Zhytomyr, Ukraine –
As soon as the funeral of a veteran colonel killed by Russian shelling was completed, cemetery workers prepared the next hole. Inevitably, given how quickly death is destroying Ukrainian troops on the front lines, the empty tomb will not last that long.
Regiment Alexander Makhachek left behind widow Elena and their daughters Olena and Miroslava-Alexandra. During the first 100 days of the war, his grave was the 40th to be excavated in the military cemetery in Zhytomyr, 140km west of the capital Kyiv.
He was killed on May 30 in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine, where fighting is raging. Nearby, a funeral note on the freshly excavated tomb of Vyacheslav Dvornitsky says he died on May 27th. Other graves also show soldiers killed within days of each other – on May 10, 9, 7 and 5. And this is just a cemetery, only in one of the Ukrainian cities, villages and hamlets laying soldiers for rest.
President Vladimir Zelensky said this week that Ukraine now loses 60 to 100 troops every day in battle. By comparison, an average of fewer than 50 American soldiers died a day in 1968 during the deadliest year for American forces in the Vietnam War.
Among his comrades-in-arms who paid tribute to 49-year-old Makhachek at his funeral on Friday was General Viktor Muzhenko, chief of staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces until 2019. He warned that losses could worsen.
“This is one of the critical moments in the war, but it is not the peak,” Muzhenko told the Associated Press. “This is the most significant conflict in Europe since World War II. This explains why the losses are so great. To reduce losses, Ukraine now needs powerful weapons that match or even surpass Russian weapons. This would allow Ukraine to respond in kind. “
Concentrations of Russian artillery are causing many of the casualties in the eastern regions, which Moscow is focusing on after its initial invasion, which began on February 24, failed to capture Kyiv.
Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commander of the US military in Europe, described Russia’s strategy as a “medieval approach to exhaustion” and said that until Ukraine receives promised supplies of US, British and other weapons to destroy and destroy Russia’s batteries “This kind of sacrifice will continue.”
“This battlefield is much more deadly than what we are all used to in the 1920s in Iraq and Afghanistan, where we did not have such numbers,” he told the AP.
“This level of exhaustion will include leaders, sergeants,” he added. “They are a big part of the victims because they are more exposed, they are constantly moving around, trying to do things.”
Makhachek, a military engineer, leads a detachment that laid minefields and other defenses, said Colonel Ruslan Shutov, who has attended his friend’s funeral for more than 30 years.
“After the shelling began, he and a group hid in a shelter. There were four people in his group, and he told them to hide in the dugout. He hid in another. Unfortunately, an artillery shell hit the dugout where he was hiding. “
Ukraine had about 250,000 men and women in uniform before the war and was in the process of adding another 100,000. The government did not say how many died in more than 14 weeks of fighting.
No one really knows the number of Ukrainian civilians who were killed or how many fighters died on both sides. Allegations of casualties by government officials – who may sometimes exaggerate or underestimate their figures for public relations reasons – are almost impossible to verify.
Western analysts estimate that Russian military casualties are far higher, at many thousands. And yet, as Ukraine’s losses grow, the grim mathematics of war require it to find replacements. With a population of 43 million, it has a workforce.
“The problem is recruiting, training and bringing them to the forefront,” said retired U.S. Marine Colonel Mark Kansian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
“If the war is now turning into a long-term struggle for exhaustion, then you need to build systems to get replacements,” he said. “It was a difficult time for any army in battle.”
Muzhenko, the Ukrainian general, said acknowledging Zelensky’s great sacrifices would further boost Ukrainian morale and that more Western weapons would help turn the tide.
“The more Ukrainians know about what is happening on the front, the more the will to resist will grow,” he said. “Yes, the losses are significant. But with the help of our allies, we can minimize them and reduce them and move on to successful offensives. This will require powerful weapons.”
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Juras Karmanau contributed to this report from Lviv.
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