“Give us more weapons and we’ll get the job done,” it sounds from the trenches in Ukraine

Army chaplain Oleksandr (40) races south from Mykolaiv, past open fields, trenches, huge mounds of sand, solar panels with bullet holes in them. A startled pheasant just manages to get to safety, two army helicopters skim low. Further on the southern Ukrainian horizon, black clouds of smoke rise to the left and right of the car: there is fighting between the Ukrainian and Russian army.

Oleksandr – beard, cap, sunglasses, army clothes and bulletproof vest – is on his way to the front line with a car full of food and medicine, less than six hundred meters from the Russian lines. Russian artillery often fires this road, and in this open lowland, a car is easily spotted by the Russian drones in the sky. Deadly birds, Oleksandr calls them. “They see everything,” he says resignedly, while he continues to accelerate.

In the first month of the war, Oleksandr – for security reasons he keeps his last name secret – could not drive here. At that time, this area was still in the hands of the Russian army. The Russians lay in a semicircle around Mykolaiv, ready to take the city.

But now it’s different. While the Russian army in the Donbas is still slowly but surely gaining ground, on the southern front it is the Ukrainians who have pushed Russians backwards tens of kilometers. The Ukrainians are now less than twenty kilometers from the southern city of Kherson. There has been talk of a major Ukrainian offensive for weeks.

Broken windows

When we have passed a checkpoint, Oleksandr asks to put the mobile phone on airplane mode – the mobile signal draws fire. For safety reasons, he also asks not to mention the name of the village we are entering. He parks his car at a half-destroyed school, which is used as a command point.

Three soldiers suddenly poke their heads out of a cellar. “We’re safe down there,” said soldier Oleksandr Golykov (50), who is sitting on a chair outside himself. He looks relaxed, but keeps his helmet on just in case. His automatic rifle rests on his thighs.

Before the war, Golykov gave children swimming lessons, a day after the Russian invasion on February 24, he joined the army. “Athletes, musicians, teachers, engineers: all of Ukraine is fighting.”

On his first day at the front, a mortar shell exploded seven meters from him. Fear gripped him for a moment. By now he has become accustomed to the violence of war. “It is ingrained in humans to get used to everything.”

Bird twitter fills the silence, but it never lasts long, because explosions can be heard almost continuously. Centimeter by centimeter, meter by meter, says Golykov, Ukraine has been able to recapture the villages south of Mykolaiv in recent months. Accurate Ukrainian artillery fire was the deciding factor, he said. “After that, there were counter-attacks from the Russians. We declined. Both parties have now taken up permanent positions.”

In the next phase, Ukraine wants to steam up towards Kherson, the port city conquered by the Russians. For weeks, rumors have been buzzing that Ukraine is preparing for an offensive in the south. Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said in the British newspaper The Times this month that President Volodymyr Zelensky ordered the Ukrainian army to liberate the occupied coastal areas.

The south is a weak spot

The Ukrainian strategy does not come out of the blue. While Russia focuses on the struggle in eastern Ukraine, the south has become a weak spot. The front here differs from that in the Donbas, explains Golykov. “The front line in the south is vast. They can’t staff them well everywhere.” Moscow also had a foothold in the east with the ‘People’s Republics’ of Donetsk and Luhansk, which broke off in 2014: “All vehicles and weapons were already there. There is nothing in the south. They had to fight here.”

Ukraine has been deploying Western weapons in recent weeks as a prelude to the offensive against Kherson. Since the arrival of the advanced US Himars missile systems, Ukraine has also been attacking Russian weapons depots in the south, such as at Nova Kachovka. Ukraine also bombed the Antonivsky Bridge near Kherson again last week. The port city is isolated, on the north bank of the wide Dnieper. If the bridges are destroyed, the Russian garrison is practically cut off from the hinterland and Kherson can only be supplied via a roundabout route, making the transports more vulnerable to Ukrainian attacks. The Antonivsky Bridge still stands, but is badly damaged. Two other bridges were also damaged. As a precautionary measure, the Russians are laying pontoon bridges across the Dnieper.

For British intelligence, that is a sign that the Ukrainian operation has started. The counter-offensive is gaining momentum, the British Ministry of Defense reported this week. But south of Mykolaiv there is nothing to notice yet. Nowhere are long lines of columns with tanks and vehicles or soldiers gathering. The Ukrainian offensive is slowly unfurling. Be careful, says Private Golykov. “We are not Russians who shoot everything and everyone to pieces. It is not important to them how many people die. Our officers do care about our lives.” He sniffs. “And if we had had more Himars, we could have acted faster.”

Ukraine has twelve Himars systems. They frighten the Russians. “Give Ukraine a hundred,” Golykov asks. “I understand it’s different than striking a match, but teach us, and we’ll get the job done.”

If Ukraine succeeds in liberating Kherson, it will be a painful defeat for Russia. The port city is the only major place in the hands of the Russians north and west of the Dnieper. If taken, Ukraine beckons an advance towards Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.

Western experts mainly emphasize the economic factor of the counter-offensive. If Kherson is taken, the entire Black Sea coast west of Crimea would be in Ukrainian hands. Ukraine thus has wider access to the Black Sea, on which it is so dependent economically. The port of Kherson can also be used for the export of grain, which must be restarted after the agreement with Russia.

But these arguments are not discussed at all in conversations with Ukrainians. “This is our land and we are going to take it back,” chaplain Oleksandr expressed the feeling among the Ukrainian population.

Office shot to pieces

Two days earlier, Vitali Kim, head of the Mykolaiv regional military administration, also referred to the plight of Ukrainian civilians in the occupied territories. “It’s our people who are there. We must free them. That is paramount,” says Kim (41) during a conversation on the street in the government part of Mykolaiv, which is closed with concrete blocks and barbed wire.

Kim became famous with tidy videos he shot in his office, feet on the table. But now the office has been shot to pieces, almost split in two by a Russian bombing raid in March that left 37 dead.

Mykolaiv is still under Russian fire. The city is within range of Russian artillery. The night before, a Russian missile hit a gas station. Two university buildings and hotels are also in ruins.

In the early days of the war, the Russian army advanced towards Mykolaiv, but it did not capture the city. The residents stood up to the Russian soldiers, Kim explains. “Everyone is united here. Nobody here wants the Russians. Civilians, the military, hunters, fishermen – everyone grabbed a weapon and went to fight. The Russians had not expected such resistance.”

That was also the case with the liberation of the villages south of Mykolaiv, says Kim. Ukraine chased the Russian army. “They got no rest. They didn’t sleep. During the day they fought with the Ukrainian army, at night partisans hunted them in places where they stayed, such as in the woods. Everyone fought.”

Now the next part of the war awaits the Ukrainians in the south: the counter-offensive. Kim doesn’t want to say much about it – secret, he says. But bombing the Antonivsky Bridge is part of the plan of attack, he admits. “Russia uses the bridge massively for military traffic.”

Kim sees opportunities in the south. “The Russian army is not as strong as claimed. They can’t attack in two or three places. They are now concentrated in the Donbas.” The Russian army is now sending reinforcements to the southern front, according to Ukraine.

Kalashnikov within reach

“When I say lie down, lie down.” Chaplain Oleksandr leads the way, heading for an observatory 600 meters from Russian soldiers. The walk from the school building goes through the affected village: blackened walls and shattered roofs. A gold-painted Soviet memorial to soldiers killed in World War II sparkles unscathed in the sun.

At most twenty people of the original thousand live in the village, says the chaplain. He sometimes visits them with water and food. “They are pro-Russian and are waiting for the Russian army.”

At the lookout point, a soldier peers out from behind a five-foot wall of sandbags across the open field. His Kalashnikov is within easy reach. Behind him is a trench. The soldier’s name is also Oleksandr and he is sitting here alone. He keeps in touch with other soldiers with his walkie-talkie.

He can hide in a bunker of sandbags, earth and tree trunks. It’s dark inside. Empty water bottles, a map and packs of cigarettes lie on a table.

Oleksandr’s best protection is his ears. He tries to listen for incoming Russian fire. “Quiet, quiet,” he sometimes says, then looks out over the plain. “Nothing, nothing,” he continues. And then again: boom. “Oooooh,” Oleksandr shouts. Immediately after that comes another thump, and another. Black clouds of smoke rise on the horizon.

When there is silence, he talks lightly about what happened when the Ukrainian army advanced towards the villages under Mykolaiv. “We came, and they went away.” Oleksandr tells it as if the Ukrainians didn’t have to fire a shot. “And then the war started here, as you hear now.” The battle has turned into trench warfare like World War I, but one with 21st century drones flying overhead.

Western arms supplies

In the car on his way to the front, chaplain Oleksandr sneered at western arms supplies. The West is nice to talk to, he says, but the amount of weapons that Ukraine gets is too small to push the Russians back, he says. Minister Reznikov said in The Times that Ukraine has a million soldiers available to retake the southern territories, but not enough weapons. The United States promised to deliver four more Himars, Poland sends tanks.

Soldier Oleksandr on the lookout point – he too keeps his last name a secret for security reasons – allows the West to act faster. After fighting in eastern Ukraine in 2016, he traveled across Europe building exhibitions. “Everything is going slowly with you.”

There is no lack of militancy among the Ukrainians. Research by the International Institute of Sociology in Kiev among 2,000 Ukrainians shows that 84 percent find territorial concessions unacceptable. At the same time, there is a feeling that without huge western arms supplies, the major offensive in the south could take a while yet.

“Quiet, quiet,” says Oleksandr again. He listens carefully, but nothing. “War is not that difficult,” he continues. “It depends on who has the most guns.”