They appear here and there, seized by death, in their bloody uniforms, at random from a ditch or a doorway riddled with shrapnel.
A dozen corpses of Russian soldiers were lying scattered in fields and houses on the eastern outskirts of Kharkiv on Wednesday. The Ukrainian army has regained control of a section of the highway there, loosening the Russian grip on Ukraine’s second city.
“It’s all over the place,” says a Ukrainian intelligence officer during a visit organized by the army, along this four-lane road and in the nearby village of Mala Rogan, three kilometers further north. .
The fighting “lasted nearly three days to liberate” this stretch of highway linking Kharkiv to Chuguyv, he said. East of Chugouïv, this same highway is however cut: the bridge spanning the Donets, a river, was destroyed during the night by a bombardment, noted Agence France-Presse.
Near Kharkiv, “the road was under fire from Russian forces, who killed civilians there. We pushed them back about ten kilometers further north,” said a commander of the 92and Brigade, one of the main units participating in the defense of the city.
“The road is now open, it is free. The deminers are passing through, the municipal services have started to work to clear the debris and the wrecked cars,” explained this officer, resolved to “chase the forces from Moscow to the border”. “The enemy will no doubt concentrate their forces towards the south and Mariupol. In Kharkiv, we can repel them. »
young soldiers
The body of a Ukrainian, in civilian clothes, killed a few days earlier, is still lying sideways on the road, near a damaged van with holes in it.
Carcasses of cars riddled with bullets litter the central reservation, where local peasants in tractors are already excavating the wrecks.
In a ditch, below the hard shoulder, another corpse, that of a Russian soldier this time, his fingers pointing to the sky.
Passports, various other identity papers, credit cards show youthful faces, dates of birth around the year 2000.
At the edge of a plowed field on a height a few hundred yards away, a Russian position was completely obliterated. Two armored personnel carriers, vaguely concealed behind a hedge, their guns turned towards Kharkiv, are half charred, amid abandoned military effects. We slalom carefully between grenades and suspect ammunition.
Here the soldiers were able to leave. But at the next combat post, the lifeless bodies of five troops, heavy helmets on their heads, are lying here and there, one at the bottom of his trench, the others on the ground.
Civilian clothing for “infiltrating”
Everywhere, in the fields, in the brush or on the nearby highway, shell holes, the remains of finned bombs and other deadly rockets, witnesses of intense bombardments.
The Russian soldiers “were exhausted”, especially “young people who were starving”. They were nearly 120 in this area, of which “forty” were taken prisoner, said the intelligence officer.
How many died? No Ukrainian soldier ventures to give a precise number. The balance sheet of losses in the opposite camp seems to leave them indifferent. An officer evokes “dozens” of Russians killed.
What is certain is that the Russian forces found themselves surrounded by surprise on this eastern part of the front around Kharkiv and in particular trapped in the neighboring village of Mala Rogan, according to concordant sources.
The village was recaptured over the weekend, but the cleaning operations lasted nearly three days, house by house, many Russian soldiers having taken refuge in cellars.
On Wednesday, an ambulance began picking up the bodies in plastic bags: one near a bus, covered with a bedside rug, two others at the entrance to a hovel obviously squatted in recent weeks by the soldiers.
One of them was wearing civilian clothes over his khaki pants. “They had been there for weeks. They dressed like the people here to better infiltrate our lines,” said a Ukrainian policeman.
Rare civilians have reappeared in the streets. A couple are repairing a roof, damaged by a bomb which dug a crater 10 meters in diameter in the neighboring alley.
Old ladies, flower headscarves, came to pick up oranges, biscuits and other food distributed by the army. They mention about thirty people taken hostage by Russian soldiers on the first floor of the school, including young girls who “were raped”.
An elderly man, fur cap on his head, storms too. Three Russian soldiers forced themselves into his home for days. “Give me a Kalashnikov and I’ll kill a Russian!” he says.