On the fronts beyond Lyman, the forests are burning. Even when the bombing by Moscow’s army stopped, the fires continued to consume the region, day and night. Already battered by tank attacks and artillery duels in the first year of the Russian invasion, when the town of Lyman, located in Donetsk Oblast, had changed hands twice, the forest of trees with trunks sectioned has become, in places, a black forest. Depending on the winds, villages and roads are sometimes invaded by clouds of ash.
Hidden under trees half charred by their own 152 mm cannon, each shell shot accompanied by a ball of fire which ignited the surrounding branches, the âBulbaâ artillerymen (in homage to the Cossack fighter Tarass Boulba, of novel by Nicolas Gogol) and âRakunâ (raccoon), their nom de guerre, receive the order to target an enemy artillery piece. Bulba transmits the coordinates, the men cover their ears, Rakun fires, the ground shakes, the forest trembles. One shot is enough. The battle is not raging these days, so there is no point wasting shells, which Ukrainian forces say are sorely lacking.
Although they fire a powerful Soviet Guiatsint (“hyacinth”) cannon, Bulba and Rakun are not career soldiers and only learned the basics of artillery after volunteering, like hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainians for two years. They chose to report to a recruitment center of the 12e Azov assault brigade.
From nationalist movements
In a Ukraine which has been debating, since the failure of the summer counter-offensive on the southern fronts in 2023, the necessity and modalities of the mobilization of men of fighting age, and while Russia has in recent months accentuated its military pressure in Donbass, the volunteer units from nationalist movements are special. If they do not integrate men mobilized by the army, they have the right to open their own volunteer recruitment centers, which often meet with more success than the traditional sector.
For Azov, the challenge nevertheless remains complete: the regiment, which defended Mariupol in the spring of 2022, fighting right into the bowels of the Azovstal metallurgical factory, before the surrender and departure of its men into captivity, was promoted to brigade rank. The unit must increase from 1,500 to 7,000 men, which is no small feat in a war where the men most resolute to fight have already engaged in 2014 in the Donbass, or after the Russian invasion of February 24, 2022.
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