A Ukrainian-American's View From The Frontlines

I asked Pasha why he didn't consider going to be with his family in Krakow after having fought so long. He told me he wouldn't be able to leave his country and look foreigners in the face and tell them why he wasn't in his homeland helping to defend the country.

He also told me about the help the Polish people had given to Ukraine and how welcoming they had been to his family:”My family, along with many other women and young children, were sheltered in a Catholic women's monastery of the Augustinian sisters in Krakow. I am very grateful to them.

Pasha told me that what he feared most wasn't death but Russian captivity. This fear was the same with most soldiers I spoke with on the frontline. If you were captured, you were likely to come out disabled for the rest of your life – after being tortured or watching your friends be pummeled or tortured to death – that is, if you escaped simply being killed yourself by the Russians.

Once in Dnipro, we spent our days doing what our nonprofit usually does: delivering humanitarian aid to the frontlines and evacuating civilians from the front. When traveling to deoccupied areas retaken by Ukraine, the locals stated that there are no stores that operate, no electricity, and they are fully reliant on humanitarian aid. Others talked about how, when the Russians were there, they threatened to cut the eyes and ears out of those deemed to be pro-Ukrainian.

We also spent time going to Ukrainian army units on the front to deliver the drones and Starlinks I had brought from the US. When I spoke with soldiers from different units, they all hastened to point out that fighting nowadays without drones will quickly lead to death. Drones save lives on the frontline.

One drone unit on the front told me about a recent Russian attack in which the Russian side sent dozens of soldiers to charge as cannon fodder at Ukrainian lines at night. If the Ukrainian units hadn't had a drone in the sky at that moment, they wouldn't have been able to spot them and call in artillery to protect their trenches from being overrun.

If a Ukrainian position is being constantly bombarded, the Ukrainians are able to deploy drones to deliver basic items like water and even ammunition to units under constant attack.

In what felt like a movie, soldiers from the special unit“Kondor” of the 1st Presidential Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine picked me up near Lyman, Donetsk. We drove through the forests and backroads towards the Svatove-Kreminna line. Once we got to their base on the front, the soldiers made some coffee for us to sit down and chat and I was able to conduct interviews. Prior to fighting near Kreminna, they had fought in Bakhmut throughout 2022.

In the Kondor unit, most of the soldiers had some sort of technical background, because they mentioned that it is important to understand how to utilize software and make modifications to drones to improve performance.

I had the opportunity to see how the soldiers conduct drone warfare in action. In essence, every part of the battlefield has to be monitored by drones and all the drones stream their feeds back to base, where the generals on the second line are able to see a clear picture of the entire battlefront. The Ukrainian soldiers also constantly deploy drones to be on the hunt for Russian equipment and soldiers.

Surveillance drone operators know that if they see a Russian tank or a location full of Russian soldiers they must quickly call artillery to strike that position. At one point, I witnessed a Russian soldier popping his head out of a trench hole. Shortly after, I watched a drone drop a grenade in that exact location.

Similarly, a kamikaze drone will find a target and bombard it with explosives. Soldiers showed me how they strap grenades and even customize RPG warheads to attach to drones to hit tanks. They usually spend a lot of time tinkering with explosives and figuring out how to utilize them best.

Nearly all the units I spoke with told me that they received all of their drones exclusively from volunteers and various foundations. While the Ukrainian government at that point had made progress in improving the procurement of drones, the needs were simply too great.

Oleksiy, a Senior Lieutenant from the 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade who was fighting on the Zaporizhzhia front near Robotyne, told me that after we delivered supplies they lost 94 of out 100 donated drones in two weeks of fighting. He also had a few words to relay to the American public:

“You can't imagine how much this help is needed in these times, how important it is. All the aid that is given, we use it wisely. The Mavic drones don't just help win battles, but they save thousands of lives. If we see Russian armor on the move with drones, we have more time to prepare for battle and this is crucial. You should not worry; at a minimum, this drone will save at least one life. Thank you so much.”

Andriy, also from the 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade, highlighted the fact that they need to control their own supply chains to fight. For many tasks– ranging from accessing social media and asking for equipment-repair money to buying vehicles after losing some in battle to procuring life-saving drones and medical equipment – they are reliant on donations and supplies from ordinary people, foundations and foreign organizations.

So much of this war effort is driven by volunteers. Andriy said that without such a strong volunteer force in Ukraine, he didn't know what would've happened – it would've been impossible to fight without all the help coming from volunteers.

At the front, I interacted with many soldiers. I also participated in evacuating injured soldiers, and visited soldiers in the hospital. I remember speaking with one medic named Oleksandr from Kyiv in a hospital in Dnipro. He had a hole in his throat with a tube to help him breathe. He told me that medics on the frontline have to make daily judgment calls about who gets to live and die.

Soldiers use a grading system from 100 to 300 to assess injuries. A 300 rating would be received by someone who had been ripped to pieces by artillery and was bleeding out with little chance of surviving. Medics, once they are radioed in, need to determine whether it is worth risking their own lives to save the wounded soldier.

In one case, newly trained medics deployed to one area on the front made a mistake. They were not supposed to gather all of the injured soldiers in one location while waiting for evacuation, but they thought that evacuation would be easier if everyone was grouped together. Therefore, they gathered six injured soldiers in one building.

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The building was soon spotted by a Russian drone. Shortly after, Russian artillery struck the building, killing everyone including the medics.

Oleksandr also spoke about running away from Russian drones on three occasions. One time, he had to kick a kamikaze drone that flew at him with explosives. After he kicked it away from him, it exploded and he survived.

When Oleksandr asked an engineer about how to survive the mine fields that they have to walk through, he responded that you should aim to have at least two other people in front of you so that in case the mine exploded, they would take the blast and you would have a chance to survive. In fact, most Ukrainian soldiers on the frontline die from either artillery or mine explosions, according to Oleksandr.

But the impact of the war isn't just felt among active duty military personnel. Oleksandr Dovhal is a good friend of mine and a fellow volunteer with Dobra Sprava - we volunteered together in Bakhmut. At the beginning of the war, his wife and two children fled from Dnipro to Italy as refugees, while Oleksandr stayed behind to help with the war effort.

Using his own vehicle and his own savings for gas money, Oleksandr drove under fire to evacuate civilians from cities like Kharkiv in the early days of the war. He continued driving every day until he ran out of money.

At the beginning of the war, he would also drive to the front lines every day to bag the bodies of the dead Ukrainian soldiers and drive them back to their respective regions to be buried. When I asked him if he would consider giving an interview about his experiences, he lowered his head with an all-permeating sadness, remarking that it would be better for him not to talk about those things.

From left to right; Oleksandr Dovhal, Vyacheslav Petrikeev and the author, delivering supplies to a hospital in Toretsk, which was under daily Russian bombardment, September 2023. Photo courtesy of the author.

One night there was a Russian missile strike on Dnipro which landed 1.5 kilometers away from me. I heard the first missile fly past me, then the second, and as I heard the third missile, I remember thinking:“Maybe it's going to hit me and this will be it.”

The next morning, while people texted each other to check that everyone was okay and alive, Alina told me it's really a lottery determining who gets to live and die as the Russian strikes kill people at random.

Civilians have had to adapt to the ever-changing conditions and continue their lives amid the destruction.

This article was first published by Harvard's Ukrainian Research Institute and is republished with permission. Follow David Kirichenko on X @DVKirichenko.

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