"We’ll defend it with our lives" - visiting the Ukrainian brigade holding the most strategically important city in the Donbas

Pictured: Members of the 93rd Mechanized Brigade receive their final orders before deploying to their positions at an undisclosed location, just behind the front line, Donetsk Oblast

“Lie down, cover your ears, open your mouths.” 

As training exercises go, it’s fairly dramatic. “Odesa”, an intelligence officer in the Ukrainian military’s elite 93rd Mechanized Brigade casually pulls the pin out of a live fragmentation grenade and drops it into a small trench two metres away from our position, with the practised ease of a soldier who has done this dozens of times. 

A few seconds later, the grenade detonates. Smoke and a small amount of dirt flies out of the shallow trench. 

Odesa grins. “All our trainees go through this exercise”, he says. “It's to demonstrate how a weapon like this works. To teach them not to panic; to show that as long as you’re in cover you’re perfectly safe”. 

I’ve been taken to one of the many training grounds used by the 93rd, a short distance behind the front line at a secret location in Donetsk Oblast. As we watch, around a hundred members of the 93rd run through combat drills. The brigade’s combat instructors observe with hawk-like attentiveness. 

“There’s a lot of military here,” Taras, a senior NCO in the 93rd and our guide for the last two days, says. “So there’s a small chance of a Russian missile strike. But only 5 to 10 percent.” It’s not entirely clear if he’s joking; Russian reconnaissance drones are a relatively constant presence in the skies above. Everything within a 30km radius of the front is reliably visible to Russian eyes. 

The 93rd are extremely well equipped for a Ukrainian brigade. They’re also well trained, led, and have a strong esprit de corps - the common sense of pride and comradeship shared by members of a capable military unit. As such, despite being consistently deployed to the most dangerous sections of the front, the 93rd have a waiting-list to join.

Alongside the equally elite 24th Mechanized Brigade, the 93rd have anchored the defence in Chasiv Yar for months. Odesa describes the city as “the most strategically important position in the whole region”, an opinion shared by many Ukrainian, Western and Russian analysts alike. If Chasiv Yar falls, Odesa believes, the rest of the Oblast will not be far behind.

Sitting on high ground, the city overlooks the crucial logistical hub of Kostyantynivka, as well as the twin industrial cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. The Russians have taken a foothold in the eastern-most “Kanal” district of the city, but the majority of the city remains firmly in Ukrainian hands. And crucially, the Ukrainian defenders have managed to keep the Russians from crossing the key Siverskyi Donets-Donbas canal that sits on the eastern edge of the city in force. Now drained of water, the empty canal is a significant obstacle for Russian armoured vehicles. 

Taras believes the recent Russian incursion into Kharkiv Oblast was at least partially designed to draw Ukrainian forces away from the Donbas, and particularly from around Chasiv Yar. It was at least partially successful, with the 92nd Assault Brigade, 42nd Mechanized Brigade, and the Kraken special forces unit all being redirected to help repel the Russian push towards Ukraine’s second city. Despite the significant amount of Ukrainian military strength being drawn away by Russia’s Kharkiv offensive, they haven’t been able to capitalise by advancing in Chasiv Yar.

I ask what the conditions are currently like for the 93rd’s soldiers fighting in the city. “It’s hell”, Taras tells me. The Russians are using everything in their arsenal in increasingly desperate attempts to advance. Human wave assaults, heavy glide bombs, thermobaric rockets and huge numbers of FPV drones are being thrown at the Ukrainian defenders, who are outnumbered and outgunned.  

“There’s not much we can do against the glide-bombs”, Taras explains. “We do get some warning when they’re incoming, but then we just have to hunker-down and hope they don’t land directly on our positions.” 

I ask about the brigade’s artillery. The recent package of U.S. aid has made a significant difference, Taras says, and Odesa agrees. The 93rd’s artillery batteries, who recently had to fire as few as 1 shell to every 10 the Russians fired, are now receiving significant shipments of shells. Now the ratio is only 8 to 10, Taras says. 

Where the Russians really outnumber the 93rd is in manpower. “Our soldiers are the bravest fighters in the world”, Odesa says. “But for each Ukrainian soldier, the Russians have up to 8 of their own”. And still, the 93rd hold. For now. Odesa pauses. “They’re criminals and mercenaries'', he says. “We’re defending our country. And we’ll defend it with our lives.”