Kurájove is another place name from the Ukrainian province of Donetsk besieged by Russia. Pokrovsk, Toretsk, Chasiv Yar or Kurájove itself are municipalities that the invading troops are surrounding from the north, south and east, making its defense more difficult for the Ukrainian army, until it has to withdraw to avoid being isolated. This has happened this year in Avdiivka or Vugledar. “We will probably soon see that Kurákhov will follow the same fate, besieged by the Russians,” warns Eugene Churbanov, deputy battalion intelligence commander of the 46th Airborne Brigade, a military veteran with the highest military decorations of the Ukrainian State. The biggest problem for the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Kurákhove, says Churbanov, is not Russian superiority or lack of weapons: what, above all, is allowing the constant Russian advance of recent months is the lack of soldiers in its regiment.
Soldiers from four brigades defending Kurájove have agreed on the same diagnosis in the three days in which EL PAÍS has traveled through this sector of the front: the future of the war is bleak for their interests because there are not enough replacements. “Why are we going backwards? Because we don’t have rotations, we don’t rest, we are demoralized,” explains Shkoda, the code name of an officer in an anti-drone unit of the 46th Brigade.
This soldier, like others consulted last week in this sector of the war, refers to the growing problem of soldiers fleeing their positions. The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office has indicated this October that there have been nearly 100,000 cases of abandonment of positions or desertion so far in the war, which is equivalent to 10% of all Armed Forces personnel. More than half have done so in 2024. “I had a friend, we called him England. He fought the entire war on line zero, in Robotine, Soledar, Kherson… He was exhausted, he couldn’t take it anymore and the commanders didn’t give him rest. A few days ago he left, just like that,” says Shkoda.
Alexander, an officer of the 119th Brigade of the Territorial Defense Forces (TRO), reveals that in the 116th TRO Brigade there was a block rebellion in Kurájove, they refused to follow orders, and were transferred to Sumi, from where the raid is directed Ukraine in the Russian province of Kursk. The case of 100 soldiers from the 123rd TRO Brigade abandoning their positions in Vugledar a few days before being occupied by the Russians, at the beginning of October, was also reported. They did it to denounce that without sufficient training and weapons they were assigned to a suicidal defense.
Superiority of three to one
Churbanov, a sergeant who has been wounded seven times in this war, explains that by law he has the right to leave the army. He does not do it, however, because there is a lack of men. He provides devastating information: he reveals that currently his men can spend three months in their positions without rest, without being rotated; a year ago, the maximum was one month. In the first year of the war, the basic rotation was every four days.
The average time spent by soldiers in their Kurájove positions is 25 days, according to the soldiers consulted. Bison, a fighter with the 119th Brigade, estimated that the Russians have an infantry superiority of three to one: “Thank God, they don’t have exact information about how bad we are in certain places.” Churbanov adds that the Russians are also “better equipped, better trained and adapted to this war than before.”
Dimson is the code name of a private infantryman who prefers not to reveal which brigade he serves in. He just returned from a leave of only two days. There had to be more, but they asked him to return immediately because the enemy had taken the position defended by his platoon and they had captured several of his companions. In silence, he looks at photos of these comrades on his cell phone, as if he expected the worst for them. He then shows a video that appeared on the Internet this Sunday in which a soldier from a civilian recruitment patrol in Zaporizhzhia is seen shooting into the air to scare away a group of people who wanted to prevent a young man from being taken to the army in the force. “For every kid they recruit like this, they lose 40 who could consider joining the ranks,” says Dimson.
Videos like this have multiplied since the new mobilization law came into force in May. There is no official data on those recruited, but Roman Kotsenko, of the Defense Committee of the Ukrainian Parliament, stated on October 3 to the British newspaper The Times that the objective was to close 2024 with 200,000 new soldiers. United States intelligence sources specified in September The Wall Street Journal that Ukraine has lost 80,000 soldiers during the war and another 400,000 have been wounded. Most of the injured recover and return to the front.
“There will be no people to fight”
The meeting with Shkoda takes place at an establishment in Ulakle, 10 kilometers from the front, where he buys food for the next few days in which he will be on the front line. “The mobilization [de civiles] It’s going badly because people are scared,” confirms Shkoda. “They see that they take you by force in the street and that they send you with little training to the front. “I don’t want anyone like that by my side, unmotivated, because my life depends on it.” Dimson assures that two of his comrades taken prisoner had no experience and had only been at the front for three days. The death this July on the Pokrovsk front of Matityagu Anton Samborskii, son of the great rabbi of Ukraine, made the news. Samborskii was mobilized in May, he only received a month of training and after three weeks of combat, he was already dead.
EL PAÍS also met in Ulakle with a press team from the Ministry of Defense that visits regiments. The head of the mission, who asked to speak without revealing his name, summarized the situation like this: “The problem now is not the weapons, it is the people. Nobody wants to go to the army. The brigades tell us that they cannot rotate, that they are exhausted. Soon there will be no people to fight.”
There is another reason why rotations are less frequent, and it is the massive presence of bomb drones that make it difficult to transfer soldiers. The journey itself to access Kurájove was proof of this. The invading troops are located at the eastern end of the city and from there they punish the road that leads to the city from free Ukraine. The soldier behind the wheel first connects the antennas of the radio-electronic equipment built into the SUV that can nullify the threat of a drone by interfering with the signal from its pilot. More and more vehicles, especially armored vehicles, carry these electronic warfare devices. The effectiveness, indicates Oleg, the soldier who accompanies this newspaper to Kurájove, is 50%. Without this, the possibility of survival is minimal: this is demonstrated by a vehicle without this equipment, which was in the middle of the road, destroyed shortly before by a bomb drone.
Kurájove is now another ghost town, lifeless, beyond the military sheltered in basements. The place awaits the Kremlin’s designs, for it to be devastated with its artillery and aircraft before attacking it. The Ukrainian response may be to defend it in urban combat or abandon it, as happened in Avdiivka. Drone pilots from the 113th TRO Brigade and Shkoda agree that the Ukrainian commitment to waging war with drones has a disadvantage in defense in urban areas: these unmanned vehicles are more difficult to handle between buildings than in open fields.
“If things don’t change a lot, Russia won’t be able to be stopped,” Churbanov explains in a calm and sad tone of voice, especially exhausted, “if things don’t change a lot, our grandchildren will also have to continue fighting.”