The fields of northeast Ukraine stretch on endlessly. One village looks much like the next, with only the occasional dilapidated road sign to distinguish one clutch of houses and farmsteads from the next. 

It’s on the outskirts of one such village, here in the Vovchansk district of Kharkiv, almost a stone’s throw from the Russian border, that a small forest conceals something else: a dozen tanks, hidden from aerial view by an outcropping topped by trees. This is one unit of Ukraine’s 3rd Tanks Brigade, and they lie here in wait for their own role in the just-begun Ukrainian offensive.

“Even in a rear area like this, it’s important to keep these tanks hidden,” says Yuri Kulish, a 53-year old deputy company commander in the brigade. He gestures at a few of the dirt revetments dug into the earth, shielding the tanks from view from every angle except above. “[The Russians] have guided bombs that can hit these from many kilometers away, from the other side of the border. And we can’t afford to lose tanks from carelessness,” Kulish says.

The 3rd Tank Brigade is a reserve formation of the Ukrainian military: all its soldiers have been called up over the past year and a half, filling out positions to bolster the standing contract army.

The unit was mobilised immediately following Russia’s invasion on February 24, 2022, and within two months was already participating in the defence of Izyum. While that town would fall to the Russians, it would not be lost for long: Ukrainian forces, including the 3rd Tanks, would recapture it in September as part of the wildly successful Kharkiv counteroffensive.

The speed of that offensive is obvious driving through the northeast Kharkiv countryside. While all of these towns and villages were occupied by Russia, they bear few of the scars and damage visible in the Donbas and elsewhere, as Ukrainian forces swiftly liberated them without a prolonged fight.

The vast majority of the war’s battles, however, have been less decisive. Kulish and his subordinates tell of the dozens of difficult fights they have engaged in with their Russian adversaries in the months that followed.

One such battle took place at the village of Topolsk, near Izyum, last spring, in which the commander of Kulish’s company received wounds he is still recovering from.

“Sasha Sarichev, the commander of our company, is a very patriotic guy,” Kulish says of his direct superior. “We were about to make an assault [on the Russian positions], and he put a Ukrainian flag on his tank. I tried to tell him, ‘Sasha, don’t do that, you’ll make yourself target number one [for the enemy], but he insisted. So we began the assault, and as I predicted, all the enemy fire was concentrated on him. But because of this, the rest of us were able to get close to the enemy positions. My gunner, Oleksii, managed to get his first vehicle kill in that attack – he hit a Russian BMP. So Sasha’s bravery really helped us all, like a true leader should,” Kulish says.

The 3rd Tank Brigade is also representative of another division within Ukraine’s military. While hundreds of Western main battle tanks have been transferred to Ukraine in recent months, the vast majority of those have been shepherded into their own brigades, new formations created, trained and equipped to utilise the new equipment in a concentrated manner. The smaller numbers of relatively advanced Challenger-2 and Leopard 2 tanks transferred has led Kyiv to group them together for fear of dispersing their combat power.

That means that existing formations have had to make do with their own stocks, as well as a limited number of foreign donations of older Eastern Bloc models. The 3rd Tanks is no exception to this, as staff sergeant Roman Kryvchuk explains.

“Almost all of our tanks are Ukrainian [made],” Kryvchuk says, gesturing at the half-dozen dug into their revetments in the forest. “Of the six you see here, five of them are T-72s, either already in service [at the start of the war] or repaired and brought back into service. Only one of them is from abroad – also a T-72, but from [North] Macedonia,” he says.

But older tanks mean older support systems, as well. The lack of advanced visual or targeting gear has regularly impacted the 3rd Tanks in combat, as its members explain.

“I remember one battle, quite typical of the fights we have,” says Kulish. “There were enemy tanks approaching us, driving down a road. We took positions in the forest belt across from them, waiting for them to close within effective firing distance – 600 metres. Our rangefinder didn’t work, so I had to estimate myself [what that looked like]. The four enemy tanks – three T-72s and a T-90 – were all the latest model, upgraded in 2020. We fired on them, but with their advanced targeting and optics gear, they immediately returned fire, more accurately than us even though they were surprised. We hit them, but their explosive reactive armor protected them. In the end, we had to retreat with three damaged tanks, while they were almost unharmed,” Kulish says.

Ammunition problems have plagued Ukrainian units in recent months. Artillery units have been severely affected, while one mortar team recently said that they were now reduced to firing just five shells a day, compared to 300 daily earlier in the war. While this has affected tank crews as well, the shortages have not been nearly as acute, Kryvchuk says.

“Often when we go out, we’ll fire about 60 shells [in one day],” he says. “A T-72 can hold 22 shells, so that means we go through a full complement [of shells] three times. We’re engaging both infantry and enemy tanks with them, so fortunately we haven’t had many [ammunition] shortages yet,” Kryvchuk says.

Meanwhile, some of the problems encountered by this unit have already been experienced even worse by Ukrainian troops engaged in the current southern counteroffensive. In one battle, near the town of Orikhiv earlier this month, Russian Ka-52 attack helicopters savaged an advancing column of Ukrainian armour. Multiple US-donated Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and at least one Leopard 2 tank were destroyed by anti-tank missiles, fired by helicopters hovering some 10km away just above the treeline. 

The 3rd Tanks has had its own difficulties with Russian helicopters, one of the main advantages Russian forces still retain in the conflict.

“There was one attack [we launched], where Russian tanks were suddenly reinforced with helicopters,” Kulish says. “We had nothing effective to hit them – some of the infantry were shooting at them with small arms, just their rifles. When [the helicopters] fly low, close to the trees, even [US shoulder-launched] Stinger anti-aircraft missiles are not so effective against them. It’s a real problem,” Kulish admits.

No one expects the current counteroffensive to be easy – Kulish, Kryvchuk and the others recognise that the Kharkiv assault last year, when Russian lines often crumbled on contact, will likely not occur again. Heavy fighting through prepared defences awaits any Ukrainian unit that will take part in the assault, while the modest gains to date – a handful of villages liberated from Russian control over the course of two weeks – speak to the difficulty of the fighting. 

While they still don’t know what their eventual role will be in any assaults, or where it will take place, Kulish and the rest of the 3rd Tank Brigade feel up to any challenge.

“Only five people in the world know the plan for the counteroffensive,” says Kulish, referencing a comment by Ukrainian Security Council chief Oleksii Danilov. “Even if I did know anything, I wouldn’t tell you! But we have fought many hard battles before. We will be ready for whatever comes next.”