Proud Band of Ukrainian Troops Holds Russian Assault at Bay — for Now

MYKOLAIV, Ukraine — The stays of a Russian Tigr combating car sat smoldering on the aspect of the highway, as Ukrainian troops lounged exterior their trenches smoking cigarettes. Close by, a gaggle of native villagers was tinkering with a captured T-90 tank, attempting to get it operating once more in order that the Ukrainian Military would possibly put it to make use of.

For 3 days, Russian forces had fought to take Mykolaiv, however by Sunday, Ukrainian troops had pushed them again from the town limits and retaken the airport, halting the Russian advance alongside the Black Sea, a minimum of quickly. By Monday morning Russian forces had resumed their assault.

“Few anticipated such power from our individuals as a result of, once you haven’t slept for 3 days, and once you solely have one dry ration as a result of the remaining burned up, when it’s unfavorable temperature out and there’s nothing to heat you, and when you find yourself consistently within the battle, imagine me, it’s bodily very troublesome,” an exhausted Col. Sviatoslav Stetsenko, of the Ukrainian Military’s 59th Brigade, mentioned in an interview. “However our individuals endured this.”

Taking Mykolaiv stays a key goal for Russian forces, and the thwomp of artillery within the distance on Sunday instructed that the Ukrainians had not pushed them again that far. However the sudden Ukrainian success of defending this vital port, about 65 miles from Odessa, underscores two rising developments within the warfare.

Russia’s failure to grab Mykolaiv and different cities rapidly, as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia seems to have meant, is essentially a operate of its navy’s faltering efficiency. Russian forces have suffered from logistical snafus, baffling tactical selections and low morale.

However it’s the fierce and, in accordance with many analysts, unexpectedly succesful protection by Ukrainian forces, who’re considerably outgunned, that has largely stalled the Russian advance and, for now, prevented Mykolaiv from falling into Russian arms.

For 3 days, troops from the Ukrainian Military’s 59th Brigade, along with different navy and territorial protection items, have been defending Mykolaiv from Russian assault alongside a number of fronts, going through down punishing artillery barrages, helicopter assaults and rocket strikes, a few of which have hit civilian neighborhoods.

Civilians elsewhere in Ukraine on Sunday bore the brunt of an unrelenting Russian assault. For the second day in a row, Ukrainians had been unable to flee from the besieged southern metropolis of Mariupol amid heavy Russian shelling regardless of efforts to barter a cease-fire. And civilians attempting to go away Kyiv, the capital, and the close by city of Irpin additionally got here beneath assault by Russian forces. Mortar shells fired at a battered bridge utilized by individuals fleeing the combating killed 4 individuals, together with a girl and her two youngsters.

Mr. Putin, in a telephone name with President Emmanuel Macron of France, denied that Russian forces had been concentrating on civilians and vowed to achieve all of his objectives “by means of negotiation or warfare,” in accordance with the French.

That the Ukrainian forces nonetheless exist and are in a position to mount a protection after 11 days of warfare is by itself a significant feat. Most navy analysts and even some Ukrainian generals predicted that if Russia mounted a full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s navy, which is dwarfed by its counterpart by nearly each measure, wouldn’t final various days and even hours. However by making the most of their native data, attacking lumbering Russian troop columns with small, lithe items and utilizing Western navy help like antitank grenades to most impact, Ukrainian forces have managed to gradual, if not cease, the Russian advance.

“We battle them day and night time; we don’t allow them to sleep,” mentioned Maj. Gen. Dmitry Marchenko, the commander of forces defending Mykolaiv. “They stand up within the morning disoriented, drained. Their ethical psychological state is just damaged.”

The governor of the Mykolaiv area, Vitaliy Kim, mentioned that Russian forces had been surrendering in sudden numbers and had deserted a lot gear that he didn’t have sufficient navy and municipal employees to gather all of it.

“We’re in temper now,” he mentioned.

The time for such attitudes could also be restricted. A senior Ukrainian navy official, talking on the situation of anonymity to debate delicate navy assessments, mentioned that Russian forces exterior Mykolaiv seemed to be regrouping and getting ready for a counterattack, presumably with extra firepower. Russia nonetheless has many extra troops and superior weapons than Ukraine, and its air power now dominates the skies.

Regardless of near-frantic warnings from the White Home of an imminent Russian invasion within the weeks earlier than it really occurred on Feb. 24, the preliminary assault took Colonel Stetsenko’s unit without warning, he mentioned. His brigade was at a coaching train close to the border with Crimea exterior a city referred to as Oleshky and solely half assembled when it obtained the order to arrange for battle.

“If we had obtained the order three or 4 days earlier than, we may have ready, dug trenches,” he mentioned.

That delay practically led to his brigade’s destruction within the first hours of the warfare, he mentioned.

The Russian power that poured out of Crimea was 5 instances the dimensions of his Ukrainian unit and rapidly overwhelmed it. His brigade had no air help and few useful antiaircraft techniques, as a result of most had been despatched to Kyiv to defend the capital. A lot of the brigade’s tanks and armored combating autos had been destroyed within the preliminary assault by Russian aviation.

The brigade’s commander, Col. Oleksandr Vinogradov, had misplaced contact with navy management and was pressured to make selections on the fly, mentioned Colonel Stetsenko, who was with the commander all through. Encircled and struggling heavy losses from strikes by Russian fighter jets, Colonel Vinogradov ordered his remaining tank and artillery items to punch a gap by means of a unit of Russian airborne assault troops that had positioned itself on the Ukrainian brigade’s rear.

The maneuver allowed the principle Ukrainian combating power to cross a bridge over the Dnieper River and retreat west about 45 miles to Mykolaiv, the place it may regroup and hyperlink up with different items to proceed the battle.

“The fighter jets of the enemy attacked our tanks, a number of tanks had been hit and burned, and the remaining remained and didn’t flee,” Colonel Stetsenko mentioned. “They knew that behind them had been different individuals, they usually gave up their lives to interrupt by means of the bridge to dig in on the opposite financial institution.”

The tactic labored, however the prices had been steep. By falling again to Mykolaiv, Colonel Stetsenko’s brigade needed to sacrifice Kherson, which on March 2 turned the primary main metropolis to fall to the Russian forces. That they had no selection, Colonel Stetsenko mentioned. If that they had tried to defend Kherson, Russian forces may have flanked them and reduce them off, opening a highway to the west, and to Odessa.

With a white, intently trimmed beard and deep crevices round his mouth the place dimples would possibly as soon as have been, Colonel Stetsenko cuts an uncommon determine on the battlefield. He’s 56 and had been retired from the navy for a decade when he determined to re-enlist in 2020. By then, Ukrainian forces had been already combating a Kremlin-backed insurgency in jap Ukraine, and Colonel Stetsenko felt he wanted to do his half.

“I knew that many individuals who had already served had been drained,” he mentioned. “It’s troublesome to dwell for thus lengthy with out their households, and we would have liked individuals to serve. So I went to the navy recruiting middle and signed a contract.”

Such dedication goes some method to explaining the fierce resistance displayed by Ukrainian troopers on the battlefield, as Russian troops appear to be surrendering in giant numbers. An acute data of the Russian navy provides the Ukrainian forces one other benefit.

Colonel Stetsenko served with Russians as a younger soldier within the Soviet navy within the Nineteen Eighties, when he was posted to the Far East. Now, troopers based mostly at a number of the similar Russian garrisons the place he spent his youth are combating towards him.

“They’re now my enemy,” he mentioned. “And every one in every of them who comes right here with arms, who comes right here as an invader, I’ll do the whole lot I can to make sure that he stays as fertilizer for our land.”

On Sunday night, Colonel Stetsenko returned to the entrance line exterior the town the place the sounds of battle swelled as soon as extra as Russian troops regrouped for a counterattack. That has been the best way of this warfare, practically every week and a half in, a violent ebb and stream that has centered on just a few key cities like Kyiv and Kharkiv.

In Mykolaiv, Colonel Stetsenko and his comrades gained the town a day of relaxation. The solar got here out for just a few hours within the morning, adopted by a lightweight snow within the afternoon. Streets that had been abandoned just a few days in the past had been populated once more with moms pushing strollers and folks strolling canine.

On the outskirts the place combating had been most intense, Nikolai Bilyashchat, 54, had joined just a few of his neighbors to work on the Russian T-90 tank, which now sported a Ukrainian flag. It had been broken when Ukrainian forces blew up the bridge it was driving over, and now solely the treads on its left aspect labored correctly.

“I’ve been a driver my complete life, so I do know a bit of bit about mechanics,” Mr. Bilyashchat mentioned. “Although I don’t know a factor about tanks.”