A small band of Ukrainian soldiers were trapped. They were holding the line on the battlefield, but Russian forces had managed to creep in behind their trench and encircle them.

“Even if the position holds, supplies — ammunition, provisions — eventually run out,” Capt. Viacheslav, the 30-year-old commander of an elite drone unit, said last week as he monitored events from an outpost a few kilometres away in eastern Ukraine. “Any vehicle attempting to reach these positions will be ambushed.”

“We are always getting stuck in these kinds of tough situations,” he said.

As the war in Ukraine enters its fourth winter and the first snowfall blankets cratered fields strewed with bodies, the situations are only growing tougher for Ukrainian forces. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s top military commander, recently said his forces were fighting to hold back “one of the most powerful Russian offensives from launching a full-scale invasion”.

Ukraine got a boost on Sunday when the US, after months of pressure from Kyiv, said it had granted permission for Ukraine to use American-provided weapons to fire deeper into Russia. On Tuesday, they used American-made ballistic missiles, called ATACMS (for Army Tactical Missile System), in an attack on a munitions depot in Russia.

But the election of Donald J. Trump to the American presidency this month injected an extra dose of uncertainty over the fate of the Ukrainian war effort.

While questions over whether the US would continue to provide robust military support to Ukraine have resulted in a frenzy of diplomatic activity around the world, nowhere will those decisions be felt more acutely than on the front lines, where beleaguered Ukrainian troops are engaged in a fierce and bloody defence of their land.

Outnumbered by more than six to one along some stretches of the front, soldiers and commanders say they are hindered by a lack of combat infantry after years of heavy fighting and, just as important, by a shortage of experienced platoon and company commanders to lead untested recruits into battle. That has led to a fraying of Ukraine’s lines.

New York Times News Service