Ukraine is turning into a minefield The war is following the model of North and South Korea

Then there was the issue of strategy. Western, particularly American, advisors urged Kyiv to focus its offensive solely on the Zaporizhzhya axis to sever the vital Russian supply line. Instead, Kyiv distributed its forces across the front to try to break through in multiple areas — a diffusion of attack that meant they were unable to penetrate anywhere. The result is that, last month, the Russians were able to launch a counteroffensive of their own in the Kharkiv region; there has been hard fighting in the village of Lyptsi and town of Vovchansk ever since.

Sat roughly 19 miles from the Russian border, Kharkiv itself is now on the receiving end of almost everything Moscow has to offer. The latest are glide bombs: essentially conventional bombs that can be launched remotely instead of directly over the target. This means they can be fired from planes 60-70km away from the intended target — so from Russia — and out of the range of the Ukrainian air defences. During the initial phase of the Kharkiv offensive, Russia dropped 20 glide bombs on Vovchansk in one day alone. The Russians are pounding the city with them daily. On a street near the centre, I see an apartment building that was recently struck. Window-shaped squares are filled with plywood; the building facade is pockmarked with shrapnel holes. I drive past several buildings — all civilian — that have suffered the same fate. The Ukrainians had no way of defending against these new weapons until they were finally given permission to use US weapons on Russian territory.

If glide bombs are an innovation, century-old weapons are just as effective. In a park in Vovchansk, I meet Leonid, a captain in the Pioneers platoon, which lays and removes mines.

Leonid has just returned from fighting near the border, not too far from the Russian city of Belgorod. He is wiry, with large glasses, wispy grey hair and a moustache that curves around his mouth. He hasn’t slept for two days and reeks of body odour. He smiles at me; I like him immediately.

“This is the biggest mining operation in human history,” Leonid tells me. “Both in amount and density. There are tens of thousands of mines every few kilometres. It is done on an industrial level, by the Russians and by us too. The USSR produced millions of mines in case of war with Nato, and now these mines are used against us. I’d say 10% of all combat casualties are from mines.”

Leonid works with infantry and artillery units, which cover them with fire as they lay the mines. The sappers’ objective is, he tells me, to prevent enemy manoeuvres — to stop the Russians breaking through. “Their Russian offensive right now is fierce,” he says. “In front of us the line is stable, but the Russians have broken through on the right flank of our positions; and east from our positions in Vovchansk they are breaking through. It was poorly mined.”

The perennial problem, Leonid explains, is the lack of Ukrainian weapons. “Last year we captured a lot of Russian mines. We had so little equipment we had to use thousands of Russian mines from Izyium to Kharkiv and lay them along the border. We lack everything.”

My next stop is Kyiv, where the question of weapons — and the international cooperation that will decide to what degree Ukraine can continue to resist Russia — will be decided. But for the moment Leonid’s words put me in mind of something else: manpower. The Ukrainians are now struggling to recruit new soldiers: press gangs stalk the streets of almost every major city. I look at Leonid’s grey hair and wrinkled face. I ask how old he is, and he beams in response: “Will you still need me, will you still feed me / When I’m sixty-four?”

A few days later, back in Kyiv, I meet Colonel Hennadiy Kovalenko, Director of the International Defence Cooperation Department at the Ministry of Defence. “David, in England you count to five like us in Ukraine,” he says. We are sat in a coffee shop opposite his office, and he is holding out his hand. “One, two, three,” he adds, a finger going up each time. At the count of five, all his digits are extended; he leans forward and offers me his open hand to shake. “In Russia, they count like this.” His hand is open as he starts to count, a finger going down on each number. At five his fist is clenched, and he mimes a punch at my head. “And that, in a shell of nut, is the difference between us and Russians.”

Since 2014, Kovalenko has been responsible for working with Nato and Ukraine’s foreign partners; everything from training to the supply of weapons falls under his purview. He begins by explaining the evolution of Ukraine’s army from 2014 to today. “In the initial phases of the conflict, the Russians were reading our minds: we used the same Soviet manuals and doctrines, so they knew how we planned our activities and so on. Then we created the Defence Education Advisory Group with the Americans and Brits. Once we started implementing new field manuals, our casualties dropped significantly.”

Key to this success was what the Germans call Auftragstaktik; a decentralised military doctrine emphasising initiative and flexibility for subordinate commanders. “It allowed our guys at the beginning of the hot war to delegate decisions to the lowest tactical levels. When the Russians were waiting for orders from the Kremlin or general staff, our guys were making decisions on the ground in accordance with the operational situation.”

When I ask about America’s recently announced aid package, Kovalenko explains that the logjam beforehand wasn’t fatal: European nations did not pause their shipments, while Washington was able to send smaller amounts of weapons and munitions through proxies. Yet many of the soldiers I have met on the front still cite “munitions” as the biggest problem they face. “The problem with the ammunition is not delivery, it’s production,” he replies. “It takes time for our partners to manufacture the munitions and ammunition we need in time.”

To speed up this process, the Czech government launched an initiative in February to provide Ukraine with 50,000-100,000 large-calibre shells per month — not through manufacturing them, but by going around the world buying them. By April, some 20 countries had joined the programme, financing the purchases with their own funds. Has it made a difference? “To be brutally honest, we have been promised 800,000 155 artillery munitions by the end of the year,” Kovalenko says. “We haven’t got any, but the deliveries are expected soon. It’s too early to say whether it’s working or not. We need to place production on Ukrainian territory — under certain security provisions of course and undertake joint ventures and technology sharing with our partners.”

Without the work of Kovalenko and others like him Ukraine would most likely not have held out for so long against Russia. The Czech initiative is likely to bear fruit at the right time. But divisions are growing. Ukraine’s top reconstruction official has just resigned after accusing the government of undermining efforts to build fortifications against Russia. And people are tired. The will to fight remains, but it is diminished. In the East many grumble about going to die in “Kyiv’s war”. Thoughts turn to possible solutions or at least anything that might offer a respite.

Once again, my mind turns to mines. Ukraine is, according to the EU’s delegation to the UN, now the “most mine-contaminated country” since the Second World War. As of February, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine says the amount of territory potentially contaminated with explosive objects amounts to 156,000 square kilometres — 25% of the country’s total area. I can believe it: I’ve stood on the Ukrainian lines staring out at miles of them. It’s astonishing: swathes of land that have become a living death.

But that’s not all. Look at a map. You’ll see the area of contamination snake around Ukraine as it follows the line of contact between the two sides. It is without doubt as accurate an adumbration of the fighting as you can get, but to me it also looks like something more instructive: a border.

Experts assess that, at current rates, it would take 757 years to fully demine Ukraine. And while the speed of clearance would increase if the war ended, it is for the foreseeable future an immovable fact on the ground. And in this lies probably any – at least interim – political solution. The model here is North and South Korea, which are technically still at war and separated by a demilitarised zone and hundreds of thousands of mines. In reality, while relations are not rosy, they have not been fighting for decades.

It remains politically impermissible for Zelensky to talk about any territorial compromise. Just as no British Prime Minister could agree to give an aggressor Manchester and Surrey, so Zelensky can never publicly accept the loss of Donetsk and Crimea. But you can talk about a “ceasefire” — and those, if agreed with an honest partner (which Putin is not), can last for decades. It is, of course, an imperfect solution. But as things stand, the alternative may well be far worse.

---

David Patrikarakos is UnHerd‘s foreign correspondent. His latest book is War in 140 characters: how social media is reshaping conflict in the 21st century. (Hachette)

dpatrikarakos