Brutal bombings on the eastern front line

Lysychansk – The casing of a cluster munition stood upright like a fence pole not far from a team of Ukrainian medics rushing a bleeding soldier from the eastern front.

One of the doctors reassured the wincing fighter that the tourniquet being squeezed just above his knee did not mean he was about to lose a part of his leg.

Another peered back at the smoke rising above one of the biggest battles of Russia’s methodical assault on its pro-Western neighbour and cursed.

Some soldiers formed a protective circle around the scrambling paramedics and took down coordinates over their radios for the next medical evacuation from the front.

“They come in waves,” volunteer fighter Mykola said of the Russians’ repeated attempts to push south past a strategic river near a rural settlement called Bilogorivka. “They tried over the weekend and we pushed them back. Now they are trying again. It goes back and forth. First they hit us, then we hit them.”

Neither Moscow nor Kyiv is a signatory to a 2008 convention banning the use of bombs and rockets that spread small but deadly munitions over larger areas such as fields or city blocks.

Their use in Ukraine highlights the brutal and often indiscriminate nature of the weapons falling from the sky. The casing from the cluster munition was lying near the last checkpoint leading to Bilogorivka – a village whose fall would help the Russians launch an assault on Ukraine’s eastern administrative capital of Kramatorsk.

Ukraine has been pouring in forces in what appears to be an increasingly desperate effort to hold the line. Two besieged cities just east of Bilogorivka – Lysychansk and Severodonetsk – are a deserted but still contested war zone the Russians might claim any day.

What happens inside Bilogorivka is nearly impossible to verify because both the settlement and its surrounding roads are being bombed and shelled incessantly. The earth shakes around it and Ukrainian soldiers’ faces darken when the settlement is mentioned by name.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said 60 people died when Russia bombed a school sheltering 90 villagers over the weekend. Soldiers emerging from Bilogorivka were unable to confirm the claim because the school was in a northern area under the Russians’ control.

“We went in and this is how we come out,” a volunteer fighter said. “We’re preparing to go back in again. But we have no cover. We have no mortar guns. I do not know how our unit is going to fight.”

Surging military morale and a national outpouring of support for the army have been instrumental to Ukraine’s ability to first defend Kyiv and then stall Russia’s advance across the east. This may be harder to maintain as the death toll mounts and Russia’s superior strength starts to translate into lasting gains. –

We have no cover. We have no mortar guns.