The Ukrainian fortifications stretched away across the green and golden fields, the barbed wire and anti-tank traps contrasting starkly with the calm, almost idyllic countryside. A short distance away was the huge welcome sign to the Donetsk region, a landmark that has been transformed by Ukraine’s soldiers into a sombre memorial to the defence of their country. “Only the dead have seen the end of war,” read one message, written on a flag.
In the more than three years since President Putin ordered tanks into Ukraine, Russia has been unable to fight its way out of the Donetsk region, the epicentre of the war, into the neighbouring Dnipropetrovsk region, a vast area that includes Kryvyi Rih, President Zelensky’s home city.
Yet as Putin prepares to oversee a Victory Day military parade in Moscow on Friday, the Russian leader is desperate for a symbolic battlefield triumph he can present to his people. His aim, Ukrainian military officials say, is to have Russian boots on the ground in the Dnipropetrovsk region by the time he takes to the podium on Red Square — whatever the cost.
With its forces only two miles from the border, the Kremlin is sacrificing hundreds of troops a day in pursuit of its goal, said Colonel Andrii Nazarenko, the commander of Ukraine’s 72nd Brigade’s Unmanned Systems Battalion. “The enemy has stepped up its pressure dramatically, attacking around the clock, as it does everything to reach the border,” he said.
He said Russian troops were using motorbikes and cars to navigate their way around the battlefield, a tactic that gives them greater manoeuvrability but also leaves them vulnerable. “They are suffering huge losses, but they don’t take them into account,” he said. “They have one aim and that is to reach the Dnipropetrovsk region.”
Battle-hardened Ukrainian troops say the scenario is being repeated across Donetsk, where Russia’s army has made slow but steady advances, leaving the ruins of towns and villages in its wake.
Ukrainian forces fire a howitzer at Russian troops in the Donetsk region
OLEG PETRASIUK/REUTERS
“Everything for them is based on some kind of Victory Day-mania, so that their generals can report to Putin ‘we are so great, we did it, we took something,’” said Illia Petryna, acting deputy commander of Ukraine’s 25th Airborne Brigade. “But there has never been a Russian soldier on the territory of the Dnipropetrovsk region and we are doing everything we can to keep it that way.”
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Since coming to power 25 years ago, Putin has turned the annual Victory Day event to mark the defeat of Nazi Germany into a demonstration of Russian military power.
President Putin spoke at the 2023 Victory Day parade
GAVRIIL GRIGOROV/SPUTNIK/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Thermonuclear missiles were rolled along the streets of Moscow in 2023
VLAD KARKOV/GETTY IMAGES
Troops rehearsing in St Petersburg last week before the parade on May 9
ARTEM PRIAKHIN/SOPA IMAGES/REX FEATURES/SHUTTERSTOCK
Nuclear missiles rumble through central Moscow, fighter jets soar over Red Square and parents dress their babies in Second World War military uniforms for the day. This year, the guest of honour will be President Xi, the first major world leader to attend the event since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Russia’s attempted advance toward the border has been accompanied by a massive increase in shelling and drone attacks across the Donetsk region, as Putin’s forces try to break down Ukrainian defences. The consequences of Russian attacks can be seen everywhere, from gaping holes in the sides of charred apartment blocks to the black smoke that rose into the sky over Pokrovsk, a strategically important town that has been almost destroyed by the Kremlin’s indiscriminate strikes.
Shortly before The Times drove into Dobropillia, a town ten miles from the Dnipropetrovsk region, a Russian artillery shell or drone slammed into an area next to a military checkpoint. A cloud of smoke was still visible in the near distance.
The scene in the Donetsk region on Monday
TETIANA DZHAFAROVA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
“This is more of a political goal for Russia. It’s not a full-scale military operation, but rather an attempt to demonstrate the presence of Russian soldiers on the territory of the Dnipropetrovsk region,” Ivan Tymochko, a senior official with Ukraine’s ground forces, told Espreso TV, a Kyiv-based channel. “Russian forces will try to push this narrative around May 9 and attempt to make it a reality.”
The Russian army has more manpower, Colonel Nazarenko said. “It outnumbers us in some areas of the front by at least ten to one. If it decides to throw all its forces into the direction, then we understand that it will be unrealistic to try and hold onto our positions.”
Yet even if Moscow’s troops were to make it across the border, it would not represent an immediate strategic breakthrough and would have a purely symbolic value for Putin, Ukrainian analysts and officials said. “It’s just a line on a map, not a settlement or a river. It has no military meaning,” said Victor Tregubov, a spokesman for the Khortytsia Operational-Strategic Group.
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Yet the ferocity of Russia’s assault is already making itself felt in border towns and villages in the Dnipropetrovsk region that were once considered relatively safe. As the Kremlin’s troops advance, they are able to target increasing numbers of settlements not only with artillery, but also with first-person-view drones whose remote pilots can select their targets from miles away.
A drone strike on the Dnipropetrovsk region
STATE EMERGENCY SERVICE OF UKRAINE/ANADOLU/GETTY IMAGES
This week, Ukrainian authorities began the first compulsory evacuation of children from seven frontline villages that are now only miles from Russian forces. “The front is getting closer, we could hear kamikaze drones every day,” said Kateryna, who was sent with her two children to a temporary shelter deeper inside the Dnipropetrovsk region. It was the second time she had been forced from her home by Russia’s army after being forced to flee the Donetsk region earlier in the war.
“The drones started to attack about a month ago,” she said. “We didn’t expect it. They told us on the news that everything was OK, that they’d pushed them back. But now, you go out to plant potatoes and there’s a drone above you. One hit the roof of our school [which was empty at the time]. I lifted my head up and thought it was ours but then it picked up speed and crashed into the school.”
Alyona, second left, and Kateryna, right, evacuated with their children to a temporary shelter
KATERYNA MALOFIEIEVA
Putin’s hopes of a triumphant Victory Day have also been set back by a new Ukrainian offensive into western Russia’s Kursk region, which comes after he claimed that Kyiv’s forces had been driven out of the area. Russian pro-war bloggers said that Ukrainian troops had smashed through the border, crossing minefields and blowing up bridges.
Russia also accused Ukraine of launching about 100 drones at Moscow. There were no injuries reported, but state media aired images of a cracked supermarket window and a blackened residential building façade in the city.
Four months after President Trump came to power on a pledge to negotiate an end to the war, it is hard to find anyone in Ukraine who now believes that peace is imminent. “Everyone hoped that the day would come when all this would end, but that’s not happening,” said Alyona, another woman who had been evacuated from a border village. “The news is very bad. Russia is pressing us on all fronts and wiping out towns. They are just destroying everything.”
Ukraine’s soldiers are too busy, however, to think much about how peace might eventually come to their country. “There have been so many predictions that the war will end in a month, or in two or three weeks,” said Petryna, the deputy brigade commander. “Now we’ve all switched over to thinking that there is work to do and it’s up to us to do it.”