THE DONBAS FRONT, Ukraine (Reuters) – Always on the move, members of the Ukrainian army’s mobile tank repair unit travel along the Donbas frontline in the country’s east, responding to radio calls from battle groups requesting regular maintenance, a quick fix or a breakdown recovery.
Fielding a constant stream of callouts – to a broken caterpillar track on a T-72 tank, for example, or a dead battery in an armoured personnel carrier – the mechanics can fix the vehicle on the spot or tow it away for more serious repairs.
“We are like nomads – we move from one place to another,” said Serhii, a 23-year-old mechanic and driver of the recovery vehicle.
Nearly five months since Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, Russian forces have recently stepped up operations in the Donbas region, the key battleground in the east.
“They are more aggressive now. It feels like they are firing with closed eyes, they shell everything,” Petro, a 20-year-old serviceman, said.
Petro first joined the unit in the early days of the war when his hometown of Chernihiv, a town in northern Ukraine that was home to about 285,000 people before the conflict, was heavily shelled.
“It was hard to drive on the armoured recovery vehicle and tow a tank behind on the streets where I used to walk with a girlfriend just a month ago,” he said.
After Russian troops pulled back from northern Ukraine at the end of March, Petro’s unit was rebased to the east of the country as Moscow refocused what it calls its “special military operation” there.
(Reporting by Anna Voitenko and Gleb Garanich; Writing by Anna Dabrowska; Editing by Alex Richardson and Frank Jack Daniel)
