There are only nine high-rise buildings in the Ukrainian village of Stepnohirsk, but the battle inside them could alter the course of the war.
It was once a sleepy settlement, home to only 5,000 people. Today, no civilians remain. Instead, the scorched cottages and the nine bombed-out buildings at its centre are divided between opposing armies fighting intense, house-to-house, floor-to-floor urban combat.
Some 20,000 Russian troops have descended on Stepnohirsk, intent on forging a path north towards the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, 14 miles away. An industrial hub and home to the largest steelworks left in Ukrainian hands, the city is vital to the country’s war effort.
Stepnohirsk is the last Ukrainian stronghold before the Kinska river, a marshy tributary that narrows movement into predictable crossing points. If the Russians can cross it, they will be able to bring barrel artillery to bear on the city and bleed the life out of it.
“The loss of Stepnohirsk would allow the enemy to overcome the natural barrier, advance artillery and unmanned assets, and shell Zaporizhzhia round the clock,” says “Mongol”, a senior officer commanding the Ferrata group, a special forces unit of HUR, Ukraine’s military intelligence.
“That would cause panic among the civilian population and a humanitarian crisis. It would create the conditions for the occupation of Zaporizhzhia and the loss of the regional centre.”
Ukrainian drones hover over the village’s cratered landscape, scanning for signs of enemy movement and relaying live feeds back to Ferrata’s command centre.
On one command screen, splashes of white heat mark the battle for the high-rises. No sound comes back, only greyscale pixels from a thermal imaging camera. Stripped of colour and the cacophony of combat, the explosions flower and fade in eerie silence.
A Ferrata serviceman in the command centre in Kyiv
ANTON SHTUKA FOR THE TIMES
On another, a Ukrainian infantryman dashes from an apartment block towards a drone dangling a package. The drone releases the bundle — ammunition and water — and the soldier vanishes into cover as soon as he has snatched it.
In September 2022, President Putin declared the Zaporizhzhia region annexed. Four years later, his soldiers are still clawing forward, dying in extraordinary numbers in the attempt to make their leader’s claim real.
Those efforts have only accelerated as Russian diplomats talk of peace. Five Russian divisions from two armies are concentrated in the Zaporizhzhia region, an estimated 65,000 ground troops.
Yet for the first time, Russian troops are being killed or wounded faster than they are being recruited, the Ukrainians claim, a claim backed by western officials. Across the entire front line, some 31,700 Russian soldiers were killed last month, according to General Syrsky, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief.
The battle at Stepnohirsk is being fought by elite units, a testament to its importance. The Russians have sent two paratroop divisions, a motorised rifle division and a Spetsnaz brigade to the village. Standing in their way, outnumbered roughly seven to one, are the special forces soldiers of HUR, alongside a smattering of regular infantry, drone and territorial defence units.
The Ferrata group during target practice
Mongol’s Ferrata group, which works with a Ukrainian military technology company and uses artificial intelligence to support its operations, is tasked with reconnaissance, counterattacking and raiding Russian lines, forcing them back whenever they try to establish advance positions. When a group of Russians manages to infiltrate Ukrainian lines, it is Mongol’s assault teams that go in to eliminate them.
Mongol was in the middle of one such clearing operation when The Times visited. A group of Russians had dug in behind Ukrainian positions, threatening supply lines.
“The bad thing is they already know we’re coming,” he told a squad commander on a secure line. “Right now the enemy is conducting additional recon there. Keep checking constantly whether the enemy is observing, and sit like mice. Full radio silence.”
A Ferrata reconnaissance squad had spent three days performing a covert insertion to get in close to the enemy. “Our Spetsnaz is now trying to take two Russians alive as prisoners,” said “Nine”, another Ferrata officer.
The Ferrata officer “Nine” at the command centre in Kyiv
ANTON SHTUKA FOR THE TIMES
The Ukrainians called out, pretending to be Russian, and managed to lure one paratrooper out. He quickly realised his mistake, so they shot him dead. The other refused to surrender, so the group pinned him down for a first-person view (FPV) drone to finish, then withdrew.
“I reckon the life expectancy of one mobilised Russian here is about 12 minutes, no more,” Nine said. “And the cost of his life, in terms of shells and FPVs spent to kill him, is about $5,000-$6,000.”
Not all the group’s missions run so smoothly.
In December, Sergeant “Ice”, a Ferrata squad leader, took his team of 15 special forces operators on a mission to set up observation and ambush points near a farm that had been occupied by the Russians. The enemy was threatening to flank the village, moving on from the farm to Prymorske and Lukianivske, villages either side of Stepnohirsk.
Ice and his team drove part of the way, then walked in with full gear in four separate groups. “We had to walk 15km to the target. There is no ability to drive right up in an armoured vehicle — it will get destroyed [by drones] immediately,” Ice said.
Sergeant “Ice” in the Zaporizhzhia region
ANTON SHTUKA FOR THE TIMES
ANTON SHTUKA FOR THE TIMES
For three days they observed the Russians from 170 metres away, he said, before they began bringing in regular infantry to man the ambush points.
“One of my groups was guiding our neighbours towards the target, there were 300 metres left, and they were spotted by a drone. Then the incoming started. One neighbour was killed immediately — a direct hit by a drone. And my fighter too: mortar fragments wounded him and then they finished him with an FPV drone,” Ice said.
The remainder of the group took cover in Ice’s trench, alerting the enemy to its position, he said.
“In 15 minutes eight FPV drones flew into our dugout, it was already half-destroyed and started burning. Mortars and artillery were smashing the area, so we didn’t leave and we didn’t start putting it out — we let the enemy think we burnt up,” Ice said.
His men soaked the timber in their half of the trench in water to stop the flames spreading and doused their balaclavas in water to try to avoid inhaling smoke, he said. For three hours they lay under the smoke in the burning trench, before they risked an escape, making it back to safety with badly burnt limbs.
Burn wounds suffered by members of Ferrata on the mission
The two remaining groups stayed on target for a further 14 days, Ice said, hunted by Russian drones. They could not be supplied by drones so close to the enemy, so had to forage supplies from knocked-out fighting vehicles in the area when conditions allowed.
The soldier killed, “Kind”, 30, was a close friend, Nine said. “It’s kind of emotional to talk about,” he added, before his voice trailed off. Instead, he brought out his smartphone to play video showing the men joking as they are crammed together in a small bunker. “This is us on a mission,” he said.
“Kind”, the soldier killed during the mission
“What would you say about the service here in this hotel? How is it?” One soldier asks in the video. “The service is shit, but the girls are fine,” comes the response, to laughter. He is surrounded only by his comrades, sweating in thermals and body armour. “Kind, tell us how is the local spa zone?” The soldier recording asks.
“Everything is great, compared to other situations,” Kind answers. “The cocktail bar has too few people, though,” he says jokingly. “Something has to be done about that.”
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Ultimately, Ferrata was able to halt the Russian flanking movement.This month, after Elon Musk’s X agreed to a whitelist scheme that shut off Russian access to Starlink in Ukraine, the Ukrainians were able to counterattack and have begun driving them backwards, Mongol said.
“By exploiting significant communication problems on the enemy side after the complete shutdown of Starlink, it was possible to push them back from the settlement of Prymorske and significantly cut their advances along the former Kakhovka Reservoir,” he said.
The Russians are still attacking through Stepnohirsk’s centre, however. Mongol did not expect peace talks would yield any success soon. His men would fight on as long as the Russians were on Ukrainian territory, he said. “Only the destruction of manpower will reduce the enemy’s combat potential. No tank, no drone moves without manpower. Our task, first and foremost, is to kill Russians.”