Late at night, half a dozen Ukrainian infantrymen leaned over a map spread on wooden pallets inside a building. Within an hour they would embark on one of the most dangerous deployments of the war, a nighttime operation across the Dnipro River.
Vyshyty, a deputy company commander, was issuing orders for an operation last May. The unit would be providing support for assault troops, he told them. “If they retreat, you hold positions, give them covering fire, and evacuate the heavily wounded,” he said.
The men of 126th Territorial Defense Brigade are among elite forces of the Ukrainian army. Trained by British special operations forces, among others, they have been conducting cross-river operations, alongside marine infantry brigades and special intelligence units, against Russian forces in the southern Kherson region for the best part of two years.
Over several weeks this spring, commanders and soldiers of the brigade allowed a team of reporters to accompany them on operations. They also described some of their earlier operations that had not been previously reported. Because of security restrictions, some details and locations have been withheld and soldiers are identified only by first names or call signs.
For months the Dnipro River has been a brutal battlefront, as Ukraine attempted a show of force with an amphibious assault against Russia’s western flank. The Ukrainians took untold casualties as they clung to tenuous positions in the village of Krynky on the eastern bank.
The 126th Brigade has been in the forefront of the river operations, conducting reconnaissance and assaults.Their exploits illustrate the desperate cost of the war as Ukraine has tried to make gains against a vastly superior force.
Formed by volunteers in the city of Odesa in the days after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the 126th Brigade had few members with military experience. But its volunteers included entrepreneurs, self-declared hippies and geeks who made qualities like training and good leadership a priority.
“It was a bit of a miracle,” said Rul, 38, the brigade’s chief sergeant major. “We did not know each other but our minds all went in one direction.”
With training from British, American and Swedish instructors, the brigade adopted elements from NATO drills, which differed from Ukrainian and Soviet models in their attention to detailed preparation and a focus on keeping soldiers alive.
“Good management saves lives,” said Rul. “And if you want to win, you have to save more lives than the Russians do.”
The 126th fought at the city of Mykolaiv, and in the counteroffensive in 2022 that recaptured Kherson. The hardest test of all, soldiers and commanders said, has been the assaults across the Dnipro.
Ordered to punch through Russian positions beyond the village of Kozachi Laheri on the eastern bank in August 2023, Krab, one of the brigade’s commanders, led a platoon across the river and advanced 800 meters from the riverbank. But fighting was so intense, the soldiers ran out of ammunition and discovered the real difficulty of a cross-river assault: bringing supplies across half a mile of water.
Forced to pull back, they were soon fighting with their backs to the river.
Two months later, in October, the 126th joined units from several marine brigades in a large-scale amphibious assault on the village of Krynky on the eastern bank. That operation has become notorious among Ukrainian forces as a “suicide mission,” in which wave after wave of men were ordered across the river to attack Russian positions with little gain.
Russian firepower was so heavy, soldiers and marines said in interviews at the time, that men were cut down midstream or before they set out, as they were loading into boats. When they reached the eastern bank, they had to clamber over corpses to disembark into a moonscape with no shelter but bomb craters and splintered trees.
The 126th Brigade units took their share of casualties — one company lost half its men over months of fighting — yet it was the brigade’s reconnaissance and assault units that first forged a route into Krynky and established positions there. In recognition of its capabilities, the 126th has been selected to become a new marine brigade.
Those assault troops all came back alive from Krynky after seven days of fighting, said Mudri, 31, their commander, who met them as they returned.
But the Russian shellfire intensified after the first week, soldiers in infantry units that followed up on the initial assault said. Serhii, a 41-year-old father of three, said his unit fought for six hours to advance just 80 yards. The unit was so pinned down that they could not evacuate the wounded for four days, he said.
“The medic bled out and died,” Serhii said. “He was lightly wounded but he died.”
Others described nearly drowning in the river, weighed down by their weapons and kit when their boats were sunk.
Rybak, 41, who ran a small angling company before the war, was thrown in the water when his boat hit a mine. Unable to move his legs — he later discovered his back was broken — he managed to paddle to the riverbank.
He said he hid among the corpses of fallen comrades for six hours, slipping in and out of consciousness, clinging to the bank by digging two commando knives into the grass. He was later rescued by a passing boat but only by chance.
Through October fighting was at close quarters, house to house, with Russian soldiers in one building and Ukrainians in the next, Serhii said. The men sheltered in basements. Neither side could go out to recover the dead.
Animals were eating the corpses, Serhii recalled.
By November the Russian troops had pulled back and were flattening the houses with aerial guided bombs. Ukrainian troops were scattered and without communications.
Ihor, a commander in the assault battalion, took a unit into Krynky for nine days and scoured the bombed-out buildings to register which units and men were still alive and fighting.
“Thanks to that we worked out who was where,” he said. “We named it Chaos Street.”
The brigade began supplying its men with ammunition, food and water by drone since the route across the water was so dangerous. They held positions in Krynky through the winter but the Russian bombardment steadily demolished all cover.
By early this past summer the brigade was starting operations at a different part of the river.
“The good thing is there is good soil so you can dig in,” Vyshyty, the deputy company commander, told the squad readying for the operation last May. Russian positions were close, he said, so he advised the men to whisper to avoid detection.
In a village a safe distance from the river, the men geared up, swinging on body armor and packs, jumping to shift the weight. They cracked jokes and smoked cigarettes as the tension grew. One soldier asked the commander to let them know the result of a boxing match while they were on positions.
Then suddenly they fell silent, piled into vehicles and slid away into the night.
The route in was the most dangerous part of the operation, Vyshyty, 27, said after the men departed. They would face Russian artillery fire, guided bombs and the most lethal of all, attack drones, as they drove to the riverbank and loaded onto boats.
Both sides had jamming devices to guard against drones but the protection was imperfect, Vyshyty said. “Something will go wrong,” he said with a shrug, “or nothing will go wrong.”
He stayed up till dawn monitoring the operation and allowed Times reporters to join him. Two engineers arrived back from the riverbank. They paced around the room, high from adrenaline after a dash to evade drones as Vyshyty debriefed them.
In the early hours bad news came through from Krynky. The brigade’s last unit, trapped in the village for weeks, had finally received orders to pull out. They made it to the pick up point but just before dawn their boat was hit by a Russian drone. One of the brigade’s most experienced soldiers was killed.
“He was the best warrior,” Vyshyty said a few days later.
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