On a recent morning, after a rain shower had blown over the night before, the gunners prepared a Soviet-legacy howitzer of a type nicknamed the Carnation. The barrel turned. “Firework!” cried a soldier. The gun boomed. Leaves fell from nearby trees.
A few minutes later, an intelligence unit’s artillery team received an interception of Russian two-way radio communications. “Probably two dead,” said a Russian commander. The soldiers were in a cheerful mood.
“It is our usual working day to destroy as much as possible,” said Arseniy.
On the counter-offensive, which he sees through the ebb and flow of orders to fire the gun, he said: “I think things are going according to plan,” but added: “Even if things don’t go according to plan, it is That’s also in our plan.”
The once sleepy country lanes, lined with tall green grass and wildflowers, are now clogged with ambulances exiting the front, their lights flashing. Tracked vehicles rumble along and pick-ups painted in makeshift camouflage, the soldier’s main means of transport, bounce across the tracks.
As dusk turned to night and swallows flew and squawked across the fields, a Ukrainian drone surveillance unit from the 47th Mechanized Brigade went to work.
These early hours of the night are prime time for hunting Russian tanks with infrared cameras, as the bulky metal armor, which heats up in the sun during the day, almost glows in the dark.
“Sunset is our golden age,” said the commander, Lieutenant Arutiunian. The soldiers spot tanks and then call out the coordinates for an artillery team.
