Outgunned and outmanned, Ukrainian soldiers struggling to hold the front line in a brutal, months-long Russian siege of Chasiv Yar are increasingly worried about their army's ability to protect their rear. If key supply lines from the west are cut off and if troops to their south are overrun, they risk being choked.
"It would be critical if the main road for resources, ammunition, and everything is captured, or if the Russians approach closer to it," said a sergeant in an artillery unit who serves with the 80th Air Assault Brigade deployed near Chasiv Yar and goes by the name of Bohdan.
After retreating west from the Donetsk Oblast city of Bakhmut just over one year ago, Ukraine's forces have used the higher ground around Chasiv Yar to inflict massive losses on advancing Russian troops who this spring made incursions into the town's eastern outskirts.
But the predicament for Ukrainian troops struggling to hold Chasiv Yar worsened in past weeks after a poorly organized rotation of Ukrainian soldiers to the south allowed Russian forces to advance towards the Ukraine-held towns of Toretsk and Niu York.
To make matters worse, Russian forces have been advancing swiftly to the southwest after the fall of Avdiivka in February 2024. Russian troops have made it as far as the village of Novooleksandrivka.
From there, they are pushing hard and are just over six kilometers away from Highway T0504, a key supply route for Ukrainian troops in the entire region that could become a path for Russian forces to attack to the west, east, or both ways.
Asami Terajima
The Ukrainian military is still using T0504 as a supply route at a limited capacity even if it is dangerous due to Russia's drone and artillery strikes, a company commander with the 110th Separate Mechanized Brigade and an acting Battalion Chief Sergeant with the 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade told the Kyiv Independent.
"It is a very serious threat, because after two years of war, the enemy has the ability and determination to break through the front line and not in one or two places, but in several (places) to threaten logistics," an infantry company commander with the 110th, who goes by the name Mykhailo, said of the Russian advance toward T0504.
"Any blocked logistical route affects the situation at the front, because all roads are important and perform strategic tasks, and various logistical tasks are assigned to them."
The highway is one of several critical major supply arteries for some of the last Ukrainian-held cities in Donbas, the main route from the southwest. There are rural and major roads to the north that can be used as alternatives. Still, it's a main road that was in the past used to connect Pokrovsk, a supply hub to the west, with three of the largest Donbas cities still held by Ukraine: Kostiantynivka, Kramatorsk, and nearby Sloviansk.
Senior Sergeant Viktor Boichenko, who has also fought in the Chasiv Yar sector until recently with the 22nd Separate Mechanized Brigade, echoed the concern about logistics, saying it would be "severely complicated" as the alternative road into Kramatorsk and the nearby town of Druzhkivka would be "much further and much worse."
Chasiv Yar has other supply routes from the north. However, concentrating supplies on fewer roads makes them more vulnerable to Russian air strikes. In turn, this further jeopardizes logistics for Ukrainian forces already grappling with ammunition shortages.
Ukraine's general staff said on July 11 that the fiercest fighting was currently raging near the village of Vozdvyzhenka – about five kilometers away from a middle section of the highway. Russian troops are attacking from Novooleksandrivka, a village they captured in late June, according to military analysts.
"This is the initial stage of a big offensive on the Toretsk agglomeration," said Oleksander Kovalenko, a Ukrainian military and political analyst with the Kyiv-based think-tank Information Resistance.
Lieutenant Colonel Nazar Voloshyn, spokesperson of the Khortytsia group of forces in the region, denied that Russian forces have pressed on to T0504, claiming that the Ukrainian military "securely holds the defense" there.
But Kovalenko said the "peak moment" could arrive early in August. Moscow, he added, successfully seized a moment to launch an offensive on Toretsk and nearby Niu York this June during a poor rotation of Ukrainian units.
Kovalenko said Russian troops would likely focus on reaching the highway and possibly pushing towards Pokrovsk further west before intensifying their offensive in the Niu York-Torestsk axis.
Toretsk and Niu York are devastated towns that endured war since Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014 but have been calmer sectors of the front line during the past two years of Russia's full-scale invasion.
Francis Farrell
U.S.-based military expert Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who routinely visits the battlefields in Ukraine, said the Russian advance toward Pokrovsk "threatens to anchor out potentially creating large pockets around Toretsk and south of Pokrovsk."
"Russian advances have typically devolved into small unit attacks by assault groups. Russian forces are steadily pressing into defenses, pursuing an attritional approach, which yields incremental gains but can't generate momentum."
Russia is increasing pressure on Chasiv Yar and Toretsk and advancing northwest – to capture Kostiantynivka, according to Serhiy Hrabskyi, a retired Ukrainian colonel and military analyst.
Seizing Toretsk and Chasiv Yar would allow Russian troops to push toward Kostiantynivka – from the south and north, which Hrabskyi says is Russia's goal. Kostiantynivka hosts an intersection point between two key highways – T0504 and T0514, with the latter leading up to Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
Kovalenko said the amount of Western military aid deliveries, a top topic of discussion at this week's NATO summit in Washington DC, is crucial to determining the outcome of these battles.
Bohdan and several other soldiers deployed on the Chasiv Yar front said they anticipate even fewer shells being delivered due to worsening logistics in the coming months. Bohdan said his artillery battery unit currently receives a small fraction of shells daily compared to 2023 supplies. The shortage forces his unit to conserve shells, leaving him and fellow artillerymen unable to provide fire support for their infantry against Russian mortars, armored vehicles, and tanks.
Critically lacking people to replenish the heavy infantry losses, Ukrainian battle-torn brigades deployed in and around Chasiv Yar have struggled to hold off relentless Russian assaults. Being unable to provide fire support for the already depleted infantry leads to more casualties when combat-capable soldiers are already few.
"We try to show that we have something, but honestly, we have nothing (to defend Chasiv Yar with)," Bohdan said over the phone a day after returning from a combat mission, shocked at how critical the shortage of crucial resources from ammunition to air defense missiles had gotten.
Following a Ukrainian retreat from the easternmost Kanal neighborhood earlier in July, the front line in Chasiv Yar is currently along the Siverskyi Donets-Donbas canal that divides Russian and Ukrainian-held territories. Russian troops could either aim for an operational encirclement by surrounding Chasiv Yar from the northern and southern flanks – a tactic previously used to force complete Ukrainian withdrawal from cities like Avdiivka and Bakhmut – or try crossing the canal to intensify assaults on the main part of the town.
"We are holding the defense (of the Chasiv Yar sector)," Bohdan said, adding: "But little by little, we are withdrawing because we have nothing (to fight with)."
Francis Farrell
