It was a perfect May evening. Daria Karpinska and her friends sat in the corner of a five-a-side pitch and played cards. Nearby was their school. Swifts had returned to their village of Hrodivka and screeched in a sunny blue sky.
Suddenly, a loud whoosh-whoosh noise interrupted the teenagers’ game of “fool”: the sound of a Grad missile. Seconds later came the boom of artillery. “It’s louder today than yesterday,” said 14-year-old Karpinska matter-of-factly.
Nine miles (15km) away – across a green and blossom-white landscape dotted with slag heaps and wheelhouses – the Russians were advancing. In February, they captured the city of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine. Last month, they launched a surprise attack and overran the small town of Ocheretyne, a railway hub.
Last week, they gobbled up neighbouring villages. The frontline creeps ever closer to Hrodivka, a once peaceful community of 1,500 people, now on the brink of extinction.
The teenagers are preparing to leave. “My family decided last week it was time. We are packing up,” said Liza Shapovalava, 17. Two years ago, she and her parents moved away after Vladimir Putin’s full-scale attack. They returned but are departing again, this time possibly for ever. Their belongings will be sent on ahead.Shapovalava said she wanted to study psychology at university – in Kyiv, maybe.
Her classmate Maksim Chuprin added: “We are not happy. Of course we want the Ukrainian army to prevail. But I’m a realist.”
Like their grownup counterparts, the students consult Deep State, a frontline app that shows Russia’s battlefield gains. Additional evidence is close by: Russian bombs hit Hrodivka’s community hall and blew out windows from their school.
Ivan Anysymov, 21, wondered if the enemy might not advance directly towards Hrodivka because of the hilly terrain, which was easier to defend. Of the Russians, he said: “They think they are superior, that their culture is better. It’s not true. We just want to live our lives.”
The Kremlin says that Ukraine’s eastern provinces are part of “historical” Russia. In 2014, it swallowed up the two main cities in the Donbas region, Donetsk and Luhansk. In 2022, Russian troops occupied most of Luhansk province. One of the Russian president’s key war aims is to reach the administrative borders of the Donetsk oblast.
This objective had seemed impossible. Now, though, a string of Ukrainian garrison cities are suddenly in peril as Russian combat units move forward, supported by planes dropping lethal glide bombs.
Putin’s generals are using classic Soviet military tactics from the second world war. They are trying to encircle Ukrainian troops on multiple fronts.
The capture of Ocheretyne means Moscow has tantalising options. It can push west through Hrodivka to the city of Pokrovsk, a key Ukrainian military base. Or its forces can head north. If Russia manages to capture the city of Chasiv Yar, it can simultaneously advance from the south, chopping off a further large chunk of Ukrainian territory.
For now, Ukraine is hanging on in Chasiv Yar. Months of bombardment have turned its multistorey communist-era blocks of flats into blackened stumps. The Russians have reached the city’s eastern outskirts. Fierce fighting continues.
If Chasiv Yar falls, Moscow can use this elevated position to hit a string of nearby Ukrainian military cities: Kostyantynivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. They are home to tens of thousands of civilians as well as to many servicemen. The future of Ukraine’s Donbas region – as a place for normal life – seems increasingly bleak.
In a forest training camp, Lt Andrii Todorov explained Ukraine’s recent setbacks. He said his “Rubizh” brigade – part of the national guard – used to fire American 120mm high-explosive M933A1 mortars. “They were good, with an excellent fuse,” he recalled. In June 2023, however, the bombs ran out. No more have arrived.
“We kept three of them for a special target,” he said. He added: “My guys didn’t get any more US ammunition. I hope we receive some. We are doing everything possible to hold our positions and keep the line.”
The six-month delay in US military aid – caused by pro-Moscow House Republicans in Washington – cost Ukraine dear. It allowed Russia to regain the strategic initiative after the failure last summer of Kyiv’s counteroffensive.
The first deliveries of new US military assistance have arrived in Ukraine as part of a $61bn package. They include artillery shells and long-range missiles, but it will take several weeks for weapons and equipment to reach the frontline in large quantities.
“The Russians are moving pretty slowly. But still they are moving. It’s a problem,” said Volodymyr Cherniak, a captain in the national guard.
He said his soldiers would be able to defend positions successfully if western nations provided Ukraine with adequate ammunition and F-16 planes – plus anti-aircraft systems that could shoot down Russian fighter jets. “Without them we are fighting against their missiles with our infantry. It’s a nonsense,” he said.
The situation was “very difficult”, a security official in Kyiv said last week, but “not catastrophic”.
According to Cherniak, the Russian army adapted after its failure in 2022 to capture Kyiv, stepping up drone production. The Russians now have “two or three times” more first-person-view drones, which they fly continually, including at night.
That meant supplying frontline positions and rotating troops was harder, he said. The Russians were also willing to sacrifice large numbers of men and armoured vehicles in costly “meat assaults”. He added: “Their tactics are simple, bloody, inhuman and effective.”
In March, after the loss of Avdiivka, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, announced that 1,200 miles of defensive fortifications were under construction across the country.
In Ocheretyne, however, Russian brigades bypassed these new defences, carving out a mini salient. Cherniak said his soldiers were skilled at laying minefields, but that Ukraine’s military lacked the specialist engineering units used by Russian forces to construct bunkers and trenches quickly after each mile or so advance. “We don’t have enough people to do this,” he said.
Another national guard officer, Maj Maksym Taran, pointed out that Russia is not fighting on its own. North Korea has supplied ballistic missiles, while China has sent technical parts and Iran kamikaze drones. “Yes, we will win this war. But it depends on the west. On our own, it will take us 100 years,” he said.
Cherniak added that the Kremlin had long-term ambitions – in Europe and beyond. “It is the victors who write history. If Russia takes Ukraine, 20 years from now, this could be China and Russia, and not the US and UK,” he warned.Some observers believe Ukraine’s prospects are brighter than they appear. “I don’t think Donetsk oblast is lost,” said Andriy Zagorodnyuk, Ukraine’s former defence minister. “It depends on when equipment arrives. If we receive this ammunition, we can certainly stop Russia and substantially damage their capability.”
He added that the delivery in April of US long-range Atacms missiles “tremendously changed the situation” and also predicted Crimea – where Ukraine has used maritime drones to target Russia’s Black Sea fleet – would go from “asset to liability”.
Back in Hrodivka, the local school has been shut for two years, with all lessons online. Pupils meet up there anyway, gathering on the football pitch, or sitting in a playground next to a patch of purple lilies.
The students finished their game of cards, and set off in a dusty procession of mopeds and one push bike. They parked up outside the village shop. Artillery continued to boom. “We don’t know what will happen. Maybe our house will survive,” Shapovalava said. “Maybe it won’t. Things here are coming to an end.”