At Ukrainian training ground, growing confidence about coming battle

From the sudden renewal of Russian missile barrages on Kyiv and other cities to Ukrainian strikes behind Russian lines, signs are multiplying that both sides are gearing up for Ukraine’s critical spring counteroffensive.

Yet even as some analysts suggest that such deep Ukrainian strikes, including in long-occupied Crimea, signal the offensive has already begun, Ukraine is patiently and deliberately rotating front-line forces for training to equip them for the main push to come.

Among the Ukrainian troops, their work on these proving grounds appears to amplify a sense of confidence, rather than foreboding.

At one recent session, on an eastern Ukrainian practice range marked by rolling hills, spring sun, and distant targets obliterated by firepower, a bald Ukrainian soldier who gives the name Vitalii enthuses about old 30mm grenade launchers mounted on tripods. They’re so old they could have been used by his father during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

“This is very effective; three men can stop 16 or 17 men,” Vitalii says. The launcher requires careful targeting and has a rudimentary trigger mechanism, as his fellow soldiers demonstrate by firing multiple rounds into a hillside.

Everyone within seven meters of an impact will be killed, says Vitalii, while everyone beyond that up to 10 meters away will be wounded.

As the Ukrainian military, bolstered by American and European hardware and cash, prepares for an assault that it hopes will reclaim lost territory – and ultimately force Russia out of Ukraine – these training grounds some miles back from the sprawling Donbas front lines are seeing the use of every tool.

Across a muddy hilltop carved with the treads of armored vehicles and carpeted by spent shell casings, elements of multiple brigades train on an array of weapons, old and new. A key source of confidence for Ukrainians, despite the challenge to come and their limited means and hardware, is that after 14-plus months of war they know the weaknesses of their enemy – and appreciate their own capabilities.

Indeed, the three AGS-17 grenade launchers here are clearly inherited from former Soviet stockpiles and stamped with the years 1975, 1982, and 1986, when they would have seen duty during the Cold War, or in Afghanistan, where they first became popular with Soviet infantry.

Soldiers also practice firing an 82mm gun mortar, another Soviet relic that first came into service in 1970.

“We are very optimistic,” says Vitalii, as the sound of rifle shots and explosions creates a steady background noise. “Even without American weapons, even with this old stuff, we are kicking Russian [tails]. With the American guns, the Russians don’t have a chance.”

The United States has been the leading Western supplier of Ukraine’s war effort against Russia. It has provided tens of billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment to defend Ukraine, and money to keep its economy afloat, in a battle that U.S. and European leaders cast as a pivotal historical fight.

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin presided Tuesday over the annual Victory Day parade, which commemorates the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany. The event was shorter and far less immense than it has been in previous years – with just one World War II-era T-34 tank, instead of the usual row upon row of modern Russian tanks – amid reports that numerous parades in cities closer to Ukraine were canceled altogether for security concerns.

Mr. Putin, who ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, nevertheless said Russia’s enemies were seeking the “disintegration and destruction of our country” and blamed the West for a “real war … unleashed against us again.”

Hours later, the U.S. announced a further $1.2 billion in security assistance for Ukraine, for everything from air-defense systems and 155mm artillery shells to commercial satellite imagery.

Meanwhile, as Ukraine’s final training rotations proceed, some analysts suggest that the spring offensive has already begun, in the form of rocket strikes and sabotage deep behind Russian lines.

Ukraine has in the past used U.S.-supplied HIMARS rockets to strike Russian supply lines and targets in Crimea, for example, which is home to a Russian naval base in Sevastopol and was occupied and annexed by Russia in 2014.

In recent weeks, oil storage facilities in Crimea have burned, causing dramatic fires, and two trains in Russia, not far from Ukraine, have been derailed – all attributed to Ukrainian drone strikes and sabotage. The Kremlin last week was also rocked by two overnight explosions, in what Russia said was a failed drone attack conducted by Ukraine on Russia’s seat of power. Ukraine denied any role.

Russia appears to have responded by aiming multiple waves of missiles and drones at targets across Ukrainian territory. It launched some 15 cruise missiles at the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on Tuesday, for example – the sixth such attack on the capital in less than two weeks – though Ukrainian officials say all were shot down.

Last Friday, Russia-appointed authorities in the southeastern Ukraine area of Zaporizhzhia – the site of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which was seized by Russian troops in March 2022 – issued evacuation plans for 70,000 civilians. Previous such orders have presaged Russian retreats from occupied land. And this week came preliminary accounts, from both sides, of a substantial Russian setback around the long-contested Donbas city of Bakhmut.

At the training ground, patches affixed to uniforms speak to truisms discovered by Ukraine during this war. On one are the words, “Freedom is not free.” Another is a small American flag in camouflage colors Velcroed to the helmet of a soldier, who tests his assault rifle marksmanship from a trench position and gives the name Oleh.

Why does he wear that flag?

“Because the Americans are our friends,” he says.

Also friends are members of the Ukrainian volunteer group “Save Life,” which collects donations to buy military gear for front-line troops. On this day, two of the group’s representatives – decked out in military camouflage themselves, as they record a video of appreciation from soldiers for their donors – are on hand for the unboxing of two new Czech-made PKM light machine guns.

They are part of a consignment of 1,500 new guns promised by the volunteers to be spread across a number of Ukrainian units. Soldiers marvel as the guns are unwrapped in the sunlight, with parts glistening with factory oil. Grateful, they line up to take turns firing down range.

“How can you tell about taste, when you are really hungry?” asks a bearded staff sergeant with square-framed glasses, who gives the name Mykola. “If you don’t have enough weapons, you are happy with anything. If you have lots of weapons, you try to improve quality.

“This weapon will not last long in such an intensive war,” he says, nodding toward the new machine guns. “That’s why we are asking all the time for more and more weapons.”

Mykola says he was an entrepreneur who owned a computer company until he joined the military in 2014, when Russia seized Crimea and, with its local allied militia, the Donetsk and Luhansk regions from Ukraine.

“It’s been 10 years, so I probably learned something” about fighting the Russians, says Mykola. “You cannot underestimate your enemy. And the regular Russian soldiers, who want to survive, they will be ready. But their commanders, maybe not – they can send them to their deaths.”

What has he learned? “Only one thing: There are no rules that [the Russians] follow, so it’s useless to try to change or convince them. We need to fight, just to kill. But if they’re giving up, it’s much better for us,” he says.

That is a lesson learned also at a military medical stabilization center in the same region, closer to the front line, where a row of blood-stained stretchers outside is the only sign that this nondescript building has been converted into a key front-line transit point for wounded soldiers from the eastern front.

“You never know what kind of day you will have,” says a volunteer nurse and surgeon, who wears large disks in her earlobes in the Ukrainian national colors of yellow and blue and gives the name Valentyna. “It’s very quiet, or you get 100 people in a day.”

She notes 20 wounded soldiers arrived the day before, some requiring amputations, and 40 wounded the day before that.

“We also have to change positions often,” says Yuliia, a fellow volunteer nurse. That means packing up and moving the makeshift operating theaters and areas for treating trauma. “We just drink coffee and energy drinks, and keep on going.”

Those at this stabilization center say they are always prepared, and therefore plenty ready for the battles to come.

“We are over this … counteroffensive; everyone has been talking constantly about it since February,” says Valentyna. “Everyone wants this counteroffensive, but not all of them realize that we are not playing ‘Call of Duty,’ with an autosave function.”

Reporting for this story was supported by Oleksandr Naselenko.