The conflict against Russia is causing serious weariness among Ukrainian soldiers and civilians. Franceinfo was able to see this at the front and in kyiv.
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Robotyne is a small village of only three square kilometers, but which represents one of the great Ukrainian victories during the counter-offensive which was unsuccessful last spring. We went to see a company from the 65th brigade. They are infantrymen, the soldiers who advance on foot, the men of the trenches in a way. Igor and the soldiers of his company were sent here last spring. They then participated in the start of the offensive and in the first weeks, they progressed, says Igor. “We progressed on foot through these very dense minefields. There were up to three mines per square meter. It was too much. And there, you advance into the groves. You don’t know where this bastard is hiding who wants to kill you. That’s reality.”
But after that, nothing more. End of the advance, the Russians were very well prepared. Doubt then settles in the heads of these men, like Vitali. “The Russians have considerably strengthened their defense lines. It was the anti-tank rockets that caused all these losses of our armored vehicles. And the guys who fired these rockets were not conscripts, but professional soldiers. They were effective in the destruction of Western tanks.” Then the list of doubts grows. Adversaries better equipped than expected, and on their side, a shortage of ammunition and men, too. A company, for example, normally has around a hundred men. Igor’s, only around thirty. “It can’t go on like this for much longer. We’re not made of steel. We’re not robots. Shards don’t spare anyone, not even good soldiers. Since we’ve been in this sector, there had a lot of deaths. Given our psychological state, sooner or later we’re going to lose control.”
Last month alone, five men died in this company. Almost as many injured. This observation, cold as war, leads him to wonder if one day he will not have to negotiate. “If the war is to last a long time, we who are positioned here will not see the end of it. This is the reality. Either there will be negotiations one day, or we will kill them one by one with more artillery . But we don’t have any.” The Russians are trying to retake Robotyne. They started their march forward a few days ago. It’s just a village, it’s true. The military scope is not huge, but it is symbolically very important for Ukraine.
In kyiv, bombings punctuate daily life
The front is a strip stretching 1,100 kilometers to the east and south of Ukraine. And this war does not affect all Ukrainian territory in the same way. But even behind, in kyiv, the capital, bombings punctuate the daily lives of the inhabitants. And the last big salvo was two weeks ago, on February 7: five dead, around thirty injured in a building in the south of kyiv. We returned to the site, at the foot of a very large residential block of 17 floors on which the debris of a Russian missile shot down by the Ukrainians fell. A fire broke out and part of the facade was completely blackened. We found Nadia there, one of the rescued residents. “My apartment is this one. On the 11th floor.” We go up there, the elevator doesn’t work.
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Nadia is 22 years old. She lived there with her mother and her little brother but since the strike, it is no longer habitable. “It was very cold and so everyone left.” Inside, we can clearly see the traces of this shock wave. Nadia filmed after the bombing, with her phone. We can see the rubble and the smoke in the minutes following the start of the fire. And now, an air of chaos. Here, a completely melted door, there tapestries that have come loose “because of water leaks.” The windows of the balcony too, like a small loggia, were shattered. There are two gaping holes in the raw concrete. And 15 days later, Nadia still can’t believe it. “All these missiles… I never thought that one day they could fall on my building. Besides, for two years, I had never gone down to the shelter during the alerts because each time, the missile was shot down a little further away. But then, lo and behold, it fell on us.”
Nadia and her family are currently rehoused with acquaintances. The city must soon offer them a room for the three of them. But Nadia doesn’t complain because two floors higher, where she takes us, on the 13th, everything went up in smoke and her neighbor died. “She was 39 years old. Two floors away, I could have died.” Four hundred recorded deaths have been recorded in the Ukrainian capital over the past two years, a figure given by kyiv town hall.
In Russia too, weariness is felt
In the other camp, in Russia, Defenders of the Fatherland Day is celebrated on Friday February 23. And Vladimir Putin spoke in a video to greet “the authentic heroes” who are fighting in Ukraine. In Moscow, the situation is obviously not comparable to what Ukraine is experiencing. Apart from a few border areas in Russia, the territory is not under threat of bombing and most Russians say their lives have not fundamentally changed. But there too, many Russians are tired of this lasting war.
Obviously, this is certainly expressed in a more discreet or more ambiguous way than in Ukraine. The law strictly prohibits contesting the “special military operation,” as the Kremlin calls it, in any way. But this feeling of fatigue, of being fed up, of weariness, is felt among the Russians. Russians who no longer keep themselves informed, many of them. This is perhaps the common point, if one had to be found, with Ukrainian society. Today, some tell us that they turn off their phone so that they no longer spend the day scrolling through bad news from the front.