The bloody drive toward Tokmak is one small part of a front line that extends several hundred miles, part of a broader push in which Ukrainian forces are trying to break through elsewhere in the south and east.
Source: Institute for the Study of War with American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project
After a string of victories last year, military analysts thought Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive would attempt to split Russian supply lines in the south, driving a wedge between western Russia and Russian-occupied Crimea.
The Russian military expected the same and prepared accordingly. Moscow shifted troops, dug fresh fortifications and scattered land mines across the relatively flat fields of Ukraine’s south. When Ukraine began its attack, even with fresh supplies of advanced western tanks and equipment, it faced a prepared defense of the sort not seen in Europe since World War II.
Ukraine surged forward in June, but quickly lost tanks, troops and other armored vehicles to dense minefields and prepared Russian troops. Kyiv’s forces initially used American tactics better suited for the last century than the current-day battlefield in Ukraine.
Since August, the fighting has concentrated around the small hamlet of Robotyne. The Ukrainians are fighting to widen the breach with hopes they can capitalize on their hard-earned gains and inch forward to the next line of Russian defenses.
This is what Robotyne looked like a year ago: occupied by Russia, untouched by battle and home to around a hundred people.
As Ukrainian forces pushed closer to Robotyne over the summer, shell craters pock-marked fields, and trees and vegetation that concealed Russian trenches and positions were slowly sheared away.
By summer’s end, Robotyne was all but gone. Most of its buildings were destroyed. Fields were burned. And the farmland surrounding it looked more like the surface of the moon.
Sources: Satellite imagery by Planet Labs, Brady Africk’s analysis of imagery from Copernicus (Russian fortifications).
The fight for Robotyne played out in official statements and grainy videos posted on social media, leaving the scope of destruction and the scale of violence in the fight for such a small tract of land mostly at arm’s length. It is unclear how many soldiers died — on both sides — during the battle, but overhead imagery suggested the cost was disproportionate to the amount of land retaken.
Robotyne is now a village in name only. In late August, the Ukrainian armed forces released footage showing its forces entering what remains of the small enclave, images that revealed bombed-out fields and roads and destroyed homes.
Dozens of craters filled the small area shown in one photo, a hint at the sheer amount of ammunition required to win control of a town just over a mile wide.
Image source: Ukrainian Armed Forces, via Reuters
As fall approaches, and with it poor weather, Ukraine’s gains around Robotyne could dictate the next moves in its southern campaign.
As it did in the summer, Russia knows this as well. It has moved substantial resources into the area to stop Ukraine from pushing further south.
Valerii Zaluzhnyi/Telegram, via Reuters
With Robotyne firmly in Ukraine’s hands, Kyiv’s forces are shifting east, to their next objective and Russia’s main line of defense around the village of Verbove. There have been reports of Ukrainian gains and Russian counterattacks, but the progress of the offensive is unclear.
The currency of the counteroffensive is ammunition, vehicles and human lives. This is what is certain: More people will die, more buildings will burn and the surrounding farmlands will be seeded with land mines and unexploded shells that probably will take decades to clear.