Credit... Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — It all starts with a whistle, said Vladislav Goncharenko, a Ukrainian army sergeant, describing the relentless Russian shelling.
“You lie in a trench”, he said, waiting in an ambulance packed with other wounded soldiers. “There are very loud explosions. You want to get deeper into the ground. And you have shrapnel whistling above you, like flies”.
Soldiers, he said, “just want it to stop”.
Though much of the world’s focus in the war has been on Russia’s disorganized and flawed campaign, Ukraine, too, is struggling. Ukraine’s army has suffered heavy losses, shown signs of disarray and, step by step, fallen back from some long-held areas in...
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