Ukraine takes a defensive stance with barricades
Rows of concrete barricades and coils of razor wire stretch across an open field for more than a kilometre.
Trenches with rudimentary living quarters are being dug under cover of darkness. Artillery rumbles not far away.
New defensive lines visited by Reuters near the northeastern city of Kupiansk on December 28 show Ukraine stepping up construction of fortifications in recent months as it puts its military operations against Russia on a more defensive footing.
The defences, similar to those rolled out in the Russian-occupied south and east, are intended to help Ukraine weather assaults while regenerating its forces as Moscow takes the battlefield initiative, say military analysts said.
“As soon as the troops are moving, traversing fields, you can do without fortifications. But when the troops stop, you need to immediately dig into the ground,” said a Ukrainian army engineer.
President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Ukraine was “significantly enhancing” fortifications on November 28 after a counteroffensive that it launched in June failed to punch through Russian lines rapidly.
Kyiv says it is not swayed in its ambition to retake all remaining occupied territory, but for now it is focused on politically sensitive conscription reforms to replenish manpower and on dealing with artillery shortages at the front.
Russia has been ramping up offensive pressure around eastern towns such as Kupiansk, Lyman and Avdiivka. Itno longer needs to hold back reserve troops for fear of a possible Ukrainian breakthrough, said the military analysts.
Zelensky said Ukraine’s construction of defences needs to be boosted and work has accelerated around the three towns, in eastern parts of the Donetsk region, and in the regions of Kharkiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, Kyiv, Rivne and Volyn.
Those regions stretch all the way up from Ukraine’s east, along the border with Russia and Belarus, to its western ally Poland. Zelensky said that the southern Kherson region, a swathe of which is still occupied, would also be reinforced.
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There is no publicly available data for the intensity or scale of the fortification construction.
Ukraine has had defensive lines in some areas of the eastern Donbas region since 2014, when Russia backed militants seized territory.
Kyiv forces have remained dug in intensively at places such as Avdiivka since the start of the Russian invasion.
Stronger fortifications would slow down Russian troops and suck fewer Ukrainian forces into defence, freeing them up from the front so that they could, for instance, receive more training, said Jack Watling, senior research fellow for land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute.
“The Ukrainians are now shifting onto a defensive posture because their offensive has culminated,” he said in a telephone interview.
Watling said that Russia has retaken the initiative on the battlefield and is able to choose where to attack.
With Ukrainian artillery ammunition stocks falling, the rate of Russian casualties is falling, making it easier for Moscow to generate new units, which in time could allow them to open up new lines of attack, he said.
“On the Ukrainian side, they are trying to minimise their own casualties, but also regenerate offensive combat power,” said Watling. Fortifications could also be used to defend Ukraine’s flanks when it goes back on the offensive.
TRENCHES
On Wednesday, Reuters reporters visited trenches being dug with an excavator and shovels at an undisclosed location in the Chernihiv region near the Russian border.
“When the civilians have done their job [building the positions], we will mine it densely,” Serhiy Nayev, Ukraine’s joint forces commander who oversees the northern military sector, told reporters at the site.
The military has expanded its defensive fortifications in the north by 63% in the past few months, Ukraine’s joint forces quoted Nayev as saying on Thursday.
In December, Reuters reporters visited newly built Ukrainian trenches in Chernobyl near the border with Belarus, a Russian ally used by Moscow as a staging ground for the February 2022 invasion. A large military engineering vehicle churned through the snowy ground as it carved out a wide antitank ditch.
This fortification is continuing “along the whole northern operational zone. These works are currently under way in Sumy region, Chernihiv region, here in the Kyiv direction,” Nayev said at the site.
“Concrete structures, barbed wire ... ‘dragon’s teeth’ [concrete barricades] ... they will be mined and barbed wire will be put on them. This will be a continuous concrete obstacle for armoured vehicles,” he said.
Near Kupiansk, Ukraine’s military showed Reuters reporters newly built defensive lines, but said the exact locality may not be disclosed publicly for security reasons.
A military engineer using the call sign “Lizard” said they typically put down the “dragon’s teeth” first, followed by coils of razor wire and then mines, if they use them.
“I believe most of these barriers should have been built much earlier, probably in the spring. It takes too much time,” he said.
Several hundred metres behind the “dragon’s teeth”, work was under way to expand a network of personnel trenches reinforced with wooden beams where there were also living quarters and wooden bunk beds.
Lynx, the other serviceman, said Ukraine is trying to minimise the use of mines for its fortifications to avoid leaving dangerous munitions on its territory. “This is our land. We wouldn’t want to litter it so much,” he said.