“Target in sights,” he says in Ukrainian as he rests his crosshairs on a man-shaped metal panel in the quarry below a half-kilometer away. He pulls the trigger: a sharp crack, and the smell of gunpowder in the air. Artyom continues to peer through his binoculars into the quarry.

“Target hit,” he says, with a note of approval.

Artyom and Yevhen are training here at a makeshift firing range in eastern Ukraine, just a few dozen miles from the fierce battle for the city of Bakhmut, keeping sharp for when their deadly skills will be called on again. It’s early March, and around Bakhmut, both sides are dug in behind armor or mud, sheltering from 24/7 artillery fire, and occasionally darting from cover to open fire on an enemy trench position. The two snipers’ go-to guns in that type of fight are Kalashnikovs — a weapon well-suited to unleashing a wall of ammunition at close range.

“Over the last six months, there hasn’t been much use for snipers — the frontline has been changing quite a bit,” Artyom says. “Instead, we have largely been working as saboteurs: planting mines, destroying train tracks” before the enemy can capture and use them, and carrying out reconnaissance for raids.

But when the Russians have spent their energy on the latest offensive, make camp and take a knee before the next one, the snipers will take to the shadows again, to take them out.

The men have repurposed a deserted stone quarry for their target practice — a wide, rock-strewn depression gouged out of miles of farmer’s fields clogged with mud from the springtime thaw. Yevhen is younger, having joined Ukraine’s armed forces as Russia invaded last year; he is now honing his skills in long-range firearms. Artyom is a professional sniper, having worked in this role since he joined Ukraine’s army in 2016.

Top-of-the-line rifles

For today’s session, each man has a personalized, top-of-the-line sniper rifle to work with. Yevhen to a .308 calibre Accuracy International model; Artyom prefers his Italian-made .338 Victrix Scorpio V. The Western, NATO-style loadout of each marksman is an evolutionary shift from the Soviet approach that characterized Ukraine’s armed forces in years past.

“The U.S., UK, Canada — these countries are the pinnacle of modern equipment,” Artyom says, his outfit bristling with optics and auxiliary gear. “What they use, we try to emulate.” The two men spoke anonymously because they were talking without Ukrainian army permission, in order to speak freely about the course of the war.

While most of their countrymen are fighting in large, coordinated maneuver formations of tanks, artillery and infantry, the two snipers are part of the elite light-infantry force striking from the shadows, using some of the most advanced equipment in Ukraine’s arsenal. Their operations helped drive Russian forces out of western Ukraine in the opening weeks of the 2021 invasion, picking off senior enemy officers at long range, inspiring fear, and confusion among the ill-prepared and disorganized Russian ranks. It’s their tactics that NATO chiefs are studying, as a playbook to what U.S. and other troops might face, should Moscow attack NATO territory.

That kind of warfare was particularly vital in the first six weeks of the Russian invasion as well.

As Russian armored units lumbered through the Ukrainian countryside in late February and early March 2022, the conditions for the sniper warfare that had dominated the not-so-frozen conflict along the frontlines in Donbas since 2015 evaporated.

Instead, mobile strike teams capable of taking on isolated Russian columns, often operating without the requisite infantry cover, became the priority. Composed of both veteran and irregular partisan fighters, small teams of Ukrainian infantry inflicted outsized losses on Russian units.

While neither Yevhen nor Artyom ever worked behind Russian lines, they admit that there was “hardly such a thing” as proper frontlines in those hectic first weeks, before Moscow abandoned the fight for northern Ukraine to focus on Donbas.

In the months that followed, Arytom redeployed to Donbas as well. He describes several close brushes with death since then.

“Sniper duels are just a silly thing from the movies,” Artyom says. “When [the Russians] really want to get us, they use mortars — or if we’re really unlucky, white phosphorus.” The latter substance – an incendiary agent whose use as a weapon is banned in most cases by international law – was deployed against Artyom and his comrades in the village of Bilohorivka just last month. “Everything was on fire. We were lucky to escape that time,” Artyom says.

For Artyom, the war didn’t start with Russia’s full-scale invasion last February. A native of Kramatorsk, he was living in that city when Russian-backed separatists occupied it for several months in 2014 — an experience he credits for his desire to join the armed forces.

“Back in 2014, I was a normal guy, just working in a heavy machinery factory,” he says. “What happened was almost surreal. I couldn’t believe that just 20 guys can capture a whole city – that 500 policemen can just defect or flee,” Artyom says of the Russian separatists’ brief capture of Kramatorsk during Russia’s seizure of Crimea.

He aided Ukraine’s armed forces during the 2014 occupation, providing them with coordinates of separatist troops and bases. “It was pure chaos in those days – gangs looting stores, kidnapping people. I couldn’t imagine that happening to the rest [of Ukraine]. Those days affected me a lot,” Artyom says. He joined the army two years later.

Battle for Bakhmut

Despite his specialized equipment, the expert sniper says his weapon of choice these days in the fighting around Bakhmut is not his cutting-edge Western rifle, but rather, a simple Kalashnikov automatic, equipped with a thermal scope.

“Believe it or not, this, with the proper optics is the most effective weapon I’ve used in this war,” Artyom says, holding up his go-to machine gun. “A sniper rifle costs $20,000 or $30,000 dollars and can kill only one Russian quickly. An AK can defend against an entire assault.” His record in a single engagement? 15 enemies eliminated in about three hours. “We didn’t expect them to react so calmly once we started shooting, but they just kept milling around in the same area,” Artyom says.

Neither Artyom nor Yevhen knows where their next deployment will be. All they are certain is that it won’t be in Bakhmut, the city where six months of brutal fighting has brought Russian troops to within a few kilometers of encircling the Ukrainian defenders.

“There’s not much need for snipers in Bakhmut,” Yevhen says. “It’s the kind of battle that is decided by artillery and regular infantry. There’s no sense to risk highly specialized troops when shelling will kill you just as easily,” he says.

But Artyom has a few interesting ideas for assignments further down the road.

“Since we’re specialists, we get to choose a lot of our own missions,” he says. “I’d like to go next to either the forests of Belarus or the mountains of the North Caucasus. Ukraine isn’t the only country that needs to be liberated from the Russians.”

But while the war continues, the features of the battlefield have changed significantly — both in the systems employed, and the tactics used to counter them.

Ukraine’s military, which began the war with largely Soviet-era equipment, has transitioned into an ever-more Western-armed and -trained force. By contrast, much of Russia’s best equipment — and its most professional troops — have been destroyed or killed in months of relentless combat, leading Moscow to draw on older stocks as the Russian force regresses.

Few people, or units, know this better than Ukraine’s 59th Motorized Brigade. Stationed in Kherson oblast at the start of the war, the 59th was subjected to the full force of one of Russia’s best-prepared strike groups, an armored thrust northwards from occupied Crimea. But while they were forced to cede Kherson City in early March, the 59th held back Russia’s spearheads from seizing Mykolaiv, the next city along the coast towards Odesa. Now, after seven months of largely static warfare, the changing balance of power sees the 59th poised to play a major role in the upcoming battle to liberate Kherson.

The soldiers of the 59th are bullish on their prospects of beating the Russians back at Kherson City. They talk dismissively of the battlefield effectiveness of the Iranian drones that have made headlines in recent weeks — weapons well-suited to harassing civilian infrastructure but less effective against prepared military units. Consistent degradation of Russian logistics and supply lines has hampered the enemy’s ability to effectively contest the battlefield. Russian leaders’ desperate moves to staff their front line with unwilling conscripts, their focus on looting Kherson of anything moveable, and even their use of air defense systems to attack ground targets, all buoy the 59th’s morale. They smell blood in the water.

On a sunny day in late October, one platoon from the brigade was catching some sleep during a break in the action a few kilometers back from the frontline. The soldiers and officers present shared with Military Times their impressions of how the war has changed — for them, often for the better — over the past few months.

One of the hot topics in recent weeks has been Russia’s heavy deployment of Iranian-made Shahed 136 loitering munitions. Carrying a warhead of up to 50 kilograms and with a range of 1,500 kilometers, these ‘kamikaze drones’ have been employed across Ukraine, in particular to strike heating and power infrastructure in Kyiv and other cities. While they have been used on the battlefield as well, soldiers say they have not been particularly effective militarily.

“Iranian drones are attacking Mykolaiv constantly,” says Vadym, a senior lieutenant in the 59th. “They’re active over the entire region, but most of them are shot down. They are only really useful against civilian targets, when they can slip past air defense,” he says.

One of the difficulties drones present to many air defense systems is a small radio and heat signature, which can make it difficult to achieve lock-on. With advance warning of an approaching drone, however, this can be mitigated — and there are other tools that work even better.

“It’s difficult to hit [a Shahed] with any system that works by heat lock, such as a Stinger [MANPAD], unless you have extra time to track it,” Vadym says. “But our foreign partners have provided us with some very effective systems. The German Gepards [self-propelled anti-aircraft guns] are very good against them. They see the [drone] and can easily shoot it down. Even machine guns can down [Shaheds] quite easily if they are not flying too high — they are quite large and slow,” he explains.

Other troops agree with Vadym’s estimation.

“These drones [Shaheds] are not a problem at all,” says Zhenya, a sergeant major. “If you have warning and anti-aircraft weapons, you can down them quite easily. That’s why [Russia] uses them against cities — they are not useful on the battlefield,” he says.

The use of these systems speaks to the difficulties Moscow is facing in maintaining a steady level of long-range strikes eight months into the war. As its stocks of precision-guided munitions deplete, Russia has turned to other methods, some not designed for the task: soldiers say that S-300 missiles, originally designed for air defense, are now one of the primary weapons used to strike Mykolaiv. Despite their poor accuracy when used against ground targets, the missiles are still fired at the city regularly at night.

Ukraine’s efforts to degrade Russian logistics and supply routes in Kherson are also paying dividends.

“American HIMARs [precision rocket artillery] have been incredibly useful for us. Once we started hitting the bridges, the intensity of the [Russian] shelling decreased a lot,” says Vadym, describing the Ukrainian shelling of the Antonovsky and Nova Kakhovka bridges, the only two connections between Kherson and the rest of Russian-held southern Ukraine. “We destroyed a lot of their artillery and ammunition warehouses as well. Before, [the Russians] used to shell everything, just firing as much as they wanted at any targets. Now, they are forced to economize,” Vadym says.

American-provided long-range artillery systems have been crucial to shifting the tide here as well. Vadym specifically names the M109 Paladin self-propelled howitzer and the M777, whose guided Excalibur shells can hit targets up to 40 kilometers away with high accuracy.

“Before we had the M777, we couldn’t reach their [artillery] systems, but now we can,” he says.

Finally, it is not just Russian equipment that has been depleted. Much of Moscow’s professional infantry corps, many of whom were transferred from eastern Ukraine to Kherson over the summer in anticipation of an impending Ukrainian assault, has been put out of action. With competent manpower consistently lacking and contract servicemen, many of whom have been fighting without a break since Feb. 24, increasingly dwindling, Russia has thrown in a new stopgap to bolster the lines: conscripts.

The men of the 59th are unimpressed by what they have seen.

”We’ve already gone up against their mobilized men here,” says Mikhail, another senior lieutenant at a post closer to the front. “They are nearly useless. Many of them can hardly hold a gun, let alone a position. We have killed their professional soldiers, and now [Russia] is hoping to slow us down with bodies,” he says.

As the situation shifts in Ukraine’s favor, the soldiers want for only one thing: extra artillery and tanks to crack Russia’s defenses and exploit breakthroughs in the inevitable assault on Kherson.

“We have almost everything we need,” Vadym says. “We just need a bit more artillery, to fight against their guns, and especially tanks — maybe the most important element in an attack. There will be positive developments here [in Kherson] very soon.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated after publication to remove references to the Ukrainian unit’s location that could potentially put them at risk.

On May 18, Russian forces broke through Ukrainian lines west of the town of Popasna. Russia massed units there after capturing the town on May 8, preparing for a larger assault to drive into the open terrain to the west. Their primary objective appears to be cutting the highway leading from Bakhmut to the cities of Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, the last remaining Ukrainian outposts in Luhansk Oblast and the scene of fierce urban fighting for weeks.

The situation on the ground indicates they are close to achieving this goal and the coming week will be pivotal.

As recently as Friday, the Pentagon still believed Russian successes have been limited, with small towns and villages changing hands every day in the Donbas.

“The Russians are still well behind where we believe they wanted to be when they started this revitalized effort in the eastern part of the country,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters.

But the feeling of approaching war was evident on the outskirts of Bakhmut on May 20. On the city’s northern approaches, checkpoints had recently been strengthened, and additional ones set up. Soldiers at the post guarding the road heading north tell travelers that they may cross, but their safety cannot be guaranteed.

This point is immediately driven home by the van slowly trundling up to the checkpoint from the north. It is barely moving: one of the front tires is flat, and two others have been completely shredded away, leaving the vehicle driving on rims. More concerning are the bullet holes across the van’s windshield and left side, indicative of having taken Russian small arms fire somewhere up ahead.

The road itself is a no man’s land. A few Ukrainian military vehicles still use it: a T-64 main battle tank rumbles slowly along just ahead, the lack of any soldiers sitting on its chassis (as is commonly seen these days) another indication that the section up ahead is an active combat zone. The road is broken up by the craters of fresh shellfire — soldiers at the checkpoint confirm that the road is now under direct Russian artillery fire.

This section of the road is still flanked by trees, providing at least some cover. A few kilometers further, the trees break, leaving nothing but open fields in either direction. Artillery fire, always audible, is now much closer.

The town of Soledar, some seven kilometers north of Bakhmut, is nearly a frontline at this point. A press officer for Ukraine’s 24th Mechanized Infantry Brigade, fighting in the area, confirms that Russian forces are less than five kilometers from the town, and the road. On the outskirts of Soledar, the Knauf plant, a massive housing materials factory, has been hit by an airstrike and lies half-destroyed. Any further up the road, survival is pure luck: a point illustrated grippingly by a video from an AFP photographer on May 23, as he and his team are forced to abandon their vehicle and wait for shelling hitting perhaps 100 meters away to cease before continuing on.

Those few travelers who do make it down the road in one piece are visibly traumatized by the experience.

Back at the Bakhmut north checkpoint, one car pulls up, a white Lada full of civilians who have just braved the highway. The woman in the front seat is near-hysterical, shrieking at the soldier nearest her, who tries ineffectually to calm her with words of, “don’t worry, you’re safe here now.”

A conversation reveals they have just left the town of Zolote, now nearly surrounded by recent Russian advances to the northeast.

Other soldiers at the checkpoint also admit the momentum is on the enemy’s side.

“The situation is difficult,” says Artyom, a soldier standing guard. “The shelling is very close now. We are preparing now in Bakhmut,” he says.

Those preparations are visible. Between Bakhmut and the town of Konstantinivka to the west, new trenches and earthworks are being established. Near the northern outskirts of Bakhmut, concentrations of Ukrainian armor are hidden in the tree line: tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and self-propelled howitzers.

That does not bode well for the fate of those outposts further north. With Russian forces advancing to cut the main supply line to Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, Ukrainian troops are now forced to rely on a single alternate route that crosses further to the west.

Any further Russian advances might make it necessary to abandon the two Luhansk cities entirely, lest the experienced and valuable forces there be cut off.

In the meantime, Russia continues to press its offensive all across the Donbas. This week will be a decisive one for Ukraine’s prospects of holding the region — and Russia’s chances of seizing it.

Ukraine’s military intelligence chief said in recent days that his country’s goal is to reclaim Crimea and eastern territories seized by Russia in 2014. But it remains unclear if the Ukrainians — even when armed with new U.S. artillery tubes and other Western weapons — can achieve such a position and avoid a diplomatic settlement.

Senior U.S. military officials said Monday that the end-state of the war will have to be defined by the Ukrainians.

“Our effort is to do everything that we can to strengthen Ukraine’s hands on the battlefield, and also at the negotiation table,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told Pentagon reporters. “We’re going to stick with doing everything we can to make sure that they achieve their objectives. At the end of the day, you know, what this looks like, what the end state looks like, will be defined by the Ukrainians, and not by us.”