Ukrainian soldiers in Donetsk and Kharkiv have a clear vision of danger and glory alike

Updated 01 April 2023

Ukrainian soldiers in Donetsk and Kharkiv have a clear vision of danger and glory alike

Special Ukrainian soldiers in Donetsk and Kharkiv have a clear vision of danger and glory alike
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Ukrainian artillery in action in Donetsk. (AN photo by Mykhaylo Palinchak) 
Special Ukrainian soldiers in Donetsk and Kharkiv have a clear vision of danger and glory alike
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Ihor Reznik, commander of the Kharkiv Territorial Brigade, told Arab News his soldiers “need drones for survey and proper armored vehicles.” (AN photo by Mykhaylo Palinchak)
Special Ukrainian soldiers in Donetsk and Kharkiv have a clear vision of danger and glory alike
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The Kharkiv Territorial Defense Battalion is dug in along the barren landscape, with deep trenches and sandbags piled high to protect its personnel from enemy fire. (AN photo by Mykhaylo Palinchak)
Special Ukrainian soldiers in Donetsk prepare their Soviet-era artillery to launch attacks on Russian bases. (AN photo by Mykhaylo Palinchak)
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Ukrainian soldiers in Donetsk prepare their Soviet-era artillery to launch attacks on Russian bases. (AN photo by Mykhaylo Palinchak)
Special Ukrainian soldiers in Donetsk prepare their Soviet-era artillery to launch attacks on Russian bases. (AN photo by Mykhaylo Palinchak)
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Ukrainian soldiers in Donetsk prepare their Soviet-era artillery to launch attacks on Russian bases. (AN photo by Mykhaylo Palinchak)
Special Ukrainian soldiers in Donetsk and Kharkiv have a clear vision of danger and glory alike
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Commander Oleksander trains local and foreign recruits train under his watchful eye at the AIDAR Battalion base in Kostyantynivka. (AN photo by Mykhaylo Palinchak)
Special Ukrainian soldiers in Donetsk and Kharkiv have a clear vision of danger and glory alike
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Oleksandr, commander of the Aidar Battalion, an assault unit of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, in Kostyantynivka, an industrial city in Donetsk. (AN photo by Mykhaylo Palinchak)
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  • Local commander appreciates weapons donations, says troops lack technical skills and expertise to operate them
  • Loss of homes and livelihoods proved too much to bear for those who remained during Russian control

DONETSK: In Kostyantynivka, an industrial city in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, just 20 kilometers southwest of the Bakhmut front line, local and foreign recruits train under the watchful eye of Oleksandr, commander of the Aidar Battalion, an assault unit of the Ukrainian Ground Forces.

Oleksandr, a handsome man in his 30s, has been a soldier since 2014, joining up shortly after his girlfriend’s father was taken captive by Russian-backed forces that same year. Since then, his prowess as a leader on the battlefield has seen him promoted to the rank of commander.

 

 

“I know how the enemy operates by now; their strategy is to create confusion and chaos. We run ours by critical thinking, by going over our mistakes and learning from them to do better in the next battle,” he told Arab News at the unit’s local barracks.

“We have been successful in most if not all of our battles, but we need more. We need more weapons, we need more drones, we need more support. We have been trying to produce our own weapons but it is not enough.”

Bakhmut has been the site of some of the bloodiest fighting since Russia launched what it called a “special military operation” on Feb. 24, 2022.




The Director (nom de guerre) inside underground bunker by the Russian border in Ukraine's Kharkiv region. (AN photo by Mykhaylo Palinchak)

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has verified a total of 8,317 civilian deaths during the invasion of Ukraine as of March 19. Furthermore, 13,892 people were reported to have been injured. However, the numbers could be higher.

According to recent estimates, the conflict has wounded or killed 180,000 Russian soldiers and 100,000 Ukrainian troops. Other Western sources estimate the war has caused 150,000 casualties on each side.

Russian armed forces and the Wagner Group — a private military contractor which has recruited from Russia’s jails — sent a massive land force to capture the region, stretching Ukrainian ammunition to the limit.

“We see the Russian soldiers trying to emulate our strategy,” said Oleksandr. “The Wagner soldiers consist of former convicts and drug addicts. They are running low on recruit numbers and have been relying on prisons to fill in their ranks.”

In their attempt to punch through Ukrainian lines, Russian forces have been using a technique known as the “fox den” strategy, in which a grenade is attached to a drone and dropped into Ukrainian trenches from above.




The Z letter, a tactical insignia of Russian troops in Ukraine, is seen on the captured Russian towed artillery to be refurbished at the brigade's workshop in Kharkiv region on February 20, 2023. (AFP)

Nevertheless, Russian losses on this stretch of the battlefield have been high, with an attrition rate more severe than that of the Ukrainian defenders. “We do not underestimate our enemy, but they keep making the same mistakes. I have a feeling they do not learn,” said Oleksandr.

“Russian walkie talkies have fallen into our possession. What we heard shows they’re stubborn. Their generals don’t care how — the command is to get the job done no matter what, no matter the cannon fodder.”

NATO’s member states have been supplying Ukraine with modern battle tanks and other high-tech weaponry, supplementing the old Soviet-era technology that has long been the mainstay of Ukraine’s war effort.

Oleksandr says he appreciates the weapons donations, but says his troops still lack the technical skills and expertise to operate, maintain and repair the new gear. “Regardless, we will never surrender,” he said.

The Aidar Battalion came to prominence in recent months thanks to its social media activity, clocking up some 4.5 million subscribers on its TikTok account.




AIDAR Assault Battalion soldier at an undisclosed base in Kostyantinivka, Donetsk, in Ukraine. (AN photo by Mykhaylo Palinchak)

Known as the “dancing soldiers,” short videos of its personnel performing traditional dances in full battle dress have become a source of inspiration and a morale boost for the wider Ukrainian armed forces and the public at large.

“You need to find a way to have fun, or else you won’t survive,” said Oleksandr. “I also make videos for my daughter, so she can see what her father is doing.”

Further to the northwest, in the Kharkiv region, the Kharkiv Territorial Defense Battalion is dug in along the barren landscape, with deep trenches and sandbags piled high to protect its personnel from enemy fire.

Most of the region was retaken from Russian forces in September 2022 during a massive Ukrainian counteroffensive, in what was viewed at the time as a significant turning point in the war. However, this momentum has since been lost, resulting in a bitter stalemate.




Ukrainian artillery unit soldier in Kostyantinivka, Donetsk. (AN photo by Mykhaylo Palinchak)

The months of fighting across this wide front left unfathomable carnage in its wake, with homes and businesses reduced to rubble and farmland churned up and left fallow.

“The Russians destroyed everything,” Yuriy, a local man in his 40s, told Arab News at his now-disused farm in Kharkiv. “We let our animals free from our barn to give them the chance to survive. Some I believe are still alive near the river.”

Many local families have chosen to leave the area for the comparative safety of western Ukraine and neighboring countries. For those who remained during the months of Russian control, the loss of homes and livelihoods proved too much to bear.




Yuriy, a farmer from Kharkiv, at his damaged home. (AN photo by Mykhaylo Palinchak)

“The building housed my parents, myself and my brother,” said Yuriy, pointing to his family’s damaged farmhouse.

“My father died of a heart attack. The conditions the Russians put us under didn’t aid his ailment. He couldn’t withstand it. He passed away. My mother and brother have relocated. I still return here from time to time.

“I don’t know where to start to rebuild. I think this will be the last time I am here.”

Despite their stalled progress, the Ukrainian armed forces stationed here remain in high spirits, but ever vigilant, their weapons trained on the horizon for signs of enemy activity.

“We are here to protect the border,” one soldier, who went by the nom de guerre “The Director,” told Arab News from his underground bunker.

“The shelling is the hardest to get used to, but we are here to protect our motherland. The shift keeps rotating and we are always on the lookout. There is no way back from here. We have enough food and warm clothes but we need more weapons. The Russians are not welcome here and we will not stop till we defeat them.”

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Several of the men serving in The Director’s battalion had little or no combat experience prior to their deployment, working as lawyers, teachers and civil servants, yet all have quickly adapted to their new realities. Few have seen their families in months.

“I took my children and wife to safety, but this is my town,” Ihor Reznik, commander of the Kharkiv Territorial Brigade, told Arab News. “We made it through hard battles. Now there is random shelling and we try to respond adequately. We need drones for survey and we need proper armored vehicles.”

Reznik’s daughter Anna, aged 25, serves in the Kharkiv Territorial Defense Battalion’s 127th Brigade. Before the war, she studied mathematics and computer science at a university in France.




Commander Ihor Reznik with his daughter Anna at the 127th Brigade base in Kharkiv region, Ukraine. (AN photo by Mykhaylo Palinchak)

Although she was close to graduation, she chose to quit her studies in order to join her father’s brigade, where she now serves as a military photographer for its press department.

“It’s always been a hobby, but now it is my way of serving in this war,” she told Arab News. “At the beginning, my parents were against it, but came to understand it was my decision. I need to document what is happening.”

And although she has frequently found herself in life-threatening situations while working in the field, she believes her commitment to the cause of documenting the conflict helps her to remain calm while under fire.

“When one has not been faced with such situations, one doesn’t know how to react. But I remain calm,” she said. “The camera is my weapon. No matter how difficult it gets, I never regret my decision. I know I am in the right place at the right time.”

 


Pentagon says concerned over China’s ‘increasingly risky’ actions in Asia

Pentagon says concerned over China’s ‘increasingly risky’ actions in Asia
Updated 04 June 2023

Pentagon says concerned over China’s ‘increasingly risky’ actions in Asia

Pentagon says concerned over China’s ‘increasingly risky’ actions in Asia

SINGAPORE: The Pentagon voiced concern on Sunday over the Chinese military’s “increasingly risky and coercive activities” in Asia.
“We remain concerned about the PLA’s increasingly risky and coercive activities in the region, including in recent days,” said Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, who is with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at a security conference in Singapore.

 


Five Greek police officers in custody pending trial for assisting illegal migrant crossings

Five Greek police officers in custody pending trial for assisting illegal migrant crossings
Updated 03 June 2023

Five Greek police officers in custody pending trial for assisting illegal migrant crossings

Five Greek police officers in custody pending trial for assisting illegal migrant crossings
  • The five officers had been testifying before an examining magistrate since Saturday morning at the border town of Orestiada
  • Agents from the internal affairs division of the Greek police had been monitoring the five officers since October 2022

THESSALONIKI, Greece: Five police officers accused of cooperating with human traffickers to facilitate the entry of at least 100 migrants into Greece are being held in custody pending trial.
The five officers had been testifying before an examining magistrate since Saturday morning at the border town of Orestiada, in northeastern Greece.
Agents from the internal affairs division of the Greek police had been monitoring the five officers, who serve in a special border guard unit, since October 2022. They also listened into their phone conversations, whose transcripts run into over 2,000 pages. The officers had aroused suspicion by volunteering to patrol at certain times, together.
Authorities say the offices facilitated at least 12 border crossings, collaborating with four traffickers of undetermined nationality who operated from Turkiye.
Authorities allege that the accused officers took a cut from the money the traffickers received from the migrants to take them across the border. When the officers were arrested last Monday in the border town of Didymoteicho, police confiscated some 26,000 euros ($28,000) in cash, and nearly 60 mobile phones.
Almost all the land border between Greece and Turkiye is formed by the Evros River, called Meric in Turkiye. The Evros is a key crossing point into Greece for people seeking a better life in the European Union. Greece has built a high fence along much of the border to prevent migrants crossing, and is planning to further extend it.


Death toll climbs in Senegal after two days of violent protests

Death toll climbs in Senegal after two days of violent protests
Updated 03 June 2023

Death toll climbs in Senegal after two days of violent protests

Death toll climbs in Senegal after two days of violent protests
  • The flow of migrants from Tunisia has intensified since President Kais Saied made a fiery speech on Feb. 21 claiming illegal immigration was a demographic threat to Tunisia

DAKAR: The death toll from anti-government protests in Senegal has risen to 15, police said on Saturday, as authorities in the capital Dakar began to clear up debris and secure looted shops after two days of unrest.
Most of Dakar appeared quiet on Saturday, but tensions remained high after violent protests in several cities killed six people on Friday, taking the total number killed this week to 15, a police spokesperson said by phone.
The toll has now surpassed the number killed in multi-day protests in 2021, when supporters of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko first took to the streets over a rape trial they say is politically motivated.
Sonko denies any wrongdoing.

FASTFACT

Mobs smashed windows and looted at least two gas station shops in Dakar’s Ouakam and Ngor districts.

Sonko’s sentencing on Thursday, which could prevent him from running in the February presidential election, sparked the latest turmoil as protesters heeded his call to stand up to the authorities.
Mobs smashed windows and looted at least two gas station shops in Dakar’s Ouakam and Ngor districts, while a supermarket in densely populated Grand Yoff was torched and ransacked. Rubble littered the roads that were scarred black by fires.
“The police could not do anything, there were too many of them. The police had to leave after several attempts to control the crowd with tear-gas grenades,” said resident Khadija by the supermarket whose interior was gutted and strewn with broken shelves, mud and trash.
The government has enlisted the army to back up the many riot police still stationed around the city. Over a dozen soldiers guarded the trashed gas station in Ouakam on Saturday, as some shop owners tentatively opened their doors, although streets were unusually empty.
Abdou Ndiaye, the owner of a nearby corner shop said he had closed early the two previous days and opened late on Saturday, fearful of the unrest that he said was the worst he’d seen in his 15 years of business.
“We are so scared because you don’t know when the crowds will come, and when they come they take ... your goods, they are thieves,” he said in a storeroom stacked with sacks of food and household items.
“There are people who demonstrate but there are others who do whatever they want.”
The unrest is the latest in a string of opposition protests in Senegal, long considered one of West Africa’s most stable democracies, sparked by Sonko’s court case as well as concerns that President Macky Sall will try to bypass the two-term limit and run again in February elections.
Sall has neither confirmed nor denied this.

 


Greek police find €3.2 million of cocaine in banana containers

Greek police find €3.2 million of cocaine in banana containers
Updated 03 June 2023

Greek police find €3.2 million of cocaine in banana containers

Greek police find €3.2 million of cocaine in banana containers
  • Police seized two suspect containers at the port of Piraeus
  • The drugs are estimated to be worth about €3.2 million, police said

ATHENS: Police in northern Greece have seized dozens of packages of cocaine stashed in containers laden with bananas that had been shipped from Latin America, they said on Saturday.
Police seized two suspect containers at the port of Piraeus and, after taking them to the port of Thessaloniki, found 100 “bricks” of concealed cocaine, weighing 161 kilos.
The drugs, which would have been distributed across Greece and other European countries, are estimated to be worth about €3.2 million, police said.
The consignment was found as part of an investigation Greece launched last month with North Macedonia authorities and the US anti-drug agency, following the seizure of about 100 kilos of cocaine also hidden in banana containers at a warehouse in Thessaloniki. Some 14 people have been arrested in that case.


Nearly 300 killed in one of India’s worst rail disasters in history

Nearly 300 killed in one of India’s worst rail disasters in history
Updated 03 June 2023

Nearly 300 killed in one of India’s worst rail disasters in history

Nearly 300 killed in one of India’s worst rail disasters in history
  • Two trains carrying thousands of passengers collided with a freight train
  • Odisha observes day of mourning after the disaster of ‘unimaginable scale’

NEW DELHI: Nearly 300 people have died and hundreds of others were injured in eastern India when three trains collided in one of the worst rail disasters in the country’s history, authorities said on Saturday.
The accident took place in the Balasore district of Odisha state on Friday when the Coromandel Shalimar Express from Kolkata to Chennai derailed after hitting a parked freight train. Another train, the Howrah Superfast Express, traveling in the opposite from Yesvantpur to Howrah, then hit the overturned carriages.
The Coromandel Shalimar Express had 2,000 people on board and the Howrah Superfast Express at least 1,000, according to their passenger manifests.

FASTFACT

The state government of Odisha sent 200 ambulances and hundreds of first responders to the scene as it mobilized dozens of doctors to attend to the injured, saying that the accident was a ‘disaster of unimaginable scale.’

The state government of Odisha sent 200 ambulances and hundreds of first responders to the scene as it mobilized dozens of doctors to attend to the injured, saying that the accident was a “disaster of unimaginable scale.”
The South Eastern Railway, which has jurisdiction over the area, confirmed on Saturday afternoon that at least 261 people were killed in the crash.
“Another 650 injured passengers are being treated at various hospitals in Odisha,” SER spokesperson Aditya Chowdhury told reporters.
Rescuers who continued to dig through debris to find survivors feared that the toll might still increase.
Dr. Sudhanshu Sarangi, director-general of the Odisha Fire Service, said the aftermath of the accident was “extremely distressing” and many of the rescued were critically injured.
“So many dead bodies, the smell, the rigor mortis, it’s terrible. We won’t be able to sleep for a few nights. It’s a terrible tragedy,” he told Arab News.
A day of mourning was observed in Odisha on Saturday as top officials, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, arrived in the crash site.
The accident has caused disruptions in the movement of hundreds of trains from eastern India to the rest of the country.
India has the largest network of railway tracks in the world with over 13 million people traveling 70,000 km of track in over 14,000 trains every day.
Each year, several hundred accidents are recorded on the country’s railways, but the one in Odisha was the worst since August 1999, when two trains collided near Kolkata, killing at least 285 people.
In August 1995, at least 350 people are killed when two trains collided 200 km from Delhi.
The country’s worst train disaster took place in June 1981, when seven of the nine coaches of an overcrowded train fell into a river during a cyclone in the eastern state of Bihar.

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