Ukraine's counterattack manages to contain Russia in the east of the country

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Motorola excitedly emits cavernous code words.

Swift, the soldier with the silver beard, raises his head and watches the sky.

Drone alert.

The Russian positions are half a kilometer from the sandy and narrow trench of the Lugansk front in which the soldier stands guard with his partner, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan and custodian of a "very effective" Soviet-era machine gun, anchored on a wooden parapet.

Artillery shots ring out.

With rhythm, but far away.

Ukrainian forces hold firm the front line in Donbas (in the east).

After several intelligence operations and relying on weapons supplied by Western allies, and with the increasing help of combat drones, the soldiers of kyiv have managed to stop the fierce advance of the Kremlin troops in that decisive area of ​​the country.

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A little further up, in the northeast, after a powerful counteroffensive, the kyiv Army has forced the Russians to withdraw from the Kharkov city belt;

of positions that Vladimir Putin's soldiers have used since the beginning of the invasion to subject Ukraine's second largest city to constant and devastating attacks.

Moscow troops have had to retreat at some points almost to the Russian border, says the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.

But although the president, Volodímir Zelenski, has congratulated the soldiers for the achievement, it is necessary to secure the positions: the punished towns on the outskirts of Kharkov have continued this Monday under the bombs.

Russia's war against Ukraine, now running for three months, may have reached a tipping point, the British Ministry of Defense and several military analysts believe.

Russia - which, like Ukraine, does not reveal its losses - has suffered enormous casualties, of troops and material, also in this second phase of the offensive, to which the Kremlin Army has already arrived diminished after the failure of the assault on the capital , Kyiv.

This weekend, for the first time since the start of the war, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated that Ukraine can win the war.

The Ukrainian government speaks of a “turning point”.

Following setbacks in its plan to pocket Ukrainian forces in Donbas in a major multi-pronged operation, analysts believe the Kremlin has scaled back its ambitions and is now focusing on the battered Lugansk province, already 90% occupied.

As in the northeast, the Russian army is trying to take advantage of its numerical superiority and deploy planes, tanks, heavy artillery and helicopters.

In the gritty trenches and outposts of the Ukrainian Army in the eastern city of Severodonetsk, besieged by Moscow forces, young commander Andrei Almas warns that the situation is extremely volatile.

One moment there is something akin to calm, and the second artillery fire interrupts the chatter of groups of soldiers smoking on porches.

In the adjoining village, explains the soldier, who has about 200 men in his charge, another battalion is fighting street by street against the Russian forces.

Last weekend, several attacks against Severodonetsk killed two people, reached a hospital -already practically empty, like the whole city-, a chemical plant, a school and several houses, according to the authorities.

The regional government now fears even more furious bombing around Lugansk, where Moscow has reinforced its troops, arriving from the Kharkov front.

A Ukrainian soldier in a trench at the Lugansk front, east of Severodonetsk, on Monday. María Sahuquillo

Russian soldiers and Vladimir Putin do not distinguish between military and civilian positions, laments Yurii Lelyavskii, spokesman for an airborne brigade guarding positions on the Donetsk front, very close to the hotter area of ​​Izium, where Russia has established its military headquarters. operations for the area and logistics center.

“Putin says that they are coming to denazify Ukraine and he is the fascist,” remarks the military man, who highlights the role of the weapons supplied by the Western allies to deal with the offensive, but also criticizes that, on the other hand, he is followed buying gas from Russia.

In this phase of the invasion, centered on the Donbas area and more like a classic positional war, the fighting is essentially at a distance.

And the big game is artillery, says Leliavskii.

“We have a proverb: artillery is called 'god of war, the more the artilleryman sweats, the less the infantry bleeds.'

Artillery is everything here”, he abounds.

Russia's war against Ukraine, which has shaken the world, is decided in Donbas.

And in the corridors of the European Council, of the White House.

On the Lugansk front, Commander Almas insists that the Kremlin's goal now is to carry out smaller and less ambitious pincer operations to try to encircle the cities of Lisichansk and Severodonetsk, already without supplies of water, electricity, gas and without power lines. telephone.

Last week, in a showy operation, Russia erected several pontoon bridges over the Siverski Donets River to encircle the Severodonetsk metropolitan area, the main city of Lugansk.

He managed to introduce some armored vehicles and several dozen soldiers through the catwalks before a Ukrainian special forces battalion, recently deployed to reinforce the area, blew up the bridges, the material and an entire Russian battalion.

Now, explains a Ukrainian deputy commander who calls himself Viktor, a specialist in anti-tank weapons, there are several groups of Russian soldiers "infiltrated" in the area.

However, the great Russian offensive in Siverski Donetsk has failed and that also feeds the Ukrainian soldiers in the Lugansk trenches.

Now, with the successful counter-offensive in Kharkov and the resistance in Donbas, this turning point that the Ukrainian government is talking about could lead to other counter-offensives in the south and other parts of the east under Russian rule.

However, the Western allies' weapons, still flowing down the roads and to the east, and resting in some of Donbas's outposts, may not be limitless.

“Each battle won is a small step towards victory”, says Yurii Leliavskii, while showing several European man-portable anti-aircraft weapons, which are proving key in this part of the offensive: “Not only a Ukrainian victory, but also a European one.

We fight against the dark forces.”

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