A forgotten war in Ukraine amid Trump travails
ZOLOTE, Ukraine — Lt. Ivan Molchanets peeked over a parapet of sandbags at the front line of the war in Ukraine. Next to him was an empty helmet propped up to trick snipers, already perforated with multiple holes.
In other spots, his soldiers stuff straw into empty uniforms to make dummies, and put logs on their shoulders to make it look like they are carrying U.S. antitank missiles — as a scare tactic.
“This is just the situation here,” he said, shrugging as he held the government’s position. “The enemy is very close.”
Fought in muddy trenches cut through hundreds of miles of farmland, the war in Ukraine has killed 13,000 people, put a large part of the country under Russia’s control and dragged on for five years almost forgotten by the outside world — until it became a backdrop to the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump unfolding in Washington.
Ukraine, politically disorganized and militarily weak, has relied heavily on the United States in its struggle with Russian-backed separatists. But the White House abruptly suspended nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine in July and only restored it last month after a bipartisan uproar in Congress.
The impeachment inquiry hinges on whether Trump froze the aid to pressure Ukraine into investigating his political rivals, especially former Vice President Joe Biden, one of the leading candidates in the 2020 U.S. election.
In closed-door testimony Tuesday, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, William Taylor, said Trump halted the aid to Ukraine and refused to meet the country’s leader until he agreed to investigate Biden and his son. Taylor called the decision “crazy” because it undermined a vital ally, strengthened Russia’s hand and put Ukrainian lives in jeopardy — all for the sake of a political campaign in the United States.
Ukrainian soldiers here at the front line were jolted by the suspension, too. While the aid was restored in time to prevent any military setbacks, it took a heavy psychological toll, they said, striking at their confidence that their backers in Washington stood solidly behind their fight to keep Russia at bay.
“It was very unpleasant to hear about this,” Molchanets said about the halt in U.S. military assistance. But with or without allies, he added, he would continue to fight. “I tell you that as an infantryman and commander.”
Even at the tip of the spear of Ukraine’s armed forces, signs are everywhere of the poverty of the army. The war began in 2014, after street protesters deposed Ukraine’s kleptocratic, pro-Kremlin president. Russia responded by helping stir up rebellions in two eastern provinces, and since then Russia has wielded the military advantage, able to slip tanks, anti-aircraft weapons and soldiers into Ukraine at will.
Ukraine has fought back with repeated appeals for aid, diplomatic pressure, Western sanctions against Russia — and with an army that is holding on by its fingernails.
The war is fought in trenches, like World War I, owing to a peculiarity of the conflict: Neither side uses aviation. Russian anti-aircraft systems have cleared the skies. Soldiers live in log-covered dugouts smelling of socks and earth, warmed by wood stoves. Ukrainian troops cook their own meals from potatoes, carrots and onions, delivered in crates, and from handmade preserves kept in glass jars on wooden shelves.
Their weapons are also basic. Hanging on nails hammered into logs in Molchanets’ bunker were binoculars and a Kalashnikov rifle.
Both sides use heavy artillery, but the only piece of U.S. military aid at the position was a muchprized infrared spotting scope for night fighting. Soldiers also carry American tourniquets in their medical kits, used to stanch bleeding.
“Our allies help us, but the hard and dirty work we do ourselves,” Molchanets said.
Even the most sophisticated weapons the United States offers are of little use here — at least, not in the way they are intended.
In 2018, the Trump administration authorized sales to Ukraine of a shoulder-fired anti-tank missile called the Javelin, reversing an Obama administration policy of supplying only nonlethal aid.
But there is a big catch. The Trump administration provided the missiles on the condition that they not be used in the war, Ukrainian officials and U.S. diplomats have said, lest they provoke Russia to slip more powerful weaponry to the separatists. “They are not to be on the front line,” Iryna Herashchenko, a former chief settlement negotiator, said of the missiles. Their precise deployment positions are kept secret.
So, Ukrainian soldiers at the front have improvised: They prop up the dummies of straw and extra uniforms that appear to hold the missiles, as a ruse, an army spokesman said.
Since taking office in May, Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has wanted the United States to take a more active role in pressuring Russia to withdraw its forces from eastern Ukraine — which the Kremlin does not even acknowledge are there — and accept a peace deal to end the conflict.