Outgunned and outmanned, Ukrainian soldiers struggling to hold the front line in a brutal, months-long Russian siege of Chasiv Yar are increasingly worried about their army’s ability to protect their rear. If key supply lines from the west are cut off and if troops to their south are overrun, they risk being choked.
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After retreating west from the Donetsk Oblast city of Bakhmut just over one year ago, Ukraine’s forces have used the higher ground around Chasiv Yar to inflict massive losses on advancing Russian troops who this spring made incursions into the town’s eastern outskirts.
But the predicament for Ukrainian troops struggling to hold Chasiv Yar worsened in past weeks after a poorly organized rotation of Ukrainian soldiers to the south allowed Russian forces to advance towards the Ukraine-held towns of Toretsk and Niu York.