Russia-Ukraine War News: Safety Concerns Persist at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant
NEAR BACHMUT, Ukraine — Large flakes of snow drifted silently through the trees as two Soviet-era tanks burst into life and whirled up the hill through the mud. It was daybreak on one of the last days of winter, and the tank commander and his deputy were trudging through the snow, checking on the men preparing for battle.
“The snow will cover us,” Poltava commander said, explaining that the Russian Orlan-10 reconnaissance drones, which frequently fly over Ukrainian positions, are being hampered by the weather. “We’ll endure it. The main thing is that our enemy has a hard time and goes home.”
Like other members of the Ukrainian military in this article, he insisted on being identified only by his code name.
Armed with Soviet-era tanks and backed by decades of training, Poltava, 51, and his deputy, the 57-year-old Chancellor, embody the resilience of the Ukrainian army. Trained more than 30 years ago at the Ukrainian Tank Institute in Kharkiv, they were pulled from the ranks of the volunteers and sent to command a tank company shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine last year. They’ve been fighting ever since.
Their training kept the men alive and their unit operational month after month. They even added to their arsenal a Russian T-72 tank captured in a battle in the northeastern city of Kharkiv, although they expressed frustration at the slow pace of deliveries of promised western main battle tanks that would allow them to capture the to fight the Russians.
“We need Western equipment so that we can go out at night,” said Chancellor, “and good communication and good optics. Everything is old here.”
In a harsh war of attrition, however, her personal history sheds light on the broader strength of the Ukrainian resistance.
The two men graduated from the Tank Academy within a few years – Chancellor in 1988 and Poltava in 1992. It was a turbulent time, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the independence of more than a dozen former communist countries and Soviet republics, and neither continued his military career for long.
Oleksandr Chubko contributed reporting.