In first world war descriptions of an artillery barrage, there is the whistle of the approaching shell, then a flash, a concussive blast and the air is filled with flying metal. Last comes the sound of the explosion. The ground trembles. As Harry Patch, a British soldier, put it in a BBC interview: “if any man tells you . . . he wasn’t scared — he’s a liar.”
It has been seven weeks since the Russian army gave up its poorly thought out assault on Kyiv and concentrated its forces in the Donbas, where Ukrainian troops have faced incessant shelling from their better armed adversaries and suffered conditions often compared to the first world war.
Constant bombardment has taken a toll on battlefield morale, reflecting a darkening mood in Kyiv as Russia’s army uses its advantages in massed artillery to make incremental progress in the Donbas and its weeks-long effort to take the provincial city of Sievierodonetsk.