Former British Army General Sir Richard Barrons, veteran of Afghanistan and Bosnia, also wrote this in an article entitled «Dig or Die – Trench Warfare in the 21st Century», in February 2023: «Even today, in war, just as it has been for hundreds of years, a hole in the ground is a factor of life or death, victory or surrender.” Translated, the trenches were important in the time of the French minister André Maginot, one of the main architects of the construction of the line of the same name between the two world wars. And they still are, even if they don’t always work.
According to some Ukrainian and foreign analysts, saving Kharkiv and Ukraine from Putin’s advance is not enough the long-range weapons that are so much debated about, or the 155 mm projectiles or the drones. You also have to dig. And we need to have, like the Russians, engineers capable of indicating the exact point where the trenches should be built and the type of suitable fortification. In support of this theory, the Surovikin line, built under Zaporizhzhia, to protect the annexed territories, which takes its name from the Russian general also known as the «butcher of Aleppo». Three depths, minefields, dragon’s teeth, cables and fortifications, this “Russian masterpiece” resisted most of Kiev’s counteroffensives in 2023. Then, just a moment before giving in under the blows of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, it drowned in the waters of the Dnipro flowed into the area after the collapse of the Nova Kakhovka dam exactly one year ago.
Precisely in the same days, military analysts from the British Royal United Services Institute had warned that «engineering has proven to be one of the strongest branches of the Russian military». Furthermore, there was already a suspicion that the Ukrainian defenses built up to that point were too far behind the Russian-Ukrainian border and therefore not effective. Then, in November, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky discussed with army chiefs the need for “a significant expansion of fortifications,” but it was only in February that the government announced financing of 524 million dollars for their constructionwith other sources contributing an additional $280 million.
Ukrainian opposition deputies are very critical when it comes to the topic. They fear that the army and local authorities are not digging in quickly enough or that the allocated funds are not being spent correctly. What contributed to Zelensky’s opposition agitation was the appointment of a former presidential aide, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, as an advisor to Defense Minister Rustem Umerov. The fact that someone who has resigned due to a corruption scandal is responsible for the fortification work does not leave everyone at peace. Especially since Umerov’s predecessor, Oleksey Reznikov, was fired after similar accusations. Furthermore, after the start of the Russian offensive on Kharkiv in early May and after the governor of the region Oleg Sinegubov admitted that trench digging work only began on March 1, local officials were arrested with the accusation of bad management.
Regardless of the controversy, Ukraine had to build its new defensive lines, under the constant threat of artillery and missile attacks Russians. This is why the Ukrainian military themselves explained to Courier how long-range weapons serve to protect those trenches. Finally, if Putin has not yet entered Ukrainian territory again the credit also goes to the courage of those who dug them, at night, at the risk of their own lives. In recent weeks, Zelensky has inspected some fortifications in the Sumy region, a couple of hours northeast of Kiev. The hope is that they will be done better than those in Kharkiv, especially if Putin were to give the order to break through to this region too. And everyone agrees on this: it’s better not to find out.
