Ukrainian soldiers wounded during the counteroffensive in Kherson told The Washington Post reporters about the huge cost of fighting for the Ukrainian military, noting that in some cases they lost 5 people for every Russian soldier killed.

“They used everything against us,” said Denys, a 33-year-old Ukrainian soldier whose unit retreated from a Russian-occupied village after a sustained barrage of cluster bombs, phosphorous munitions and mortars.

“Who can survive such an attack?” he asks. Now the serviceman is hospitalized in a hospital in the south of Ukraine.

“For every one lost, we lost five,” says 30-year-old platoon commander Igor, who was injured when his platoon fell into a defensive ditch.

Igor says he had no military experience before the invasion launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 24, and neither did the soldier who commanded his platoon after being wounded.

In Kherson, the Russians built powerful defensive lines

Some of the soldiers interviewed by American journalists asked to speak on condition of anonymity, others, like Denys and Igor, agreed to give their names. But most spoke frankly about the disadvantages they faced.

It is said that the Orlan drones used by the Russians detected their positions, operating at an altitude of more than a kilometer, where they could not even be heard.

As a reminder, this is a model of an unmanned aerial vehicle, which Romanian Defense Minister Vasile Dincu called a “toy drone” after the drone crashed in the village of Bistrica-Neseud in March.

The Ukrainian military also talked about defensive lines built by the Russians in Kherson, reporting that their tanks were emerging from newly erected concrete fortifications to fire heavy weapons at them. Then the tanks retreated to their shelter, protected from mortar and rocket fire.

Igor says that when he fired a Kalashnikov at Russian soldiers last week, it was the first time he had fired at another human being. “You don’t think about anything. You understand that if you don’t, they will,” he says.

Despite the difficult battles in which he participated, he says that he really wants to return to the front. “My people are there. How could I leave them?” he asks rhetorically.

Twitter / Defense of Ukraine

Ukrainian soldiers are determined to continue the fight

But other Ukrainian soldiers will not return to the battlefield. Oleksandr, 28, a former construction worker, lost his arm last week in an explosion.

“They just beat us all the time. If we fired with three mortars, they fired with 20,” he said. Alexander says that he never went to Kherson before the war, but the goal of knocking out the Russians is worth sacrificing a hand. “This is our country,” he says.

All interviewed Ukrainian military personnel said that no matter how bloody the battles were, there was no other alternative.

“If we don’t stop them, they will continue to rape and kill our people, as they did everywhere,” says Oleksandr’s roommate, a 49-year-old conscript whose knee was shattered by shrapnel.

He also says that although Ukrainian losses are heavy, the side that is leading the offensive always loses more troops. “We can’t do anything about it. And we can still win,” he confidently declares.

Heavy losses during the counterattack

Despite the fact that the Ukrainian presidency called for a media blackout of the counteroffensive from the first day of its launch, there are already signs that the tight control of the Russians over the Kherson region is loosening. Perhaps most instructive in this regard, the Russian-installed occupation government in Kherson announced earlier this week that it was “suspending” plans to hold a referendum on joining Russia.

In addition, there is already considerable evidence that the Ukrainian army managed to recapture several Russian-held cities in the early days of the invasion, with foreign military analysts and experts highlighting the precarious situation in which Russian forces found themselves with their backs to them. the Dnipro River and highways are almost interrupted.

Another Ukrainian soldier interviewed by The Post said that of his unit of 100 soldiers, 7 were killed and another 20 were wounded. Platoon commander Igor says that out of 32 men under his command, 16 were wounded and one died.

“If they suffer heavy losses and continue to do so over a long period of time, that could become a problem,” said Rob Lee, a military analyst at the Institute for Foreign Policy Studies.

One of Ukraine’s vulnerabilities is its reliance on soldiers with no offensive experience, but this is even more apparent among the Russian army, which lost most of its professional soldiers in the early stages of the invasion, now relying on mercenaries like Wagner . groups and conscripts sent to war against their will.

Perhaps the most revealing of the personnel problems faced by Moscow’s armed forces is the information that appeared in the Russian media a few days ago that administration officials in St. Petersburg were trying to recruit homeless people for the war in Ukraine.

On Wednesday, the tenth day of the counteroffensive of Ukrainian troops in the Kherson region began.

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