Andriy said Russia appeared to be adapting its battlefield tactics, after previous, rapid counteroffensives last year in Kharkiv and Kherson regions exposed weakness in Russian defences.
“They learn just like we do,” he said.
MORE BULLET WOUNDS
On a recent visit by Reuters reporters to his position near Bakhmut, an exhausted field medic bandaged a gaping crimson hole in the hand of a Ukrainian soldier wounded in fighting less than an hour earlier.
He noted the rising proportion of small arms wounds – accounting for two of three soldiers brought to him from the battlefield that day.
The medic, who introduced himself by his callsign Yoda, said this was because the unit was on the offensive, which also yielded a higher number of casualties overall.
“In general, a week on the offensive would be the same as a month in defence,” he said. “In that short time, (the unit) will take as many dead and wounded as one which has been used in defence for that whole month.”
The 38-year-old is a field medic for Ukraine’s 57th motorised infantry brigade fighting near Bakhmut, the city captured by Russia from Ukraine after a 10-month struggle in which thousands of troops on both sides were killed.
Ukraine has claimed small advances around the city in recent weeks.
Yoda said he had been wounded four times over the course of the war, and that many soldiers were carrying injuries.
He said the unit faced a critical shortage of field medics due to the high casualty rate, as they sometimes had to make five journeys a day to the frontlines and back under shelling and enemy drone fire.
“Yesterday they went to a place where there were enemies. We laid out routes, but the route … turned out to be dangerous. We took losses there,” he recalled.
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