Shock, anger Pand war fatigue

On the second anniversary of Putin's invasion of Ukraine, the fall of Avdiivka has given Russia its first gain in months. In Kyiv, cracks in morale are showing. What happens now?

- Shaun Walker

Close to the frontline in Ukraine's Donetsk region, a bumpy road passes through half-abandoned hamlets. It morphs into a muddy track, snakes through fields, and eventually leads to an army base.

There, as a kettle boiled on a gas heater, a weary 39-year-old soldier, who wished to be known only by his callsign, Titushko, spoke about the problems of fighting the Russians amid a serious ammunition shortage, as the sound of fire from nearby positions echoed around the base.

In November, Titushko's men, part of an artillery division in Ukraine's First Tank Brigade, received a supply of about 300 shells every 10 days, but they now have a firing limit of just 10 a day. "Back then, we could keep them on their toes, fire all the time, aim every time we saw a target. Now we fire exclusively for defence," he said.

The ammunition reserves at the base are thin, and partly made up of Iranian shells - part of a shipment seized in the Gulf apparently en route to Houthi rebels in Yemen. They are "extremely problematic and don't work well", another soldier at the base said.

Along the frontline, Ukraine is on the defensive, short of ammunition and soldiers. Last week, Ukraine's military command announced it was withdrawing from Avdiivka, further east in Donetsk region, handing

Russia its first major territorial gain since May last year. Ukrainian officials have described the loss as a direct consequence of the shortage of ammunition from the west.

The grim news, as the second anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion approaches, is another sign that the third year of the war could be the hardest yet for Ukraine. The mood is very different from that of a year ago, when amid the horror Ukrainians remained buoyed up by the extraordinary consolidation of national society.