At the first whistle of incoming shells, soldiers in a newly liberated but remote Ukrainian village dove into the weeds by the road on Thursday and lay on their stomachs as explosions erupted.
“Is everyone alive?” one shouted as it ended. They. The soldiers jumped back and kept running, wading through the smoke billowing from the explosion.
After months of preparation and backed by hundreds of Western donated tanks, armored vehicles and howitzers, Kyiv recorded little success in the first week and a half of a counteroffensive to drive Russian troops out of southern Ukraine. In heavy fighting on the plains, the military says it has broken through the first line of Russian defenses and recaptured seven villages.
The fruits of their labor can be seen in the Ukrainian military's visit to one such village, Blahodatne, on Thursday – as well as the daunting challenges that lie ahead.
Ukraine has yet to send in most of its reserves, including troops trained in Europe during the winter and spring, and equipped with weaponry from NATO countries, meaning it could still bring more force to bear. But with every step forward, his soldiers became more vulnerable — pushed aside from the safety of their own trenches, closer to Russian artillery, maneuvering through minefields and exposed to air attack.
Ukraine is involved in two main pushes to the south, where it has penetrated the deepest in the small villages that include Blahodatne, where soldiers dived for cover on Thursday.
For the Ukrainian soldiers with the 68th Reconnaissance Brigade entering the villages, the sweetness of land acquisition was offset by the panorama of devastation that greeted them and what followed: the relentless bombardment from the Russian troops.
“They attacked with rockets, howitzers, mortars, helicopters and drones,” Sgt. said Serhiy Gubanov in an interview while taking cover in the basement as an explosion blared outside.
“It's a complete collection of intense experiences,” he says.
At some point, a metallic scream from the incoming howitzer shells sent all the soldiers in the abandoned house, including the basement, crashing to the floor. But no explosion. “Dud,” someone said, getting up and dusting himself off.
The main Russian line of defense, some nine miles away from the village, was a dense belt of minefields, trenches, armor-blocking trenches and concrete barriers — known as dragon teeth — scattered in lines over the fields and meant to stop tanks.
After the first week and a half of fighting, Russian strategy is also starting to come into focus, said Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Institute for Foreign Policy Research, in a telephone interview.
The Russians attempted to inflict as many casualties and destroy as many vehicles as possible in the battle zone in front of the main line of defense, draining the Ukrainian forces before they reached them. In effect, turning the area in front of the main line of defense into a kill zone.
Russian strategy, said Mr. Lee, was “inflicting friction on the Ukrainian units and retreating without taking too many losses himself.”
This is the area where the Ukrainian troops are now.
They were especially vulnerable in the immediate aftermath of capturing new land, when they were still clearing mines, fighting Russian stragglers, and figuring out where to find shelter and firing positions in newly reclaimed villages and in thickets of trees.
If the Russian strategy proves effective, Ukraine could lose too many of its newly trained troops – numbering in the tens of thousands – and too many tanks and infantry fighting vehicles to penetrate the main line.
Even if they got that far, troops might be too weak to flow south and help achieve the ultimate goal: severing the so-called land bridge connecting Russia to the occupied Crimean Peninsula. This would be done by reaching the Sea of Azov, some 60 miles away.
The fighting now was mainly at two locations about 50 miles apart, south of Velyka Novosilka and south of Orikhiv. After initial uncertainty, this appears to be little more than a hoax or probing attack by Ukraine. By striking in two places, Ukraine forced Russia to decide where to deploy reinforcements.
Both sides are now in a guessing game.
So far, the fighting south of Velyka Novosilka, which took place in the Donetsk region, where cloud shadows play across tall green meadows, wildflowers, small lakes and reed swamps, has been better for Ukraine than the battle near Orikhiv, which is in the Zaporizhzhia region.
Hanna Malyar, deputy defense minister, said on Thursday that the counteroffensive was taking place “gradually but steadily.” General Oleksiy Hromov, deputy operations commander in the general staff, said the Ukrainians had advanced a total of 6.5 kilometers, or about four miles.
Soldiers in the 68th Brigade said that a company of Russian soldiers – about 100 men – had been stopped while retreating from the village of Blahodatne. The Ukrainians had been hunting them, trying to avoid the artillery fire.
Those they have captured so far have been poorly trained troops, including ex-convicts, suggesting that the Russians have deployed more of the fighters it deems more expendable near the front while keeping more capable ones in reserve.
Earlier this week, a Ukrainian fighter, Lt. Serhiy Hozhulovsky, driving an American-supplied armored vehicle, transports a Russian prisoner of war bound hand and foot, blindfolded with duct tape.
In the cell phone video, the arrested Russian can be heard saying he never fired his gun and asking to be allowed to remain in Ukraine.
“What would you do?” a Ukrainian soldier asked him.
“I will work, I will build a house,” the Russian answered. “Fighting is a sin. I can't fight.”
The Ukrainian army says the prisoners they have taken over the past week often claim they did not shoot. In fact, many “fought to the end,” said a soldier who asked to be identified only, Mykola.
On Thursday, when soldiers tasked with finding stragglers first entered the village after Ukrainian assault teams swept through, it was an eerie and devastated place. Nearly every house had been blown up, and breast-deep weeds were growing in the yards. Most of the residents had fled long ago.
At a command post in an abandoned house on Thursday, a radio beeped with the news that a mortar had hit an armored vehicle, destroying it but not injuring the crew.
One commander, Captain Volodymyr Rovensk, was sitting in a dark room in front of a computer screen, when an explosion rocked the house. The Russians nearby, he said, “were dug up and there were mines everywhere.”
Around the village, the rubble of the Russian soldier's daily life is strewn: discarded cardboard boxes of military rations and, at one site, a book with pornographic images entitled “The Machine of Love.”
A Ukrainian soldier, Sergeant Yevhen, tried to carry out of the village a spoon that the Russian Army had issued as a memento – but then dropped it on the grass during a dive to cover from artillery fire.
“It's not a big deal,” he said. “I wasn't killed. The spoon is not important.”
Maria Varenikova reporting contribution from Constantinople, Ukraine.