the times | Saturday April 30 2022 13News
Day parade in Moscow has dis-
appeared. Analysts now predict that
the conflict could continue indefinitely.
“I see it lasting months, perhaps
years,” said Colonel Liam Collins, the
American former special forces officer
who served as the US senior military
adviser to Ukraine in 2016-18. “The
conflict began in the Donbas eight
years ago and that was never resolved.
With that in mind, Ukraine knows that
it will never get any lost territory back
in a negotiated agreement with Russia.
So they won’t give up. At the same time
the Russians won’t be able to accept los-
ing. They have a huge ability to absorbpain. So there is no overlap for either
side in a negotiated settlement.”the weapons equation
Roaring skywards in a flash of sound
and flame, 122mm Grad rockets fired
from Soviet-era BM-21 multiple-barrel
rocket launchers are the most dramatic
manifestation of Ukraine’s fight back
along the Donbas front. “Grads are the
fire of the gods,” smiled Bida, the nom
de guerre of a 28-year-old artillery
commander as she sat on one of her
launch trucks near the contested town
of Lyman. “We’ve made many Russian
soldiers ‘good Russians’ this way.”A veteran of the battle for Kyiv, she
joined thousands of Ukrainian fighters
sent eastwards to Donbas. As the artil-
lery thundered around, she described
the speed with which her troops could
drive to a firing point, fire salvoes of
rockets at the Russians, then move
away before Russian drones could call
in counter-battery fire. “We killed so
many of them that we know how badly
they want to kill us,” she said cheerily.
Unlike in Donbas, the fight in the for-
ests around Kyiv had been dominated,
in Ukrainian popular consciousness
anyway, by different weapons systems:
man-portable anti-tank rockets such asthe British-made Nlaw and US Javelins
which had destroyed so many Russian
armoured vehicles in ambushes on
tree-lined roads and urban streets. In
the landscape of Donbas, characterised
by isolated towns, fields, steppe and
thin tree lines, it is artillery and tanks
that dominate. This kind of war, with
these weapon systems, afford the Rus-
sians a clear advantage. “The killer in
Donbas is artillery: rocket artillery,”
Michael Jacobson, a US field artillery
expert and analyst, said. “Ukraine
doesn’t have enough of what it needs,
while the Russians have prolific artil-
lery of all different range sweeps.”A fighter pilot known as the Ghost of
Kyiv died in an air battle last month
after allegedly shooting down more
than 40 Russian aircraft.
Major Stepan Tarabalka, 29, a father
of one, was killed when his MiG-29 was
shot down on March 13 while fighting
“overwhelming” enemy forces, accord-
ing to local reports.
Ukrainian sources yesterday con-
firmed the identity of the fighter pilot
and his death to The Times. They said
his helmet and goggles were expected
to go on sale at auction soon in London
but gave no further details.
He achieved fame after the Ukraini-
an government tweeted a video show-
ing an artist’s impression of the pilot,
claiming that he had shot down sixGhost of Kyiv is killed ‘after shooting down 40 aircraft’
Russian aircraft on the first day of the
invasion. “People call him the Ghost of
Kyiv. And rightly so — this UAF
[Ukrainian air force] ace dominates the
skies over our capital and country, and
has already become a nightmare for
invading Russian aircraft,” it stated.
Ukrainians on social media have
hailed the pilot as a “hero” and a
“guardian angel” although his identity
was kept secret. This led to speculation
that the story was a myth to bolster
morale. However, Ukrainian sources
remained adamant he was real.
On March 11, two days before Tara-
balka’s death, Ukraine’s general staff
published another picture of the
“Ghost” sitting in the cockpit of his
MiG-29, his face hidden by his visor,
helmet and oxygen mask. It was
captioned with a message to theRussians: “Hello, occupier, I’m coming
for your soul!”
Tarabalka, from a working-class
family, was born in the village of Korol-
ivka, western Ukraine. He graduatedfrom Kharkiv National University of
the Air Force. He is survived by his wife,
Olenia, and their son, Yarik, eight.
Tarabalka was posthumously award-
ed Ukraine’s top medal for bravery in
combat, the Order of the Golden Star,
with the title Hero of Ukraine.
After his death, his parents gave an
interview in which his mother, Nahta-
lia, described how he used to watch
MiG jets swooping over his house and
decided at a young age he wanted more
than anything to be a fighter pilot.
“He would always watch the para-
troopers in their air exercises. And he
would run in their direction to try to see
where they landed. Since early child-
hood, he always dreamt of the sky,
about flying higher than the clouds,”
she said via a translator.
Once he made it through flightschool, he would fly over the village and
waggle the wings of his MiG-29 by way
of salute.
“At any opportunity, he would fly
close to our house, do a little aerobatic
trick. And everyone in the village, every
house and all the villages around would
know that is Stepan flying”, she said.
His father, Evon, was a construction
worker and his parents spent much of
the year in Portugal trying to make a
living. Evon said the Ukrainian military
would not give them any details of his
final flight or his death.
He said: “We know he was flying on a
mission. And he completed the mission,
his task. Then he didn’t return. That’s all
the information we have, really.”
Ukraine has claimed in total to have
destroyed 189 Russian aircraft, 155
helicopters and 229 drones.Larisa Brown Defence EditorThe pilot told the Russian invaders in
a caption: “I’m coming for your soul!”News
in the battle Putin dare not lose
Bida had already experienced the
power of Russian weapons, surviving a
strike by an Iskander missile on a base
outside Kyiv. She emerged to find her
rockets destroyed. Twenty-six artil-
lerymen sheltering with her were hurt.
“We do our best, but we are out-
matched in range by Russian rockets,”
she said. “Our own Grads have a range
of just under 30km. Even the less
powerful Russian rocket systems have a
range of 40km. Their Tochka missiles
can strike us from 70km.”
A day after we spoke her battery was
on the move, this time in retreat as the
Russians moved to encircle Lyman.
Equally aggrieved by the mismatch
in weaponry was a 28-year-old tank
commander codenamed Almas. His
problem was not the range but the
numbers. In a recent tank battle in the
southern sector of Donbas his T-64 had
destroyed a Russian T-72 at 200 metres.
He had destroyed two armoured per-
sonnel carriers in the same fight. But his
tank took a strike on the turret that ru-
ined his optics and gun system, forcing
him to leap out and join the battle with
his short-barrel AKSU-74 assault rifle.
“The Russians use their tanks like
morons,” he reflected. “Their tactics are
rubbish and their gunnery weak. But
there are just so many of them. We de-
stroy some but others keep appearing.”
This mismatch in Donbas has galva-
nised the West. Last week the US an-
nounced its third package of $800 mil-
lion worth of weaponry, including 72
howitzers, 144,000 rounds of artillery
and 121 Phoenix Ghost tactical drones.
Britain is increasing its own supply, and
30 other nations are sending advanced
new weaponry and armour, as well as
Soviet-era munitions, tanks and equip-
ment from eastern Europe. President
Biden plans a further $33 billion in
support, including weapons. Yet the
question has yet to be answered: can a
sustainable supply of weaponry reach
Ukrainian forces in time to blunt and
eventually push back Russia’s attack?
“This battle has already started,” Bar-
rons said. “But Ukraine doesn’t have the
offensive military capability to chuck
the Russians out. The race is to equip the
Ukrainian military with the indirect-
fire systems that they need to break up,
disrupt and destroy these Russian
attacks before they get any traction.”
For the Ukrainian soldiers locked in
the battle, however, the complexities of
logistical supply and timing were re-
duced with succinct short-term clarity.
“So long as I’ve got enough tank shells
I’ll keep blasting everything I see with a
‘Z’ on it,” said Almas, scratching his
shaven head as the artillery rumbled to
his east. “I’ll let St Peter sort them out.”
The bloodier it gets, the more careful our
words should be, Matthew Parris, page 27On the front lines
in the battle for
Donbas, Ukraine’s
infantrymen face
rolling artillery
barrages from an
enemy far out of
sight. The scale of
casualties, above,
is kept secret but
Ukrainian sources
said that at least
two brigades had
been devastated.
The defenders
respond with
rocket strikes from
launchers, right,
that then swiftly
move position
before Russia can
locate themSERHII NUZHNENKO/REUTERS; EVGENIY MALOLETKA/AP; EPA