‘Their human resources are unlimited’: Russia’s advances signal bleak spring for Ukrainians
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If Moscow’s forces manage to take all of Donetsk oblast it would be a symbolic moment for Putin – and Kyiv. In an underground command post in eastern Ukraine, a Ukrainian soldier peered at a map. Russian positions were marked in red. A year ago enemy troops were at least 35 miles (60km) away from the administrative border between Donetsk oblast and the neighbouring Dnipropetrovsk region. Now they were on the doorstep: a mere 5 miles away.
![[Luke Harding]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2017/12/26/Luke_Harding,_L.png?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
“The situation is pretty bad,” Valerii – call-sign “Oves” – admitted, sitting in front of a bank of screens showing live footage from the battlefield. Reconnaissance drones zoomed in on Russian positions under a snowy tree-line. “If a mouse moves, we can see it,” he said. His brigade, the 110th, spent a year and a half defending the eastern city of Avdiivka. It fell in February 2024 after a long and brutal siege.
![[Valerii working at a command post in a temporary structure containing television screens]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/6d833282cbd7fe3fca22537b86818fbd06154275/0_356_6720_4032/master/6720.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Russian troops in the summer then swallowed up the brigade’s next position in the town of Ocheretnye, west of Avdiivka. Vladimir Putin’s ground forces have in the months since been moving at their quickest rate since 2022, advancing across a frosty landscape of slag-heaps, mining towns and villages. Their tactics are familiar: destroy and occupy.
![[Andrii Hrebeniuk standing against a dark backdrop]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b836e93c8c65e421bb2d7b276a06c8c134afcfa8/0_0_6720_4480/master/6720.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
“We have seen this big Russian wave. They have never gone forward this quickly before,” Valerii said. “They take terrible losses. But their human resources are unlimited.” His mechanised units – equipped with Soviet-era 152mm howitzers – are defending the southern town of Velyka Novosilka as the Russians try to encircle it.
![[Yevhen Khrypun, editor of the Mezhivskyi Merydian newspaper in the town of Mezhova, in Dnipropetrovsk oblast, now near the frontline]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/0efb613b6ef72aa7f2ba8549418d99b39b2fe03d/117_577_6505_3903/master/6505.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
