![]() ![]() “Almost every week, we lose soldiers in the east, and almost every day, some young Ukrainian man enlists in the Ukrainian army willing to defend it,” Kuleba said. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba underscored the importance of the American support in a meeting with the Washington Examiner in Kyiv. This is something that responds to what the Ukrainian armed forces themselves have identified.” “I want to also be clear that this isn't something we invent in Washington. That includes sniper rifles, counter-artillery radars, grenade launchers,” she added, noting that nonlethal assistance includes military medical equipment and armored Humvees. “There's also a number of other systems that we're providing that are effective and fill critical requirements for the Ukrainian armed forces. ![]() “There's actually a very dangerous situation in eastern Ukraine in terms of the sniper attacks that we see on Ukrainian forces,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia Laura Cooper told the Washington Examiner in a May Pentagon interview. It included sniper rifles, thermal optics, laser rangefinders, optical detection systems, and electronic warfare systems. Then, American assistance began to arrive. Enemy intelligence groups known as “sabotage groups” can walk right up to a position, shielded by darkness, and kill soldiers directly in the trench. Russian snipers with night-vision technology can see Ukrainian movements and kill the soldiers one by one. And when you have this vision, it really helps to see the situation.” You are just sitting and waiting, and there’s nothing you can do to know when they will arrive. “But what can you do? You cannot make your eyes see better, you cannot make your ears hear better. “We were in a position at the north, and on the radio, we captured a signal, that’s how we knew a diversion group was moving towards our direction,” he said. In 2015, shortly after the conflict broke out, Marhanets was on the front line with no night-vision goggles or thermal vision technology. “There’s a little window where you look up, and the sniper hits exactly where you look,” he said. In the underground network of sandbag positions and lookout spots, any peek above ground level is potentially lethal. The one who survived is still in the hospital, paralyzed from the neck down. Marhanets knows two comrades hit by sniper fire. Photo by Abraham Mahshie/Washington Examiner The view of the enemy frontline in the so-called Donetsk People's Republic through periscope binoculars near Hranitne village, eastern Ukraine June 6, 2021. Now, they stare at a tree line across the field, looking for movement. They used to watch the enemy dig trenches until spring rains came and the grass grew taller. We received a warning because their intelligence position is nearby,” Marhanets said, a green face mask pulled up just below his eyes to conceal his identity.Īll day, every day, he and the other dozen or so troops in his unit take turns peering through periscope binoculars positioned just below camo netting and fixed on the enemy front line. “Right now, there is no sniper at this position, but they are there. “At night, you see nothing,” said a Ukrainian soldier who gave his name as Unit Commander “Marhanets” to the Washington Examiner for operational security. In this low-intensity conflict, most soldiers are dying from sniper fire. Tree lines are where the opposing sides establish their positions, digging trenches to store weapons and provisions and to hide armored vehicles, should they be necessary. The war between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists in the semi-states known as the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics is largely contained to a no man’s land in empty fields on the outskirts of small villages like this. Many of them volunteered from wealthier western Ukraine to fight Russian officers and commandos and their own Ukrainian brethren who have taken sides with Vladimir Putin in yet another protracted conflict spurred by the Russian president. Schoolchildren cross a military checkpoint from occupied territory to Ukrainian-controlled territory so they can continue attending the same school. A showy, Soviet-era rectangular City Hall, an abandoned agricultural factory converted to a military installation, and a central plaza with a stepped platform where a statue of Lenin once stood. ![]() The nearby village of Hranitne is like many in post-industrial eastern Ukraine. In a hand-dug trench a half-mile from the front line in the restive Donbas region on eastern Ukraine, bright green grass grows and red poppies flower just inches above the heads of Ukrainian soldiers manning their position. But elite Russian snipers usually don’t miss. The hope is the sniper will believe them dead. HRANITNE VILLAGE, Ukraine front line - Ukrainian soldiers are taught to drop in their trench position and stay down for at least 15 minutes if a sniper’s bullet misses them. ![]()
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