast the first few days, but now we’re going to burn.
The next day of training is better. The topography instructor is the best we’ve had so far. A focused officer who you really don’t want to mess around with. We learn how to work out where we are from local features. How to interpret contours and determine map co-ordinates. But half way through, the class is interrupted by an air-raid siren. We aren’t allowed to be inside so we complete the class under a tree. That has its uses: we learn how to determine where we are using the sun. So much information, so little time. Every day is a step closer to being at the front.
After lunch, we dismantle a vintage dshk heavy machinegun. The first of these things were produced in the 1930s, but they say it isn’t a bad piece of equipment. I find it hard to accept we’re still using weapons that require a hammer to dismantle. Some trainees are quick on the uptake and can do the job in no time. The more tender of us find it harder. At least one person breaks a finger.
I resolve to make sport part of my daily routine. It’s too hot to run before dinner, and not a great idea to do so with a full stomach, so that leaves the mornings. I’ll get up at 6am. Pull-ups, press-ups and planks in the evening. Intuition tells me the routine will save me.
My friends at home are asking how I feel. Honestly? Right at home.

Day 6
We’ve been issued with a very basic kit: gun holdalls, helmets and tactical plate-carriers with ceramic plates. On the plus side, nothing is very heavy. On the minus side, it’s not a great fit. Most of my squad have their jackets hanging around their waist. Not exactly convincing warriors. I readjust things for them so that at least the plates cover the heart and vital organs.
Our international-law classes are unique. “International law is for countries that work nine to five, and have coffee breaks,” says the training officer, who struggles to speak in Ukrainian. “We may say we are so tolerant, but in life all of us are bull****ters.” There follows a monologue about how “America never sends cash just for the sake of it”. After the class, a few guys come up to me and ask what it was all about. “He might as well be in the Russian army,” one says.
We aren’t allowed outside after 10pm, so we make chit-chat in the dugout. Sanya, a smart, cheery fellow with a story for any situation, suggests we make memorial shot glasses out of our cartridge cases. The idea is that we all engrave our names on them, then swap with each other. After the war, we’ll meet up and return the glasses to their proper owners. I almost cry. I can tell I’m not the only one.

Day 7
I want to be on my own so I head out of the bunker for an early jog. Ukraine is so beautiful. I meet three blackbirds, a hare and a magpie on my rounds. After the run I take a shower and wash my clothes there too. There are washing machines inside the bunkers but our digs are humid and stale at the best of times.
Maybe I’m romanticising war. But the alternative is too frightening.

Day 8
The sun beats down unbearably and there’s nowhere to hide. We’re in full body armour, helmet and backpacks. Our training officer barks out the instructions for the first exercise of the day. We have to walk in a column along a ditch, falling and freezing whenever a car passes. Then we have to outflank our imaginary enemy by breaking through the groves.
Fall, freeze. Fall, freeze. Fall, freeze. I adore lying on the ground. The smell of warm clay and wild flowers consumes me. This is heaven, I think to myself, as I chew on the cereal bars I’ve stuffed into my combat trousers. Reality strikes as I get up and try to fight my way through the foliage. Tree branches hit my face. Thorns prick my hands. I use my helmet as a battering ram.
We got our weapons today. My rifle and pistol have been in storage since the 1950s. I wonder if the guy who filled my pistol with grease ever stopped to think about the circumstances in which it would be removed. I have to clean out all the grease from the deepest cracks, then I have to lubricate and polish the weapons until they gleam. It’s the first time I’ve ever cleaned a gun. It takes all evening until lights out.
A blond, chubby guy from my platoon – I still don’t remember all their names – is surprised by the lack of ceremony. “You’d have thought they would have told us how to take care of it,” he says. “But no, they’re like, take the ****ing thing and be off with you.”

Day 10
The stink of boots is especially strong in the morning. During the day the boots are either on people’s feet or drying outside the entrance. At night they’re brought inside and the foot-smell of an entire airborne platoon wafts around the dugout in the heavy, humid air. We sleep on bunks 30cm apart. My neighbour on the left has begun to snore uncontrollably. The snorers seem to have a deal: if one goes quiet, someone from the support group will automatically fill in the silence.
“You’d have thought they would have told us how to take care of the gun. But no, they’re like, take the ****ing thing and be off with you”
In the afternoon an instructor treats us to a lecture on how great the Soviet Union was. How cheap the petrol was. How happy people were. I can’t stand any of this bull****. We still have to clean up the mess that dictatorship left us. We still suffer from the rot that permeates our state structures. The army. People’s brains. It makes me angry when some of the cadets here sing Soviet army songs. As far as I’m concerned, the Soviet military songbook is full of contempt for the value of human life.
I’m surprised when I realise most of my fellow trainee troops actually think the same.

Day 11
The skinny colonel teaching us how to survive a chemical attack tells us he is certain his lesson will come in handy during this war. Russia will not only use chemical weapons, he says, but tactical nuclear ones too. “People were saying on February 20th that there would be no war. And I kept telling my wife: trust me, there will be.” He tells us there is no point looking up survival statistics for a nuclear attack nearby. But we do have a chance of surviving if we are one and a half kilometres away. Reassuring.
We pull on the protective gear: green elephant suits. In a battle situation we will have to do it quickly, without breathing and with our eyes closed to prevent toxins entering the body. None of this is pleasant in the sweltering heat. The rubber gas masks drip with sweat from their last use. But the worst thing is putting on the gloves. The sweat of previous cadets drips down your fingers off the black, thick, moist rubber.

Day 12
We jump in trucks to head to another training range. Rainwater pours down onto us from the tarpaulin roof. The longer we ride, the more water ends up on our heads. We engineer a makeshift solution by stretching the cover and shoving our helmets into the holes. The new structure is held in place by the butt of a machinegun. We’re resourceful if nothing else.
The task today is to learn how to drive armoured infantry vehicles. I’ve been driving for years but this piece of hardware flummoxes me. Levers everywhere. A completely unclear gearbox system. It’s like being on the factory floor at a metal plant sometime in the 1940s. I try to remember the instructions about the manual parking brakes. (If you forget to turn them off, the engine will overheat and smoke.) The training officer says he prefers driving these monsters to cars. “Every time I get behind the wheel, the traffic makes me jittery. But if I’m in a tank or an apc, everyone gives way.”
On the way back from the range we count the number of people who wave at us from their cars as they pass us. A guy in his 20s, standing by a broken-down car, holds out cigarettes as we drive by. Another driver throws a couple of packs into the truck. When two kids catch sight of us, they salute us and start a march. An elderly lady crosses herself repeatedly.
Day 13
I woke up in the night feeling like I couldn’t breathe. The dugout was filled with a kind of fog – the breath of two dozen bodies, the dampness from being underground, the odours of badly washed socks, towels and T-shirts. My head was boiling, things were floating in my eyes. Then I realised – someone had shut the door of the dugout.
One of my squad, Bohdan, has some good news today. His girl is pregnant. “Scored a goal, **** me,” he says. But his excitement soon turns to fear. “They’re there. I’m…I don’t know where the **** I am.” He isn’t married and that has to change. He decides he’ll buy a ring with his next pay cheque and the two of them will get hitched in the nearest town. Bohdan sits down next to me. He scrolls down his messages to a photo of a petite, smiling girl with round cheeks and a snow-white face. Next to it is a photo of her pregnancy test and the socks his girlfriend’s mother has already bought the baby.
I catch my reflection in a mirror hanging in the hallway. Some bearded brute in uniform is looking back at me.

Day 14
We learned how to shoot today. My inner teenager squeals with excitement when I’m told to run and jump through thickets, work out a plan of movement, attack and defend. But I’m appalled when I’m told to fire at anything. The only thing that attracts me less than shooting is grenade-throwing. And guess what the training programme has lined up for us next?
Things start well: a training grenade explodes while our instructor is holding it. It’s an almost controlled explosion, so not a huge deal. But that’s enough for me to lose any confidence I had. My body pumps with adrenaline when it’s my turn to pick up a training grenade. I manage to hit the targets easily enough. But when it comes to handling a real grenade, I hurriedly throw the thing to get it as far away from me as possible. I’m miles off the target, but I feel relief, not embarrassment.
As long as you have two arms and two legs, you’re an ideal paratrooper.
My mother has sent me a drawing my niece Vavara did for me, showing a bearded pensioner in military uniform. Too much hair, at least if the man in the picture is supposed to be me. The beard will take another year or so to get to that state. But Vavara has the sky right. The clouds are the same colour as those flying over my range. “I love you,” she wrote. “Glory to the Ukrainian army.”

Day 15
The truck is unbearably hot. The tarpaulin overhead has created a sauna of rubber and fine dust. Sweat streams down my arm and drips from my wrist to the floor. I do my best to find some positive way of looking at the heat. “Let the pain be,” as my yoga teacher used to say.
We’re on our way to the military hospital to get our chest X-rays. The doctor inspects me more thoroughly than I’m used to. “I don’t want our army to be full of cross-eyed cripples,” he says. But his professional approach is the exception rather than the rule in my training so far. As long as you have two arms and two legs, you’re an ideal paratrooper.
It comes as a relief that we are in and out of the hospital quickly. It’s a heavy kind of place and you can easily get emotional. Time slows down when the injured pass by on crutches. It’s quiet, eerie. I watch a fragile girl with straight black hair helping a short man in uniform who can barely move thanks to his battered legs. His face is covered with scars, his eyes are expressionless – they seem to be saying that a crippled man can only focus on getting from A to B. Then I realise: the man isn’t much older than I am.

Day 16
Assault course. We have to overcome an imaginary obstacle along wooden planks stretched on metal cables three metres above the ground. There’s another wire above to hold on to. We’re in our flak jackets and helmets. Some of us have bellies sticking out. Some are too short and struggle to reach the wire. Many are out of breath, red-faced and dripping with sweat.
I feel in my element. I give my comrades a hand up to the course, and when it’s time to go myself, I scuttle across with no problem. “You can see who climbed trees as a boy,” the instructor says. I try not to smile too much.
We practise parachuting – to the extent that you can in a country where flying is too dangerous. Instead, we make our tactical descent from trucks. The height is not the important thing: it’s being able to communicate clearly and to take up the proper positions. We lie down in the grass, remembering not to go near the back of the truck, where the helicopter rotor would be: none of us wants to be turned into imaginary mincemeat.
A combat officer gives some advice about taking defensive positions in the field. “Dig deeper,” he says. “That’s the way to keep your men alive.” We’re told to dig using anything we have: spades, knives, whatever. When our hands are tired, we should use our feet. “Trust me. It’s easier than looking parents in the eye when you have their son in a body bag.”

Day 17
We’re going to come into contact with some pretty nasty mines, the kind that have long been banned under international treaties. Almost certainly, one of us will be unlucky enough to run into something known as a “witch”, an anti-personnel mine that flies upwards before detonating at human height. No chance of surviving that. Even the lucky ones among us will have to deal with tripwires. In training, we do a bad job of protecting ourselves, blowing ourselves up left, right and centre. Our problem is that we walk like “ordinary civilians”, the instructor tells us.
On our smoking break, Vlad sits down next to us. He used to be an accountant. “Do the people who start wars ever calculate how much cruelty they create?” he asks. The answer, unfortunately, is yes they do. Much better than we can imagine. The people who took the decision to invade Ukraine don’t care how many Ukrainian accountants, pr guys and doctors have to retrain as airborne assault soldiers. “I can’t understand it,” says Vlad.
The most dangerous munitions are made from improvised devices. They can look like rusty toys that roll around under your feet. Like a rock in the middle of the field that someone sometime will feel the need to lift up. We have to learn how to find and avoid this **** – and how to teach others to do the same. As commanders, we’ll need to be able to draw up mine-clearance maps. I enjoy this type of task. These are important documents.
The training officer says he’s sure Ukrainian sappers will be in demand for some time to come. “Every year of war needs ten for de-mining,” he says.

Day 18
We’re asked to work through a plan to counter-attack and liberate the Russian-occupied south. In the real world, our boys are pressing there all the time, and it looks like something big will start soon. I’d like to be there when it happens. I want to push the bastards out of Kherson. I will drag them out of the Kinburn peninsula with my teeth. I used to spend summers there with my friends. Tents, morning swims, tasty food on an open fire. Stunning. Things are different now. The Russians have set fire to everything, people say, including the national park.
Your family gets $400,000 if you die and have all the correct paperwork
“The smart learn from their mistakes,” our instructor tells us, “while the wise learn from the mistakes of others.” We analyse the lessons from Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait. The pace of our training is increasing. We are sent out to dig trenches immediately after the morning session. “When will we have time to rest?” we ask. “When you are dead,” comes the reply. Usually, our training officers don’t speak this way. Death is an extremely sensitive topic for everyone. They have fought, they have lost friends. But this is now our reality.
My friends on the front waste no time in adding me to messenger groups for soldiers. I get sober accounts of what they’re going through – and quite a bit of sensible advice. One of my friends used to bake the best chocolate brownies in Kyiv. Now he’s fighting in Kherson. “Don’t be a ****ing hero, whatever you do,” he wrote. “The less romance, the more likely you are to survive. Learn to kill from a safe distance. Don’t forget your helmet and flak jacket. Keep your distance from dickheads and mother****ers. And write a will.”
A will? I’ve no idea how this even works. I left my credit card with my parents. My friends have the key to my flat. I’ll have to tell them how to log in to my bank account and how to split whatever is in there. “You also have to work out what to do with the 15 million,” read another message. Fifteen million hryvnia, or $400,000, is how much your family gets if you die and have all your paperwork in order.

Day 19
Today is the day we’ve been waiting for: getting “run over” by tanks. You jump forwards into a ditch, then “fire” into the tank’s sight glass to “blind” it. As the vehicle approaches you throw an anti-tank grenade at it. Then, at the last moment, you lie down in the ditch so it can pass over.
In real battle we won’t be throwing grenades at tanks. There are far less risky ways to engage them these days. A Javelin missile can destroy a tank from over two miles away. It’s also unlikely that a Russian tank driver would allow you to lie down between his tracks. But the point is less to re-enact battle than to make us frightened of enemy hardware. If you’re afraid of spiders, get in their cage.
I haven’t opened a proper book in weeks. My vocabulary is down to about 30 words, most of them military commands. I’m reading, but it’s not what you’d call literature. I want to survive and I want to keep the people under my command alive. So I take in anything I can get my hands on: combat manuals, technical documentation for military equipment and books on tactics. Just before bed, I take a look from the dugout. A full moon hovers over the barracks. An owl flies past, slowly, about a metre away from me. It sees me, but it doesn’t want to change direction. It’s a big, beautiful thing.

Day 21
The whole dugout has stuffy noses. We’ve all caught the virus, whatever it is. Most of us are weak and just want to sleep, but getting released from classes involves registering with the duty officer and reporting to the medics. The medics perform only two types of diagnostic procedures here: they either check your temperature or verify if you have all your limbs intact.
I’m sick of the kindergarten around me – the moaning, the lack of application. I can feel my aggression boiling. I want to be a good person, so I take a deep breath. It’s difficult for some of the guys, I tell myself. Some people are still processing what’s happening to them. Their brains are screaming hysterically: “Where the **** am I? What’s going to happen to me? Will I live or will I die?”
Part of the problem is the training itself. And the contrast. More than half the instructors are good at what they do. They care. I’d pay to be taught by them in peacetime. But there are also the stale, good-for-nothing, Soviet-brained officers, with their ridiculous love of military pomp. Sure, none of them is going out of his way to justify Stalin. They all speak Ukrainian and they hate Russians. But they are still “Soviet” people deep down: closed-minded, insecure, anti-human.

Day 22
I take in the strong smell of wormwood as we sit outside: relaxed, dreamy and talking about the American rockets that have been destroying Russian supply lines in Kherson. If only the whole war could be like this. Lying on the grass with good people, taking in the sunshine. If a missile had my name on it, I’d like this to be the way I go.
Today we pretend to be prisoners-of-war. I spend almost an hour with my hands tied behind my back, my mouth and hands taped. Hostage situations lend a different sense of time, and with your eyes covered it’s hard to get your bearings. I’m separated from my squad and I get thrown on the floor. They punch me in the liver, but not that hard. I’m waterboarded and they pretend to cut off my little finger. “Congratulations,” the instructor says at the end of the exercise. I struggle to see the point of it all.
I said some stupid things on the phone this evening. I was too outspoken. Too open. Too anxious. Did I ruin everything? Perhaps I did.

Day 23
Some of the training officers dismiss our tactical medicine classes. I don’t know why – they’re some of the best-organised sessions. It’s all about thinking under stress, minimising losses, reducing the number of injuries. Important, right? We sprint before every practical activity. The idea is to simulate a situation where the heartbeat and stress are increased. “The injured body is your workstation,” says the instructor. “You should be comfortable around it.” I go through the checklists on the model in front of me. I fix what I can see. I tighten a training tourniquet above the bruising. Hopefully I’ll never have to use one in real life.
My vocabulary is down to about 30 words, most of them military commands
Today they hung a sign that read “The last supper” above the door to the canteen. Very original. Given what they serve up, it’s probably a good thing. Awaiting us on the table is a soulless, overcooked rice dish. Food is just food here. Calories to consume. If you think about it that way you can just about make yourself eat it. They give you apples at lunchtime sometimes. And half a banana if you’re lucky.

Day 25
A serious, short, sunburned marine colonel is here to give us the lowdown on breaching water obstacles. As an afterthought, he offers tips on dealing with Russian assault forces. Their methods are already fairly clear, he says. First they send in their proxy forces, often conscripted from occupied territories in the Donbas. These poor buggers are cannon fodder. The regular units crawl in behind them, hoping to go unnoticed, trying to get up close while you’re busy dealing with the first wave. We’re told each squad (seven men) will be attacked by at least a platoon (21-plus). The Russian doctrine says you need a three-to-one ratio in any offensive. We’re warned that there will usually be many more than that.
The colonel tells us not to forget about health and nutrition. But he warns us that figs and nuts can cause cold feet. “You didn’t know?” he says. “They make your dick stand up, and that pulls the blanket up, leaving your feet to freeze.”
O-kay.

Day 27
Bohdan got married today. He shows everyone in the smoking dugout footage from the wedding. There’s a video of the bride, which she filmed herself with a selfie stick, and a video of Bohdan opening a bottle of bubbly. He bought a new pixel camouflage uniform for the day. He looks really happy, bless him. In the excitement, he loses a magazine full of rifle ammunition. We promise to help him look for it later.
First we have the task of liberating a fictional village that has been surrounded by fictional minefields. My squad carefully crosses a minefield, keeping the enemy busy under fire, while the other two squads take up positions on the flanks. I communicate in gestures. We’ve been warned that our radios won’t work in a real battle – the Russians can jam them easily. As we take our positions, we realise the third squad has a problem. A herd of cows are grazing where they should be starting out from. The farmers, who appear from nowhere, are friendly enough. “Glory to Ukraine,” they say. They joke about our failed operation, but ask if there is anything we need.
We return to our base in complete darkness. Vova suggests leaving our boots on overnight. “We’ll need to put them on tomorrow in any case,” he says. He’s a practical man, Vova. No silly suggestions.

Day 28
The head of the academy appears in the morning. The general, we call him, though he isn’t actually a general. He’s a mythical figure – we’d heard of him, but never seen him.
I tell myself I don’t want to take part in a circus. I try to slip away to sit on the grass and mind my own business. But the general sees me, and calls me over. He asks me what I think of the training. Did I understand everything? More or less, I say. I reel off what I know about assault checklists, fire cover, communication rules and defensive positions after battle. He says I’ve got a good military career ahead of me, that I’ll rise to become a battalion commander. Well, **** that, is what I say. There’s too much to learn and understand. I’ll leave the operational level to the professionals.
After a 10km run, I call home. It will be difficult for them to understand what comes next. I’ll be on the front lines within weeks. Perhaps even a few days. But I believe in what I’m doing. This isn’t a war that can be fought with military professionals alone. The thought I have is simple: Russian tanks at one point in March were less than 60km from my parents’ home. You might need more arguments. That’s enough for me.
This is our last Monday as trainees. Next Monday we’ll be real soldiers.■
These diaries have been edited and translated by Oliver Carroll, correspondent for The Economist in Ukraine. 
 
*************************
PART 2:
By Anonymous
This is the second part of a diary kept by an anonymous soldier. 
July 24th 2022

I’m graduating today from a course that was supposed to turn me from an office manager into a platoon commander in four weeks. Our tactics instructor gives us a valedictory speech before we are sent off to our new units. “I wish you the best of luck, that we are victorious, and I hope you will survive,” he says. “The enemy will judge just how good you are.”
Roman looks puzzled. He can’t quite understand the randomness with which we are assigned to particular units. “How can they know who to pick? They haven’t even seen us.” This uncertainty is more unsettling than the prospect of being sent to the front line. “It’s like we’re a box of puppies,” says Roman. “Waiting for our owner to come and pick us.”
One of the high-ups has decided our graduation is missing pageantry. So we are ordered to line up on the parade ground and subjected to some more speeches. One bigwig looks and sounds as though he’s been imported from the Soviet Union. A priest urges us, in very un-Christian terms, to find “our inner rage”. Then a group of officers starts singing a paratrooper song called “Nobody but Us”. They sway in rhythm as though they are playing Wembley stadium. I don’t understand what is going on. What the hell is this cabaret in aid of?
The process of assigning us to our units is over in a flash. We are told which brigade we are being sent to: half of us will be with the marines, the other half, including me, are to be assault troops. Roman is summoned first. He leaves without even having a chance to say a proper goodbye. Soldiers are whisked away in cars, almost as quickly as the vehicles arrive. Viktor has excused himself and is sitting on his own by our dugout. He lowers his battered, sun-wrinkled face.
“It’s just so sad,” he says. “I have a lump in my throat.”
July 25th
The first step of my official military career is to go to my new brigade’s headquarters in eastern Ukraine, where I will be introduced to the men under my command. I tell myself I won’t be fighting for some time yet. The unit needs to be equipped and we’ll surely receive a few more weeks of training.
Our chaperone, a fat, grumpy officer in his 50s, clears the corridor at the railway station. “These aren’t any old guys; they’re servicemen,” he chides a group of girls who are trying to sell us drinks. In the sweltering heat, we jump at the chance of pouring ice-cold Coke down our throats. It wasn’t on the menu at the training camp.
I feel as if I’m headed to my first music festival. I’ve got front-row tickets at this show. Booming bass. Blazing pyrotechnics. I know I’m not going to like it. 
We’re travelling on the night train. My perch for the journey is the top bunk in a 2nd-class sleeping carriage. I have a mattress, though no sheets – these aren’t included in a soldier’s fare. But I can’t complain. The conditions are a massive improvement on the dugout I’ve been sleeping in for the past month. I have my own bed, rather than wooden planks. I’m not sharing with a dozen other men. Here no one can roll over in the night and smother me.
Two guys from my training course are travelling in the same compartment as me: Dima, 28, and Max, who is 42. Max has two children, and he tenderly shows me their photos. He is evidently fearful and doesn’t understand why everyone else his age has been assigned to reserves, but he is headed for a combat brigade.
I’m also scared. My greatest fear is losing my girlfriend. We’ve only been together a month, but it already feels serious. Who wants to be with a man who can be sent to the front line at a moment’s notice? I ring her. The line is terrible. I hear hissing instead of the voice I love. When we manage to speak, I strain to control my emotions. The reception is too bad for us to talk properly. Afterwards, I try not to cry.
July 26th
We’re met on the platform by Dima’s father, a gentle man with a neat grey beard and kind eyes. He has driven up from Zaporizhia to spend some time with his son before he goes into battle. He hands me a piece of shrapnel. “This is what you’ve got to watch out for,” he says. The small, chipped piece of metal is a lot heavier than I thought it would be. I shake his hand, and thank him for raising a fantastic son. Dima is his only child and his father can barely hold back his tears. (A few months later, Dima was struck in the head by shrapnel. I don’t know if he survived.)
I get a reality check when we arrive at the brigade headquarters. So much for keeping us away from the front lines: a young staff soldier tells me we’re off to Bakhmut in two days. The town is being pummelled by Russian artillery fire. Mercenaries from the Wagner Group, a bloodthirsty private army run by a friend of Vladimir Putin, are among the enemy forces. Many of them have been plucked from the criminal underworld.
“What’s my battalion commander like?” I ask the soldier, a studious-looking man busy filling out forms.
“Good reputation, though the rumour is he got injured. Have you been given a flak jacket?”
“Affirmative.” (My friends gave it to me.)
“A helmet?”
“Affirmative.” (It was donated by a policeman I know.)
“Well get yourself down to the stockroom and pick out what else you need.”
“Affirmative.” (I know there won’t be anything in my size, so resolve to buy the rest myself: shirt, combat trousers, sunglasses, a torch, rucksack, thermals, balaclava, you name it.)
I ask where I’m supposed to sleep. We’re not allowed to stay in the barracks given the likelihood that they will be subjected to missile attacks. “Go wherever you like,” he answers. “In the forest, a hotel, wherever. Just don’t be late on Friday.”
July 29th
I arrive at the deployment office as instructed. I’ve put all my gear in one backpack and tried not to take anything unnecessary. I place my helmet on the top and hang my sapper shovel for digging foxholes on the side. My sleeping bag dangles uncomfortably underneath. I can barely lift the thing onto my shoulders and look like a clumsy tortoise. I feel as if I’m headed to my first music festival. I’ve got front-row tickets at this show. Booming bass. Blazing pyrotechnics. I know I’m not going to like it. 
As I huddle in the corner of the smoking hut, everyone can sense I’m green. My travelling companions are experienced soldiers, and it’s clear that the war is beginning to eat them up. One man, significantly older than me, says, “I’ve started fighting in my dreams.”
We head towards the front line on cramped yellow minibuses. Within an hour, everyone is too exhausted to talk. Those who are returning to the front try to get some sleep. They know there won’t be much opportunity further on. As we approach Bakhmut, I see a wheat field burning.
July 30th
“How the **** do you get blood out of a flak jacket?” asks Mario, a short, black-haired sergeant I got to know on the minibus. Mario is not very happy with his new armour. He lost his last set when he got wounded in April. Soldiers in need of replacement equipment don’t have much choice. You have to rummage through the left-over kit piled haphazardly in the back of your company’s support truck. What we have left over once belonged to the wounded or dead. I hope Mario will be better protected than they were.
I’m issued with a modified Kalashnikov rifle. It’s supposed to be more adaptable than the ordinary one. In reality, it’s the same metal tube that spits lead and rusts before your eyes if you don’t clean it religiously.
I set off to introduce myself to the company commander, who is stationed in one of the many abandoned homes on the outskirts of Bakhmut. As I enter the bungalow, I see someone who looks like a boy sitting on the floor. He’s tall, very thin and has a shaved head. I realise this is the man in charge.
There are rumours the Russians destroyed our battalion’s headquarters. There are rumours they have already entered Bakhmut. There are rumours Russia is about to launch tactical nukes. It’s all bull****. 
Despite appearances, Raccoon is 25 years old. He graduated from the same training centre as me, just before I arrived – we even lived in the same dugout – and has been rapidly promoted. A few days ago, the company to which I’ve been assigned was heavily depleted in a Russian attack. The company commander was wounded and the acting commander received a concussion. Raccoon had to step up.
Raccoon asks me what my call sign is.
“I don’t have one,” I reply. “Only just got here.”
“That won’t do. You’ll need to respond when you’re out in the field.”
Navigator, a sergeant, tells me in a loud and irritating voice that the company will call me “The Writer”.
“I’d prefer to be called ‘Kevin’,” I say, after the ingenious booby-trapper played by Macaulay Culkin in the “Home Alone” films.
I don’t get my way. Navigator continues to call me “Scribbler”, just to piss me off.
There are rumours the Russians destroyed our battalion’s headquarters. There are rumours they have already entered Bakhmut. There are rumours Russia is about to launch tactical nukes. It’s all bull****. Rumours in the army go viral in no time.
There is a rumour our battalion commander isn’t just wounded, but dead. This one turns out to be true.
July 31st
We tune in to lnr Radio, the mouthpiece of the Luhansk People’s Republic, a breakaway statelet with a puppet government backed by the Kremlin, which was created when war began in eastern Ukraine in 2014. It’s top-class broadcasting, as you can imagine: several reports on the opening ceremony of a new park and some patriotic music that feels like it could have been written a century ago. Every 30 minutes, an advert urges people to sign up for the republic’s armed forces. “Excellent benefits and rewarding work,” it claims. The lads leave the station on since it’s the only one we can pick up around here.
A pause in the bombardment and the heat of summer makes me sleepy. I lie on a mattress, looking up at a carpet hanging on the wall that has been decorated with a spent rocket-propelled grenade suspended on top. The peace is broken with an order, barked from the streets outside. “Time to move. One hour to get your things together.”
Why do we have to move? The thud of rockets provides a quick answer. Each successive volley lands closer. I wonder aloud if we should not get out of here quicker. “We’re not pigs,” insists Misha, our quartermaster. “We clean up after ourselves.”
A blue-and-white bus draws up alongside our base. The windows are missing and it is covered in shrapnel scars. We throw our rucksacks into the metal carcass and then our comrades jump in. It’s a miracle the bus restarts. I check that no one has left anything in the yard, and toss an artillery shell we’ve been using as an ashtray into the ammunition truck. My men laugh at me for doing so, but in time the shell will become our company totem.
As we drive away, the rumble of gunfire fades behind us. When we arrive at our destination – another small, abandoned, godforsaken village – we hide our trucks and the bus in the bushes. Our new base is a dilapidated hut. There are holes in the walls and the veranda has tilted to one side. You hit your head whenever you walk through the front door. But it’s fine. We can rebuild the walls. We’ll settle in.
August 2nd
The heart of any self-respecting Ukrainian military base is the kitchen. Walter, our machinegunner, is a dab hand at bricklaying, so he is building a stove. I took the decision early on to forgo the standard fare provided by the battalion headquarters. The cooking isn’t great and it always arrives at our camp cold. We get our own ingredients instead. Some of the men are excellent chefs.
Sasha, who has suffered several concussions under Russian bombardment, is finding conversation difficult. After the last concussion, he forgot how to write the letter K, he says – somewhat of a problem since it’s the first letter of his surname. I realise that I find it hard to talk with soldiers who have been in the heat of battle. As for those who have been wounded, it’s even harder.
August 6th
If a unit has a spare day it’s supposed to train and recharge. We’ve been assigned a training officer called Vlad. He’s 22, but he joined the army when he was 17, so has experience. His specialism is reconnaissance. He is thin with a shaved head and looks like the kind of hoodlum you’d find hanging around street corners in my hometown.
We practise working as a platoon in defence. Everyone learns their positions and how to camouflage themselves to prepare for an attack. Vlad lays out a few scenarios for us. The rules say we have access to basic weaponry and the support of an artillery battalion.
Mario, who has a turn commanding, makes his task more complicated than it needs to be.
“Enemy infantry,” says Vlad. “1,800 metres away.”
“Roger, continue to monitor,” says Mario.
“So cover them with mortars,” Vlad suggests.
“We don’t have mortars.”
“I told you we had basic weapons.”
“We never have mortars! And even when we do, they never fire.
”Mario’s eyes turn red. I can see he is re-living the battle in which he got injured. If things didn’t work out to plan then, why should they work out now? “I’m not going to command people,” he declares. “I’m not going to take that kind of responsibility!” When the exercise requires Mario to evacuate wounded soldiers under his command, the poor guy simply throws down his radio and walks off.
August 15th
Reinforcements arrived today from training in Britain. Seven lads. There are two twins among them. Originally, and a little confusingly, both take the call sign Twin. Max gives them the last of our automatic rifles.
August 16th
Our truck driver is called Uncle Lyonya. He is the other side of 50 and gangly, with a braid sprouting from his shaved head, Cossack-style. “I had to pick up two boys from my village today,” Lyonya says. “One of them was a corpse and the other crippled.” The men weren’t just fellow soldiers. Lyonya knew their families well, and their relatives had asked him to look after them personally. You can tell the big guy is really hurting. He’s actually wounded himself – there’s shrapnel stuck in his shoulder – but he won’t go to hospital until he has delivered the boys’ effects back to their relatives.
“I had to pick up two men from my village today. One of them was a corpse and the other crippled”
I’m getting used to the grimness of war. Today we are sorting out the belongings of some of our fallen comrades and those who have been wounded. We’ve been driving their things around for a while and they have been soaked through with rain multiple times. Bags and backpacks are full of dirty clothes. I’m not sure anyone needs them.
I open one of the bags in the hope of finding documents or a name scribbled on the inside. I find a prayer book, a dirty towel, a notebook inscribed with pages of rap lyrics, a letter to Mum and Dad. The soldier who owned the bag was clearly a Russian speaker, but you can see from his writing that he was trying to switch to Ukrainian. He’s still not entirely fluent. I can’t make out his surname.
August 21st
The neighbouring village was hit by cluster munitions. Some of our guys were hurt. The artillery is getting louder with every passing day. There are reports of Russians nearby. We step up security on the checkpoints and add patrols.
I forgot to wish Mum a happy birthday yesterday. The days are merging into one.
August 23rd, morning
Raccoon wakes me in the middle of the night. “The order has arrived. We leave in two hours.”
We line up under the walnut trees. Raccoon reads out the formal combat order with all the jargon. Then he translates it into ordinary Ukrainian. We are being transferred to support another brigade and will arrive at our new position, on the front line north of Donetsk, at dusk. “Anybody who is not ready to follow the order, get out of line!” he says.
Two men step forward. Moses, predictably enough, is one of them. He’s the most problematic character in our company: always ill and grumpy at the best of times, and that’s when he’s not drinking. The other refusenik is Teacher. He’s one of the grown-ups among us. Teacher has three children under 18, so is not legally required to fight. He’s filed a request to be demobilised, which is entirely in his right.
We arrive at woodlands on the outskirts of town and wait. It’s almost daylight, but we’ve not been ordered to advance to our positions yet. The town wakes up before our eyes. Locals scurry around. There is no plumbed water here so people draw it from wells. They pass by on bicycles and carts. A woman approaches us. “Tell your bosses that I’m ready for any government,” she says, “as long as we don’t have war.” She keeps repeating it, like a mantra. Another man rides by on a bike. He’s talking on the phone. “The place is swarming with soldiers,” he says. To whom he is speaking, we don’t know. One soldier remarks that the locals who have stayed are clearly not rooting for Ukraine.
I try to sleep in the truck, but just as I nod off a girl approaches us. She’s crying and says that we have already been betrayed. She heard one of the townsfolk talking about our positions. I immediately hide all our equipment in the bushes and disperse the men. We’re almost invisible. Then – boom, boom, boom – the mortars start flying in. A few of them land nearby.
Raccoon arrives after lunch. He’s been trying to scope out our future position. His report isn’t encouraging. Our troops aren’t where we were told they would be. That part of the front line is under enemy fire from machineguns and small arms just a few hundred metres away. Raccoon says he’s already seen the body of one of our men.
The plan will have to change. Most likely, we’ll have to approach in small groups and drive the enemy out. Reconnaissance by fire. I thought it was just the Russians who did that. Only volunteers will go. I put myself forward, even though I’m filled with fear.
August 23rd, night
We get the order to move. It takes a while to gather the men together in the dark. They complain and squabble. “Our commanders are ****ed in the head,” Vova shouts.
Incoming! A fiery hail of rockets lands just 70 metres from us. “To the ground!” I shout. The men scatter. As soon as the shelling stops, we jump into the trucks. We get lost several times in the dark, before reaching the designated point where our advance will begin.
My head isn’t working properly. I don’t understand what is happening, how it is happening, why it is happening
Someone has decided I will be in the rear guard, not leading from the front. The decision infuriates me. Still, I take a caffeine gel and try to focus, as I walk through the forest to gather my squad. I explain that we will advance and secure positions wherever we can. It’s not a full-on assault, I say, trying to reassure them.
The battalion commander asks me to report how many haven’t volunteered for the attack. Thirteen, I say. You can appreciate their reluctance. The guys don’t understand where they are going and are not ready to attack when the plan keeps changing.
August 24th, Ukrainian Independence Day
I speak to the fighters who don’t want to go. I’m nervous but I try to sound sure of myself. I’m honest with them, and admit that I’ve never been in a battle before. I just explain the plan, patiently and in detail, again and again. Believe me, this is not something that I do naturally.
At 5am I report to the chief sergeant of the battalion. My voice trembles with pride.
“Everyone is going,” I say.
“Wha—? Balls of ****ing steel. How did you do it?”
“Happy Independence Day,” I reply.
We jump into the pickup trucks, and drive at full speed along roads pockmarked with missile craters. At our destination we quickly chuck out our gear. The less time our vehicles stay with us, the less likely we will be spotted by drones and therefore hit by enemy artillery. We break through the brambles and then wait in silence for further orders.
The advance group is being led by Contractor, a 21-year-old professional soldier from near Kharkiv in the north-east of the country on the border with Russia. They are about 600 metres ahead of us and have begun to establish their positions. Suddenly, I hear shelling and a barrage of missiles. The Russians are targeting the advance group. This is my first battle, but I can only hear and imagine what’s happening up ahead. The radio does not stop chattering. I think that everyone in that team must be wounded. A 4x4 that’s been turned into an ambulance drives past us back and forth.
Drones buzz overhead. My heart is pounding. I practise breathing exercises. “I lost my whole group,” says Contractor, whom I accompany as he retreats. His face is frozen. “I lost my whole group.”
We receive an order to establish a new position. I dig my first real trench, something I had only ever done before in the cadets at school. I didn’t get to practise this in officer training. Unsurprisingly, my one is ugly, oval and has uneven walls. I’m ashamed of myself when I come to inspect Chestnut’s effort. Before the war he worked as a decorator, and it shows. All he needs to do is put up some wallpaper, and he could rent it out for the price of a one-room apartment in suburban Kyiv.
I throw my sleeping mat down and stretch out hoping to get at least an hour’s sleep. I’m there for, at most, 15 minutes when the radio near my ear crackles repeatedly: “Forward, forward.” Other soldiers are replacing us, and we are being moved elsewhere on the line.
August 25th
I head out with Raccoon to scout our new position. We scuttle through a dense forest and fields, moving quickly so as not to be noticed. The Russians have been in control of this area since 2014. They know it like the backs of their hands.
Contractor heads out to meet some reconnaissance officers. They’ve been in the area for some time, so they will surely be able to tell us everything. But they don’t even show up for the meeting! They don’t answer calls. There isn’t a soul around. This war is a bull**** mess.
I return to pick up the rest of our men. The long column of soldiers resembles a line of ants. They are tired and walk slowly under the scorching sun. We don’t just have to consolidate our own position. Another unit is advancing into the forest ahead, and we have to send a group to support them, our commander says. My group doesn’t get far before coming under mortar fire. “Rollback! Rollback!” comes the order over the radio. Less than half return.
My head isn’t working properly. I don’t understand what is happening, how it is happening, why it is happening. I sit down to catch my breath. A mortar volley lands from the other side, trained on the positions taken by Contractor’s group. He returns with his men a minute later. They look frightened and are covered with earth and leaves. The machinegunner sits down next to me and starts vomiting. “I’ve two kias [men killed in action],” says Contractor. “Twin and Clover. Everything is burning.”
I ask for two volunteers to help evacuate the bodies. The other Twin is staring at me, dumbfounded. What can he be feeling right now? What is he thinking?
We reach Clover first. He’s lying on his chest with his hand underneath his head. He looks like he is resting. But his grey face is tinged with green. Neither Clover nor Twin had the time to dig a proper dugout.
I take pictures of the bodies, making sure it’s clear both were wearing the proper armour. Not that it helped in Twin’s case: the shrapnel pierced his helmet. I’ve heard stories of families who were denied compensation because they couldn’t prove their loved ones had protective gear on. I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s better to be sure.
I try to avoid handling him in places from which he’s been bleeding, but it’s impossible. My trousers, body armour, shoes and gloves end up smeared with blood
I’ve never touched a dead person before, let alone carried one. Clover is tall and heavy. I try to avoid handling him in places from which he’s been bleeding, but it’s impossible. My trousers, body armour, shoes and gloves end up smeared with blood. A female medic called Bouncer arrives in a pickup to help with the evacuation. We load the bodies onto the truck. Their legs stick out as she drives away, leaving a puddle of blood on the tarmac. 
I don’t feel much, just empty. Mechanically, I reach into my pocket for a biscuit. I realise I haven’t eaten for more than a day. I munch away without noticing I’m still wearing the same gloves I wore to handle the bodies. 
Swish! Boom! I drop to the ground. Several missiles crack the earth near me. The soldier next to me seems to be shouting something, but I can’t understand a word. My hearing’s ****ed. Medics rush to the scene. Blood is spurting from one man’s leg. They save his life with a tourniquet, but the leg will have to be amputated.
As the sun sets, fatigue catches up with me. My head gets heavier. My eyes start failing. I’ve heard you can get hallucinations from fatigue, but this is the first time it’s happened to me. At night, trees start looking like the graphics in a creepy version of the computer game “Minecraft”. I start to see outlines of people coming towards me. I hear them. I sense the branches crackling under their feet. I see Russian uniforms and assault rifles. I clench my teeth, close my eyes and shake my head – anything to make the visions disappear.
August 26th
My men are asking when we will be rotated out. We’ve done what was asked of us: consolidate a position. The battalion commander promises that replacements will arrive by 6pm, but I don’t believe it.
I’m pleasantly surprised, therefore, when, after lunch, a couple of guys emerge from foliage behind us. They look the part. Built like Rambo, they have the coolest helmets, headphones, and are filming everything on a GoPro video camera. The commander introduces himself as Tiger. “We’re supposed to be replacing you right now, but we decided that it would be more sensible to check things out beforehand,” he says. We agree that we’ll switch over at twilight, when the drones can’t spot us.
Tiger goes to inspect the unit alongside us – these men, too, are due to be replaced – and we prepare to retreat. A small group of us heads off to retrieve some machinegun ammunition. On the way back, we pass our neighbours’ observation point. They offer us coffee. It’s comforting to think that hospitality still exists, even on the battlefield.
Bang! Mortars hit the road ahead. We fall to the ground and run to the trenches. Then comes a second volley and a deafening third one. I hear someone screaming behind me. A soldier is holding his leg. I jump out of the trench and try to drag him into the pit. Now comes Russian rifle fire. Their assault has begun. We keep our heads down. We can’t see the Russians advancing but we hear reports of their movements over the radio.
I hear a Kalashnikov machine gun nearby. This is a very bad sign. My unit uses a German machinegun. It’s clear the Russians are already among us. We fire grenades in their direction, which seems to have the desired effect. Their assault peters out.
We check the battlefield. It is important not to move around in large groups, so we can’t all be ambushed at the same time. I head off by myself, though this means that I’m screwed if the Russians are lying in wait. Just a few hundred metres from my trench, I see a corpse, naked and face-down on the grass between two maple trees. I call out to some Ukrainian soldiers I see approaching from the opposite direction. Carefully, we step closer. Don’t move the corpse, we’d been taught, it could be mined. But I don’t have to be standing over it to see that it’s Tiger.
We drag Tiger away with a rope. The Russians didn’t have time to mine the body but they have taken his equipment. His GoPro included footage of our positions.
We won’t be rotated out that evening and the enemy has our co-ordinates. The men are understanding, but I still feel they blame me. I gave them my word, after all. Will we be lucky or not? I’m so tired that I don’t even have the strength to be afraid.
August 27th
Raccoon radios me at midnight and I make my way over to him. He is trying to look composed while clearly on his last legs. He tells me to collect the unit that is relieving us, the one that Tiger had led.
The rendezvous point is 5km away. We have to get there at night, while Russian reconnaissance teams are probing our positions. Not exactly a stroll in the park. Sumy, a short, good-natured guy with uneven teeth, volunteers to come with me. I plot a route along disused railway tracks and hope for the best. A pink moon is shining brightly. As I run, I try to land on the concrete sleepers so as not to twist my ankle.
We’re almost there. Just a steep descent and several hundred metres of forest to go. The foliage scratches my face and sharp branches slice through my trousers. The Moon illuminates our rendezvous point in the middle of a wheat field. Two black figures emerge from the shadows. I hiss the password to them, just like in the spy films. “Don’t celebrate just yet,” one of them replies. It’s Petrukha, a commander in the unit alongside ours. He’s here for the same reason as I am – to accompany a rotation to the front.
Don’t move the corpse, we’d been taught, it could be mined
After half an hour of standing around, a nervous voice whispers in the radio. We have a new rendezvous point, much closer to our original positions. We run back the way we came, exhausted, dripping with sweat and with an extra helping of scratches. No one is waiting for us at the new spot either. I’m damp and freezing. I wrap my arms around myself and try not to shiver.
When the new unit finally arrives at day break, I move them into position, group by group, doing my best to avoid the Russians’ attention. After a while incendiary shells start landing near the position we occupied. But I’m relieved. I’ve already got the last of my men out. Anyway, the field is so wet from the rain we’ve had recently that not even Armageddon could ignite it.
As we drive back, I look at myself in the wing mirror. A weather beaten figure looks back, smiling like a maniac. At the camp, I begin to feel a bit more human. A bowl of hot soup awaits me and I wash myself in cold water from a makeshift shower. My legs are bruised all over. My feet are cracked like honeycombs. There are ugly, white zits all over my shoulders and back. My helmet has left a deep furrow across my head.
It’s a six-hour car journey back to our brigade headquarters. We are taking Twin to attend his brother’s funeral. He’s sitting alongside me in the front seat.
“Why didn’t you tell me my brother was dead?” he asks placidly.
“I told you right away, when I was asking for help with evacuating the bodies.”
It turns out that Twin was so disoriented that he hadn’t realised what had happened. He had kept asking the guys where his brother was, and they just lowered their eyes.
August 28th
Our company is being redeployed. Raccoon doesn’t say where we are headed, but I have good sources. Over a dinner of falafel in my favourite local restaurant, Navigator tells me the battalion’s rear support has already been sent to the Kharkiv region. We’re headed there too.
Several of the bridges along our route have been blown up. Google Maps isn’t aware of this and so tries to get us to cross them. Heavy rain has washed away tracks through the forest, making them unusable. By trial and error, we reach our destination in the middle of a wood.
I don’t have the strength to unpack my sleeping bag so I fall asleep in the truck, under the pine trees. “What are we here to do?” I might have wondered, were I not so exhausted. 
This diary has been edited and translated by Oliver Carroll, a foreign correspondent for The Economist
 
**************************
PART 3
The secret diary of a Ukrainian soldier: on the counter-offensive
As troops blitz through Russian lines, they see the trauma of occupation and the relief at freedom
Sep 6th 2023

This is the third part of a diary written by a Ukrainian paratrooper. When war broke out in 2022, he was a civilian. He volunteered to fight and, after cursory training, found himself on the front lines, in charge of a platoon of equally unprepared men. He made new friends but lost comrades in chaotic early battles in Donbas, a region in the east of the country. This instalment begins in August 2022, as our diarist was recuperating in the forests of the north of the country, waiting to begin a secret new operation.
Day 67. August 29th 2022
Never in my life have I slept so deeply. When I wake, I inhale the scent of pine needles. Everything that went before feels like a dream: the shelling; the shooting; the dead; the base in Dnipro; scoffing four pieces of cake; the drive through the night across marshlands; the sight of new artillery pieces lining the roads going east. Clickety click. Someone is tapping on the window of the truck. It’s Raccoon, my company commander, who has come to wake us up. I last saw him yesterday lunchtime. It feels like a month ago.
Raccoon asks us to remove our unit’s insignia. If anyone asks us, we are members of a territorial defence battalion from the Cherkasy region in central Ukraine. “The First Somali battalion”, we joke, taking off any badges that might identify us as assault forces. It’s not that difficult a legend for me to absorb. I am from Cherkasy and the idea of being a professional paratrooper still feels pretty weird.
There are a number of units dispersed in the pine forest. This is the place where we are massing our forces before the battle begins. If the enemy spots us, God forbid, it’s better that we aren’t all in one place. I know this isn’t the time to relax, but I can’t help it. The warm sun of late summer has melted away my circumspection. My fellow soldiers too are resting on the ground. With their little camps scattered among the trees, they look like overgrown boy scouts.
We haven’t been taught what we should be doing during the waiting phase. I try not to get worked up with thoughts of a bloody apocalypse. I dig a foxhole. It’s a quick and easy job. I remember what they told us during our training: the ideal depth of any trench depends on the density of the soil. If you dig too deeply into soft ground, and a shell lands nearby, you will be buried alive.
The whole world seems to be talking about a counter-offensive in the Kherson region in the south of the country. We’re right at the other end of the front line. I’ve no idea what I’m meant to be doing. So I keep digging.
Day 68. August 30th 2022
I sleep like a log for the second night in a row. The soft sandy floor of my foxhole is better than any mattress. I congratulate myself for getting the size right, too: I can stretch my legs fully and there is still room for a rucksack and an assault rifle.
The armoured vehicles are supposed to be arriving today. For weeks, Raccoon has been telling me that we are to get British Spartans, armoured personnel carriers with tracks, and bmps, Soviet-made amphibious fighting vehicles. I’ve yet to see either outside a training range, and I can’t believe I’m about to take charge of one of them. I’m not a real soldier, after all.
I know this isn’t the time to relax, but I can’t help it. The warm sun of late summer has melted away my circumspection
The vehicles begin to appear. First comes the bmp I’m to take command of. You can hear it from the other side of the forest. As it roars up alongside us, a filthy, soot-covered hatch opens on the top, and a no less grubby chap, with red hair and beard, emerges from it. He looks shattered and stumbles as he dismounts from the vehicle. The two seem made for each other. Soon afterwards a column of Spartans emerges. They maintain a perfectly even distance from each other. Compared with my bmp, these are small, nimble things – the Mini Cooper of armoured personnel carriers. A tank follows behind the Spartans. It’s the first time I’ve seen so much armour in one place.
“Pay attention to the combat order.” Our battalion leader has called together his company commanders for a presentation about what is to come next. He’s laid twigs, stones and bricks on the forest floor. Ukrainian troops are the bricks. Hazel branches indicate the paths we will clear through our minefields. And a little bit farther away are the paths we will clear through the Russian minefields. We were given instructions like this when we were training. But never in my life did I think someone would actually explain a battle order with such props.
According to the plan, we are to manoeuvre through the minefields once the main strike group has passed through. All being well, that first group would capture a Russian-controlled village and engage the enemy on the outskirts of Balakleya, a large town with a barracks. Our task is to blockade Balakleya from the north. If the first strike group fails to gain a foothold, we will have to defend against the Russian counter-attack. The operation’s end point is Izium, a crucial hub 40km away, and one that the Russians fought months of bloody battles to capture. Everyone understands it’s an “impossible” ask. The commanders aren’t being honest with us, I think to myself.
We spend two hours watching drone footage of the terrain that lies ahead of us. The Russians have deep trenches that look like those I saw in textbooks. There doesn’t seem to be a soul in sight. There’s either not too many of them, or they are really disciplined, and hide whenever they hear the buzz of our drones.
Day 69. August 31st 2022
We receive an order to paint white crosses on our vehicles. We make them as big as we can and daub them on all sides. You don’t want someone to have to put on glasses in order to decide whether to shoot at you or not. When we are done, we look like some medieval order of knights. Unfortunately the Russians appear to be expecting our crusade. Social-media channels are filled with reports about an accumulation of tanks in our sector.
I don’t know what lies ahead, or how to prepare myself for it. I find myself carving words into the magazines for my rifle. These are the names of those who helped me along the way: friends and colleagues; the staff at the gym where I train and at the restaurant I once worked in. They’ve all been sending money and badly needed equipment for my soldiers. The pick-up truck we’ve been driving was also a present from my friends.
The ideal depth of any trench depends on the density of the soil. If you dig too deeply into soft ground, and a shell lands nearby, you will be buried alive
Our battalion’s machinegunners join us in the evening. Another group has been sent over from territorial-defence units. Quite a few of them seem to have been drinking and their behaviour is unruly. But they have been assigned to my company for the operation. I’m going to have to take responsibility for them whether I like it or not.
Are we ready? Our commanders apparently think so. Formally speaking we have everything we need: the correct number of men, the equipment, the guns and the combat order. But wars are never fought on paper.
Day 70. September 1st 2022
Another of the Soviet bmps arrives in the middle of the night. It makes a noisy entrance, running into a pine tree and chopping it down with its sharp prow. Were it not for the hysterical screams, I might have had another full night’s sleep. The falling tree really spooked a hardened reconnaissance officer going by the nom de guerre of Hightower. To be fair, it almost fell on his head.
Hightower was meant to be a reinforcement. On paper, he is an experienced soldier who could assist our young commander if we had problems with discipline. But he doesn’t feel like much of a backup. I would not be surprised if the real reason he was transferred to us was that his previous colleagues had grown tired of his endless chatter. His moniker –inspired by Moses Hightower, the taciturn comic hero of the Police Academy films – must be ironic.
We get a delivery of a box of grenades. “Take as many as you like, boys,” we are told. One thing I’ve discovered is that juggling them is a perfect way to deal with the endless waiting. Three at a time is easy enough. It’s when you add a fourth that things become difficult. I can’t stop wondering why we are still hanging around in the forest. We’ve already got the combat order. The Russians know we are up to something. It’s surely time to move.
Day 71. September 2nd 2022
My guys are itching to go. Every time they open their mouths they seem to ask: “So when is it?” There is nothing worse than bored soldiers. We officers have to be careful to keep them occupied with training exercises. The rumour is that we are waiting for ammunition for the new M777 howitzers to arrive. Some of us have taken to using military slang for these British guns – the “three axes”. We all understand we are showing off to look more experienced than we actually are. None of us has actually seen these things in real life.
During the night, the Russians fire cluster munitions near our positions in the forest. I hear a loud whistle from my dug-out. Pieces of sharp metal pierce the nearby trees  – you can tell this by their characteristic racket. “Can you take us in?” shout Odessa and Farmer, two of my guys who had until that point been sleeping under a canvas tent. They had teased me for digging such a large foxhole. Now it doesn’t seem such a bad idea to them.
Day 72. September 3rd 2022
Pryshyb is a small village which has the misfortune of falling right on the demarcation line between the two sides. Most of its residents have left. The only visitors are Russian mortars, which explode at regular intervals in the middle of the abandoned gardens or vegetable plots. And, for one day only, a small group of novice Ukrainian soldiers.
The three of us – me, Panda and Navigator – have been sent here to conduct drone reconnaissance. We need to see if there has been any change in the Russian positions since the videos shot a few days ago. If the Russians spot us, we will know about it pretty quickly. We hide our car under the cover of an overgrown apple tree that bears small, sour fruit in abundance.
We get a delivery of a box of grenades. “Take as many as you like, boys,” we are told. One thing I’ve discovered is that juggling them is a perfect way to deal with the endless waiting
Once we’ve completed our mission, we pass by another village on our way back through the forest. There are still a few functioning shops here, so we stop to stock up on Snickers and Coke. An old man queuing in one of them asks me when the war will end. I struggle to answer. The shopkeeper seems to sense my befuddlement. “Soon! Not long now,” she says. “These guys know what they are doing. The Russians will be gone in no time.” The locals insist I skip to the front of the queue. A woman opens the door for me. Kids outside shout “Glory to Ukraine!” I feel awkward. This feels like a propaganda movie. We give the youngsters some chocolate as we leave.
Day 73. September 4th 2022
I’ve got used to the forest. It feels like I’m reliving my childhood. There is a huge lake nearby. The lads are allowed to swim there if they are accompanied by an officer. I’m not keen on swimming, but I agree to supervise so they can enjoy themselves. They jump and bomb into the water from a long wooden platform.
We decide to turn my foxhole into a fully fledged dugout. It’s now three times the size, and a whole shovel-width deeper. We cover the new digs with pine logs and dry leaves. From a distance, you’d be hard-pressed to guess anyone could be living here. To make things even more comfortable, we line the walls with plastic and lay down camping mattresses and sleeping bags.
My new neighbours take no time in settling in. Farmer, who, appropriately enough, used to be a farmer in central Ukraine, has a wife and son waiting for him back home. Odessa, a school teacher from Odessa, fell in love with another school teacher when doing military training. He’s always talking about her, and planning the rest of their life together. He wonders whether she will ever agree to move to Odessa. I light a candle in the dugout. Things are cosy. I feel at home.
Day 74. September 5th 2022
We are woken in the middle of the night. The operation is beginning. It’s time to jump onto the armoured vehicles and “Go, go, go”. We wrap blue tape around our arms. This is supposed to distinguish between friend and foe. It is still a bit abstract to me. I’ve never yet had to make a call to shoot or not to shoot based on the colour of the tape on someone’s sleeves. It’s also the first time I’ve ridden an armoured vehicle in convoy. Not to mention in the pitch dark.
The tank is the first to leave, shortly followed by the tracked infantry vehicles and all the Spartans. My bmp is at the end of the column of armoured vehicles. Immediately behind me are the wheeled vehicles: cars and an anti-aircraft gun mounted on a truck. My job is to keep proper distance from the heavy armour in front, while checking on the wheeled vehicles behind. One of them is sure to break down or get stuck in the sandy soil of the forest road.
My guys are itching to go. Every time they open their mouths they seem to ask: “So when is it?” There is nothing worse than bored soldiers
We join another military column at a rendezvous point on our way. Suddenly, it has become extremely difficult to determine where my guys are – everyone now looks the same. It’s a miracle we don’t lose anyone. Judging by the growing din of artillery, we’re close to the point where we are supposed to break through their lines.
We grope around for a place to sleep until the morning, or the order to move arrives. We find a narrow gully set a few metres off from the road. I sleep in a makeshift tent that I’ve made from a poncho. I could dig a foxhole, but decide it’s best to get as much sleep as I can. I hope that Russian artillery won’t find me in the meantime. When dawn breaks, I see that the forest ahead of us has been burned to the ground, leaving an opening.
Raccoon is still asleep, snoozing with his back leaning against a tree. I decide to inspect the combat groups in his place. At each stop, the groups of soldiers offer me food. I have breakfast with each one of them. Coffee and chocolate; fresh, cooked pasta. Contractor’s group is playing gypsy music out of a Bluetooth speaker. One of his soldiers – a round-faced, chubby guy – is dancing on top of an armoured personnel carrier (apc) to keep warm. Another is rummaging through an infantry vehicle trying to find something among the clutter. Our battalion feels like a travelling circus.
Day 75. September 6th 2022
The combat order says it is here that we will have to cross Russian minefields near Pryshyb. My company is part of the battalion reserve, so we aren’t in the first wave. I don’t know if that group has managed to blast a passage through the minefields for us. I’m only a platoon commander, after all. No one tells me about the big picture.
While we wait I try to prise open the door of an abandoned wooden house. I sense the place hasn’t been lived in for some time – certainly since long before the invasion. I can feel the house crumbling as I push on the door. The flimsy construction just can’t stand it. I push harder with increasing desperation. But the door, which is reinforced with a layer of metal, won’t give despite all my efforts. If I can’t break into a wooden hut, I ask myself, what hope do I have against Russian defences?
There is no time to brood. My company commander Raccoon is radioing me to hurry and he sounds increasingly frustrated. There is news. The plan has changed. “You’re going on alone now,” he says. It turns out that the first wave has broken through Russian lines and penetrated deeper than anyone expected. The Russians are fleeing. I recall the lessons of military training: when the enemy is running, you chase after them. We have to step on the gas, and fast.
Now I’m in charge of my own group. I have several combat teams operating on Spartans, two grenade-launcher crews, one anti-tank crew armed with Javelin missiles and a tank. That’s right, folks: my own tank.
Commanders assure us everything will be made safe ahead of us. There is, after all, a well-worked algorithm here. A mine roller goes first. When it hits mines, it stops, and a mine-clearing vehicle called the zmiy-gorynych – named after a magic dragon in Slavic folklore – steps up. The dragon throws out a hose of explosives, and clears a lane up ahead. “If you stay in the corridor, it’s safe to drive” – or so they tell us repeatedly. If I’m honest, the mantras don’t do much to calm someone about to cross a minefield for the very first time.
The battalion commander has arrived to take us through the minefields himself. This turn of events suggests to me that things are going well. He surely wouldn’t take the risk otherwise? Still, the picture ahead is terrifying. Our path to the other side is narrow – just ruts that our colleagues have dug into the weedy fields. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of anti-tank mines either side of them. One careless move and we will turn into cans of sardines in tomato sauce.
It’s already dark by the time we enter Yakovenkove, a village that is our target destination. The outermost house is in flames. I can see a petrified man in his 60s, leading an equally petrified cow out of the yard. If it wasn’t for him, the animal would surely have been burned alive. We find out that this large house served as the Russian headquarters. When they fled, they set the building on fire, leaving a web of tripwires.
Our evening sweep doesn’t last long. After checking the first few houses, the futility of the task becomes clear. First, the darkness means that it is much more likely we will blow ourselves up on tripwires than catch any remnants of the enemy. Second, we understand that the offensive has, if anything, gone too well. We aren’t the only Ukrainian unit here. Artillery men and scouts from neighbouring battalions, all driven forward by the good news, are hiding under every bush. We don’t want to shoot our own guys in pursuit of Russian stragglers.
We set up positions for the night in the far end of the village. As we look for a place to sleep, we frighten an old lady, one of the few remaining residents. She can’t understand who we are, or why we are asking permission to let our soldiers sleep in her barn. We’ll have to apologise to her tomorrow, I think to myself.
Day 76. September 7th 2022
I wake up after a night of sleeping on a hard floor. I can tell the owners of the house I’m sleeping in had plenty of time to leave. The carpets are rolled up and stacked neatly; the windows are covered; the clothes they didn’t need for the journey are wrapped neatly in a jacket. The war damage – a mine blew a small crater in the yard, damaging the minibus parked outside – obviously came later.
“Boss, erm, the owners have arrived,” says Misha, a short infantryman aged 45 or so. His naive and earnest nature make him an unlikely soldier. “Will you talk to them?” I feel shame as I remember we entered someone’s home at night without their permission. I might be the commander of an airborne platoon, but I am completely in the wrong here. I feel like a boy caught stealing apples from a neighbour’s garden.
I recall the lessons of military training: when the enemy is running, you chase after them
Blushing, I prepare to deliver words of apology to the two women standing with their hands on their hips at the gate. The older one is wearing a brown jumper, the younger one red. “We…erm…needed somewhere to sleep,” I mutter. They don’t let me end my sentence, and instead pull me towards them, embrace me and start crying. “Boys, boys! What took you so long?” I’m numb. Nothing prepared me for this. I don’t know what to say or how to react. The women insist they cook dinner for us. But it’s against the rules to accept food from the civilian population. Yes, we are on home soil. Yes, it’s obvious that these people are on our side. But rules are rules.
The mobile networks are down, and we have no access to the internet. For the time being we have no news, just rumours. And what are those rumours saying? They say the first battalion broke through lines so speedily that they drove over Russian trenches without even noticing them. They say terrified Russian soldiers stayed in their pits until the next wave of attackers captured them.
I decide to break the rules and allow the boys to accept dinner from the ladies of the village.
Day 77. September 8th 2022
Misha clearly is not a man designed for war, but now at least he has a purpose. We’re putting him in charge of our domestic arrangements. One thing I’ve found is that as soon as you give a soldier a particular area of responsibility, he becomes a new man. Misha takes great care in keeping the house spotless. He reminds everyone of the importance of regular meals. He makes sure that the food is hot and there is enough for everyone. He glows with pride from the praise and the feeling he is needed.
The boys decide to cook borscht tonight. For whatever reason, they want to have it with mayonnaise. Some might describe this as a war crime: sour cream is, as is well established, the only acceptable condiment. But Snake nonetheless has resolved to head down to the local shop to buy it. About 30 minutes later he comes back with a machinegun, a hand-held anti-tank grenade launcher, ammunition and delighted cries of “There’s loads more!” He’s forgotten the mayonnaise.
There are indeed plenty more treasures where the machinegun came from. The Russians left behind another two machineguns, five rocket-propelled grenade launchers, half a dozen hand-held flamethrowers and under-barrel grenade launchers for Kalashnikovs. There are loads of Soviet-made helmets and Russian bulletproof vests. The Russians appear to have dropped everything heavy when they scarpered on foot.
Why didn’t he tell me he was from here? I’d have brought him to his son’s birthday party personally – on an APC
I find clues about the Russians in a notebook that my opposite number – a platoon commander from the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic – has left behind. You can see the commander was a responsible kind of guy. His notebook resembles that of a classroom swot. The entries are neat and colour-coded. This platoon was mobilised in the Luhansk region about six months ago. Ever since they have been training and patrolling, first at home and later here in the Kharkiv region. Every one of these moments is recorded meticulously.
We sweep the treelines and cast our eyes around. Scorched fields. The remains of metal bed frames and burned equipment. The evidence of retreat and escape. Later in the evening, I return to the large house that had been the local Russian headquarters. The yard is being swept by an elderly couple, their daughter and a young boy. They say that the owner of the home has asked them to clean up after the Russians, even though the place is still full of tripwires and unidentified boxes of equipment.
The child keeps his distance from us, and barely says a word. He follows the adults while clutching a dog in his arms. “He gets frightened whenever he sees a soldier,” explains the old man. The boy started wetting the bed because of the fear. The gossip in the village is that his mother was raped. I choose not to listen to the rumours. Even if they are true, it strikes me that gossip makes things worse.
My guys test the Russian bulletproof vests. They report that the plates actually withstand the bullets and cannot be easily penetrated. I’ve attached one of the under-barrel grenade launchers to my rifle. My already clunky Kalashnikov is now even heavier. But it looks epic.
Day 79. September 10th 2022
We wake to the realisation that gophers have eaten much of our food. These hyperactive rodent bastards jump from branch to branch, and gnaw through packets of biscuits and packets of dry rations. They’d robbed us before daybreak.
There is quite a bit of commotion on the radios this morning. Another part of our company tried to approach Savyntsi, the village that is next on our hit-list, and saw a car driving through it with a white cross. Our troops have already taken it without a fight, it seems. The only danger facing us there are the mines scattered on the streets.
From there we move on quickly across the fields towards our next target village, Vesele. We can finally breathe a bit more freely. Not so our Spartan apcs. On the way, sunflowers get stuck in their radiators and they begin to lose power. We are overtaken by a Soviet-made infantry vehicle.
The locals who remained in the village happily open up their neighbours’ houses so that my soldiers can rest. We know we are headed for Izium in the morning so it’s important they are fresh. Everyone wants to tell us something. About how the Russians built two checkpoints: one manned with Ossetians from the Caucasus and another with soldiers from occupied Donetsk. They tell us how the Ossetian commander would mock the Donetsk fighters: he beat them and made them shout “Donetsk is a ****hole.”
I ask everyone to go home to sleep. Tomorrow is an early start. But two of the local men don’t want to leave my boys in peace. They continue chatting in the yard of the house where we are staying.
“Relax, these are our guys,” says one of them.
“Yeah, we’re back home. In Ukraine,” replies the other.
“No, no, what I’m saying is one of the guys really is local. He’s from Savyntsi. We’ve known each other since we were kids.
”I wonder what it’s like to find yourself on an operation to surround the village you lived in your entire life. Where, perhaps, your wife and son are living right now. Where it might even be your son’s birthday. I find myself getting angry with my soldier. Why didn’t he tell me he was from here? I’d have brought him to his son’s birthday party personally – on an apc.
Day 80. September 11th 2022
Our convoy flies down the beautiful highway towards Izium. I feel elated. It’s easy to breathe. There’s a light drizzle. The air is fresh. We pass tank crews resting on the sides of the road. They wave to us. They did the hard work. Our job is now to sweep up any Russians left. As we approach Izium, I see two Russian corpses still lying across the road. We call them “sheep”. I’ve got nothing but contempt for the people who came to invade my country. They aren’t people to me anymore. Just bodies.
A tall stele with the inscription “Izium” marks the entrance to town. My heart wants to jump out of my chest. I feel triumphant. I might not have fired a single shot yet, but it feels like my victory. I grin when I see my reflection in a mirror. My face is covered in the soot that the apc in front had sprayed onto me.
Across the way, an old woman is riding a bicycle. She gazes towards the soldiers gathered around the stele. But she isn’t looking where she needs to be looking – by her wheels, which is where anti-personnel mines are lurking. A jumping mine can tear your foot off if you step on it. In slow motion, we catch sight of the woman, tottering towards the mines. We shout at her. She doesn’t hear us. When the mine explodes, the old woman falls over the handlebars of the bicycle. We help her to her feet. Thankfully, she isn’t seriously injured, just a little frightened.
A stand outside the building explains that “Russia never attacks anyone”. And even if it ever did, it was “forced to do so”. It feels absurd to be reading this in ransacked Izium
Every time, I ask for residents’ permission to enter their houses. I explain that I will do so only with their say-so. Although it would be hard to refuse a filthy, soot-covered bloke armed from head to toe. I can see the residents are tense and don’t understand what is happening. They have been cut off from the world beyond the village for months. They do not immediately realise who we are. The colour of our armbands means nothing to them. I don’t think they expected to see Ukrainian troops here so soon.
Izium means raisin in Russian – and it’s not hard to understand why the town got its name. The grapes are everywhere. There are giant, green ones with a sweet taste. And small, sour bunches. Picking one at a time, I eat kilos of the stuff.
“A tank! Tank!” All around me, soldiers grab their weapons and jump to join the hunt of a Russian tank. It’s the first time I see everyone running towards a tank, rather than away from it. It turns out that the vehicle is not, in fact, a tank, but an armoured vehicle. A disoriented Russian soldier had tried to escape from a nearby hideout, but instead headed straight for our sector. He didn’t get far.
The guys up ahead have run into a Russian sniper. Some ****er is shooting from a tower in the industrial estate. Our guys return machinegun fire. One shot from a grenade launcher and suddenly the shooting stops. When we reach the sniper’s position, we see a Russian uniform thrown onto the floor. It seems he managed to flee, disguised as a civilian.
We discover a ton of abandoned equipment at the far corner of our sector. There’s a completely intact tank, covered with explosives that the Russians never got around to detonating. More loot is waiting at what had been a repair point. We claim two extra amphibious tracked vehicles, two brand new anti-aircraft guns still in their packages and a rare apc configured as a comms vehicle. The rest of our haul goes to other units.
Day 81. September 12th 2022
We’ve set up in a house recently abandoned by the Russians. A Russian tricolour hangs at the entrance. I think about keeping it as a trophy, but by the time I’ve returned from setting up our monitoring posts, my soldiers have already ripped it off the wall and burned it.
The Russians left piles of documents behind. There are A4 forms stamped “secret”. One contains a list of soldiers injured in artillery battles. Another, dated the next day, contains handwritten refusenik statements. Each member of the unit – the platoon commander, his deputies and the lowliest privates – has written that they refuse to take part in the “special military operation”. Everyone has come up with their own reason: because they have not been granted leave; because they are ill; because they are tired or in bad psychological condition.
Over the last few days, we’ve heard stories of of rape and torture. Of people who have disappeared
We also find a pile of letters written by Russian schoolchildren. They offer support and motivational stories for “this not very good predicament”. Even kids are afraid to use the word “war”.
Astonishingly stupid propaganda litters the fancy house that Russian commanders used as their headquarters. There are cheap anti-Semitic caricatures of President Volodymyr Zelensky – as either a rabbi, the devil or an American puppet. Joe Biden is also a target for their teenage minds. A stand outside the building explains that “Russia never attacks anyone”. And even if it ever did, it was “forced to do so”. It feels absurd to be reading this in ransacked Izium, 160km from the Russian border.
Day 84. September 15th 2022
Getting a mobile signal in Izium isn’t easy. The only place where it’s possible to speak is at the top of Mount Kremenets, which overlooks the town. If you are lucky, and a 4g connection somehow dribbles through, you can make the call. But do not dare move. Half a metre to the left or right and you will lose reception. At any moment you can find dozens of locals at the top of the hill, in varying degrees of frozen frustration.
The residents soon get wind that the military has a secret communications weapon: Starlink, a satellite-powered internet service. I don’t think it’s a great idea to have locals surrounding your headquarters with dozens of phones. It’s against the rules for a start. But how can you deny people who have spent so many months without hearing from their loved ones?
Day 85. September 16th 2022
The full extent of Russian atrocities in Izium is beginning to be revealed. The world’s press has already published photos from the mass grave at the entrance to the town. There are several hundred people buried under the sandy soil there. Many of them will have been Ukrainian sympathisers. We don’t talk about it much. We just ask each other: “You saw it?” And we silently nod.
Over the last few days, we’ve heard stories of rape and torture. Of people who have disappeared. Of a disabled man whose adapted car was stolen and who was shot dead when he tried to retrieve it.
The testimonies of those we meet near our positions is shocking enough. One man would not let his son out, fearing he would be detained by Russian soldiers looking for people with pro-Ukrainian sympathy. So his 16-year-old never left the confines of their small yard for five and a half months. Another neighbour, known for pro-Ukrainian sympathies, was taken away by Russian soldiers one day. He was never seen again.
Day 87. September 17th 2022
Everyone’s focus is now on Lyman, the next major town 48km down the road. Every hour we check for updates from there and the nearby urban conglomeration of Lysychansk/Sievierodonetsk. The Russians have gathered a huge force if our information is correct. But if our guys can manage to advance around them, there is a chance of trapping them. In my heart of hearts, I want them to keep running. I want the next few days of our raid to be free and easy. For it to be like it has been in the Kharkiv region. No losses and no direct clashes. But a gnawing feeling in my gut tells me the party might be coming to an end.
Everyone believes our next departure is tonight. The rear guard are already here in Izium. We won’t be staying here for long, that’s for sure. ■
This diary has been edited and translated by Oliver Carroll, a foreign correspondent for The Economist
 

This is just getting sad. 

hmm sounds familiar.
A Brief History on the Forced Sterilization of Indigenous Peoples in the US — The Indigenous Foundation
Jane Lawerence, a historian who focused on tracking the procedure performed on Indigenous women throughout the 60s and 70s, states, “Some of [the IHS doctors] did not believe that American Indian and other minority women had the intelligence to use other methods of birth control effectively and that there were already too many minority individuals causing problems in the nation.” These ideologies are what led to 25-50% of Indigenous women of childbearing age to be sterilized between 1970 and 1976. The government failed to provide these women with the necessary information to make an informed decision, they coerced Indigenous women to sign consent forms, and The Family Planning Services and Population Research Act of 1970 even subsidized IHS and Medicaid physicians for performing these sterilizations. 

Alas, turned out this is previous year video

As for fighting for my country: That is precisely the point. I couldn't care less about my country. My country is just a bunch of lines on a map. It was totally random that I was born within the confines of these lines and not others. Three centuries ago my country didn't even exist. It was a number of smaller areas on a map with some dudes constantly wanting to redraw those lines because they didn't have a playstation or something similar and were bored. Except for the random nobleman who "owned" that patch of land, nobody cared about those lines on the map and much less would have wanted to fight for them. Enter Napoleon and suddenly people here were told that they were Germans and that this conglomerate of lines on a map is something glorious worth fighting and dying for, instead of... well, living in a country that was actually more civilized but with less noblemen still having their heads attached to their necks.
In the following years, people were told that, since they were born inside these lines on a map, they had to hate people for being born inside the neighbouring lines on the map. After the inevitable war, the then "Germans" could finally become Germans, united under a (suddenly beloved) nobleman who called himself emperor. The emperor was of Prussian origin and thus the Germans were told that a militaristic society is the best. With great "Hurray!" millions went to the next war... because... was it even about lines on a map? Or just because going to war is so awesome? Millions of dead later - who absolutely enjoyed the experience of dying for their country (if nothing else), Germans had a brief experiment with nasty leftist ideas like, actually voting for stuff and such.
That ended quickly, when Germans were told that being randomly born to the right parents, they were better than people who were randomly born to different people. And also that the lines on that map absolutely need to be redrawn because people with the right parents need more space and those people being born to parents to the east in areas surrounded by lines called "Poland", "Russia" or "Ukraine" wouldn't need that space, anyway. Oh, and Germans were of course told that being born within the right set of lines, the absolute best is of course to fight and die for that set of lines.
After the inevitable war with even more dead, some people wondered whether those "leftist" ideas weren't all that bad, after all. Voting, inviolability of human dignity, etc. But alas, the lines on the map called Germany had been split into two sets of lines. Both sides were told that it was absolutely preferable to kill their relatives on the other side to allowing them to redraw the lines. If that didn't help it was absolutely necessary to just convert both Germanies, and if necessary the whole world, into a nuclear wasteland.
See, we are kind of fed up with this nonsense of "dying for our country". In between we found out that human rights, like e.g. not getting randomly imprisoned and shot without trial, kind of made sense and that our neighbours weren't as bad as we were told. Even the French. Especially the French. As others have pointed out, had the question been if we are willing to fight for freedom, democracy, etc. the answer would probably have been different.
And finally, let me be honest with you: I support my government in sending billions in money and materiel to help you defend your lives, your right to decide for yourselves, your freedom and, yes, your human rights and the possibility to enjoy your lives. Not the random lines on the map called Ukraine.
 

Apparently the West's 'boil the frog' strategy has been so successful even some of its own citizens haven't noticed how much they've committed...
Russia crossed a red-line on February 24th, 2022.  It's been discussed on this board that, despite the obvious failings in the Russian invasion plan, they probably would have eventually succeeded if they has been fighting against Ukraine alone.  Historic levels of Western support have turned that into what will almost certainly be a crushing defeat for Russia.  What about that makes you think Russia are getting away with anything at all, here?  What exactly do you think the Russians have control of?  They are still humans, they still have agency of their own and they do not seem to be in the mood to compromise.  They will therefore continue to do stuff we don't like for a while, yet.  That's life.  No stopping it.
Fixed that for you.
EU membership is not a prize owed to anyone.  That's not how it works.  If you want to join you have to meet all the strict economic entry conditions, regardless of which war you just fought.  Being a good friend isn't enough; just ask Turkiye.
And I must have missed the bit where someone belonging to either NATO or the EU argued that we should let any warcrimes slide...?
 
Seriously, I get that the war is frustrating and we'd all like it to be over tomorrow but that just isn't going to happen.  Please, unless we have specific, realistic ideas to add to the discussion can we dial down the daily temper-tantrums and lashing-out at the West for not snapping its fingers and making the bad man go away?
 
Also, as a genuine aside, has anyone else noticed that parties who are accused of being "spineless" in almost any context often seem to end up winning?

12:30
https://telesco.pe/bolshiepushki/4397
Claim - another Wagnerite units is crossing the border
12:39
https://t.me/dva_majors/18924
Claim - Video Tanks are moving toward Moscow [probably RU MOD]. Tanks in Moscow is a very sensitive topic for RU.
12:40
https://t.me/horevica/12823
Claim Voronezh Oil depot was attacked by KA-52
12:42
https://t.me/elite_rezerve/21856
Claim exchange rate for dollar 1 to 90, Euro 1 to 100 (exchange rate with three digits  is very sensitive topic for RU)
12:46
RU Nats are discussing that both Prig and Putin live in their own realities
12:50
https://t.me/juchkovsky/3705
Claim  that kadirovci indeed started to move toward Rostov. Not very smart move for Kremlin
.https://t.me/natalia_maximus_ZOV/17528
Claim - Rostov support Wagnerites. They help Wagnerites with water nad food
 
I am off for some time

He did have some close encounters with the Soviet apparatchik and their influence in '39 in Spain though.

I wouldn't mind if you did exactly that. I'm learning a lot.

Greetings everyone. Long-time lurker who has been reading this thread since 23rd Feb of 2022 and now wants to step out of the shadows to thank everyone who has contributed. It has been a fascinating and informative experience to read through it all day by day, despite the tragedy which has brought everyone in this thread together.
I will likely spend the vast majority of my time continuing to lurk, since I do not have the military knowledge to give valuable commentary on most relevant things, but in this first post, I wanted to provide a short summary of an article from the Berlin branch office of a Swiss newspaper which is about planned changes to NATO structure. While it is not directly about the situation of Ukraine, the planned changes described therein seem to be a direct result of the (renewed) invasion of '22 and thus I think it still fits to the topic.
Google translate has not worked for me on this website, maybe it does for someone else who wants to read it in its entirely:
https://www.nzz.ch/international/neue-nato-struktur-deutschland-macht-wieder-grosse-ankuendigungen-ld.1740692 
Here is the summary:
General Christopher Cavoli and a small team has been working on a plans to reorganize the structure of NATO for about a year and these plans will be presented at the next meeting of NATO head of states in Vilnius on 11th and 12th of July Newspaper claims as sources 1) a team member who is involved in the planning and 2) a high-ranking ex officer who claimed to be familiar with the work Germany will have to prepapre to become a more important administrative and logistical hub for NATO NATO is aware of how the Russian attack on Ukraine has turned the world upside down, and in Brussels and Mons, Cold War terminolgy and plans are being pulled out of dusty folders  Below the Mons HQ and the 3 regional operative HQs of Brunssum, Napoli and Norfolk, two new army staff commands will be created, called "Army North" and "Army South". Army North will be located at the American base in Wiesbaden, Army South in Izmir. Both Army North and Army South will be responsible to coordinate NATO troops organised as corps, divisions, brigades and battalions the reorgnisation and expansion of staff is the result of both the Russian invasion and of newly acquired members in Eastern Europe which have to be more integrated (and also pay heed to the fact that e.g. Poland has now 4 full army divisions and thus is a larger contributor than e.g. Germany) new defensive plans for the three regional HQs Brunssum, Napoli and Norfolk  Americans want the new Army North and Army south command staff to become operable as soon as possible, which is one reason why they will be staffed to a large part by American officers from their Europe and Africa commands, since no other member state has the same number of available trained staff officers. This is also why an alternative suggestion to build up and place the two command HQs in Poland and Romania was rejected Cavoli's plans indicate that there will be 9 to 12 new army corps in Europe which will be fully staffed - a lot of the existing army corps from the Cold War still exist but only on paper, without any bodies so far it is planned a corps will contain 2 to 3 divisions with a strength of ca. 20.000 each the total numerical strength is not yet decided, but the number of quickly available troops will be increased from currently 40.000 to 300.000 ("New Force Model") NATO "Joint Support and Enabling Command" in Ulm, Germany will receive a significant increase in staff and will be responsible for overseeing the supply via ports, railway and air transport which will be routed mostly through Germany  the plans expect that half of the "New Force Model" troops will come from North America, the other half from European member states Europe is woefully behind in terms of ground-based air defense, especially against ballistic missiles and drones, and a new program is supposed to increase the number of European AD  German government continues to promise that it will provide 17.000 troops forthe  "Allied Reaction Force" which is supposed to form a strategic reserve with enough ammo for 30 days of operation, but German MoD will have to be honest in Vilnius if they can actually keep this promise.  Germany also promised to provide at least 30.000 troops which can be quickly relocated, but it is not yet decided which readiness level the troops will have - either 10 days, 30 days or 100 days German troops require improved communication equipment to integrate with NATO, and new digital radio are supposed to arrive until end of 2024 - another topic German MoD is expected to provide an honest outlook about at Vilnius If anyone sees any error, please inform. I find these kinds of planned changed to NATO very interesting due to the wider implications for the Ukraine conflict but also the global security order. If this article toook me for a fool and none of this is realistic, I apologise. As I said, I lack modern military knowledge. 
 

I'm sure they will. They are already in sparse use I think in  first aid in mountain rescue. Personally, I'm a little disappointed how much money and tehcnology has been invested in advanced warfare, while I see our forests here burning every year and disappearing because we are using the same old tech from the 50s to extinguish fires. Air manned assets that can't fly in strong winds , night or close to the fire. I think drone tech can help immensly here, with bigger unmanned platforms flying 24h around the clock and scrambling immediately to the first sign of fire. 

Oh I don't know. He has been good enough on his feet to arrange the destruction of the Russian military with only 4% of the US military budget, thoroughly pantsed the GOP on the debt limit fight and Americans 25 to 54 are working at their highest rate since 2001.
If that's not fit, I'll take more unfitness please.

I have to say...and this is coming from the center left...that a lot of the antifa folks in DC were completely obnoxious. The BLM folks were what we would call around here 'good protesters'. They did their thing, acted coherently and didn't randomly attack whatever for the thrill of it...the burning of the lobby of the AFL-CIO being a particularly egregious example of the tendency to burn for the fun of it tendency of some of the Antifa folks. A lot of them looked like teenagers burning off covid isolation.
But...neither one had anything like the sheer nastiness of the radical right wingers. Patches like RWDS (that stands for "Right Wing Death Squad") and Confederate flags were routine and far more common than outright Nazi regalia. People telling my neighbors with a pride flag at their house that they "will come back for you later". Or the 100 or so Proud Boys that charged a police line my kid and I were behind because they were trying to get at BLM folks on the plaza on 16th Street behind us. Oh...and did I mention the guys with the long guns that got arrested at one of my places of business?
We got to see the monster with it's mask off...because they were sure that they were going to get a pardon sooner or later as they would tell DC MPD who had to deal with them...and I would strongly suggest you all take it seriously. Out of patriotism if nothing else. Nobody benefits more from it than Vladimir Putin.

anyone who thinks we don't have a fascist problem because folks won't take down their confederate flag to put up a nazi one does not understand that in America, that confederate flag IS the nazi one.  Not specially a response to your comment Steve, but just to point out for folks that think Americans don't blatantly display fascist trappings ought to think twice.  
Getting this back to Ukraine, if I was in the UA and someone from America came and told me they were concerned about some unit in the UA having a patch that resembled a Nazi symbol I'd be scratching my head about that confederate flag I saw on TV being marched through the halls of congress on 1/6.
The History of Democracy: Fascist Movements in U.S. History | WKMS
 

I recall some time ago seeing a pie chart of documented attempted terrorist acts in the US since 9-11. Al Qaeda wannabes came in a distant second from the primary malefactors. Left wing organizations made up the tiniest sliver of the pie. Terrorist 'immigrant groups' didn't even make the chart due to round-off error. In some (most) circumstances 'both-sides-ism' just doesn't wash.

This will not be very informative to such a group as this but I enjoyed it hearing from Mr. Glantz.
 

He is a fan of ISW and prints out the daily reports.

You realize that this sentiment is really the problem, right?  I mean there is nothing categorically wrong in what the ambassador said for an objective point of view.  Russia has not demonstrated that it will act in good faith during the conduct of this war - the systemic warcrimes are a big hint.  So it would be a very good idea to approach any peace negotiations very carefully.
You do not have to like someone nor agree with their politics, but that does not automatically mean everything they say is incorrect.  Statements or positions need to be weighed against the facts, not affiliations, no matter which end of the spectrum the come from.  
There are exceptions of course, for example if someone has demonstrated habitual lunacy or use of mis/dis-information, sure go ahead and burn them as a source, but the Ukrainian ambassador does not fall into that category as far as we know - unless you have proof beyond her possible post-secondary education?  You are burning her based in affiliation alone or at least it appears that way, and that is intellectually lazy to be blunt.
Finally this whole line of thinking is a significant fracture point that has, and will be exploited by all sorts of players.  It is in fact step 2 in the subversive warfare playbook - widen the fractures that were already there and make them unsealable; the death of compromise.  Step 3 is to harden elements from either side of the fracture into organized and connected collectives that are able to self perpetuate and metastasize - a carcinogenic operation. This is a long standing recipe on how to destroy a society from the inside out.
This is exactly the type of operations Russia did before 2014, and was attempting before this war started.  Every nation that borders Russia is combating this sort of influence.  And it will very likely be what Russia falls back on once this war is over - assuming there is a functioning Russia left.  China is also very good at this game, it is also out of their playbook, but they are much better at it.
So you do not have to agree with the current US president - and sure go ahead and insult him based on ageism. But it is hard to disagree with the results in Ukraine, so far.  This has been one helluva tough one to steer through from a strategic and political level.  And it has not been perfect.  But for navigation through the first real proxy war of the 21st century I gotta give it a B+ so far.
As to the rest of the politics, well you Americans can go argue that - preferably on another thread.

And what is the quality of those new systems?  Given shortages in tech supply within Russia these systems will likely have issues with guidance systems and flight controls.  They will be then plugged into a 3rd rate ISR architecture that is being eroded as well.  Which is plugged into a Command and Control system that was a mess to start with.
This is what it looks like when organized crime tries to fight a conventional war.  
We have been watching the one-way erosion of the RA for over a year now.  The symptoms of systemic failure are written on the walls, underlined and bolded.  I am getting a growing sense that the upcoming collapse may be spectacular.
All war is communication, and Russia has been sending out signals of failure since this thing began.  All war is violent, but it has to be effective violence.  Simply doing disconnected or ineffective violence only reinforces an opponents resolve because they get angry, not despondent. You never create a curve they feel they are falling behind.  Russia has been a testament to ineffective violence in this war - it has not been focused or connected, a flailing windmill of murder and rage that looks scary for the first few seconds and then everyone realizes it is in fact a seizure.
Russia has already lost this war, they likely already know it.  We have already won it, but some refuse to see it.  All that remains is how do we end it?

The EU didn't even figure in polls in the UK about things bothering the public. Came in after the top ten concerns in the years before the Brexit vote.
Once the troll farms went to work that changed dramatically. This worked by specifically targeting lower education voters and voters that leaned towards conspiracy theories. With the results seen.
The UK's own reports showed there was no loss of sovereignty in the EU - it was all just bullsh1t.
You get the same "loss" of sovereignty joining any international organisation - the UN, NATO, etc.
 
 
 

UK fishing fleet sold its quotas to EU fleets over a twenty year period - it wasn't taken from them. It made a small percentage of them rich while hobbling the industry.
 
Better to blame the 'bad' EU though. Like most Putin talking points it takes two minutes of research to disprove.

Sweden is a bit more tricky though because they've managed to piss off Turkey (criticism of Erdogan's human rights record and support for Kurds) and Hungary (criticism of Orban). Nothing that other NATO countries haven't also said, but here they are in a position to demand concessions in exchange for not vetoing Sweden.
Sweden and Turkey had an agreement on what Sweden needed to do before Turkey would allow it in, but Turkey is saying that Sweden hasn't fulfilled its obligations yet (notably extradition of some Kurdish organizers from Sweden, which were blocked by Swedish courts). The Turkish parliament has approved Swedish entry to NATO, but I gather it's not up to them, but to the Erdogan administration.
So Sweden is unlikely to get approval from Turkey before the Turkish elections in May.
Hungary is expected to give in if/when Turkey does, but that's not certain either.

This is so well expressed. I’d like to add one more thing implied but often left unsaid. Russia clearly did not have either Britain’s, the EU’s, or the USA’s best interests in mind. In politics *these* days this is a hard fact for sone to swallow, despite how obvious it is. But debates like Brexit, or the vexing cultural debates in the USA are quite complex. They contain numerous separate issues and questions. When we uncover, or refuse to see, or discover later that a hostile foreign power is striving to push the decision in one direction, to cast doubt on the entire process…that too needs to be included when weighing the pros and cons.