Foreign soldiers flocked to Ukraine after Russia invaded. Five months on, the fighting is taking a heavy toll.
Relentless Russian bombings were “the closest thing I’ve ever seen to hell,” an American who served several tours of the Middle East said.
2022-07-21 19:34:15 - VI News Staff
After a thrilling first few months of unexpected success that boosted morale among the Ukrainian ranks, the reality of the bloodiest European conflict since World War II has taken its toll among some of the thousands of foreign fighters who traveled from abroad to battle the Russian invaders.
The war has long moved past the Ukrainian victory in Kyiv’s suburbs, which are still scarred by the mass graves and blown-out buildings of the Russian occupation. Instead, after months of battle, soldiers push for excruciatingly incremental gains from trenches in the grassy plains and farm fields of the country’s east and south.
It’s now a grueling artillery slugfest.
Round after round hits near Ukrainian lines, filling the air with dirt, sand and ash and forcing soldiers to burrow into deep trenches. As Ukrainian troops wait for an opening or calculate the position of a potential target, explosions resonate around them with regular thuds — sometimes for 12 hours at a time. The seeming randomness of the strikes intensifies the feeling among some that survival might come down to sheer luck.
An American fighting for Ukraine who served in the U.S. Army with combat tours in the Middle East described the constant Russian bombardment of the city of Severodonetsk in Ukraine’s Donbas region as “the closest thing I’ve ever seen to hell.”
Ukraine Armed Forces estimate that Russia is using eight times as many artillery munitions each day, firing thousands more shells than the Ukrainians and stymying their efforts.