'Fear is contagious, but so is courage' - Ukraine readies counteroffensive

Ukrainian army readies for long-awaited counterattack

- Julian Borger, Artem Mazhulin

‘We killed 10 of them for every one of ours … but to them they were just meat’ - Petro Horbatenko Battalion commander

A US-made armoured vehicle flying a large Ukrainian flag careered over a muddy field, coming to an abrupt halt by a tree line, its metal tracks churning up the sticky black soil.

Fire from its machine gun cut through the undergrowth, amputating branches, as the back door lowered, releasing a platoon of soldiers who ran into the trees firing, working through a system of hidden trenches until they were deemed to have been cleared.

The soldiers were from the first battalion of Ukraine's 3rd Assault Brigade, who had defended the town of Bakhmut for five months. Bakhmut fell days ago, seized by Russia at huge human cost, and now the brigade is preparing to fight back, as part of a long-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive.

The officers and soldiers training in the Donetsk countryside are under no illusions about the task ahead. Once one platoon had performed the exercise, they got out of the vehicle and another platoon got in to do the same drill: storm the tree line, clear the trenches and form a defensive perimeter. Elsewhere, soldiers are rehearsing urban combat. “We’re training in certain places where there are certain landscapes that are the exact landscapes that we will have to fight in,” said the battalion commander, Petro Horbatenko.