BAKHMUT, Ukraine – Ukrainian soldiers recently rushed around the howitzer in a field. In a fit of activity, a man dragged a 106-pound explosive device from a truck to the gun. Another pushed him into the breach with a wooden stake.
“Loaded!” shouted the soldier, then knelt on the ground and covered his ears with his hands.
The cannon fired with a resounding bang. A cloud of smoke rose. Leaves fluttered down from nearby trees. The grenade sailed toward the Russians with a metallic scream.
It’s a scene repeated thousands of times a day along the front lines in Ukraine: artillery duels and long-range strikes from both sides on targets ranging from infantry to fuel depots to tanks.
And what followed the salvo fired into eastern Ukraine on Wednesday morning also marked the rhythm of this war: a coffee break.
This is a war fought in a cycle of contradictions – eruptions of chaos from outgoing or incoming shelling, then long pauses during which soldiers engage in the most routine activities. Just minutes earlier, warriors unleashing destructive weapons with a thunderous roar, settled in an oak forest around a picnic table of wooden ammunition boxes, boiling water on a campfire and pouring cups of instant coffee.
They rested in an oak grove, overlooking a field of tall green grass and purple flowering thistles. Elsewhere, soldiers used breaks to smoke or get a haircut.
On a recent visit, soldiers of the 58th Brigade fighting in and around the city of Bakhmut, where the artillery war is raging, were both attacked and assaulted by artillery.
All over the rolling grassy hills west of Bakhmut, brown clouds of smoke rose from incoming Russian attacks targeting Ukraine’s artillery positions.
The critical importance of long-range fire was one of the reasons the United States and other allies rushed NATO-caliber howitzers to Ukraine. The military has exhausted almost all of its stock of Soviet grenades from its arsenal and from allied countries in Eastern Europe, and is now shifting to more abundant NATO ammunition.
Our coverage of the war between Russia and Ukraine
Russia has huge stockpiles of artillery ammunition, but there is evidence that it is dipping into older reserves that are more likely to fail on impact.
The Soviet Union’s howitzer firing the Ukrainian team, a model called the D-20 nicknamed the “fish lure,” has held up well, said its commander, Lieutenant Oleksandr Shakin. American-supplied long-range weapons such as the M777 howitzer and the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System known as HIMARS have increased the range of the Ukrainian military, but the bulk of its arsenal still consists of Soviet-era cannons.
The cannon they fired was made in 1979, he said, and most of the grenades are from the 1980s. Still, Lieutenant Shakin said, “They haven’t let me down yet.”
Typically, he said, he fires about 20 rounds a day with each cannon, sparing Ukraine’s dwindling supply of 152 millimeters of ammunition.
“We have a lot of motivation,” said Captain Kostyantin Viter, an artillery officer. “In front of us is our infantry and we have to cover it. Behind us are our families.”
In the town of Bakhmut on Wednesday, in a position where soldiers of the 58th Brigade are encamped in an abandoned municipal building, the whistles of their colleagues’ grenades could sail above their heads – aimed at Russian troops east of the city.
The soldiers stood in a courtyard smoking and listening to the sound of shells overhead and the crack of explosions in the distance.
The buzz of electric clippers also filled the air as one soldier gave the other a haircut. A few trucks were parked in the yard and a dozen or so soldiers were walking around.
About half an hour later, a new sound of distant explosions joined the background: the clatter of nearby explosions. What had been a languid summer morning became a scene of chaos.
Soldiers ran for cover or ducked to the ground. After about ten bangs it was over. Acrid smoke drifted across the courtyard and shards of glass lay. “Is everyone alive?” shouted a soldier.
All the soldiers who had been in the garden escaped unharmed. But the Russian rocket attack killed seven civilians and injured six others near the soldier’s base, authorities later reported.
