For months, Ukrainian soldiers battled to capture and then hold the Kharkiv region city of Kupyansk, split by the Oskil River and home to a crucial, now-unused rail line stretching to the west.
Even after Russian troops staged a surprise assault last fall using an old underground pipeline to sneak under the river, soldiers from Ukraine's 14th Separate Mechanized Brigade and other units have largely held their positions, a bright spot on an otherwise grim front line.
It's come at a painful cost for the 14th.
Last week, relatives of some of the brigade soldiers went public with angry complaints and photographs showing emaciated soldiers -- the result, they said, of poor supplies, a lack of adequate food and water, and bad leadership.
Olha said her husband and other members of the 14th brigade had been deprived of food and water for days on end.
"He wrote to me, saying, 'I'm alive, but we're starving,'" she told RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service. "And by that time…it had been nine days since they had had food."
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The photographs, and the relatives' complaints, have struck a nerve in Ukrainian society, exhausted and in many cases demoralized after more than four years of all-out war. And they grabbed attention of Ukraine's military leadership, who have struggled to keep up a steady pipeline of new recruits to defend against a larger Russian Army.
On April 24, General Oleksandr Syrskiy ordered the removal the commander of the 14th brigade.
Brigade commanders "concealed the real state of affairs, including the loss of a certain number of positions and miscalculations regarding the provision for solders," the General Staff said in the announcement. "In particular, a problem was identified regarding the supply of food to one of the brigade's positions."
Personnel Woes
Since the start of the all-out invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has relied on a mix of pluck and determination, along with a flood of Western weaponry, to fight Russia to a near draw. Ukraine's drone warfare innovation has also helped equalize the fight.
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Everyone Wants Ukraine’s Drones. This German Joint Venture Is Trying To Get Ahead Of The CurveGetting enough men into battle, however, continues to be a major problem.
It took lawmakers and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy two years to agree upon major reforms to the country's mobilization and recruiting laws. But recruitment remains spotty, and some commanders regularly complain about not having enough properly trained men: Individual units conduct their own specific advertising campaigns, and draft dodging is common.
A decentralized system of recruiting centers has led to accusations of corruption and bribery.
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'Busification' Is A Dirty Word In Ukraine -- And A Symptom Of Its Persistent Problem With Military ManpowerMany of Ukraine's most battle-hardened units -- the Third Separate Assault Brigade being one prominent example -- have mostly maintained adequate personnel levels, despite being frequently ordered to help shore up porous defenses.
But other units have struggled with both quantity of personnel and quality of training for new recruits.
In one notorious case, a new Western-trained and equipped unit -- the 155th Separate Mechanized Brigade -- was roiled by desertions, incriminations. and scathing public criticism of its commanders. The brigade's commander was relieved of duty days before it was to deploy to the front.
In the case of the 14th brigade near Kupyansk, relatives told RFE/RL and other Ukrainian media that the unit has suffered shortages of food and supplies for as long as seven months.
In a post to Facebook last week, Anastasia Silchuk, the wife of another soldier, reposted several photographs of the men and quoted them as saying:
"For seven months, there have been constant delays in food, water, and gasoline. We often faint and are physically unable to defend our positions. Frequently the situation arises that we end up fainting and we are physically unable to defend our positions."
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Commanders and military officials did not deny the shortages and instead blamed them in part on the difficulty in getting supplies across the contested Oskil River. They said limited supplies were being flown in by drones, an increasingly frequent occurrence along the front lines.
"The situation is now stabilized in terms of logistics, even though it's still extremely complicated," Nadiya Zamryha, a spokeswoman for the brigade, told RFE/RL. "All this is occurring under the very close surveillance by enemy [drones]."
The logistics problem isn't unique to the 14th brigade, Olha Reshetylova, the advocate watchdog for the Ukrainian military, told RFE/RL, suggesting wider problems involving rotating troops and exhausted units away from the front lines.
"The problem isn't even this specific unit, but rather the broader issue of making timely decisions about withdrawing or pulling troops back," she told RFE/RL.
Ihor Romanenko, a retired deputy chief of the Ukrainian general staff, said the supply routes around Kupyansk are definitely difficult due to the river.
"The fact of the matter is that this should have been known to the higher-ups," he told RFE/RL. "Leadership has a duty to be in control of the situation, to be on the ground as much as possible. They have deputies, other subordinates to understand the situation objectively."
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On Ukraine's Battlefield, Spring Weather, New Fighting Season, A Big Russian AssaultAnatoliy Kozel, a retired colonel and former commander of the 53rd Motorized Rifle Brigade, said officers frequently mislead their superior officers, not only about logistics problems but about conditions on the ground or, for example, the status of defensive positions.
"We have positions on the front that don't correspond with actual tactical situation. Positions have been only half-prepared for a long time, positions where there's no communications…and the brigade commander is simply afraid to report it," he told RFE/RL.
"If they're frequently deceiving you, then you need to get out to the landing site," he said.