ORIKHIV, Ukraine — The town of Orikhiv, the starting point of Ukraine’s 2023 summer counteroffensive, is now in the middle of a two-way artillery firing range.
“That’s the Russian world right there,” said Dmytro, gesturing at the surrounding devastation and shaking his head in disbelief. Like many other Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines, he is identified only by his first name for security reasons.
The soft-spoken head of the press service of Ukraine’s 118th Mechanized Brigade is not prone to dramatic outbursts, but his surroundings on this dull, gray Saturday morning in March are anything but usual. On Feb. 21, a Russian 550-pound “glide bomb” had torn through the dome of the Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the center of Orikhiv before blowing out the stained-glass windows and scattering shrapnel all over the edifice.
“This is a Russian [Orthodox] church belonging to the Moscow Patriarchate,” said Dmytro, who used to build wooden toys out of a workshop in Lviv, in western Ukraine. “They’re bombing their own churches.”
In the center of the nave, someone had gathered pieces of the bomb in a makeshift altar. In the shredded iconostasis, a miraculously spared icon of Jesus looks on disapprovingly at the devastation, his fingers crossed as if to wish it away.
The church is eerily quiet save for the crunching of broken glass and plaster under the soles of Dmytro’s and his comrades’ combat boots.
Yet for Orikhiv, in the southwestern Zaporizhzhia region, the silence is never unbroken for long. After a few minutes, explosions ring out again in the distance.
Many of the 14,000 inhabitants had been evacuated in the face of the Russian onslaught in March 2022 while the town and its surroundings were ravaged by artillery, white phosphorus and cluster ammunition.
Only about 1,000 residents remain. They shelter in the basements of bombed-out residential buildings and rely on humanitarian help to survive.
Focal point
One wouldn’t know from the cratered streets and collapsed houses that the town was once the focal point of Ukraine’s hopes of liberating its territory and putting an end to the worst war on European soil since 1945.
After weeks of speculation and cryptic messaging from government and military officials, Ukrainian forces in June launched a series of counterattacks in Orikhiv, signaling the beginning of a much-anticipated summer counteroffensive. Newly formed brigades equipped with Western tanks and weapons rushed toward Russian positions in the oblast of Zaporizhzhia. They focused mainly on a portion of Russia’s defensive line stretching between the front-line villages of Robotyne and Verbove.
After major battlefield successes in late 2022, some quarters in Kyiv, Washington and Brussels held hope that the 2023 summer offensive could deal a decisive blow to Russian occupying forces and force a quick end to the war.
After months of bloody fighting, Ukrainian efforts made frustratingly little progress against an unexpected Russian defensive doggedness and a sprawling network of fortifications and minefields. The system came to be known as the “Surovikin line,” after the general who oversaw its construction.
“We didn’t have enough ammunition, and the bastards had time to dig in,” said Roman, a bearded artillery officer of the 118th Brigade.
“We worked very effectively, firing between 100 and 120 shells a day,” said fresh-faced Danyl, the 22-year-old commander of the battery. “But it wasn’t enough.”
As the Ukrainian advance stalled, Russian forces progressively regained the initiative late last year and launched a series of attacks on the recently liberated villages. Planes pounded Orikhiv with 550- and 1,100-pound glide bombs. By mid-2023, an estimated 80% of the town’s buildings had been damaged or destroyed.
“They fire at the city every day, mostly with GRAD rockets,” said Dmytro, driving down a road lined with destroyed and blackened Soviet-built residential buildings. “But the worst are the glide bombs.”
Much of Russia’s modern weaponry has failed to live up to expectations in the war, but the throwback glide bombs — Soviet-era aerial munitions retrofitted with precision-guidance systems and launched far from the front lines — are wreaking vast devastation. With a flatter flight trajectory, the missiles “glide” to their target and have proved exceedingly difficult for the Ukrainians to intercept.
As the Russians press their advantage on multiple axes of the sprawling front line across more than 600 miles in southern and eastern Ukraine, it falls on Danyl and his men from the 118th Brigade to keep them at bay. They rely on 155 mm artillery shells, whose stocks are dangerously low.
“Our own personal record was about 170 shells over two days,” Roman, another Ukrainian soldier, said as he took his place inside a U.S.-built M109 Paladin self-propelled howitzer. “Now we fire about 70.”
Scoot and shoot
The artillery piece is operating out of a destroyed agricultural installation on the outskirts of Orikhiv, firing its 95-pound shells in the direction of Robotyne before heading back under the relative safety of a shredded hangar. The vehicle’s flanks are riddled with painted-over shrapnel scars, a testament to the intensity of the fighting.
“Unlike towed artillery, we can shoot and scoot,” said the Paladin’s driver and mechanic, a grizzled 50-something soldier from Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine. “That’s why we’re still alive.”
The men all seem fond of the American-supplied gun, which they say is much more reliable and accurate than anything the Russian army can field.
“We’ve already destroyed tanks, [armored personnel carriers], artillery pieces, even mortars,” said Danyl, a native of the nearby city of Zaporizhzhia. “This is a very accurate, very reliable gun. We just don’t have enough shells to work with.”
Minutes after our arrival, a radio transmission interrupts the conversation. The crew has been given the coordinates of a target just a few miles away. The vehicle lumbers out of cover with a roar.
After a tense couple of seconds, the gun fires two rounds in short succession. The detonations are deafening, lifting clouds of dust and twigs around the vehicle.
“As you can see, we’ve already congratulated [Russian President Vladimir Putin] on his victory,” Danyl said with a smile.
The results of Russia’s widely disparaged presidential election were scheduled to be revealed the next day, but Mr. Putin’s reelection had long been a foregone conclusion.
Ukrainian soldiers on the front line greeted the results in characteristically ironic fashion: “That’s two votes against,” Danyl said with a laugh as he took a drag from his cigarette.
In the distance, explosions ring out again in the direction of Orikhiv — or what’s left of the town.
• Guillaume Ptak can be reached at gptak@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.