ZAPORIZKA REGION, Ukraine — The day after the conflict started, after their unit was once just about burnt up in a missile strike, Ukrainian Sgt. Oleksandr Gorvat offered his female friend and commanding officer, First Lt. Olena Petyak, a hoop he had twisted in combination from twine and requested for her hand in marriage.
“Formally we’re now not meant to serve in combination, however we don’t seem to be formally married,” he defined on Friday, amid the whoosh of Grad rockets being fired at close by Russian positions. “This is for after the conflict. Once we win.”
Along with their unit, the 128th Separate Mountain Attack Brigade, the couple, each 25, had been dug right into a frontline place within the Zaporizka area of south-central Ukraine, east of the Dnipro River and most effective about two miles from the place Russian forces had been making an attempt to overrun extra territory.
Fierce combating was once underway on Friday throughout a band of southeastern Ukraine, in and round primary cities like Polohy, Orikhiv and Vasylivka, which is at the banks of the Dnipro. It fell to the troops of the 128th to forestall Russian forces from pushing farther north towards the vital business town of Zaporizhzhia, simply 20 miles north of Vasylivka at the river.
The Kremlin has completed certainly one of its strategic targets, seizing a strip of land alongside the Azov Sea, linking the Donbas area within the east, now the focal point of the conflict, with Crimea, the peninsula President Vladimir V. Putin invaded and annexed in 2014. The one vital pocket of resistance final is a sprawling metal mill advanced within the ruined port town of Mariupol, the place Ukrainian warring parties and civilians are in underground bunkers, underneath heavy bombardment.
However the Russians had been making an attempt this week to extend that ribbon of territory, pushing north from the coast towards Zaporizhzhia. Different Russian forces had been pushing west thru Donbas, the place on Friday one of the vital heaviest fight was once being waged across the town of Sievierodonetsk and the city of Popasna. Moscow’s military was once additionally advancing southward from town of Izium. Altogether, the entrance line is ready 300 miles lengthy.
Moscow’s separatist proxies in Donbas, subsidized by means of Russian apparatus and troops, have held a part of the area since 2014, and Russia has mentioned that it targets to extend its territory there. How a long way Mr. Putin will move is unclear, however the Kremlin seems intent on trapping a lot of the Ukrainian army in a pincer and destroying it.
Lieutenant Petyak, who’s 2d in control of the brigade, mentioned the objective within the Zaporizhzhia area — the southwestern a part of that entrance line — was once now not simply to carry the Russians at a standstill however to push them again.
“The enemy is repeatedly firing with artillery, tanks, Grads, and aviation in our route,” she mentioned. “They need to knock out this phase, however they received’t be capable of do it as a result of we’re right here. To the contrary they’ll need to surrender their positions as a result of I’m sure that someday quickly we can push ahead and take the rest of the land that they’ve been in a position to quickly occupy.”
That can turn out a problem, even for the Ukrainian forces, that have shocked army analysts {and professional} infantrymen with their fierce and efficient protection for the reason that get started of the conflict.
After Mr. Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, Russian forces primarily based within the Crimean Peninsula, one of the vital nation’s maximum professional and well-equipped, lunged north, gobbling up territory in southern Ukraine each within the route of Kherson, west of the Dnipro, and east towards Mariupol.
Early within the morning of Feb. 24, the warriors of the 128th brigade discovered the conflict had begun when a Russian cruise missile hit their base, simply lacking the barracks the place they slept. The troops had been in a position to flee into the close by woods.
It was once tomorrow, as they scrambled to regroup and sign up for the fight in opposition to the invading Russians that Sergeant Gorvat proposed.
In the beginning the brigade was once deployed within the neighborhood of Melitopol, a southern town about halfway between Crimea and Zaporizhzhia. However they’ve been driven again just about 70 miles to the north. They’re now entrenched in a patch of woods wedged between wheat fields which are vibrant inexperienced with spring enlargement.
Ukrainians who reside within the coastal territory that Russia has seized proceed to surge north in the hunt for shelter in Ukrainian-held lands. Convoys of automobiles and buses, encumbered with suitcases, arrive steadily on the parking space of a household items retailer in Zaporizhzhia. Many arrive with unsettling stories of the Russian career.
“It’s general lawlessness,” mentioned Natalya Gorbova, who arrived in Zaporizhzhia on Thursday along with her 17-year previous son, Egor. That they had fled Melitopol, whose mayor was once abducted by means of Russian forces and dragged from his workplace with a bag over his head. He was once most effective launched after Ukraine agreed to a prisoner switch.
“In the event you keep house, it’s high-quality,” Ms. Gorbova mentioned, “however there are those guys strolling round with weapons who do no matter they would like.”
In Ukrainian territory, she mentioned, “it’s more straightforward to respire.”
Ukraine’s entrance line positions buzz with surveillance drones that Russian forces use to focus on their artillery. At one level on Friday, Capt. Vitaliy Nevinsky, the commander of the 128th, dispersed a gaggle of infantrymen chatting shut in combination round a campfire, lest a drone direct an artillery strike into the center in their accumulating.
The primary weeks of the conflict had been a baptism by means of fireplace for the 128th. At one level, Captain Nevinsky defined, his forces had been surrounded and needed to punch their method in the course of the Russian traces. Captain Nevinsky, 25, mentioned he was once using on a tank, masking the unit’s break out when it was once hit by means of a shell. He suffered shrapnel wounds and a concussion, however returned to the entrance traces two weeks later.
His brigade is best geared up now, he mentioned, with antitank missiles supplied by means of the American citizens and the British, in addition to Stinger antiaircraft missiles and different complicated guns techniques. Those have helped gradual the Russian forces down, he mentioned. This week, he mentioned, the brigade has taken out two Russian T-72 tanks that strayed too on the subject of their positions.
“We’re on our personal land,” he mentioned. “We’re protecting ourselves and knocking out this horde, this invasion of our territory.”
