On Oct. 15, Ukrainian soldier Yuriy Gromovych from the 92nd Mechanized Brigade was killed in action in Donbas, near the fortress city of Avdiyivka.
The next day, his combat unit reported on Facebook that he was struck through his own gun port — a small window in a fortification for opening fire — by an enemy marksman positioned close to the Ukrainian dugouts.
Gromovych became Ukraine’s eighth casualty this month. That same day, Yaroslava Nikonenko from the 101st General Staff Security Brigade was killed in Mariinka, also by a sniper. The next day, Stepan Kryl from the 36th Marine Brigade was killed in action near Mariupol.
In September, Ukraine lost 13 soldiers. Eight in August. Fourteen in July. Eight in June. Nine in May. The list goes on and on, and could include all 4,000 Ukrainian combatants killed in Donbas since 2014.
But there’s another sad piece of news: The death toll will continue to grow. And that’s not simply because we have a simmering, low-level trench war with no end in sight. Rather, it’s because Ukraine is wasting the lives of our soldiers in vain in this war.
For years, Ukrainian leadership adhered to the ineffective but very comfortable tactic of simply holding its soldiers in the line of fire, hiding behind their backs, and not caring to create a credible strategic plan of action for this war.
Ukrainian soldiers will never live to see the day they break through enemy lines with guns blazing because it isn’t going to happen. And they won’t be given a plan better than to stand passively, a grenade’s throw away from the enemy, and wait for the unknown.
They are not dying in the killing zones of Donbas because there is active, all-out warfare and the military has no option other than to engage an advancing enemy. They are dying because the political leadership of our country doesn’t have the guts to take responsibility for unpopular, but necessary steps in our situation — for instance, to implement a deal on mutual withdrawal of troops and weapons along the 450-kilometer front line.
Unlike most of my colleagues and friends in the military, I support President Volodymyr Zelensky’s attempts to make progress in the disengagement. And not because I’m a quitter wishing to end the war at any price, but because what is happening now in the war zone makes no sense and is criminally negligent with the lives of our soldiers and officers.
Ukrainian soldiers dig a trench on the front line with Russia-backed separatists in the small city of Shyrokyne, 25 km from Azov Sea port of Mariupol, on Nov. 28, 2018. (AFP)
We are doomed to continue receiving a dozen soldiers’ coffins every month because our troops are needlessly stationed too close to the enemy.
As someone who has been virtually everywhere along the Donbas front line over the five-plus years of war, I know what I’m talking about.
Soldiers have asked me countless times to speak quietly along the front line because Russian-backed militants were hiding in a ruined house just across the street and letting them discover our position was not a very good idea.
I once peeked out from behind Ukrainian fortifications to see flags of militant formations like the Vostok Battalion waving behind nearby bushes. I could hear these Russian proxy fighters shouting obscenities from their own trenches.
I can’t remember how many times I have seen Ukrainian forces relentlessly firing on new enemy engineering works and communications equipment across the front line, only to prepare for reaction strikes afterwards. And vice versa.
When opposing troops stand in direct contact, unable to break through each other’s defenses, the logic of static trench war comes into play.
It’s all about a grueling, never-ending struggle for advantageous spots in no-man’s land. Where civilians see a bare and scorched wasteland between the lines, people of war see opportunities to improve their positions and gain the upper hand over the enemy.
A Ukrainian soldier mans a combat post in the Promzona area near the city of Avdiyivka on July 21, 2018. (Volodymyr Petrov)
They step in and try and make use of any opportunity to set up secret observation posts keeping an eye on enemy lines and to prevent the enemy from doing the same. Or to explore safe paths to new sniper nests and enemy outposts. Or to set up booby traps on paths that enemy scouts could also be using.
The struggle continues, and soldiers fight to improve their own communications and cripple the enemy’s or to strengthen their fortifications and prevent the enemy from doing the same by any means available.
Many, many other small-scale tactics comprise the everyday routine of this frozen war — and all are situationally necessary, lest the enemy gain the upper hand. This bloody cat-and-mouse game, this war of small squads struggling for tactical benefits eventually becomes a never-ending, self-sustaining process.
On the other hand, in many locations along the front line, there had been almost no armed clashes for years — as in much of Luhansk Oblast, where the lines are separated by the broad waters of the Siverskiy Donets River.
Almost all fresh military and civilian casualties occur in hotspots east of Mariupol or in Mariinka, Krasnohorivka, Avdiyivka or Horlivka, where opposing forces remain in close contact. In many ways, this is why we keep suffering casualties every three or four days while the front line has stayed deadly frozen since early 2015.
And this is not going to stop.
A Ukrainian soldier mans a dugout recently retaken from Russian-backed militants in a combat area near the town of Svitlodarsk on Dec. 27, 2016. (Anatolii Stepanov)
The ugly truth is that these weak tactics are not justified. Every drop of sweat and blood shed by a soldier must have a very clear and practical reason behind it if Ukraine is to be a Westernized, European society and not a post-Soviet banana republic that doesn’t care for people’s lives.
In this situation, there’s no reason for Ukrainian soldiers to stay in the killing zone for years, hiding behind their flimsy defenses. Their costly war effort isn’t being converted into something that makes Ukraine stronger and more capable of resisting the ignoble peace imposed upon Ukraine in Minsk.
Ukrainians are simply treading water until Europe and Russia make a deal over their heads and force them to implement the Minsk agreement in its entirety. Given that Ukrainian leadership has wasted five years and failed to propose a real alternative to Minsk, the best thing to do is continue the diplomatic battle with the Kremlin — with Ukraine’s military power as its strongest argument.
If Ukraine is not sending the army to retake Donbas in a gory battle, it must continue to contain the enemy all along the front line. But this doesn’t mean the Ukrainian troops must continue standing a shout away from enemy lines, engaged in a never-ending and fruitless scuffle for the gray zone.
That is why I do not oppose Zelensky’s negotiations on the mutual withdrawal of troops and am not joining the choir of accusations of “capitulation” and “surrendering Ukrainian land to the enemy.” According to the plan, Ukrainian forces can be pulled nearly 1 kilometer back (while the Russian proxies do the same, of course) to the designated areas of Zolote and Petrivske and then in all other front-line sectors where necessary.
Read also: Front-line town of Zolote seeks rescue from war
This already happened in Stanytsya Luhanska in late June and the world did not end, contrary to the apocalyptic prophecies from hardline fans of former President Petro Poroshenko.
Sadly, Ukrainian society remains bitterly misinformed about the provisions of disengagement. Many believe it will mean Ukrainian troops getting up and abandoning their trenches at a moment’s notice, allowing Russian-backed militants to advance and occupy them.
No, this is not how it should happen — and this is not what is in the agreement. This misunderstanding, which makes people join angry crowds protesting “capitulation,” is yet another result of the Zelensky administration’s absolute inability to explain its plans and actions.
In reality, the disengagement will take place mutually, step by step. No Ukrainian unit moves unless a certain Russian-backed unit withdraws at the same time.
And the army isn’t going anywhere. It will remain all along the front line with the same mission: contain the enemy and be ready to repel an all-out offensive. And it can continue fulfilling this mission, stationed beyond direct contact zones and not sacrificing soldiers’ lives, while politicians in Kyiv continue their endless negotiations.
A Ukrainian soldier engages the enemy during a combat clash with Russian-backed militants near the town of Novoluhanske, eastern Ukraine, overnight into June 15, 2019. (Volodymyr Petrov)
Amid hysteria and empty discussions, the military is actually proposing clear and realistic plans for a relatively fail-safe disengagement operation. As Major General Ihor Hordiychuk, the hero of the battle of Savur Mohyla, said on Oct. 11, the demilitarized zone between the withdrawn forces can be patrolled by special light-armed police units, ensuring law and order for local civilians.
But the military would continue to stand ready for action within 10-20 minutes in case the enemy breaks the agreements.
In all cases, what General Hordiychuk proposes is much better than losing 12 soldiers a month in the name of “Not one step backwards!” slogans posted on Facebook. By the way, Ukrainian troops once returned to their lines after a failed mutual pullout near Zolote in 2016. So nothing is irreversible, should it not work out.
The disengagement plan is also not something unheard of in modern conflicts.
The most vivid example from recent history is Israel and Syria after the Yom Kippur War of 1973. The two conflicting countries eventually signed an armistice envisaging a mutual pullback of troops in the Golan Heights and the establishment of a United Nations-patrolled demilitarized zone near the area of al-Quneitra.
More than 40 years on, this agreement still holds the status quo in the region, although the situation never found an ultimate political solution. By the logic of those opposing attempts to negotiate disengagement in Donbas, Syrian and Israeli troops would have continued with a static war for all these decades.
Of course, no one is saying that disengagement in Donbas will end the war. For now, it is only an instrument to reduce military losses and continue the struggle.
And by no account does this mean that the disengagement must be achieved at any price. But if this option is still on the table in Minsk, Zelensky and his team must negotiate it, no matter how politically unpalatable it may be.
Not a single soldier’s life is worth sacrificing for Zelensky’s approval rating to stay high.
