'We've seen a big Russian wave' Ukrainians fear a bleak spring as Putin's troops gain ground

In an underground command post in eastern Ukraine, a Ukrainian soldier peered at a map.

- Luke Harding

Russian positions are marked in red. A year ago enemy troops were at least 35 miles away from the administrative border between Donetsk oblast and the neighbouring Dnipropetrovsk region. Now they were on the doorstep: a mere 5 miles away.

"The situation is pretty bad," Valerii - call-sign "Oves" - admitted, sitting in front of a bank of screens showing live footage from the battlefield. Reconnaissance drones zoomed in on Russian positions. "If a mouse moves, we can see it," he said. His brigade, the 110th, spent a year and a half defending the eastern city of Avdiivka. It fell last February after a long and brutal siege.

That summer Russian troops swallowed up the brigade's next position in the town of Ocheretyne. Vladimir Putin's ground forces have in the months since been moving at their quickest rate since 2022, advancing across a frosty landscape of slag heaps, mining towns and villages. Their tactics are familiar: destroy and occupy.

"We have seen this big Russian wave. They have never gone forward this quickly before," Valerii said. "They take terrible losses. But their human resources are unlimited." His mechanised units - equipped with Soviet-era 152mm howitzers - are now defending the southern town of Velyka Novosilka.

In the past few days Russian scouting parties have infiltrated the nearby settlements of Neskuchne and Novyi Komar. Fierce fighting rages. The commander Andrii Hrebeniuk, a sergeant major, said: "During the day we hit them with artillery. At night the foxes and dogs eat their remains." He added: "We've recovered psychotropic drugs from Russian prisoners. They are dosed up to reduce fear before kamikaze missions."