with the Ukrainian soldiers in Kharkiv

First modification: 09/20/2022 – 16:11Last modification: 09/20/2022 – 16:13

In the Ukraine conflict, Russian forces suffered one setback after another in September, withdrawing from much of the country’s northeast in the face of a lightning counter-offensive by the Ukrainians in the Kharkiv region. kyiv troops also regained ground, but more slowly, in the south.

A Ukrainian soldier describes his surprise at the Ukrainian counter-offensive: “We went up, captured a position, occupied it and fortified it. Three days later the front advanced and they (Russian soldiers) began to come out en masse. We were prepared to fight, so to think that they were going to leave the entire front, we had not planned it”.

Ukrainian soldiers are busy restarting equipment abandoned by the enemy. “This is the new generation of Russian Ural vehicles that they had prepared for the invasion… Well, now they are going to work for us,” explains this Ukrainian soldier.

The defeat of the Russian Army can be seen everywhere. These men, who have just arrived to secure the territory, are discovering the old Russian positions. Opposite lines have been broken. Here are only Lenin posters, a pin-up girl and Soviet-style newspapers with no bad news.

Part of the story of this tactical success is the ruse used by the Ukrainian command a few weeks before the counteroffensive.

This is what Andriy Malakhov, an officer of the Ukrainian special forces, says: “I led the assault, my main maneuver was the diversion, south of Balaklia. In fact, the greatest advance occurred in the west, but the intelligence services spread the information that the attack would take place in the south.

A success made even rarer by the fact that his troops, he says, were three times fewer than the enemy during the attack.

This article was adapted from its French original