Commanders force Ukrainian soldiers to stay on the front lines for weeks

‘Russia is working to make defending Ukraine even more difficult. According to Ukrainian Armed Forces Colonel Voloshin: ‘The Russian army is trying to maximize the area of effect, destroying all buildings and shelters with pinpoint strikes, turning them into completely bare wastelands where it is impossible to hide, and most soldiers die during rotation.’

For this reason, commanders force soldiers to stay on the front lines for weeks without rotation. And this creates problems for morale.

‘An infantryman who has once spent from 60 to 165 days in a trench at the front won’t go there again. We do not have a doctrine on how to build a deeply echeloned defense when there are very few infantrymen at the front. At the same time, the enemy disrupts your communication between the front and the rear and actively disables your drone operators at the front. This is the recipe for Russia’s slow advance – the squeeze-out effect,’ says research fellow of the ‘Come Back Alive’ foundation, Beleskov.’