A Ukrainian soldier drags himself through tall grass with an injured leg.
Seconds later, a bright orange flash and a cloud of white smoke mark the spot, a few meters away, where another land mine detonates.
A second seriously wounded soldier climbs into an armored personnel carrier waving his arms and leaving a thick bloodstain.
All of this was recorded live last week by a Ukrainian army drone flying over the frontline south of the city of Bakhmut in Donbas. Seen from above, the cratered minefield looked like an irregular series of dark brown circles.
«Mines are terrifying. They scare me more than anything else,» said Artyom, a 36-year-old soldier from Ukraine’s 108th Territorial Defense Brigade.
Two days earlier, two of his colleagues had stood on «petals» – small green antipersonnel mines – recently scattered by Russian rockets.
«Our guys are experienced, but it’s hard to look everywhere. They’ve each had one leg amputated. We have mine wounded after each combat«, says Artyom, a veteran shoemaker, the soldiers who are in charge of digging trenches during a conflict.
Artyom explains that the Russian forces lay new mines by firing rockets in places that had already been liberated and cleared by the Ukrainian forces.
Mines to slow progress
Ukraine’s long-awaited counter-offensive has yet to achieve the speed and momentum expected by some, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, who admitted it went «slower than desired».
Several soldiers we spoke to on different sections of the front attribute this, in part, to the Russian minefields.
«Of course, it slows down troop movement,» says Dill, the commander of a nine-man sapper squad.
He has just completed a demining mission on the near front east of the small, ruined village of Predtechyne, on the outskirts of Bakhmut. He places defused Russian mines on the ground under a tree after making sure the Russian drones couldn’t see it.
«The enemy has no mercy on his own soldiers. They are used as cannon fodder. But we are moving forward with the minimum number of casualties,» Lieutenant Serhii Tyshenko, of the III Assault Brigade, declares from a bunker. nearby.
«I hate this job»
Some three hours further south, across a succession of pontoons, several Ukrainian sappers are crouched on the side of a cratered highway. They carefully defuse a powerful Claymore anti-personnel mine hidden near a utility pole.
«I hate this job,» Artyom, a former auto mechanic, confesses moments after defusing the mine. There is a hiss, then a crash, as a Russian artillery shell hits the nearby fields.
Along the edge of a hill, the Ukrainian infantry slowly advances south, past the newly captured town of Rivnopil.
Artyom’s anger is not just about the dangers of the minefields, but about what it means to lay mines and booby traps instead of fighting the enemy «man to man.»
Later, at their temporary base in a cabin several kilometers away, the soldiers expressed frustration at the shortage of mine clearance equipment and sappers, four of whom have been injured in recent weeks.
But then Artyom shows us a large antenna and pulls out a laptop to start playing recent recordings of alleged radio interceptions by Russian soldiers.
The inappropriateness-filled messages seemed to indicate a degree of chaos and low morale.
«Our kamikaze drone hit our own vehicle. We have one dead, one injured.»
«Soldiers are escaping. Some are stealing cars. 50 people have fled.»
Radio interception suggests that Russian soldiers were abandoning their positions after a shelling by Ukrainian artillery.
«This happens from time to time. In groups of 10 or 20 people they disappear and go without permission. The Russians know that we can eavesdrop on their communications, but sometimes they forget,» says Artyom.
Optimism about progress
He describes himself as «realistic» about the Ukrainian counter-offensive. He alleges that too many people «in the media and in society are in a hurry» and expect rapid progress.
Two Ukrainian fighter jets fly low with a deafening roar, followed by a succession of crashes from the front, further south. Soon after we heard artillery and what sounds like a long range HIMARS rocket system hitting Russian positions.
Ukraine’s counteroffensive may be slow and relatively quiet at this stage. But one high command, speaking off the record, suggests that this patient approach will soon pay off, as long-range strikes have destroyed Russia’s ability to rearm its front-line units, and low morale among US troops. Putin opens up opportunities for strategic advances by Ukrainian forces.
«You will see this soon,» he says.
As for the vast stretches of minefields still waiting for the Ukrainian counterattack, Dill, the commander of the sapper squad near Bakhmut, is calm and confident.
«We are learning to improvise and invent ways to open fast and safe paths through the minefields. But we are fighting against a very fierce enemy,» he acknowledges.
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BBC-NEWS-SRC: IMPORT DATE: 2023-07-05 03:50:06
Andrew Harding
BBC News in Predtechyne and Neskuchnoye, Donbas