As invasion continues with western arms deliveries smaller than hoped, ordinary Ukrainians are facing full weight of Russian artillery
leksandr’s war lasted only a week. The 36-year-old, a Ukrainian electrician working in Gdansk, hurried back to join up after“We were shelled constantly during the day. There was not 10 minutes without Russian shelling,” he said, describing a fearful human cost: “Every day one person was killed and another couple wounded. Big losses, really big losses.”
Now, Oleksandr lies in a crowded part of a hospital in the central city of Dnipro, his wounded right arm held in place by four scaffolded pins, telling a story of how ordinary frontline soldiers like him faced the full weight of Russia’s artillery bombardment – with little or no hope of answering back.
Morale among the soldiers in hospital remains high, but their personal stories also illustrate the desperate nature of the defenders’ fight – and how Ukraine improvised an enlarged military to defend itself against the unprovoked Russian invasion, using every human resource to hand. “Out of a unit of 20, 15 people were injured by shelling, one was captured and one was killed,” Nikolai counted. Those wounded from artillery fire included himself, a casualty of Russian counterattack on a fluid section of the frontline, leaving him with long-term damage on the lower part of his right arm.