from the field of maneuvers to the front lines

If they wanted, after the daily training –which lasts from morning to afternoon– they could walk to the trenches where almost everyone has a friend or family member –at the gates of that hell that continues to be the city of Bakhmut– and smoke a cigarette there with them while listening to the night bombardments. It seems like the plot of a science fiction movie, but it is the reality of a war that has been bleeding Ukraine dry for more than 16 months, and that is going to get even worse this summer.

Precisely from the combat front come some of the instructors who impart this phase of military training to the recruits. The soldiers are silent as they pass, they are different from the others. They are struggling on the battlefield, his face is hardened, just like his gaze. And the youngest feel a mixture of admiration and gratitude that is difficult to explain. “That’s one of the most experienced ones,” a soldier whispers to me, as a bearded major climbs out of a BMP-2.

They will learn how to assault an enemy position from these amphibious-capable armored fighting vehicles, which are designed to carry a squad of foot soldiers. Some carry the Ukrainian flag, in others the flagpole looks empty because time and war have gnawed at the piece of blue and yellow cloth.

soviet vehicles

The design of these vehicles – with which it is common to come across on the roads if you live near the front – is Soviet, although its use spread throughout half the world. From Angola to Afghanistan, passing through Iraq, Yugoslavia or Chechnya.

In the eighties, the extinct USSR was an authentic factory for the design and production of war weapons. From armored vehicles to cannons of all calibers. They were mass-produced. Over time, in the West they modernized those designs or changed them for others that provided more range, precision or autonomy.

But in Eastern Europe, the huge remnants of this type of weapon – which was manufactured until the 1990s – continues to be the backbone of many armies today. Starting with Russian, and continuing with Ukrainian -although Zelensky’s soldiers are adapting at record speed to the use of modern weapons sent by allied countries–.

However, it is difficult to see those modern armored vehicles, the Leopards or the Himars rocket launchers: they constantly change their location, to protect them, using them only in very well planned offensive operations. So what you find in 90% of the front line positions are still BMPs, T-64s and Grads.

But the instructors of the 28th Brigade do not complain: it is what they have, they know how to repair them when they break down and they are used to fight. When they get out of these vehicles and take off their helmets, sweat runs down their necks, mixing with the dust that the mud that covered everything this spring has turned into.

Nor do they protest the sun of justice that turns the inside of BMP’s into saunas, nor the dust that gets in your eyes and dries your throat. The spirit of the troop remains unbreakable, despite the harsh conditions in which they are going to have to fight during the next months.

This war is not the one of 2014

Many of the new recruits have no military experience, but others have fought sporadically in Donbas between 2014 and the start of the Russian invasion in 2022. “It’s common in this part of the country: many men went off to fight a month or two a year, when they had vacations, or for short periods. Almost every man in Donbas has fought at some point,” Alina, the translator, explains to me.

However, the Donbas war had little or nothing to do with it. It was a low-intensity conflict, where the biggest “boom” could do was a Grad projectile. “There were seasons in which the war consisted of firing a few bursts with the rifle at the Russian positions, normally without casualties, and you you went back to the rest area until the next day,” another soldier confessed.

“Now we prepare them for something else”says Sergei, one of the press officers of the 28 Brigade. “The training is much better, because our Army is also better, it is better structured and we know what we have to focus on,” he explains as we enter a wooded area, where they will learn to defuse antipersonnel mines.

“The Russians have mined everything, absolutely everything”, Add. So the lives of these soldiers – most of them very young – depend to a large extent on their learning this lesson well. The mine instructor is also an experienced military man, and he patiently explains everything.

After the theoretical part, which they receive sitting on the ground in a clearing in the forest, practice arrives. The instructor has placed mines in another part of the field, and the soldiers must spot them. They walk in slow motion, crouching at times, because in actual combat they will be taking Russian fire as they try to advance without being blown up by a mine.

In one hand they carry the rifle, in the other a thin branch with which they part the vegetation to inspect the soil. Suddenly a loud explosion startles us all, and several pieces of earth and moss fall on my notebook: the instructor has detonated one of the mines. It is part of the training, which they will repeat every day, for a month.

After mine class, they will do an urban combat simulation. “They are also instructed in sanitary issues, knowledge of military engineering and many other things. This instruction is one of the most complete and important,” Sergey adds.

When they finish their training in this improvised war school, next to the Bakhmut front, they will go into combat. There are no practices here. They will be integrated into a mechanized infantry battalion, and the assault operations on enemy positions will be real. Some will fall in combat – they all know it – but still they have decided to enlist in the army. in one of the most complicated moments of this war.